In 2016, Donald Trump made immigration restrictions a signature campaign issue, one that drew a core group of passionate voters. Since becoming president, Trump has pursued policies aimed at significantly reducing immigration—especially in the months after Covid-19 arrived on our shores. Yet some voters, polls show, have balked at his more draconian measures, which should provide an opening to Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee. The former vice president’s problem, however, is that the entire Democratic Party has lurched significantly to the left on immigration—and his own platform reflects that move.
Whereas Democrats, along with pro-business Republicans, at one time justified a liberal immigration policy as a net economic and civic plus for America, the Left has transformed immigration into a social-justice issue in which advocates preach that almost nothing less than open borders are sufficient. The “root causes” of our ongoing border crisis, Biden’s own agenda argues, are problems like bad trade policy and insufficient attention to climate change, which can only be addressed with sweeping cultural changes that go well beyond traditional immigration policy. There’s little in the polling that suggests such an agenda will appeal to any but the most committed leftists, leaving a giant policy vacuum between Trump and Biden on immigration.
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