It wasn’t way back that Democrats embraced an unequivocally pro-immigrant stance.
The social gathering as soon as outlined its immigration platform in opposition to the insurance policies of former President Donald Trump’s first time period: separating households detained on the border, a journey ban on Muslim-majority nations, and efforts to intestine the asylum system amongst them. In 2020, President Joe Biden ran on a message of undoing the cruelties of his predecessor, and in his first week in workplace, he signed a flurry of government actions doing simply that.
A lot has modified within the 4 years since. Within the closing weeks of the 2024 marketing campaign, the rhetoric coming from Kamala Harris and most Democrats is decidedly totally different. There’s a better deal with border safety and fewer emphasis on immigrants’ rights and contributions to the nation.
This pivot didn’t come from nowhere. Border crossings reached document highs on the finish of 2023, fueling a Republican narrative of chaos that People seem to have embraced. Although crossings have come down considerably all through 2024, extra People nonetheless need to see immigration ranges lower than at any level for the reason that early 2000s, simply after the 9/11 terror assaults. Polls present most voters help stricter border safety measures; a rising share desires mass deportations.
That is the political actuality Democrats have needed to confront forward of the presidential election: Broadly, People maintain anti-immigration views. It doesn’t actually matter that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, was often called a champion for immigrant rights within the Senate and through her 2020 presidential bid. In a race towards Trump, who has upped the ante on his dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants within the closing stretch of the marketing campaign, she will be able to’t afford to look weak on the border if she desires to win. That’s very true given immigration is a matter that has solely turn into extra salient among the many unbiased voters she’s courting in key states.
“Earlier than you’ll be able to repair a coverage, first you could get elected,” mentioned Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential marketing campaign who designed Sanders’s Latino vote outreach technique. “[Republicans] have bullied Democrats for years on this challenge, and I believe it sensible for the Harris marketing campaign to not again down and take them on.”
Assuming Harris wins, what’s subsequent for Democrats and liberals on immigration? The progressive left that was as soon as so vocally pro-immigration has largely supported Harris regardless of her dash to the middle. That’s as a result of progressives know full properly {that a} Trump administration can be worse. But when Trump and his xenophobic agenda are defeated, that would make room for a leftist offensive on immigration. What would that appear like, and can we see it throughout a Harris administration?
How a brand new politics of immigration emerged
Democrats’ 2020 platform didn’t even point out border safety. As a substitute, it targeted on increasing authorized immigration pathways and rolling again the US’s immigration detention regime. 4 years after former President Barack Obama was dubbed the “deporter in chief,” it appeared as if Trump had pushed Democrats to embrace a newfound ethical case for rising immigration.
However amid a difficult new actuality on the border and ensuing political strain, Biden superior immigration insurance policies that his Republican predecessor devised himself or would have no less than authorised of:
- He stored Trump’s Title 42 coverage in place for greater than two years, permitting him to show away swaths of immigrants on the border underneath the guise of defending public well being throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, even though public well being consultants noticed no proof that it was an efficient technique of curbing the virus.
- He instituted his model of Trump’s asylum transit ban. That rule permits immigration enforcement officers to show away migrants for a lot of causes: if they don’t have legitimate journey and identification paperwork, in the event that they’ve traveled via one other nation with out making use of for asylum, in the event that they don’t present up at a port of entry at an appointed time, and extra.
- He issued a proclamation barring asylum seekers who cross the border with out permission from making use of for protections within the US when migrant crossings exceed a every day common of two,500 in per week.
Harris performed a job in executing this technique, and immigration was a part of her portfolio as vice chairman from the early months of Biden’s presidency. She was tasked with addressing the foundation causes of migration in a diplomatic function that primarily concerned directing private-sector funding to Central America.
Throughout a go to to Guatemala in June 2021, she delivered a controversial message to migrants: “Don’t come” to the US. When border crossings later spiked, she got here underneath hearth from Republicans as Biden’s failed “border czar,” a body that the Biden administration sought to rebut.
In February, Biden tried to make concrete progress on immigration by endorsing a bipartisan invoice that included border safety measures that Democrats wouldn’t have dreamed of supporting just a few years prior, together with a brand new authority to rapidly expel migrants arriving on the southern border at instances of excessive demand. In change, Democrats would have gotten one thing they wished: closing gaps within the authorized immigration system which have left everybody from the youngsters of high-skilled overseas staff to Afghan refugees in limbo.
At first, Republicans coalesced across the invoice and it appeared as if it will go — that’s, till Trump started to foyer towards it, reportedly stating he wished to maintain the border a dwell challenge within the presidential election.
To make sure, Biden’s method hasn’t been solely targeted on border safety. It’s value noting that Biden has additionally superior one of many largest efforts in over a decade to legalize undocumented immigrants. Below the brand new program, which is now on maintain because of a authorized problem, roughly 500,000 spouses of US residents and 50,000 of their stepchildren may very well be eligible to use for everlasting residence and get a inexperienced card with out having to go away the US.
However such strikes are the exception. The Biden period has usually seen Democrats transfer nearer to Trump on immigration moderately than additional away. Because the Democratic nominee, Harris has needed to navigate that new regular.
What would a Harris presidency imply for the politics of immigration?
Democrats outlined their immigration platform earlier than Biden determined to not search reelection, however Harris nonetheless must element how she would method the difficulty.
She has indicated in public appearances that her technique will likely be two-pronged, targeted on securing the border and creating earned pathways to citizenship, together with for Dreamers within the Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which supplies authorized protections to migrants who got here to the US with out authorization as kids.
She has repeatedly argued that Trump is concurrently not robust sufficient and never compassionate sufficient on immigration, whereas she appears intent on presenting herself as putting that stability.
That’s been clear in her rhetoric, however what precisely that stability seems like in follow guarantees to be the topic of an intra-movement wrestle, one which pits pro-immigrant activists towards the social gathering’s relative border hawks.
Harris’s rhetoric throughout the marketing campaign has steered a tougher-on-immigration method.
As an example, when talking at her solely debate with Trump concerning the border invoice that Democrats tried to go in February, she forged the failed invoice — and Trump’s advocacy towards it — as proof that the previous president isn’t severe about discovering a approach to enhance the scenario on the US-Mexico border: “He most popular to run on an issue as a substitute of fixing an issue,” Harris mentioned.
Throughout a Univision city corridor earlier this month, Harris once more criticized Trump for tanking the invoice. Nonetheless, this time, it was in response to a query from a voter whose mom died earlier than she may turn into a US citizen. Harris argued that the invoice may have created “a complete earned pathway to citizenship for hard-working individuals” just like the voter’s mom.
That’s not a wholly correct portrayal of the invoice. It could have expanded present pathways to citizenship with the addition of 250,000 family- and employment-based visas and opened up a path to everlasting standing for Afghans who got here to the US after American forces withdrew from Afghanistan, however it was hardly complete in its method.
Nonetheless, the interplay confirmed Harris making an attempt to melt her tone, if not the border insurance policies she helps.
“Relying on what venue she’s speaking in, she frames the immigration challenge a bit in another way,” mentioned Douglas Rivlin, a spokesperson for the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice. “On Univision, her humanity got here via in a approach.”
Some progressives, nevertheless, see cause to consider that Harris can be extra pro-immigrant as a president than she has been as a campaigner.
Rocha famous that the Harris marketing campaign has employed immigrant activists, together with Alida Garcia, who led immigration advocacy on the immigration and prison justice reform advocacy group FWD.us, and Julie Chávez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of Latino civil rights activist and labor chief César Chávez. And that would recommend that her marketing campaign is considering find out how to advance a pro-immigrant agenda throughout the present political atmosphere.
Progressives additionally appear to consider that whereas they could not endorse all of Harris’s immigration insurance policies, they will nonetheless discover methods to work collectively, as they used to when she was a senator.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, recounted that Harris co-sponsored the primary invoice she ever launched, a response to Trump’s journey ban. It sought to make sure that individuals had entry to authorized counsel in detention once they first arrived within the US.
“She cares concerning the dignity and humanity of people that come to this nation,” Jayapal instructed Vox. “Whereas I’ve disagreed with among the immigration positions she has taken, I do know that she will likely be a accomplice with us on this challenge, moderately than use immigrants as a political soccer the way in which Republicans and Donald Trump have.”
Jayapal’s feedback are a reminder of why the pro-immigrant left has given Harris scope to function towards Trump, whose rhetoric about immigrants, from his debunked feedback about Haitians consuming pets to his claims that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America, has not too long ago reached a brand new low. However the query is whether or not — and for the way lengthy — progressives’ goodwill towards Harris will final if Trump is defeated.
Concretely, immigration battles underneath a Harris administration would probably play out on among the similar points the place the left criticized Biden, together with his restrictions on asylum seekers on the border and the February border invoice that Harris has held up as a mannequin for Democrats going ahead. Activists nonetheless need most of the similar reforms Harris supported in 2020, comparable to swapping out deterrence-based insurance policies for insurance policies increasing secure pathways to come back to the US and bettering entry to asylum.
Nonetheless, the impulses that drive help for Trump’s immigration insurance policies aren’t more likely to simply fade away, even when the person himself recedes from public life. So, a President Harris would probably nonetheless face demand from the American public to prioritize border safety. That will not go away a lot room for her to undertake the mantle of the left’s priorities on immigration.
Advocates appear to acknowledge that actuality in addition to the sensible challenges of passing immigration reform in a divided Congress or issuing government actions on immigration that may very well be challenged in courtroom.
“The American individuals are fairly clear about what they need to have occur on immigration. They need the balanced method that Harris and the Democrats are for,” Rivlin mentioned.
Advocates are holding out hope that Harris can use her bully pulpit to alter the tone of the dialog about immigration in America, as she began to do on the Univision city corridor. In Rivlin’s view, “That’s one of the vital necessary issues that should occur on immigration.”