In today’s immigration news: Immigration, polls, and the upcoming election; Trump and Project 2025; Democrats’ slide to the right on immigration.
Is immigration a “top issue” in the upcoming November elections? NPR talked to Gallup pollster Megan Brenan, and found out that the answer is complicated. Immigration is a higher-priority issue for Republicans than for Democrats. Misinformation about immigrants and immigration shapes people’s attitudes. So does the way that questions are asked.
[NPR] “INSKEEP: When we’ve interviewed voters, I’ve noticed really complicated thoughts that people have about immigration. Do the results change if you refer to people as illegal immigrants as opposed to asylum-seekers or whatever other term you might put on them?
“BRENAN: Yeah, that’s a good point. So we asked a question last June about whether Americans are sympathetic towards illegal immigrants in the United States versus people from other countries who traveled to the United States in an attempt to enter the country. So we got a significantly higher percentage of people who were sympathetic to those who were coming to the U.S. border to enter the country versus illegal immigrants. So that’s exactly right. It’s all in how you refer to people, as well.”
Trump’s presidential campaign—and the official Republican party line—are closely identified with a political monstrosity called Project 2025.
[Niskanen Center] “The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is the policy playbook for a second Trump administration, and its impacts on immigration would be far more complex and destructive than previously reported. It isn’t simply a refresh of first-term ideas, dusted off and ready to be re-implemented. Rather, it reflects a meticulously orchestrated, comprehensive plan to drive immigration levels to unprecedented lows and increase the federal government’s power to the states’ detriment. These proposals circumvent Congress and the courts and are specifically engineered to dismantle the foundations of our immigration system.
“The most troubling proposals include plans to:
- Block federal financial aid for up to two-thirds of all American college students if their state permits certain immigrant groups, including Dreamers with legal status, to access in-state tuition.
2. Terminate the legal status of 500,000 Dreamers by eliminating staff time for reviewing and processing renewal applications.
3. Use backlog numbers to trigger the automatic suspension of application intake for large categories of legal immigration.
4. Suspend updates to the annual eligible country lists for H-2A and H-2B temporary worker visas, thereby excluding most populations from filling critical gaps in the agricultural, construction, hospitality, and forestry sectors.
5. Bar U.S. citizens from qualifying for federal housing subsidies if they live with anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.
6. Force states to share driver’s licenses and taxpayer identification information with federal authorities or risk critical funding.”
[The Guardian] “Trump has laid out his vision for a “record-setting deportation operation” in a series of rally speeches, newspaper articles and social media posts. He intends to move swiftly after inauguration day next January to stage mass roundups of immigrants across the country, conducting raids inside big cities where he would face certain Democratic opposition. …
“’This time we need to take Trump at his word,’ said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. ‘When he talks about mass deportation – in boxcars, or bus loads, or planes, or whatever – that’s what he’s going to do.’ …
“’Trump will have his agents remove people, then ask questions later. If somebody looks like they’re undocumented, meaning they have brown or black skin, or speak with an accent, they could be included irrespective of their citizenship,’ Leopold warned.”
Senior Project 2025 adviser John McEntee recently said children of undocumented parents, born in the United States, should not be allowed to vote. This “replacement” theorist joins the ranks of other white nationalists who want to deny citizenship to children of immigrants, violating the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. McEntee made his remarks on the “Diving Deep” podcast, in a May 1, 2024 interview with “Dirty Water Don.”
[Media Matters] “It’s like — it’s just crazy that we allow this. You know? And, like, anyone born here is an American. It’s like, then they get to vote. OK. So, yeah, even if that illegal doesn’t vote, their kids do, their grandkids do. That’s why this is more about, like, demographic change.”
Republicans are split on immigration. Younger Republicans reject many of the extreme positions taken by the party. Though they are less extreme than older Republicans, they still skew to the right of Democrats.
[Axios] “Young Republicans are notablymore moderate on immigration than the elders in their party, according to an Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll. …
• Gen Z Republicans are more likely to support more legal immigration pathways.
• They’re more likely to question negative narratives about immigrants than older generations, the survey found.
• They’re less likely than boomer and Gen X Republicans to back some of Trump’s most aggressive plans to crack down on illegal immigration.
“By the numbers: Most Republicans in the older generation did not feel that media often portrays immigrants negatively or unfairly, while 63% of Gen Z said that it does.
• Less than half of the younger Republican age group said they would want mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and closing the border down entirely.
• Around three quarters of Republican Gen X and boomer respondents expressed support for those same Trump plans.”
Despite the vast divide between Trump’s neo-fascism and Biden’s “centrist” liberalism, neither party is pro-immigrant. Biden’s off-the-cuff insult during his State of the Union address was bad enough, but the Democratic Party’s continuing shift to the right on immigration is unconscionable.
[Texas Observer] “At best, Biden’s use of a retrograde xenophobic insult could have occasioned a sincere apology and a forceful insistence on the basic fact that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born. But the president’s PR shop felt it more important to (unsuccessfully) avoid looking soft on unauthorized immigration. This decision was but a minor example of Biden’s overall reelection strategy of shifting right on immigration to try to neutralize his opponent’s top issue. …
“We live in an era of mass migration fueled by war, climate change, and post-pandemic economic crisis, along with ease of international travel and communication. Long past 2024, America’s leaders will face a fundamental dilemma: Deterring migrants from seeking U.S. safety and prosperity requires measures that are cruel, expensive, and possibly illegal under international law. Outsourcing our border enforcement to Mexico, as Biden has begun attempting, may seem to work for a time but is amoral and unsustainable. Moving beyond the model of deterrence is the true challenge, and liberal leaders should be wedded to that cause. …
“The real crisis is that we are perilously close to abandoning the dream of bringing our neighbors “out of the shadows.” It is that what good steps Biden has taken on immigration—through executive action—can be immediately undone by a reelected Trump. It is that we could be demagogued into losing one of the things that makes this country, born of indelible sin, worth a damn: our fragile yet tenacious understanding that we are a nation of immigrants.”
Speaking at a Washington, D.C., fundraiser at the Mayflower Hotel that marked the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, President Biden praised immigrants—but seriously dissed Japan, a major U.S. ally.
[Washington Post] “President Biden called Japan a “xenophobic” country during a campaign event Wednesday evening, putting the U.S. ally in a group with authoritarian rivals such as China and Russia and suggesting that a lack of immigration may be why the nations were “stalling so badly economically.” …
“’Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants,’ he continued. ‘Immigrants are what makes us strong. Not a joke. That’s not hyperbole, because we have an influx of workers who want to be here and just contribute,’ he added.”
Immigration news 