Is 'chain migration' a racist term? No, it's just you, Democrats. The problem with the left's obsession to represent minorities is their insane instinct to leap to conclusions about hidden racism.

Jonah Goldberg | Opinion columnist

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump lays out 'America First' immigration plan President Donald Trump is calling on Congress to "set politics aside" and overhaul the nation's immigration system during his State of the Union speech. Trump announced the four pillars of his plan which he says "puts America first." (Jan. 30)

It’s no secret that the Democratic Party has invested in identity politics both as a matter of principle and partisan advantage. Minorities are an indispensable part of the Democratic coalition, and appeals to racial and ethnic identity are central to Democratic policies and rhetoric. This might explain why the Democrats felt the need to offer five responses to the president’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday night: One aimed to white voters they lost in the last election, one in Spanish, one aimed at angry socialists and two responses from black women.

While I’m not a fan of identity politics on the left or the right, I have no objection to Democrats emphasizing inclusion, celebrating diversity etc. In fact, I think the Republicans are guilty of malpractice for doing so little to reach beyond their white, older, base.

But there’s a negative side to the Democrats’ obsession with claiming to be the sole respectable political party for non-white people and immigrants. So powerful is this belief, it can lead not only to sanctimonious groupthink but also flights of Orwellian propagandizing.

One of my favorite examples came at the Republican National Convention in 2012. MSNBC landed an advance copy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s speech. “For four years,” McConnell planned to say, “Barack Obama has been running from the nation’s problems. He hasn’t been working to earn re-election. He has been working to earn a spot on the PGA Tour.”

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Put aside the now quaint notion that Republicans might have a problem with a president who plays a lot of golf, the point was pretty clear: Obama hits the links too much. But Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC saw through McConnell’s façade to the racist dog whistles beneath. “Well, we know exactly what he’s trying to do there. He’s trying to align ... the lifestyle of Tiger Woods with Barack Obama,” he explained, alluding to the sex scandals then befalling the famous (black!) golfer.

“These people,” O’Donnell explained in reference to Republican speechwriters, “reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can find in every one of these speeches.”

A more recent example comes in the novel claim that the term “chain migration” is a racist shibboleth. Chain migration is — or was — an utterly neutral term for the process by which legal immigrants sponsor members of their extended family to become citizens as well.

Rep Chris Murphy, D-Conn., tweeted recently, “Reminder: ‘chain migration’ is a made-up term by the hard-line anti-immigration crowd. Its purpose is to dehumanize immigrants. If you're using that word, you're declaring a side.”

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., refuses to even use the phrase. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., insists the term — which he used as recently as 2010 — is offensive because African Americans came here in chains. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, insists that " 'chain migration' is an epithet. It was invented. The term is ‘family immigration,’ and it’s the way America has literally always worked.” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., made a figurative clown of herself when she literally said, “Let's be very clear: When someone uses the phrase 'chain migration,' it is intentional in trying to demonize families, literally trying to demonize families and make it a racist slur.”

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This is all a lie and a smear.

According to the academic database JSTOR, there are hundreds of scholarly papers using the term, beginning in 1942. It came into wider circulation in the 1960s, no doubt because immigration policy was radically changed in 1965. LexisNexis dates the first appearance in a 1982 New York Times article about urbanization in India. Though that is probably because its database largely begins about then. The term wasn’t simply used about immigration issues in America but for migration patterns in other countries. Search for the term “chain migration” at the Census Bureau’s website and you’ll find scads of reports and papers using the term, many of which were produced under the Obama administration.

Julian Simon and my old boss Ben Wattenberg, who were as pro-immigration as anybody, both used the phrase, without the slightest racial animus.

In short, the only inventing going on is coming from liberals determined to weaponize a term to make a policy — and party — they don’t like seem racist.

One can love, hate or be agnostic about chain migration or family unification (tomayto tomahto) without being a racist. Does the “alt-right” hate chain migration? Sure. But there is no transitive property here.

If Democrats are so confident that their political opponents are evil bigots, they shouldn’t have to work so hard to invent evidence to back up their claim.

Jonah Goldberg, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and National Review contributing editor, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him @JonahNRO.