A campaign ad by a Republican candidate for Congress in Indiana sums up migrants arriving at the border in one word. He doesn’t call it a problem or a crisis.
He calls it an “invasion.”
The word invasion also appears in ads for two Republican senators vying for Michigan’s Senate seats. It also appears in ads for a Republican congressman running for re-election in central New York and for Missouri’s lieutenant governor running for governor. In West Virginia, an ad by a Republican lawmaker facing a tough Senate race says President Biden “created this invasion” of immigrants.
It wasn’t that long ago that the word invasion was relegated to the margins of domestic immigration discussions. Many candidates and politicians tended to avoid the term, which reflected last century’s demagoguery targeting Asians, Latino immigrants, and European immigrants. Few mainstream Republicans dared to take advantage of it.
But now the phrase has become a staple of Republican immigration rhetoric. Data shows that use of the term in TV campaign ads in the current election cycle has already exceeded the previous total, with the word also appearing in speeches, TV interviews and even bills proposed in Congress. It is appearing.
The term’s resurgence exemplifies a shift in Republican rhetoric in the era of former President Donald J. Trump and his right-wing supporters. Language that was once considered hostile may become popular precisely because it goes against politically correct sensibilities. Differences are even deeper on immigration, with even Democratic mayors complaining about the number of immigrants in their cities.
Democrats and immigration advocates have denounced the word and its recent rise to taboo. Historians and analysts who study political rhetoric have long warned that the term dehumanizes the people it refers to and has the potential to incite violence. They have pointed out that the term appeared in the writings of the perpetrators of the incident, and have pointed out that “this term dehumanizes the people it refers to and has the potential to provoke violence.” El Paso, Texas. and, in recent years, Buffalo, New York.
Republicans have defended their use of the term, believing it adequately describes a situation they say has escalated beyond crisis levels and could help sway voters.
Indiana Congressman Mike Speedy, who used the phrase in an ad, is running to push for a tougher southern border. Mr. Speedy, a state representative, traveled nearly 3,000 miles to Yuma, Arizona, to film the ad between the rusting boards of the border fence. He argued that the word invasion was accurate because it referred to overwhelming force and did not necessarily involve weapons. He said in an interview that he was not concerned that the word could incite others to violence. “If they act out of hatred, they are common criminals and should be brought to justice,” he said.
The word “invasion” appears in 27 TV ads for Republican candidates ahead of the November 2024 election, accounting for more than $5 million in ad spending, according to early April data from media tracking firm AdImpact. occupied. That’s more than 22 uses of the word throughout the 2022 mid-cycle, totaling nearly $3.3 million in ad spend. During the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, advertisers spent just under $300,000 on four ads that deployed the term.
The immigration advocacy group America’s Voice has been tracking the term’s rise in Congress. The group has collected at least 20 instances of Republican lawmakers using the term in floor speeches this Congress, compared to seven in the last Congress and zero before that. The term appeared in four laws this year, compared to seven laws last year and three in 2022.
Analysts who study political rhetoric and extremism have warned that the language of invasion, and what they describe as similarly inflammatory language regarding immigration, is influencing displacement theory. There is. A racist doctrine prevalent on the internet’s far right is that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” and disempower white Americans. Gunmen in Pittsburgh, El Paso, and Buffalo echoed this theory in online posts, targeting Jews, Hispanics, and blacks for killings.
“An invasion, by its very definition, is a hostile intrusion or intrusion,” said Juliette Kayem, a former Obama administration official who now heads the Homeland Security Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Told. “You automatically recognize people who are fleeing their countries for a million reasons, most of which are not hostile, as enemies.”
West Virginia Republican Rep. Alex Mooney, who is running against a pro-Trump candidate, echoed Speedy’s views. “There is film of people pushing into our country along the Texas-Mexico border, and the Biden administration is just letting it go,” he said.
Maca Casado, the Biden campaign’s Hispanic media director, said voters will once again reject Trump’s immigration rhetoric, calling it “not doing anything that voters actually care about.” “It’s the usual cruel, anti-American politics to distract from an agenda that doesn’t matter.” about. “
The Trump campaign said Biden was allowing illegal immigrants to “enter the border.”
“By definition, an invasion is an intrusion by a large number of people or objects into a location,” said Caroline Leavitt, the campaign’s national spokeswoman. “There are no words to better describe Joe Biden’s open borders that have allowed tens of millions of people to freely enter our country.”
Political discourse that stokes fears of invasion at the southern border is as old as the border itself. The jagged 2,000-mile border separating Mexico and the United States was born out of a war in which both sides were wary of attacks from the other. In the 19th century, as Chinese laborers migrated to work on the railroads, fears of Chinese invasion grew, leading to the country’s first xenophobic immigration laws explicitly based on race. Political leaders have stirred similar fears about immigrants from Japan, South Korea, India, and Southern and Eastern Europe.
Pat Buchanan is one of the few people to use the term enthusiastically in recent decades, and during his unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1990s, he referred to the “immigrant invasion” that was invading Western society. I warned you. And California Governor Pete Wilson, seeking re-election in 1992, ran an ad calling on Congress to “stop the invasion” of Mexican and other Latino immigrants.
Other Republicans followed suit. Texas Governor Greg Abbott promised to complete Trump’s border wall and warned that “homes are being invaded.” His office then argued that illegal immigration and drug smuggling constitute an “invasion” under the U.S. Constitution, allowing Texas to “participate in war” in the name of border security.
Immigrant rights groups say the language will not help curb border crossings (which began to increase under Trump, slowed early in the pandemic, and have since increased again) or help Republicans in elections. He claims that there is no. Zachary Mueller, senior research director at America’s Voice, said predictions of a red wave in 2022 have dissipated, despite Republican fear-mongering about immigration.
“Yes, it works to mobilize their base,” he said. “But I don’t think the majority of people would sign up for that level of vitriol.”
California Republican strategist John Thomas said he doesn’t expect talk of invasion to go away.
“The word invasion matches the intensity that many voters feel about this issue right now,” he said. Its usage “will increase even further as we head into November.”
