The Democrats’ Shameful, Foolish Surrender on Immigration

Vice President Kamala Harris was in Arizona last Friday to engage in the periodic political pilgrimage to the southern border, where she pledged to continue President Biden’s crackdown on asylum if she defeats Donald Trump in November. She would not only keep in place an executive action that severely restricts the ability to apply for asylum at all but actually expand it, as well as “ramp up prosecutions of those who illegally cross the border—including potential felony charges for repeat offenders, according to two sources briefed on her plans,” Axios reported.

With this, the Democrats’ transition to a default restrictionist approach on immigration—and an adoption of MAGA’s messaging on the issue—is all but complete. It shows that our leading Democrats still don’t know how to do politics; they only know how to react to opponents, allowing the right to set the terms of debate. That’s the polite way to put it, anyhow. Perhaps more accurately, this is shameful, wholesale surrender on the part of Democrats.

Think about the immigration rhetoric over the last several years. When was the last time you heard a nationally known Democrat discuss the issue in a way that wasn’t a direct response to something insane that Trump or some MAGA acolyte put forward: an assertion that they too are Tough on the Border and have the workable plan to limit migration, or wishy-washy filler about immigrants being “our strength,” with little underlying substance? Can you remember?

Maybe this isn’t a question you’ve thought to pose to yourself before because our mainstream political firmament has, at some point in the last five or so years, settled on an artificially narrow band of right-left political stances on immigration that have as their locus the beliefs of extreme hard-liners like Trump adviser Stephen Miller. It’s not that everyone has adopted this stance per se, but it has become the center of gravity to which every other position is tethered, measured in essence by their distance to it, which can never get too far.

This is not exactly a historical anomaly, admittedly. Even as American political attitudes have shifted on a number of fronts over the last two centuries, immigrant bashing has been a proud tradition, and preoccupations about exactly who is allowed into the country and what danger they might pose to the polity have always been an easy hook for populist politicking.

Behind closed doors and among the politico cognoscenti, the reason for this is a simple calculation: Tough-on-immigration rhetoric is politically popular and only getting more so, with polls showing a sharp collapse of public support for immigration since 2021. A CBS News/YouGov poll from this summer shocked observers by concluding that 62 percent of adult voters would favor some sort of nationwide mass deportation program for all undocumented immigrants.

Let’s set aside for a minute the moral questions and tackle this question on the terms of shark-eyed political strategists interested mainly in winning—those who believe Democrats can’t afford any perceived weakness on immigration as the existential threat of Trump Redux looms.

We have here something of a chicken-and-egg problem on narrative and attitudes. Since he first descended that escalator nearly a decade ago, Trump has made immigration a cornerstone issue with a relatively simple and repeatable set of narrative planks: Immigrants are disease-ridden and dangerous, alternately living on the dole and taking all your jobs, and they will vote in great numbers even if they are not legally allowed to.

All of this is base and blunt and not particularly novel in the scheme of American political dialogue, but Trump’s innovations have really always been about branding and reach. He’s effectively the McDonald’s of xenophobic slop, producing serviceable and easily replicable product in mass quantities that’s now everywhere, franchised around the country by his cadre of sycophants for reasons of true belief or mere expediency. You can’t escape it, and it’s basically a background drumbeat to any sort of political conversation.

And what has been the Democrats’ response? Teetering around, feebly trying to sidestep the issue or meeting it head-on by effectively insisting they can make the better burger. Behind the scenes, there have been some clear distinctions in approach, with the Biden administration having rejiggered ICE enforcement priorities away from the shock-and-awe campaign that Miller and Trump were trying to run, stepped away from mass detention, and wound down family detention altogether; and generally tried to foment more humanitarian migration via the refugee system and parole. Yet this has gotten little play on the rhetorical front, almost as if the White House and its advisers didn’t want people to find out about it.

So yes, if voters are on the one hand bombarded with a simplistic and all-encompassing vision of a country beset by the perils of masses of faceless immigrants and, on the other, hear crickets or a sort of tepid agreement with the promise that Democrats will actually be better at handling it, of course their opinions are going to trend in a restrictionist direction. It’s no contest, and there’s no way for liberals to actually win on these terms. Attitudes will keep getting harsher, and they’ll keep rushing to catch up, but of course they’ll never manage to outrun the shameless fascists, untethered as they are by considerations of either humanity or reality—just look at J.D. Vance’s flippant admissions that the Ohio pet-eating story is false but that it doesn’t matter in service to the narrative.

For low-information voters—and the truth is, almost every voter and a substantial chunk of elected officials are low-information on immigration, which is a policy issue that inflames much passion but that almost no one understands, below the very surface level—all they see is strong versus weak. This isn’t going to work, and it’s past due time to try something else; liberals must coalesce around a concrete, straightforward, memorable, and forceful pro-immigration message that constitutes a full alternate vision, not just playing defense or being shackled to the right’s terms.

So allow me to humbly propose a better approach for Democrats. Point to how immigrants helped economically revitalize a depressed Springfield, Ohio, and cities across the United States instead of just ridiculing the pet-eating lie. Don’t let the right ever get away with talking about birth rates without hounding them over how this squares with the prospect of new arrivals. Force right-wing figures to explain how, exactly, the U.S. would have become a global economic and cultural locus without massive immigration, or how all this contemporary business about revitalizing domestic high-tech manufacturing or keeping domestic food production running could be accomplished without it. Ask voters: Do you like the prospect of Social Security and Medicare remaining solvent? Great, immigration is the straightest path there.

Just say it: Immigration is good. We should consider ourselves lucky to have had so much, and we should strive to have more. This psychopathic and—you can say it—white supremacist fixation on punishment and control of migration is not just a moral stain but a disastrous economic policy. If carried out to its full effect, it would represent one of the greatest acts of national self-immolation in our history. Say it over and over, a coordinated message across the country, a full alternative to what is a terrible but at this point default vision. Some voters will hate it, and centrist commentator types will lose their minds. That’s fine, because staying the course is a losing message—and, not to mention, just plain wrong.