Illegal immigration was not the only reason Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to President-elect Donald Trump, but it was a big one. According to the Democratic-aligned Blueprint polling firm, the second-most popular reason voters, including Hispanic people, chose Trump over Harris was that “too many immigrants illegally crossed the border under the Biden-Harris administration.”
For years, the Democrats thought immigration was a winning issue for them. After then-President Barack Obama unilaterally granted temporary amnesty through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to about a million illegal immigrants who entered the country as children, his support among Hispanic people rose from 66% in 2008 to 70% in 2012. The Republican Party agreed with the Democrats, as the Republican National Committee autopsy of the 2012 election called on the party to capitulate to Democratic demands and give amnesty to all illegal immigrants.
Trump, as president, had a different idea of what voters really wanted. He promised to end illegal immigration by building a wall along the border with Mexico and pledged to deport up to 3 million illegal immigrants. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton moved in the opposite direction, promising voters more amnesties and less enforcement. Not only did Hispanic people reject Clinton’s message, shifting slightly but not decisively toward Trump, but working-class white people moved toward Trump in large numbers, costing Clinton the key “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Instead of being chastened into moderating their open-border immigration policies after their 2016 loss, Democrats went even further in 2020, with eight of the 10 candidates calling for the complete decriminalization of all illegal border crossings. Thanks to COVID, Democrats eked out a narrow victory in 2020, and Biden rewarded open borders activists for their loyalty. When he came into office, he immediately halted deportations and loosened Trump’s Title 42 policies.
If Democrats are going to make immigration a winning issue for them again, or at least make it less of a liability, their first step must be to admit it was Biden’s open border that caused the unprecedented historic surge of illegal immigration in the past four years. Reasonable people see this as an easy step. Open borders activist groups wanted more immigration and called for policies that facilitated it. Biden implemented those policies, and more immigrants came. The chain of causality is clear.
But many hard-left activist staffers in Democratic campaigns and offices won’t admit the obvious. They blame “root causes” such as global instability. They even blame Trump for the historic surge of immigration during Biden’s term. By one account, the United States added a net 8 million foreign-born people during Biden’s presidency, and more than half of them entered illegally.
The second step for Democrats looking to retrieve credibility on immigration is to admit that illegal immigration is a bad thing that should be prevented. That leaves open unlimited debate on legal immigration, but at least it would put Democrats on the side of the law. If illegal immigration is a good thing, which many Democratic Party staff members and allies believe, why try to stop it?
Voters know illegal immigration is bad and wrong, just as they know that illegal expropriation of property is wrong. The evidence is all around them. Democrats and their media allies deny it, but the recent wave of illegal immigration was overwhelmingly of young men perfectly capable of looking after themselves, not of needy and scared people fearing persecution in their home countries. Among any population, those who are most likely to commit crimes are young and male. We should not have added to this entirely unnecessary and unwanted group through the feckless administration of the border.
Basic economics and the Democrats’ arguments about immigration mitigating inflation tell you that illegal migrant labor erodes wages for similarly skilled native workers. Lower wages, especially for low-skill workers, can destroy communities. Illegal immigrants also raise housing costs, break local government healthcare budgets, and damage public schools. It is difficult to learn to read when half the class doesn’t speak English.
Only when Democrats admit that their policies cause illegal immigration and are harmful will voters trust them again on the issue. This does not require Democrats to change their minds about amnesty for those already here or for higher levels of legal immigration. If they want to make the case for each of those, they are free to do so. They are still Democrats, after all. But they cannot expect to win general support as the party of lawbreaking.
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One easy way Democrats can quickly change their brand on immigration is to cooperate with Trump when his new administration begins its deportation efforts. The San Francisco Police Department shouldn’t help Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents break down doors and arrest families in their homes, but when an illegal immigrant is arrested for selling fentanyl in the Tenderloin, the agents should contact ICE to come and pick him up. When the New York City Police Department arrests an illegal immigrant for endangering a minor, a call to ICE is in order. What is out of order is releasing him to rape and murder a woman in Georgia.
In other words, it is time for Democrats to end their “sanctuary” city and state policies. It is a moral imperative in a democracy that the government, including the security forces, administer the law. If they start to do so again, our federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies would be working together to keep communities safe, not needlessly keeping each other in the dark.