New York Times’ Clyde Haberman decided that it was prime time to bash Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot initiative restricting government aid to illegal immigrants which passed into law, only to be declared unconstitutional, but which nonetheless spawned similar acts nationwide: “Failed Referendum That Propelled Policy on Migrants.”

Haberman virtue-signaled this would be no objective look at the issue of a country's right to determine who gets to live there, by crying out “xenophobia” in the first sentence. The paper made a big production of Haberman's piece, coupling it with a special nine-minute “Retro Report” video contrasting the state of the immigration debate, then and now. Not even Barack Obama was hard-left enough for Haberman, who passed along his apparent nickname in some circles of "deporter-in-chief."

Though the roots of most Americans lie in other lands, there is among them a streak of xenophobia that can be broad. Chinese and Irish immigrants were the targets of nativist hostility in the 19th century, as were Eastern European Jews and Southern Italians in the early 20th. Japanese-Americans were confined to detention camps in World War II. Now the unwelcome mat is spread for many Latinos and Muslims. Much of the focus these days is on undocumented immigrants, but under President Trump the mood has turned conspicuously anti-foreigner in general. The president wants to sharply reduce even legal immigration. He is also ready to impose the strictest limits of modern times on refugees fleeing persecution and deprivation in their homelands -- those huddled masses enshrined at the Statue of Liberty. We have seen all this before.... Under Proposition 187, unlawful arrivals were to be denied access to public schools, nonemergency health care and other basic services. Doctors and teachers would also have been required to become informers: letting the authorities know of people presumed to be in this country illegally. “It’s like bringing a Big Brother into the schools,” President Bill Clinton said in opposing the measure. One goal was to make life in California so unappealing that Mexicans would go back home, or not leave it in the first place. Routinely overlooked was the reality that many had crossed the border seeking not a handout but, rather, work....

Not even President Obama was generous enough on amnesty:

.... The greater aggressiveness of the 1990s, [former NYT journalist Roberto Suro] said, created “the basis for the large-scale removals that we’ve experienced in this country for the last 10 years.” Those removals reached a peak under President Barack Obama, described disapprovingly by some critics as the deporter-in-chief. .... The Trump assault, however, extends to all forms of immigration. In August, he embraced proposals to cut lawful entries in half over the next decade. Preference would be given to people possessing special skills and higher education -- hardly the tired, the poor and the wretched refuse embraced in “The New Colossus,” the Emma Lazarus poem affixed to Miss Liberty’s base.

Since when is aspirational poetry government policy? Fascinating how the same liberals who would make policy based on words on a statue will ignore statutory and even constitutional rules when it suits their agendas.

Haberman then got condescending with Trump voters.

Surveys show that Mr. Trump’s “America first” sloganeering helped him eke out victories in November in critical swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where some longer-term residents are uncomfortable with rising numbers of Latino newcomers. Sudden diversity is rarely simple. For some, it is scary.

After warning California's true blue hue was "a cautionary tale for Republicans," Haberman left where he came in, on “xenophobia.”