December 3, 2024 - 1:00pm
Immigration helped vault Donald Trump back into the White House, but he faces an acute political challenge as he prepares to assume the presidency again: avoiding the immigration backlash.
The American people have conflicted opinions on immigration. They support border controls and object to the turmoil caused by unchecked illegal immigration. But they also are enamoured with the idea of the United States as a welcoming nation and are often uncomfortable with immigration enforcement that seems harsh or punitive. This makes American public opinion on immigration particularly thermostatic — zigging in one direction while political incumbents zag in the other.
The unwinding of border controls under Joe Biden has pushed the American electorate in a restrictionist direction. Gallup polling from the summer found skyrocketing support for reducing the rate of immigration. Over half (55%) of those polled thought that immigration should be cut — the highest percentage in over two decades. According to another poll from CBS, 57% of Americans support deporting all illegal immigrants.
These numbers would seem to indicate that Trump has some running room to regain control of the border and crack down on illegal immigration. Yet the American people could sour on an enforcement agenda if it seems too disruptive. When he was last president, public opinion shifted against enforcement (support for a border wall as well as cuts to immigration fell during the Trump years), so the next administration will have to be flexible to avoid repeating this dynamic.
In order to address the competing impulses of the American people, Trump might adopt a low-salience strategy of enforcement. This approach would involve tightening border controls and interior enforcement while also trying to avoid spectacles that could tug at the heartstrings of swing voters.
This kind of strategy could incorporate a range of policies. In June, Joe Biden performed a sudden U-turn and issued an executive order that curtailed the ability of migrants to seek asylum if they were intercepted while trying to cross the border between official ports of entry. This policy dramatically reduced unauthorised migration, and extending it or expanding it could help restore order at the border. Since many migrants pass through another country (especially Mexico) on their way to American borders, negotiating agreements with third-party countries can help deter a flood of asylum seekers.
In 2021, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo that exempted almost all illegal immigrants from deportation if they entered the United States prior to 2020. Ending that policy would obviously be a first step toward restoring credibility in immigration enforcement. An expanded deportation programme could start with unauthorised immigrants with criminal convictions in the United States.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), there are currently hundreds of thousands of noncitizens in the United States who have been convicted of crimes but are not in ICE custody. Some of those people might be serving prison sentences, but not all of them are. Given that incoming “border czar” Tom Homan has said he hopes to prioritise the deportation of criminal aliens, it appears as though Trump is already leaning into this low-salience direction.
Inaction can itself be a way of changing the immigration dynamic. Throughout his presidency, Biden has used parole policies in an unprecedented way to grant quasi-legal status to hundreds of thousands of people. Simply not doing that would reduce the incentives for unauthorised migration.
Beyond these executive actions, legislation could also deter illegal immigration. Passing universal E-Verify could help ensure the legal status of workers, and cutting funding to sanctuary jurisdictions could encourage state and local cooperation with federal law enforcement. These legislative items could be bundled into a bigger pro-worker policy regimen. In 2023, a group of Republican senators (including future vice president J.D. Vance) rolled out a proposal that combined universal E-Verify with a boost to the minimum wage. That kind of policy deal could help Republicans claim the mantle of fighting for working families across the board.
The goal of this low-salience strategy would be to change the incentives for illegal immigrants so that fewer people are tempted to risk the hazardous journey to the American border. Combined with credibility in enforcement, cutting off the magnets for unauthorised migration (such as employment) could deliver the controls demanded by the American people — without the brutal headlines.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThe American people have conflicted opinions on immigration. —–> You mean they want it both ways? Because that is what this sounds like. Virtually every voter had immigration among their top three issues. Let’s not pretend that none of them expected the process to be squeaky clean and pure.
At this point, no one is certain just how many illegals are in the country. Estimates go from single-digit millions to tens of millions, and plenty of local and state budgets are feeling the impact. So are communities in which Team Biden dumped people who do not speak the language, have unknown skill levels, don’t know about or care about the culture, etc.
You want a brutal headline – it comes with every story in which an illegal kills or simply brutalizes a citizen. It comes with every story of foreign gangs taking over apartment complexes. It comes with the ongoing cost of pretending that there are no consequences to acting “welcoming” while others deal with the fallout.
American here. Most of us are not conflicted. We welcome legal immigration of people willing to contribute and integrate providing our economy is doing well enough to absorb them. We shun illegal immigration of people looking to live off the taxpayer. End of story. No conflict except amongst a small section of activists amplified by the political class who benefit from vote harvesting and cheap labor.
> The American people have conflicted opinions on immigration.
They were pretty clear in this last election. Theast election was a referendum on all of these luxury beliefs and it turns out the people have decided against them.
Policies concerning illegal immigrations have little to do with what Americans feel about them. Think big business and big agriculture. They want illegals. Illegals do the jobs no Americans want—slaughter houses, meat packers, etc. Theses businesses can pay below minimum wage and ignore safety requirements—a 13-year- old boy was killed and another boy lost his arm in slaughterhouses. Then there’s agriculture. No Americans will bend over all day in the heat to pick strawberries. A couple of years ago, Georgia introduced strict requirements for keeping illegals out of the state. Their most famous crop—peaches—rotted on the ground. Big business gets what it wants.
Doubt there is any conflict at all.
It was recently reported that here in Canada, there are 4.9 million residency permits set to expire by the end of 2025. That’s 12% of our current population of 41 million. That is a pressure relief valve that needs to be opened – it will allow our services, infrastructure and housing market to breathe a collective sigh of relief. We are ready to help pack the bags and queue up the planes – and we are the polite ones from north of the border that live in igloos and eat maple syrup, bacon and beer for breakfast! And we love our immigrants! Until we don’t… And that time has come for us.
Given that we’ve had it up to our eyebrows, I can only imagine that our more assertive brothers and sisters south of the border are at their wits ends.
Unfortunately, we in the north are still saddled with a serious case of political hemorrhoids, though I suspect his time will come soon.
So let me get this straight? A policy of deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes is a “low-salience”, moderated approach that seeks to avoid “spectacles which could tug at the heartstrings”? Is that what it is? I don’t think that’s how I would describe it. I would call it basic, common sense law enforcement. Arresting people for breaking the laws of the nation that have been established by the people through their elected representatives should not be controversial in any way. If I decided to sneak into Canada because Trump won the election without following Canadian law, I would expect the Canadian government would probably arrest me and send me back. If I then also shot a man or robbed a bank, I’d expect to be sent to prison immediately and then the Canadian government would probably send me back to serve my sentence in an American prison, where I might face other charges for breaking the law in a friendly country, or they’d make me serve my sentence in Canada and send me back afterwards. I doubt I’d have very much luck demanding to stay in Canada after having twice broken the law. It really shouldn’t be controversial for America to do the same thing.
If deporting criminals is a strategic decision, I suppose it’s a good strategy in the same sense that fleeing a burning building is a good strategy. The government isn’t possessed of unlimited resources. They can’t secure the border, stop the flow of migrants, and deport millions of people already here in the span of a few weeks. This is a monumental task that will take a great deal of time and sustained political effort. It will take years, perhaps the entire administration, and perhaps even beyond that. They have to start somewhere and starting with the criminals already sitting in prison is a good place to start because the location of these criminals are known and they can presumably be retrieved without tremendous difficulty. Then once that’s done they can assess the situation and decide what the next step should be. I don’t feel the need to congratulate anybody on seizing upon the obvious.
The more interesting ‘strategic’ questions must be answered by the other side. I’ll be interested in seeing if the talking heads, lawyers, and open borders advocates will actually be stupid enough to try to appeal to the sympathy of Americans on behalf of drug dealers, thieves, rapists, etc. That would be a very poor strategic choice, but they may in fact be that stupid or that committed to their failing ideology. If they walk into such an obvious trap, it will only make the new border czar’s task that much easier. You don’t have to have a great strategy if your opponent is a fool.
Intrigued by e-verify. This a form on ID check I assume? Anyone able to elaborate?
The issue of ID cards/check pertinent to immigration debate in UK too, where been great reluctance to have anything like this.
E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information entered by an employer from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to confirm employment eligibility
e-verify.gov
In practice I have never seen it used by employers here in the US although to be fair, my experience is limited.
Thank you
Reducing wars in and arms sales/gifts to nations in conflict, and reducing support for oppressive regimes may reduce the desperation and desire of people to leave their homelands and come to US, Canada, Europe.
Also the policy (in Canada at least) of deliberately attracting/soliciting the so-called ‘best and the brightest’ (ie those with more money, training and English skills) from poorer nations to come to be our doctors, nannies, care staff, nurses, and government-dependent and therefor obedient low-level managerial staff rather than training enough here is a disgusting form of neo-colonialism that deprives those nations of the wealth and people who might be able to improve life in their homelands.
The low salience approach is clearly the way to go. Immigration unsettles people (here too) if it is perceived as not being managed well or at all. Above all, illegal immigration must be seen by the public as something that the Government is on top of.