Immigration, legal and illegal, is mostly driven by business need to make exponential profit to the detriment of the local workforce and necessary unionism. Labor that undercuts hard fought conditions and wages is the constant desire of the majority of employers from the big end of town.
Paul, like all discussions about illegal immigration in the main stream media, you have omitted any mention of the role illegal employers - employers like Trump who hire large #'s of undocumented workers - play in drawing illegal immigrants to the U.S. Until illegal employers are included included in the discussion of illegal immigration, it will remain incomplete.
Mr. Waldman, I think you have described the positions of Democrats and the general public quite accurately. The maga-ites, through their media, have been taught to fear and hate anyone not in their cult. Bush the lesser proposed a reasonable solution that was killed by his party. Then Senator Rubio proposed a similar reasonable solution that was killed by the R's when President Obama endorsed it. Clearly the maga/R party does not want to solve this problem. They want to keep it and the fear they drum up alive and exploit it.
I rarely think you are naive but this article sure feels like it. Polls repeatedly have shown strong public support for things like legalized abortion which Republicans get away with destroying. I remember all the polls showing the public’s extremely strong support for Bill Clinton enacting healthcare reform. Then Bill Kristol told Republicans to deny Clinton any win on healthcare so Republicans win the midterms and the onslaught of deeply dishonest propaganda began. Support for the Clinton healthcare reform plummeted and the bill was DOA.
At that time I was shocked that mainstream media did next to nothing to counter the lies and distortions which in the media helped spread. For example the venerable New Republic published a long, blatantly dishonest critique of the Clinton healthcare plan by the right wing Manhattan Institute’s Betsy McCaughey. McCaughey falsely claimed people would be prevented from going outside the system to personally pay for care they believed would be better. The bill explicitly said “…nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services…..” but the media did nothing to debunk that claim. Instead people like George Will echoed McCaughey’s lies. McCaughey was later put forward as a healthcare expert so she could lie about Obama’s ACA plan.
Today Republicans are even more dishonest and the mainstream media is even more cowardly and complicit in the their take over of our politics. If Democrats listen to people in the mainstream media calling for them to come up with immigration reform plan I would bet it will be Lucy and the football all over again.
I don't remember the details of last year's bipartisan immigration bill that trump sunk, but wouldn't it have embraced this idea? Created an orderly immigration and asylum process (legal immigration good) and strengthened border protection (illegal immigration bad) that Ds and Rs could have sold to their constituencies. No wonder trump and miller didn't like it-the bill would have shot down their path to the WH.
This is a game Republicans have been playing for decades. I lived in Texas for a decade. It was common knowledge that wealthy employers in fields like construction preferred those workers because they could pay them less and not worry about silly things like safety regulations. That state would collapse without all those undocumented workers and the Republicans know it. So does the media which lets them get away with pretending they want to fix the system. I would bet Trump actually deporting their workers has them terrified.
Exactly what I was thinking, Mark. House Speaker Johnson wouldn’t let it be brought before the House at Trump’s urging so the issue wouldn’t be at least partially resolved by this bill but rather kept alive as a fierce campaign issue. It worked, unfortunately.
I obviously do not have a crystal ball to explain the increase in Republican support, but things happening in my community and elsewhere in my own state point to some influence of labor shortages. Here, I've heard either first-hand or through reputable local media reporting about immigration-related labor shortages profoundly affecting fruit harvest (a major economic engine here), the patient:care staff ratio in skilled nursing facilities, and tariff-related layoffs at our usually very busy port (forcing a surge of port workers into the pool of riideshare drivers, reducing rides per driver and causing many to accept rides so far away that they lose money on them). These issues affect the financial stability of households, quality of care available to beloved elders, and economies of regions and states without much regard for party affiliation.
You left out abuse of the asylum system. As it was under Democrats anyone could show up at the border and claim asylum for some reason. They would be given a ticket and told to wait for a court date.
well, i think the commenters here are mostly right. but i want to emphasize the problem is not immigration as such, or stopping illegal immigration. it is the cruelty by which it is done. and the assault on the law and human rights..which will be there when they want to round up protesters or just people they regard as, however slightly, dangerous to their continued power. this is not a matter for talking about, it requires massive resistance to the crimes commited by ICE ... resistance by whatever remains of honest government and decent people.
You wrote: "They want to stop illegal immigration, deport all undocumented immigrants, and limit legal immigration as much as possible."
That is not really true. They have been showing up to courts to arrest legal immigrants. Saying they just want to stop illegal immigration is not their position at all. They want to deport all immigrants. Even naturalized, and birth right citizens. This is really a misleading sentence imo.
But I do enjoy your articles. I just wanted to point this out.
Such hypocrisy (throughout the West).
Immigration, legal and illegal, is mostly driven by business need to make exponential profit to the detriment of the local workforce and necessary unionism. Labor that undercuts hard fought conditions and wages is the constant desire of the majority of employers from the big end of town.
Paul, like all discussions about illegal immigration in the main stream media, you have omitted any mention of the role illegal employers - employers like Trump who hire large #'s of undocumented workers - play in drawing illegal immigrants to the U.S. Until illegal employers are included included in the discussion of illegal immigration, it will remain incomplete.
Mr. Waldman, I think you have described the positions of Democrats and the general public quite accurately. The maga-ites, through their media, have been taught to fear and hate anyone not in their cult. Bush the lesser proposed a reasonable solution that was killed by his party. Then Senator Rubio proposed a similar reasonable solution that was killed by the R's when President Obama endorsed it. Clearly the maga/R party does not want to solve this problem. They want to keep it and the fear they drum up alive and exploit it.
I rarely think you are naive but this article sure feels like it. Polls repeatedly have shown strong public support for things like legalized abortion which Republicans get away with destroying. I remember all the polls showing the public’s extremely strong support for Bill Clinton enacting healthcare reform. Then Bill Kristol told Republicans to deny Clinton any win on healthcare so Republicans win the midterms and the onslaught of deeply dishonest propaganda began. Support for the Clinton healthcare reform plummeted and the bill was DOA.
At that time I was shocked that mainstream media did next to nothing to counter the lies and distortions which in the media helped spread. For example the venerable New Republic published a long, blatantly dishonest critique of the Clinton healthcare plan by the right wing Manhattan Institute’s Betsy McCaughey. McCaughey falsely claimed people would be prevented from going outside the system to personally pay for care they believed would be better. The bill explicitly said “…nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services…..” but the media did nothing to debunk that claim. Instead people like George Will echoed McCaughey’s lies. McCaughey was later put forward as a healthcare expert so she could lie about Obama’s ACA plan.
“LIES, DAMN LIES, AND BETSY MCCAUGHEY.
BY EZRA KLEIN”
https://prospect.org/article/lies-damn-lies-betsy-mccaughey./
Today Republicans are even more dishonest and the mainstream media is even more cowardly and complicit in the their take over of our politics. If Democrats listen to people in the mainstream media calling for them to come up with immigration reform plan I would bet it will be Lucy and the football all over again.
I just found this post by Nancy LeTourneau which details the last time immigration reform was tried.
https://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2025/06/correcting-amy-walter-with-some-recent.html#comment-form
I don't remember the details of last year's bipartisan immigration bill that trump sunk, but wouldn't it have embraced this idea? Created an orderly immigration and asylum process (legal immigration good) and strengthened border protection (illegal immigration bad) that Ds and Rs could have sold to their constituencies. No wonder trump and miller didn't like it-the bill would have shot down their path to the WH.
This is a game Republicans have been playing for decades. I lived in Texas for a decade. It was common knowledge that wealthy employers in fields like construction preferred those workers because they could pay them less and not worry about silly things like safety regulations. That state would collapse without all those undocumented workers and the Republicans know it. So does the media which lets them get away with pretending they want to fix the system. I would bet Trump actually deporting their workers has them terrified.
Exactly what I was thinking, Mark. House Speaker Johnson wouldn’t let it be brought before the House at Trump’s urging so the issue wouldn’t be at least partially resolved by this bill but rather kept alive as a fierce campaign issue. It worked, unfortunately.
I obviously do not have a crystal ball to explain the increase in Republican support, but things happening in my community and elsewhere in my own state point to some influence of labor shortages. Here, I've heard either first-hand or through reputable local media reporting about immigration-related labor shortages profoundly affecting fruit harvest (a major economic engine here), the patient:care staff ratio in skilled nursing facilities, and tariff-related layoffs at our usually very busy port (forcing a surge of port workers into the pool of riideshare drivers, reducing rides per driver and causing many to accept rides so far away that they lose money on them). These issues affect the financial stability of households, quality of care available to beloved elders, and economies of regions and states without much regard for party affiliation.
You left out abuse of the asylum system. As it was under Democrats anyone could show up at the border and claim asylum for some reason. They would be given a ticket and told to wait for a court date.
well, i think the commenters here are mostly right. but i want to emphasize the problem is not immigration as such, or stopping illegal immigration. it is the cruelty by which it is done. and the assault on the law and human rights..which will be there when they want to round up protesters or just people they regard as, however slightly, dangerous to their continued power. this is not a matter for talking about, it requires massive resistance to the crimes commited by ICE ... resistance by whatever remains of honest government and decent people.
You wrote: "They want to stop illegal immigration, deport all undocumented immigrants, and limit legal immigration as much as possible."
That is not really true. They have been showing up to courts to arrest legal immigrants. Saying they just want to stop illegal immigration is not their position at all. They want to deport all immigrants. Even naturalized, and birth right citizens. This is really a misleading sentence imo.
But I do enjoy your articles. I just wanted to point this out.