Democrats Can Win the Immigration Argument AND Be True to Their Values

Guess what: The public isn't happy with Trump's new police state!

U.S. Army Private June Lopez at his naturalization ceremony (National Park Service photo by Emily Brouwer)

A new poll from Gallup on immigration shows that not only is the public apparently rejecting the Trump administration’s police state crackdown — who could have predicted that people might be uncomfortable with the government sending gangs of masked thugs rampaging through cities and towns across the country? — but Americans seem to have become more favorable toward immigration in general than they’ve ever been before. This is surprising to say the least, given how often we’ve been told that the president’s bigotry and xenophobia is why he got elected and the thing voters love most about him.

There are reasons to be cautious about over-interpreting these numbers. But they point to something important that Democrats need to understand: It is absolutely possible for them to devise, articulate, and communicate a position on immigration that is both persuasive to the public and consistent with their values.

It’s not something Democrats have done in, oh, forever. That’s because whenever they approach an issue where conservative beliefs look popular (even momentarily) and the uglier emotions seem powerful, they immediately sink into a defensive crouch and start asking whether people won’t be so mad at them if they offer a warmed-over version of whatever Republicans are advocating.

That’s not to say that many elected Democrats aren’t fighting courageously against the horrors the administration has wrought. But if I asked you “What do Democrats want to do about immigration?” you probably wouldn’t be able to say, because they have no coherent position.

Republicans do, and we all know what it is: They want to stop illegal immigration, deport all undocumented immigrants, and limit legal immigration as much as possible. You can sum up their position as: Immigration is bad. It’s simple and easy to understand, even if right now it’s getting less popular.

Where we are now

Before we get to what Democrats should be doing, let’s look at the Gallup results. The big headline is that after falling by 13 points over the course of the Biden years, the number of Americans saying that immigration is a good thing for the country has jumped to 79%, higher than it has ever been before in this poll. Strangest of all, while Democrats and Independents have become more favorable to immigration in the last year, the most dramatic increase is the 25% jump among Republicans:

This may be due in some part to what political scientists call thermostatic public opinion: One party takes power and starts implementing its agenda, and the public reacts against whatever it is doing, wanting to turn the thermostat down; then the other party takes power, and the same thing happens in the other direction. The change we see could reflect the public being unhappy with Biden’s policies, then unhappy with Trump’s policies for the opposite reason: They think Biden was too lax and Trump is too harsh.

In any case, immigration was always one of the issues on which Trump got the highest approval, yet in this poll only 35% approve of the job he’s doing, while 62% disapprove. Among Independents, it’s 28-69.

But it’s when we look at what people think about specific policies that things get really interesting:

This isn’t an exhaustive list of every immigration policy question — importantly, it omits anything about the legal immigration system. But it’s striking that the only Republican policy on this list that gets unambiguous majority support is hiring more Border Patrol agents — and support for that idea has dropped 17% since last year.

Embrace the complexity

If Democrats are wondering whether this means Americans are pro-immigration or anti-immigration, the answer is…Yes! They’re both, often at the same time. Americans have complex and sometimes contradictory feelings about the subject. They think immigration is good, and they don’t like the idea of people sneaking over the border. They don’t want more people to come illegally, and they think there should be a path to citizenship for undocumented people who are already here. They think people should hold on to the culture of their ancestors, and they want immigrants to assimilate. They love tacos, and they don’t want to hear everyone speaking Spanish. They admire immigrants’ industriousness and ambition, and they don’t want immigrants taking too many jobs.

Is that collection of beliefs kind of a mess? Yes. But it’s all inextricably tied up with beliefs about fairness, an extraordinarily powerful idea that has to be considered when thinking about how to convince the public that your course is the right one. It has been wielded against Democrats, but it can just as easily be wielded against Republicans, since they have gone so far to the right on this issue that they’ve left the public far behind. For instance, the idea of giving citizenship to “Dreamers,” people who were brought to the US as children and have lived here most of their lives (a rare bit of skillful branding from Democrats, btw) has always been incredibly popular; in this poll, it scores 85% support, including 71% from Republicans. Why? Because it doesn’t seem fair to deport people who have “played by the rules” (an appeal to fairness and order).

So how should Democrats describe what they want to do about immigration? Simple: Stop illegal immigration, and allow more legal immigration. Do both at the same time.

That shows that Democrats don’t want law-breaking, they do want an orderly system, and they believe that America is a place that has always and will always benefit from immigration. Values and practicality together.

Believe it or not, this is something even immigrant advocates are in favor of. As any expert in this issue will tell you, the dysfunctional legal immigration system encourages illegal immigration, because immigrating legally is so difficult that most people who would like to come to America won’t even bother trying through the formal pathway. Reforming, improving, and enlarging that legal system should also include expanding the currently limited guest worker program, since we need those workers and if people can come temporarily, make money, and then go back home — within a system that guarantees them reasonable pay and protection from exploitation — they’ll have no need to sneak over the border and then stay.

There’s a lot more to say about how such a system would work, but the point is that if Democrats believe that immigration is good and we want a system that’s fair to everyone, they can advocate for exactly that, without apology.

And the starting point is for them to stop assuming the public rejects everything they believe and therefore their only choice is to become more like Republicans in the hope that people will stop being mad at them. They can aspire to more than just mitigating the damage this issue does to them; they can actually win on it. And maybe, sooner or later, change the system to something that works.

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