The growing role of Sanctuary state and migrant influence mechanisms in the U.S. politics: the case of California

«…I do not believe DACA is amnesty [disagreement]»

«…these are children who were brought to this country no fault of their own [protectiveness] this is the only country [singling out USA] that they know, we should not send them out [deportation] of our country we need to make sure they're taken care of»

«…the president wants to make sure that we have a solution to DACA and he is very committed to making sure we have a resolution. I believe that we're gonna look at what the more conservative folks [support conservatives] want as well as what more moderate folks [support moderates] want and I think we're gonna come to a comprehensive solution and I think it's gonna be a solution that both sides can live with [compromise]»

«We have to have border security if we're gonna have a DACA fix we have to make sure our borders are secure [security] and I think that's one of the fundamental differences right now I think that the Republicans want to make sure our borders are secure and I'm not sure that our friends on the other side of the aisle think that that's as high of a priority [border prioroty]»

What we are looking at here is representative Mrs. Walters showcasing her deviation from general party ideas about immigration, but still nevertheless still attempting at not opposing the party openly. Due to the ground theory method we can this open coding can now be brought down to categories and further on into patterns (depicted in Table 4):

Table 4

Now as a result we have come up with 2 patterns for the ground theory of how Mimi Walters behaved during her time in office. First of all we can see that she is indeed being protective of immigrants. Not only that, but she never refers to the immigrant kids as «immigrants» or «aliens» (the latter being a very common case with other republicans), only as «children». This brings out not only her will to develop a more liberal republican approach towards the matter and reforming DACA, but also brings her out as a mother who showcases care for the kids. By singling out the United States as the only country these immigrants know, in a way those are America's children. She has also expressed quite distinctive notions of opposing how the GOP addresses the DACA matter. In a sense most republicans are very radical when it comes to those acts and they treat them as amnesties for the aliens, which in turn provokes generally more hardline policies towards the issue. However Mrs. Walters, alongside other republicans in California sees DACA only as a deferred action and a pathway to legal citizenship. Mimi Walters has shown strong signs of trying to attract GOP support, but all unsuccessfully. «Walters doesn't appear to be that worried. After demanding more information about the family separations, last week she voted for a failed bill proposed by House conservatives that did not include a permanent path to citizenship for Dreamers.» In a way, towards the end of her House run, all that Mrs. Walters essentially did is oppose a good amount of GOP stances on immigration, which eventually lead to her losing almost of their support.

2.2 Case #2 - Republican Jeff Denham (10^th congressional district)

Jeff Denham is a pretty hard and controversial case in some sense. Treu republican at heart, but not judging by his election activity, which makes him a very interesting case. His backstory is very «republican American» in a sense. At an early age he enlisted into the US air force where he served his country for 16 years having tours in Iraq and Somalia. Later in life after the military he graduated from the Californian Polytechnic State University and later started a plastic container business. He started his political career in the Californian senate in 2002.

He has lost reelection for his seat in the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, not being able to cope with both party needs and district needs. Mr. Denham is particularly a very interesting case, whereas in his search for the support of voters in California, he constantly tried to form bi-partisan blocks to pass immigration bills that would both bode well with the public and the GOP. However his work was constantly being disrupted by the GOP, The Freedom Caucus and the president's administration that prioritize other issues over the bills that Denham is trying to pass, by always putting a hold on them and postponing the decision making. A very important point to keep in mind, is that throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has always prioritized border security over any other aspect of immigrations reforms. For him and for his close followers all questions considering illegal aliens come second after actually being able to build a wall and stop immigrant inflow for good. This has been the case al throughout the year of 2018 up until the November midterms. Denham had a plan to push a discharge petition that would get 218 signatures (a majority out of the 435 representatives in House). That would in turn make the leadership bring up 4 new immigration bills for a vote. Whichever one passed with the largest number of votes would be enacted. (this is known as the «queen of the hill» rule). Denham's hope was that the amnesty bill he has co-sponsored, H.R. 4796, would be the one to get the most votes. That bill would pair an amnesty even more expansive than the 1.8 million illegal aliens that the president has agreed to, thus providing Denham with good support in his district, where almost 40% of the population in Latino, alongside some unremarkable border-security window-dressing that would do nothing to contain the fallout of the amnesty. The discharge did not pass which eventually led to Denham losing the election in his district.

Prior to losing, in an interview with the MSNBC Jeff Denham provided several quotes on the matter at hand after a House Republican Conference (a forum that is used to communicate party's messages to it's members and vice versa) in early June of 2018:

«There is only one way [inevitability] this is going down. If the Freedom Caucus no longer supports [retraction] the measures that they negotiated [negotiation] upfront. …We took a lot of amendments [changes]. We agreed [compromises] to just about everything they brought to the table. Our focus was not only on border security [national security], but making sure the Dreamers [kids] are protected [care] from day one, making sure they have a path forward [progress]. We felt like we had a good compromise [compromises].»

Denham: «I think that bi-partisanship [democrats] is something that is often times lost here. I believe that finding a bi-partisan [democrats] solution is also finding an American [patriotic] solution. We are going to reserve every parliamentary opportunity [administrative force] to bring a bill up and work with democratic collogues [democrats - positive connotation] in doing so.»

Interviewer: «It sounds like you guys have a pretty high level of anger with you leadership for postponing the decision on this matter. Is that a correct assessment?»

Denham: «I would say frustration [fatigue - negative connotation]. Frustration [fatigue] that the rules have continued to change [inconsistency] that we've had a number of agreements [compromise] that were broken [trust issues - negative connotation]…»

Now we can see some notions made by Denham that he is trying to find a solution that would bode well with not only his party but also the American people in California, and more precisely his district of course. Now we can that Jeff Denham has taken a clear approach of working mainly with his democratic colleagues on coming up with an immigration bill that will pass as bi-partisan. This was hopefully his way of securing votes early in the year. But this bill did not pass the Republican party committee as easy and fast as he had hoped, which in turn kept slowing down the process for the incumbent. Now what's interesting to note, is that Congress hasn't taken up Denham's bill up for a vote prior to March 5^th 2018 (the Legislative Day of March in Congress). Now we have to remember that from January 3^rd 2017 to January 3^rd 2019 Republicans had the Senate Majority and the House Majority in Congress. And this says a lot when we think of the fact that they did not take a Republican bill up on such a pressing matter like immigration up for a vote. Matters like such have put a severe dent in Denham's progress on trying to reform the immigration system in modern U.S. It is important to understand that in a bi-partisan country like the U.S., in is very hard for house representatives to push through bills without the full support (or at least the majority) of the their party. Now in a an older interview with the MSNBC Rep. Jeff Denham has spoken out on this matter in particular in a few statements, when the bill wasn't taken for a vote and when he decided to file a discharge:

«It is difficult to force [bureaucracy] this, but the biggest concern [organization] was that there was no deadline [organization] there was no timeline [organization] this is something that should have been done last year [incomplete task]… In March when Congress failed to act [incomplete task] I started spending a lot of time with the parliamentarian, working with my Democrat colleagues [democrats - positive connotation] as well to find a bipartisan [democrats] agreement [progress] but also to find a unique way to introduce a rule to get support on the rule to empower the speaker, and then ultimately when a vote wasn't called [incomplete task], we're doing a discharge now to have a full debate in front of the American public.»

«You know there is certainly a goal to get 218 Republicans on a bill and passed this as a Republican only bill my goal is to find an American solution [patriotic] and that means both parties [democrats] working together [teamwork] I think you also have to be a realist, to get 60 votes in the Senate it's going to have to be bipartisan [democrats] as well so if you want to make law I think that working across the aisle [teamwork] and giving Republicans and Democrats to come together is a good thing [teamwork - positive connotation]»

Table 5

Now what we see from the graphs above is that there the category «Frustration with the GOP» is indeed composed out of a lot of code extracted from the statements given by Rep. Jeff Denham. Not only that, but the entire first pattern is basically influenced mostly by the urge to help immigrants in the district and in the state. In a way we can see how the categories «Dreamers» and «Bi-partisan work» don't outweigh together the «Frustration with the GOP». But from what we can gather the Republicans didn't exactly provide open support to Denham for no reason. We can see that Denham presents a more moderate wing of the GOP. This in turn has led him to seek guidance and support in working with his collogues «across the aisle». Actions like this provoke a danger of dividing the base of the republican party from the moderate wing, especially in sanctuary states like California where immigration plays a role of a cornerstone when it comes to elections. So in reality this just comes down to a sheer political conflict that is growing inside the Republican party in California. A conflict that can only have two outcomes: 1) a radical split between the conservatives and the moderates, which can in turn lead to a complete separation of the moderates from the GOP (and possibly join the Democrats) and the loss of control in a given sanctuary state; 2) a compromise that can bring the two wings together in order to work more closely and less disruptive in the future.

Now if we also pay attention as to how Rep. Jeff Denham addresses the topic of finding a solution for the immigration reform, we can how carefully he is treading the ground he is standing on. And the context for that is very vivid. In order to both not openly betray his own party and to show support for working with the Democrats, he calls the solution to the problem - an «American solution». Now if we also address out attention to the «Dreamers» category of the graph we can see that he has also emphasized the need to show care and protection for the children of the illegal immigrants. Now this claim of his is supported by another passage taken from an interview with the CNN from June 18^th 2018:

Denham: «You got to keep them with their parents. At least one parent, the way that we're writing up is to make sure that at least one parent, in case it is a violent situation within a family. We need to make sure that the safety of the child is always there first and we want to make sure they're with their parents. So it's going to take a new law.»

Interviewer: «Is the president damaging your party by digging his heels in? I mean, just to see the stream of tweets this morning, he continues to blame this on the Democrats. It doesn't appear that he is backing off on this issue. Is that damaging for Republican lawmakers like yourself?»

Denham: «Well, not only is this current policy unacceptable, but the optics of pulling kids away from their parents is horrible for any party.»

The passage above is a little different from the ones we have examined above, whereas it deals with solely one topic - taking parents away from the children. We can see how Jeff Denham opposes what the president is pushing through and how he is attacked by these rather obvious questions in an interview. His response is strict and definitive. He finds the policies of the president unacceptable. Now from we have gathered so far in both cases, is that the policies that the leaders of the GOP are pushing through regarding alien minors and their parents do not sit well with the house representatives in California, running for reelection, because that just completely undermines the grounds that they are running on for reelection.

If we were to backtrack Denham's actions, we would see that his biggest mistake was that he tried to play both sides. While trying to please the leadership of his own party by coming down on various compromises, he has completely put into ignorance the Hispanic constituents of his own congressional district. And combined with the fact that he openly worked with the democrats (including creating and passing the bill through congress) has led him to only put his own job on the line with a big chance of losing the elections, but has also showed Californians that the Democrats present a better wager in this race, which consequently led to them getting the majority wins in the Californian midterms. More precisely the Democrats won 46 house seats out of 53, as shown in the table below, provided by the Washington Post (Table 6):

Table 6

Another problem with the poor support for Denham's bill on protecting the dreams and reforming the immigration system, is that it was constantly compared to something called the Goodlatte approach, a bill presented by a Republican house representative in Virginia, Bob Goodlatte. Goodlatte's idea was to slowly legalize the immigrant youth that was already in the United States and yet also not really tackle the chain migration issue. And Hispanics in Virginia have showed their support for this bill. However the Hispanics in California have criticized Denham heavily for his version of the bill, which was relatively all the same, except he was aimed to end chain migration. They did understand why they have to settle for a republican like Denham when there are republicans like Goodlatte. Interestingly enough, Goodlatte has also lost his election run to a Democrat, due to being severely pressured by party leadership to provide more conservative to the republican party immigration projects. However, returning to the comparison, it was unreasonable. Not only does California have a more severe immigration problem, approximately 2.2 million aliens, as opposed to the ~275 thousand in Virginia (both numbers provided by the Pew Research Center), but California also shares a border with Mexico, whilst Virginia is tucked away deeply on the east coast of the United States. So in reality it is near pointless to compare these two bills whereas the two states have absolutely different levels of severity to the immigrant inflow problem.

2.3 Case #3 - Republican Young Kim (39^th congressional district)

Now I would like to turn the attention to a very controversial in a sense republican, named Young Kim. Mrs. Young Kim has a very rich early life immigrant history which is very unusual for a republican party member. Not to say, that the GOP doesn't have immigrant representatives, but most of them are born U.S. citizens, such as for example Carlos Curbelo a republican house representative in Florida, who was born himself in Miami Florida. Young Kim was born in 1962 during the Cold War in Incheon South Korea and later in 1975 moved to Guam, an unincorporated and organized territory of the United States in Micronesia.

Young Kim is running for office in a district that has 65% colored people, which makes this one of the harder districts in terms of maneuvering around immigration policies. Now she is someone who you call a moderate Republican, and more so she does in fact identify herself with the moderate wing. There is a number of republicans in the moderate wing who openly disagree with the administration's policy. That includes Young Kim who has spoke out on this matter in particularly publicly (passages taken from a debate session with her rival Gil Gisneros on «The Issue Is» on FOX):

«My family and I [personal experience] came here legally to realize the American dream [immigrant goal] and many people [inequality] have waited in line [time] to come through that system [legality], to realize that. Nobody [exclusion - negative connotation] should cut in line [cheating - negative connotation]. We also need to be compassionate [humanity]. And I agree we need to fix DACA [system flaws]. They've [kids] been here for generations, for 3 or 4 decades, America has invested [investment] so much in them, providing [investment] them public education. They need to be able [possibility] to stay here through some pathway to legal status [legality]. Once they get that legal status [legality] they need to wait in line [legality], like I've done [personal experience], like many people have done [other's experience - in a sense of equality]. To wait 3 to 5 years to apply for citizenship. We need to secure the border [national security]. We need to be able to separate the bad actors [hostile] from the good actors [friendly].»

Another statement from Mrs. Kim on the matter provided by the «LAist» news outlet:

«I disagree with administration's family [Trump] separation policy. We do need to take care of those issues [system flaws] in a humane way [humanity]. But, you know, what we witnessed [separation experience - negative connotation] is not the humane [humanity] way and it's totally against our American values [high moral values].»

«But when I talk about immigration, it needs to be fair [humanity]. The same way that my family [personal experience] came here, many of us [other's experience], and many still, wait in line [legality], thousands and thousands of them, to come to United States to realize the American dream [immigrant goal].»

Now in Kim's discourse we can notice that her argumentation is rather simple. We can also see how she's appealing a lot towards her own experience. In a way you almost say that she doesn't appreciate illegal immigrants having it easier than her family had. This is a very simple deduction, whereas if she did openly care for immigrants attaining U.S. citizenship in an easier way than she did, she wouldn't be putting so much emphasis on her own story. So what we can really see from here is that: yes - Young Kim is certainly a republican moderate, yes - she is certainly fighting for a less hardline immigration that which the administration is pushing through, but her «cornerstone» - is her personal past and experience. She can't envision a way in which the immigrants should have a much easier pathways to legal citizenship that the one she had. And that's frankly the problem with republican immigrant moderate politicians, is that there is always a policy limit with them past which they just can't go. Such is the case with Young Kim, which ultimately lost her the race, as opposed to her opponent, democrat Gil Cisneros, who is of immigrant nature himself, but who fights for extremely soft immigration policies in the U.S. That is not to say that Mrs. Kim fights for separating kids from their parents, on the contrary, as a mother, she speaks out how seeing parents being torn away from their parents «breaks her heart».

Interestingly enough, Kim has never provided any speeches that would fully support Trump's border wall plan, nor did she ever object her support for it. In a way her personal stance within this matter has always been extremely careful, given the district she ran in. As part of the debate mentioned above from FOX she has come forward with her thoughts on this topic:

«If we are talking about securing the border [national security], I believe we need to talk about maybe beefing up [fortification] the border with… the border's agents [alternative] and that's probably one of the ways that I will be advocating for [personal take].»

«What we [unification] need to do is come up with the immigration policy that works. That will secure the border [national security] but allow legal immigrants to come to United States in the fair way [fairness], but we will be compassionate [humanity] when we deal with them.»

We can see that Young Kim is attempting to address the immigration issue at a rather neutral angle. She is trying to showcase her care for the kids, but is advocating for a fully legal and fair pathway to citizenship. She priorotizes DACA and reforming the system over national security. Wcan showcase Kim's priorities rather vividly through another pattern structure below (Table 7):

Table 7

Now the theory that we can build around Kim's behavior tells us that she is a moderate republican who strongly supports lawful immigration, with no amnesties, while relying on the rhetoric of her own legal migrant past, and that everyone should do it the right way. At the same time she does not support the hardline immigration policies that the GOP leadership, along with the president and his administration are pushing, that include tearing parents away from their kids and shutting down borders for good to fully end the inflow of potential immigrants. She believes that the border should be enforced with agents and that the screening process should be more advanced and not rule out most newcomers as hostiles.

All in all, Young Kim's profiling was «compelling, as it is rare for someone running under the GOP banner: an immigrant, an Asian American and, perhaps most important, a woman in a year when female voter enthusiasm is surging.» But this still just wasn't enough to sway the voters in her favor when election day came.

2.4 House representative cases summary

Now as we can see, there is in fact some obvious similarities between these three cases, where republicans have lost their seat. Not to say that they were the only ones. The republicans also lost the elections in another, previously held, 4 districts: 21 (David Valadao), 25 (Steve Knight), 48 (Dana Rohrabacher) and 49 (Diane Harkey). I have however conducted analysis on the representatives in those districts that were affected the most by the main party immigration policy, to provide a more vivid picture of what is happening in a sanctuary state like California due to GOP hardline immigration policies. To be fair of course, all of the republicans in the state have dealt with the immigration topic in the past midterm race, but examining each and every one of them would most likely provide us with all the same trends more or less, just to different extents. And I believe that I have taken into examination a very good contrasting ample of politicians, more precisely an American woman, an American man and a politician with a very rich immigrant past. This provides good contrast to them compared to each other. But as you may have noticed, their policies and values don't differ by that much when it comes to elections, whereas they are all dealing with the same problem in terms of immigration.

Based on the election results of 2018, the Republicans have failed to win (meaning they came second) over 31 congressional districts and failed to keep (meaning a republican incumbent was already sitting in office prior to election) 7 congressional districts. That adds up to 38 congressional districts out of 53 total, that the republicans failed to secure. All of the candidates in these distrcits have been affected more or less but the unsettling immigration question. After the 2018 midterms GOP ended up with only 7 seats. That is 7 seats less than after the 2016 elections (based on BallotPedia presented in Table 8):

Table 8

They have lost half their seats, and frankly losing 50% of your seats is not good. Now of course we must keep in mind that California is not a swing state, it is mostly a democratic state. But the tendency that we are looking out so far does not look promising for the Republican party if they keep up their immigration hardline policies, that are extremely affecting sanctuary states. Interestingly enough, if we look at the dynamic of the past 9 years, almost a decade, we can see that the Californian Republicans are consistently losing their seats in the House of Representatives. As can be vividly shown in the elections results of 2010 shown below (provided by California Secretary of State presented in Table 9)):

Table 9

2.5 Case #4 - Republican James Bradley (Running for Senate)

Now I would like to switch to the results of a senate race. Given the political transformation of California into more of a democratic state in terms of House of Representatives seats, it is indeed very hard to imagine how a senate race could have ended in a win for a republican. Let alone the fact that Democrats have been presenting California in the senate ever since the beginning of the 1990's. Dianne Feinstein, one of the two current senators, has been in office since 1992 and has been reelected 5 times since then. Two other women, Barbara Boxer (1993-2017) and Kamala Harris (2017 - present day) have occupied the second senate seats in this time.

Nonetheless I believe it is still important to examine how republican senator candidates have behaved in their journey to try and win a senate seat. The person in question, James Bradley, was fighting for a more moderate republican approach towards immigrants and still lost. In the 2018 midterms he has only achieved 8.3% and finished 3rd in the race. The race was mainly between two democrats: Dianne Feinstein (a long time democratic Senator in California) and her opponent who came second, Kevin de Leуn. Rep. James Bradley, on the other hand has proposed some great ideas towards reforming the immigration system, but none of which resonated enough with Californians for them to vote for him.

In an podcast interview with NorCal News, James Bradley has clearly depicted his stance on the matter of immigration in the state:

«The immigration issue and DACA, I want to give them a pathway [pathway-positive connotation] to citizenship. Those that have been here for a while [long stay immigrants] that need some level of hope [hope] that there won't be deported [deportation - negative connotation] I…I hear that that, that's what resonates with who I am [personal care]. So the pathway [pathway] to citizenship for the immigrants is really important [high importance] for me to create a plan [reform], but it also there has to be checks and balances [hardline] and there it does have to be a vetting process [verification]. Because we do have a real serious issue about the illegal criminals [crime issue] in the state of California. We have MS-13 [criminal gang], we have the Mexican cartel [narcotics] the Mafia [criminals] so those are the people in and the list goes on. So that's what the vetting process[verification] is designed to take care of those that have been living here for several generations. Come on let's take care of them, they need to be taken care of [care - positive connotation]. Get them in the system [integration], let's get them in the system paying tax [profit] because that's gonna help us all out [benefit] - there's a lot of them if they do pay taxes it's minimal its sales tax it's perhaps a small variation of what we contribute owes taxpayers and citizens. So I think there is a win-win scenario [positive outcome] that we can really approach in the refinement [development] of our immigration laws.»

We can see that the approach that Rep. Bradley is taking here is indeed very moderate. He also believes that there is a benefit that can come from immigrants in the sense of more tax payer money, which is an interesting point, whereas not many republicans take up this rhetoric. Most of them solely focus on the downsides of letting in criminals into the country, overlooking those who can actually get a job and contribute to the economy of the United States. In the same interview James Bradley however also speaks out on the family separation issue, and rather radically:

«Immigration laws [immigration system reform] is really one of my key aspects [personal goal], key initiatives when I get into office, but am I gonna deport [deportation - negative connotation] them? No. There has to be a the pathway [pathway - positive connotation] to this citizenship, that is so important [high importance] and I'll give you an example. I had a friend [personal experience] of mine call me the other day saying that he has an 18 year old dear friend of his living in a house that his parents bought, but have been deported [deportation - negative connotation] and they've been here for at least a generation [long stay immigrants]. Then he asked the question: `What do you do about that James?' I said we're gonna reunite [family reunion - positive connotation] that family [immigrant family], we're gonna bring them back [legal border crossing] to the country and gonna reunite that family.»

James Bradley who was running for senate was a clear moderate in his approach. Below we can witness how exactly. Now based on his interview we can clearly depict a 2 patterns, as show below (Table 10):

Table 10

We can see above that there is a clear distinction in his rhetoric between emotional and practical factors. For instance, being a republican of course, he does believe in effective border security, but nonetheless he targets a moderate approach to this issue. He believes that if the immigration system and border security were to be reformed in a more civilized way, that would ultimately open up borders to law abiding aliens, this could most certainly benefit the economy. Interestingly enough this sounds a lot like the rhetoric that the democrats have been pushing in California for many years now, of course they have been way more liberal in this sense, also being backed by Washington in their fight for immigrant rights. Being as it is, James Bradley's stance does not resonate at all in it's core with that the general GOP rhetoric dictates about savoring the US economy (in the form of jobs mainly) for the American citizens. Again this is just one of many examples that have been show so far on how strongly local Californian politicians deviate from key Republican values and ideas in their race for office seats.

2.6 Overall case summaries

The cases presented above have one big point in common. They showcase how big of a role immigrants play in sanctuary states like California, and how republicans in the state are trying to work around that whilst still doing their best to not deviate from the party values too much. Moreover, the GOP party itself is making the Californian republicans navigate though serious obstacles, having them deal with contradictions about various acts such as DACA. In other words GOP is saying one thing and supporting it's own policies, while the republicans in California are trying to soften up those GOP ideas. It is impossible to neglect immigrants, the immigration system in the United States has been «broken» long enough now to have allowed millions of them to cross the border and integrate themselves into the American society, culture, economics and politics. Even though most of them are technically not U.S. citizens, they have planted their roots deep enough to be considered somewhat Americans at this point already by the society around them. And those who live amongst them, or are maybe even are of such decent themselves (like Kim Young) realize how important it is to liberalize them and listen to them. Ignoring them, trying to flush them out of the system is ultimately pointless. It is not the same as getting rid of some kind of bad tumor in an organism, more like cutting off a leg. It makes sense because, for instance in California, the Latino population takes up so much of the lower end jobs which ultimately form the foundation for the state's economy. Take that away, and the state will crumble. The transition that president Trump and the rest of the radical republicans envision involves taking away these low end jobs from immigrants and providing them to unemployed Americans. All is good in theory, but this transition is something that will take decades to perform. As I have mentioned previously in this paper, there might not even be enough unemployed Americans to take over these jobs for a transition like this to go smoothly. And the radical republicans don't understand that to it's full extent. Those that choose a moderate approach, do however. But they do not have the full support of their party on the matter at hand.

We can see that all four of our case picks have spoken on the fact of how the system should be reformed, how they believe that it is broken. We saw how all of them have positioned themselves against the hardline DACA reforms that Trump is trying to push through. The general notion of their messages on this matter do align with each other. I believe that this is one of the more key points in all of their electoral stances. But they are very different from the party apparatus and the presidents administration. The research presented above has showcased how serious the conditions are for republicans in California. They are trying to be strategic and as moderate as they can but are still losing over and over. The only districts that have remained red over the midterms are those that have always had a strong republican presence. But even that might change in the next decade, when these districts will start getting in more immigrants. Over the course of a couple of more midterm elections where the house seats will be open for taking by the democrats, the whole playing field might change drastically in California.

Summary

I believe that in this research I have been able to showcase the growing problem of the partisan value disrupt of the GOP in California. Specifically on the case of the immigration topic and the respective migrant communities in the state. We have examined how sanctuary states are somewhat of a source to this growing disrupt, unless the GOP decides to act upon the immigration issues and change their approach to them. I believe that in a race between closing down borders and refining the immigration system in the way that representatives like James Bradley and others envision it, the latter has the better time efficiency ratio. Of course closing borders down physically is of course much easier, however in such a country like the United States of America, such actions can lead to massive disturbances and unrest nationwide, given the ethnic diversity of the country and the amount of immigrants in it. The GOP as whole needs to reevaluate their values and find a compromise between themselves to this growing problem. Their hardline immigration policies that are aimed at protecting the interests of the U.S. citizen and U.S. business, are leading to massive political control downfalls in states that harbor a lot of aliens. This only comes to show that the immigrants in California do possess a lot of power, in the terminology that Bachrach and Baratz have identified. This presents the GOP with a great dilemma on their hands. Whilst the number of arriving immigrants is still consistently growing in the states, should the republicans really go all in on their idea to basically close down borders and start filtering out the already existing immigrants in the states before Trump's first office session runs out. Because the 2020 presidential elections are not that far away and the plans that the GOP has put in motion can and most likely will be easily disrupted if a democrat comes to power in 2020 and then after the 2022 midterms the Congress could potentially seat even more democrats in Sanctuary states. As the House Representatives race showed, the republicans had lost 7 districts, that they previously managed to hold, and have lost by a great deal. Not to mention the other districts in which they failed to even come close to the democrats.

This research showed us that the partisan value disrupt is taking place in modern U.S. politics. Not only that but it has proven to be very severe as the grounded theory above has showcased. Especially in the light of the political asymmetrical polarization that is happening in the United States right now, this value mismatch between the party and it's representatives, in sanctuary states like California, will be a long term issue. The GOP representatives in California are so moderate compared to general GOP values, that in their discourse they are almost dead in the middle on the political spectrum between left and right. This research has showed us how Californian republicans are struggling to attain votes whilst the republicans as a whole are pushing through hardline immigration policies with the support of the president and his administration, while neglecting the influence mechanisms that the migrant communities have at play. In the last midterms this has resulted in the republicans losing a great deal of districts.

The conclusion that this research has brought me to is that unless the GOP changes their general approach to immigration in the states, they will ultimately, with time, lose any sort of significant or noticeable control over sanctuary states. Because closing down borders and flushing out aliens is a short term action that will lead to long term economic, social and political problems. More so, it is not a remedy for fixing the republican partisan value disrupt that is happening in contemporary USA.

I believe that there is still much more to be researched on this topic, whereas the immigration topic in California is just one of many examples where representatives of the GOP deviate from party values to attain votes. I believe there are value mismatches in many other domains, and not solely political, such as: economic, social, cultural and more. These series of researches could be potentially very fruitful in the aim to unravel and somewhat predict the future of U.S. politics.

References

1) Bachrach P., Baratz M.S. Two Faces of Power // The American Political Science Review. 1962. №56. С. 947-952.

2) Campbell J.E. «ONE-SIDED PARTY POLARIZATION?» Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America, Princeton University Press, Princeton; Oxford, 2016, pp. 173-196.

3) Haynes, Dina & Lasch, Christopher & Chan, Linus & Eagly, Ingrid & lai, annie & Mccormick, Elizabeth & Stumpf, Juliet. (2018). Understanding «Sanctuary Cities». Boston College Law Review. 58 BC L Rev.

4) Herbert F. Weisberg Partisanship and Incumbency in Presidential Elections // Political Behavior. 2002. Vol. 24, No. 4. pp. 339-360.

5) Martin D. Levine, Mark S. Hyde Incumbency and the Theory of Political Ambition: A Rational-Choice Model // The Journal of Politics. 1977. Vol. 39, No. 4. pp. 959-983.

Размещено на Allbest.ru