President Obama seems to be taking his cues from the academic left in claiming there is a "nativist trend" among some in the Republican Party who oppose any kind of amnesty for illegal aliens.
In an interview with NPR, Obama stated, "If your view is that immigrants are either fundamentally bad to the country or that we actually have the option of deporting 11 million immigrants, regardless of the disruptions, regardless of the cost, and that that is who we are as Americans, I reject that."
Obama discussed the potential to work with the Republicans on the issue while warning about "nativists" who seek to block "immigration reform."
"So, the question then becomes, by me having taken these actions, does that spur those voices in the Republican Party who I think genuinely believe immigration is good for our country? Does it spur them to work once again with Democrats and my administration to get a reasonable piece of legislation done?" he asked.
"Or does it simply solidify what I do think is a nativist trend in parts of the Republican Party? And if it's the latter, then probably we're not going to get much more progress done, and it'll be a major debate in the next presidential election," he continued.
TRENDING: Jihad against Christians is due to … climate change?
Nativism typically is defined as the political position of vehemently opposing immigration of all kinds and demanding a favored status for the established inhabitants of a country.
The U.S. academic left, particularly professors at California state universities, have been leading the charge in applying the "nativist" term to opponents of illegal immigration, essentially branding them as racist and bigoted.
Lindsay Pérez Huber, assistant professor in the College of Education at California State University's Social and Cultural Analysis master's program, wrote a 2009 paper at Harvard's Educational Review magazine on the topic.
Titled "Challenging Racist Nativist Framing," Huber said she used the testimonials of 10 "Chicana undergraduate students at a top tier research university" to interrogate and challenge the "racist nativist framing of undocumented Latina/o immigrants as problematic, burdensome, and 'illegal.'"
According to an abstract, Huber utilizes her date to argue for a "human rights framework that demands the right of all students – and particularly Latinas/os – to live full and free lives."
Meanwhile, in the spring of 2012, the University of California at Berkley's Center for Latino Policy Research held a lecture series titled "Discourses of Racist Nativism in California Public Education: English Dominance as Racist Nativist Microaggressions."
Huber made an hour-long video for the series in which she addressed what she described as the "nativist" attitudes of some Americans toward "undocumented" students.
A May 2009 report by UC Berkley's Center for Race and Gender explored the impact that "racist nativism" has had on the lives of "undocumented" students.
The report explained: "Racist nativism rests on a racialized belief system about who 'belongs' in the US in general, and at public schools in particular."
The UC Berkley report referenced a May 2009 UCLA report co-authored by Huber in which so-called undocumented students "made connections between the recently intensified climate of racist nativism in the U.S. and the failure of educational institutions to acknowledge the presence of undocumented students on campus."
Students reported to Huber's UCLA study that "racist nativist beliefs 'became apparent when their needs were not met, support was not provided and information was not allocated by their colleges and universities.'"
As far back as July 1998, UC Berkley professor Harold L. Wilensky complained about the "nativist" attitudes toward illegal immigrants in a paper titled "Migration and politics: Explaining variation among rich democracies in recent nativist protest."
Wilensky wrote about the "nativist political mobilization at work" in the U.S. in the early 1990s.
He concluded nativism toward immigrants is largely fueled by "economic deprivation, large numbers and concentration of immigrants, and great social distance between immigrants and natives." He wrote that the same three factors also "foster prejudice and the perception of group threat."
With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott.