One of the notable facts accompanying Donald Trump’s return to the White House is the cratering support among the American people for immigration of all types. Biden’s lax border policy generated a backlash against immigration far greater than Trump’s first presidential campaign did in 2015–2016. The 46th president’s neglect of the southern border and encouragement, often through funding of NGOs, of migrants to enter the United States not only sharpened public disapproval of mass migration but also turned the issue into an electoral goldmine for Republicans.
In a cruel irony for immigration moderates, Biden’s permissiveness did more damage to the public perception of their cause than did Trump’s hostility. From a combination of ideological zeal and fecklessness, Biden’s administration discarded “Remain in Mexico” and other Trump border policies that, by the end of Trump’s first term, had reduced immigration’s political salience (and arguably boosted Biden’s prospects in 2020). And one cannot attribute Biden’s immigration policy to a wholesale desire to overturn his predecessor’s legacy, since, on questions of industrial protection and China, for instance, he opted generally to continue Trump’s approach.
Biden and his party’s radicalism on immigration was pivotal in Trump’s victory in November; Trump himself believes that it was the issue that gave him the White House for a second time. It’s worth highlighting three dimensions of Democrats’ approach to the issue that are often overlooked, concerning, respectively, how it affected public perception of the party; how it shaped Americans’ relationship with their own major cities; and how it patronized Hispanic Americans.
First, consider Democrats’ incessant attempts, over many years, to portray Trump as uniquely extremist and a special threat to our most cherished norms of governance. Despite these efforts, and to the shock of liberals, Republicans won narrowly among voters who believed democracy was threatened. Why did Democrats fail in casting Trump as extreme? One reason is that, on immigration, the public could not be talked out of the view that the Democrats were the extremists—that the party’s conduct and policies were far from both popular consensus and recent American practice. Compared with their effective refusal to enforce immigration law, Trump’s blunt pronouncement, “If you don’t have borders, then you don’t have a country,” sounded like common sense.
In the 2020s, parties cannot credibly cast themselves as “normal” when they are committed to historically high levels of immigration. Here, the Democrats are not alone. Several European parties, even those with impeccable centrist credentials, have collapsed after presiding over rapid increases in immigration. Whatever one believes about immigration, an honest broker must accept that restrictionism is viewed by Western electorates as the moderate and responsible position today. No Western public seems willing to accept that a party endorsing high levels of immigration is the centrist or normal option, no matter the party’s other positions. Internalizing this lesson is perhaps the most urgent task facing Democrats today, but great gains may await if they do so; as the case of Denmark demonstrates, center-left parties that embrace immigration restrictionism can flourish.
Secondly, Democrats’ radicalism had civically demoralizing material consequences. Take New York City. The surging number of migrants into the city and the budgetary and social strain that their presence has placed on residents contributed to a rightward shift in Trump’s hometown. But the indirect effect on non-New Yorkers is less often considered. New York turned some 20 percent of its hotels into migrant shelters. The resulting reduction in hotel rooms, combined with the city’s restrictions on short-term home rentals, made it significantly less affordable for out-of-towners to visit. Last September, for example, the cost of the average New York City hotel room exceeded $400 a night; it hit $600 at a Manhattan Holiday Inn. That doesn’t include the significant taxes assessed, nor the cost of any activities that a family might want to enjoy.
In other words, mass migration made New York City unaffordable for middle-class Americans—a reality abetted by the federal government, which committed to pay more than $200 million to defray New York’s migrant-housing costs. This meant that American citizens, at the Biden administration’s behest, were effectively financing their own exclusion from the nation’s cultural and economic capital. Indeed, the sobering reality during the Biden presidency was that if you were not well-off, you had a better chance of staying in the heart of America’s most dynamic and culturally rich city if you were a non-citizen than if you were a citizen. Call the instincts behind the Democratic stance on immigration humanitarian or cosmopolitan if you wish, but the policy likely contributed to the impression that Democrats didn’t care about the struggles of non-wealthy Americans, and to the party’s historically high unfavorability rating.
Thirdly, notwithstanding how Trump has been denounced as a racist, he made remarkable gains among minority voters in 2024. He performed well with Hispanics, particularly among those in border regions. For example, in Hidalgo County, a 92 percent Hispanic county on the Texas-Mexico border, Trump improved 10 percentage points between the 2020 and 2024 elections, swinging Hidalgo’s presidential choice from Democrat to Republican. County residents explicitly cited immigration as the reason for their vote in 2024.
These results demonstrate a major flaw in Democrats’ attempt to woo Hispanic voters by facilitating illegal immigration and underscores the party’s condescension. The Democrats’ presumption that the way to win Hispanic voters was to assist mass migration from Latin America exemplifies what we might call, to adapt the George W. Bush expression, “the soft bigotry of low civic expectations.”
After all, no one imagines that the way to win over my vote is to encourage illegal immigration from Britain or Italy (the two sides of my heritage); it’s taken for granted that I identify with America and American interests rather than with my ethnic heritage. But Hispanic voters are Americans, too. As a matter of basic respect, one should presume that they also identify as Americans first, and that their concern for the national interest extends beyond blood or skin color. We have no reason to suspect that Hispanics are not troubled by the lawlessness, the strain on public services, and the social dislocation that have resulted from the Biden administration’s border policies. For Democrats to reverse their recent losses among Hispanics, the party’s standard-bearers need to start addressing them as fellow Americans and civic equals.
Immigration played a pivotal role in 2024. Mass illegal immigration imperiled the Democrats’ electoral prospects, made visiting New York effectively impossible for many Americans, and turned Hispanic voters toward Donald Trump. Whichever party better heeds these developments will position itself to win voters’ trust on this crucial issue. For now, it’s advantage, GOP.
Top Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images
