An acute sense of the dilution of national identity makes immigration different from most public-policy matters.
Among the species that populate the American political marshland, we are paying too much attention to the youngest. Pollsters were first sighted at the end of the previous century, but this non-native kind has since proliferated. Earlier this year, when the journalists (indigenous animals, by comparison) turned to the focusing event at the southern border that is still occurring, Echelon Insights and Morning Consult found immigration to be the principal issue for conservatives. Now, it is second in salience to “the economy” — a term that can mean everything and nothing — and ahead of national security. Assuming all survey respondents make the same distinctions between these overlapping concepts, what might they mean by immigration that isn’t an economic or security concern? Market research cannot reassemble a puzzle it has itself scattered.
