 Supporters of Donald Trump at a 2018 rally in San Diego. |
DONALD TRUMP'S bid for a second presidential term is looking strong. But whether or not he regains the White House, he has already won the policy battle that he cares about most. He has succeeded in turning most Americans against immigration.
The Gallup Poll, which has tracked public opinion on immigration since 1965, reported this month that an outright majority of American adults surveyed, 55 percent, want immigration to the United States to be decreased. Not since 2001, in the immediate wake of 9/11, has such a large percentage of Americans soured on immigration.
When Trump first emerged as a national political candidate in 2015, a plurality of Americans, 40 percent, said that immigration should remain at its current level and only 34 percent wanted it rolled back. Nine years after he came down the Trump Tower escalator to launch his presidential campaign with a blistering attack on immigrants and a vow to "build a great wall" to keep them out, his view has become mainstream. Today only 25 percent of the public thinks immigration should continue at its current rate — less than half the number who want it curtailed.
Of all Trump's immigration-related proposals, the most extreme is his vow to undertake "the largest domestic deportation operation in American history," beginning on his first day in office. In an interview with Time, he claimed that as many as 20 million people would be rounded up, and that he would deploy the National Guard and state and local police to forcibly move residents across the border. Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser, has stressed in interviews that "this is going to happen. If President Trump is back in the Oval Office in January, this is going to commence immediately."
Any such operation would be a nightmare. It would rip apart families and communities, destroy businesses, and involve sweeping use of government power against a peaceful civilian population. Even if most Americans now agree with Trump that future immigration should be reduced, would they favor the mass roundup and expulsion of undocumented migrants?
They say they would. In a nationwide survey conducted by Axios and the Harris Poll in April, 51 percent of respondents said they would support large-scale deportations of immigrants who lack legal papers. That support was highest among Republicans, at 68 percent, but 42 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of independents also signaled their approval. Another survey, by Reuters/Ipsos in May, likewise found majority support for deporting "most or all" immigrants who are in the United States unlawfully.
What respondents tell pollsters is not chiseled in granite, of course, and there is no guarantee that what Americans endorse in theory, they would actually uphold in reality.
Nevertheless, Trump's harsh anti-immigration attitudes have clearly penetrated the mainstream to a far greater extent than ever before. The Republican Party, which under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush explicitly celebrated and sought to expand immigration, has been wholly subsumed into Trump's build-the-wall and keep-them-out nativism. Today's Republicans cheer when Trump describes undocumented migrants — the vast majority of whom are peaceable, hardworking, and law-abiding — as "poisoning the blood of our country." GOP candidates in their ads and speeches routinely refer to the arrival of migrants at the border as an "invasion."
But the surging anti-immigrant sentiment isn't limited to Republicans. According to Gallup, support for curtailing immigration has jumped by 11 percentage points among independents and 10 points among Democrats. President Biden, even as he proposes to naturalize undocumented immigrants married to US citizens, insists that he also wants to "shut down the border right now." So marked has the Democrats' shift on border issues been that former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro, a Democratic progressive, accused Biden and his allies of trying to out-MAGA Republicans on immigration. More than two dozen congressional Democrats have formed a "Democrats for Border Security" caucus to press for tougher asylum laws and move their party to the right on border enforcement.
As a consistent supporter of open immigration who wants the most generous possible policy toward refugees and asylum-seekers, I find the current swing against immigrants disheartening and shortsighted. America is in desperate need of more newcomers, not fewer. The obvious cure for the problem of illegal immigration is to expand opportunities for would-be Americans to immigrate legally. But if history is any guide, this turn against immigration is likely to intensify before it eases.
For 250 years, the United States has gone through cycles of welcoming immigrants and then turning against them.
In 1798, the Alien and Sedition Acts codified an early eruption of xenophobia; among other provisions, the law tripled the residency requirement for US citizenship to nearly 14 years and authorized the government to arrest, imprison, or deport — without due process — any noncitizen deemed dangerous to public safety. In 1882, yielding to widespread anti-Asian bigotry, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring all immigration to the United States from China. In 1924, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act all but slammed the gates shut on immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe.
When the 1924 law took effect, nearly 15 percent of the population was foreign-born; by the time it was finally overhauled in 1965, that figure had shrunk to 5 percent. Now, nearly 60 years later, the share of Americans born abroad has once again reached 15 percent — and anti-immigrant animus is soaring. A century ago it was crude and overhyped fears of genetic inferiority that convinced politicians of both parties they had to keep the immigrants out. Now it is crude and overhyped fears of violent crime — "Biden's border bloodbath," Republicans have been calling it — that is driving the immigration debate.
Not for the first time, the nation is turning its face against immigration. Eventually Americans will regret surrendering to the nativists, but "eventually" may be a long time in coming.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
-- ## --
Follow Jeff Jacoby on X (aka Twitter).
Discuss his columns on Facebook.
Want to read more? Sign up for "Arguable," Jeff Jacoby's free weekly email newsletter.