The Democrats Are Falling Into a Trap on Immigration Again
Not many things about immigration policy are clear except for the fact that it seems to have broken people’s brains. Just over the past few weeks, Congress spent a considerable amount of time not reaching an immigration deal; House Republicans made a pilgrimage to the southern border for a traditional immigration publicity stunt; Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Mexico to discuss interdiction policies; media outlets ran prominent stories about new migrant caravans and increasing arrivals at the border; Texas passed legislation making undocumented immigration a state crime, setting itself up for a legal challenge to reach the Supreme Court; and New York sued bus companies for transporting migrants from Texas to the Empire State.
Despite all the attention on immigration, the discussion has been divorced from the reality of migration. Alarmist lawmakers and media have made it seem that we are facing an unprecedented crisis, but we are not. Looking at the picture globally, immigration worldwide is an infrequent phenomenon. Only about 3 percent of the world population migrates, a percentage that has remained stable for decades. Moving to what’s happening in the United States, although last year recorded the highest numbers of arrivals on record, Customs and Border Protection has five times the budget it used to have in 2000, during the previous peak, so it’s hard to believe the agency’s claims that they’re simply overrun. In short, yes, there is more immigration to the U.S., but it’s not at a level that corresponds to the political frenzy or justifies the rightward shift of the Biden administration.
Both the reported efforts during legislative negotiations—offering a return to some of the most draconian border policies we saw under Trump—and Secretary Blinken’s trip to Mexico are proof that the Biden administration has fully embraced immigration deterrence as its main policy agenda. This is despite the fact that deterrence policies greatly endanger lives and they simply don’t work. How could they if even Americans don’t know what the border policy is? Moreover, if the dangers of crossing Mexico—where just last week a bus with 31 migrants was kidnapped by an organized crime syndicate—or of crossing the Darién Gap or Sonoran/Arizona desert do not dissuade people from coming to the United States, then U.S. border policy won’t do so either.
Finally, the patterns of current migration to the U.S. further suggest that old deterrence measures are even less likely to work this time around. For the first time ever, a majority of people arriving at the southern border are not from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras combined. More family units and people are coming from Venezuela, Colombia, and China than before, for example. It was also reported recently that immigration from Africa to the U.S. has increased as Europe has tightened its border controls. This tells us that people are embarking on longer treks with their entire families, meaning that they are less likely to be dissuaded by whatever CBP is doing at the border.
A big reason that deterrence won’t work is that one of the main pull factors: the American economy. The U.S. is currently experiencing an economic boom that is not seen anywhere else on this continent and there is a shortage of just under 9 million workers. People currently migrating may have good reasons to leave, but the reason they choose to come to the U.S. is because the economy here is ready to receive them.
The Mexican example is illustrative. Mexican migration to the U.S. was net negative between 2005 and 2014. This is despite the soaring violence and meager growth in Mexico during those decades. Since 2015 the trend has reversed, greatly increasing last year. Conditions in Mexico did not change that much in that time; the real difference is that today the U.S. is a much more attractive destination.
The reality is that the fate of immigration is deeply tied to the economy, a fact that will be even more pronounced in the future as the population in the U.S. keeps getting older.
Defenders of the Biden administration’s embrace of deterrence policies frame it as a response not only to Republican pressure but also that of state and local Democratic officials. The loudest of these officials has been New York’s Mayor Eric Adams. Adams has made himself notorious for his bizarre and incongruous conduct, but at least when it comes to migration, he’s been consistently awful. He has made it clear that New York—a sanctuary city in name—is not open to migrants, and recently sued bus companies taking migrants from Texas to New York under a 19th-century New York state law that requires anyone who transports a “needy person” likely to seek government assistance from another state to cover their expenses. Various observers have said the suit is not going anywhere, but it shows just how reactionary Adams is on immigration. The problem is that Adams isn’t alone. Many other local officials have raised similar concerns, albeit in less alarmist or racist ways.
Many people believe that these mayors and governors are caving to the politics of the MAGA right. That may be part of the story. However, it’s important to recognize that increased immigration to places like New York and Chicago is putting constraints on cities’ and states’ social budget and infrastructure. Perhaps even more importantly, local officials may also be responding to traditionally Democratic constituencies. At a recent panel on immigration in Chicago, Eréndira Rendón from the Resurrection Project, an organization that works with and in immigrant communities, spoke about the growing resentment in those communities toward newly arrived migrants. Rendón reported that many people felt it was unfair that there was no government support for long-term undocumented residents while temporary parole, employment authorization, and more generous city services were being provided for new arrivals. The same is true for other minority communities that only know a history of underinvestment in their social infrastructure and well-being. Of course, the easiest thing to do is to blame the new arrivals, because it’s only natural to believe that public resources are a zero-sum game.
It is, however, in that notion that lies the solution to the morass. Democrats are so scared to alienate voters when it comes to immigration that they’ve caved or adopted restrictionist policies and xenophobic talking points. However, policymakers can be shown through policy that immigrants are not enemies to their identities or their pockets, that public social support systems are not zero-sum. On the contrary, immigration makes the country wealthier, which ensures that state and local resources are plentiful enough to cover the needs of all communities. Of course, that process takes time. In the immediate term, local officials should spend their resources in communities, not on lawsuits and publicity stunts, and the executive should start making the case that immigration is good for the country. Because that’s just it, and yet people are afraid to say it. Either the United States will embrace itself as a nation of immigrants or it will become a nation in decline.
