For most of the past decade, progressives presented the battle over immigration as simply a fight against Republican cruelty, racism and xenophobia. Such messaging does not amount to a political strategy. By 2024, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris seemed to stop trying to win the debate. As border-state governments grappled with newcomers, Republican leaders saw a crisis they could seize and weaponize — while Democratic leaders offered no compelling case of their own.
Republicans, led by President Trump, amplify and employ chaos at the border, casting Democrats as weak and deepening divisions along racial and economic lines for their political gain. Thus Joe Biden’s compromise border security deal with Republicans was doomed from the start: It misread Republican motives, which were in fact to keep America’s immigration system in a state of permanent dysfunction, a tool in their path back to the White House.
For years, immigrant rights advocates have anchored our politics in the power of personal narrative, believing that if people simply saw the humanity in immigrants, justice would follow. In an era of populist backlash, immigrants continuing to tell our stories is essential, but storytelling isn’t enough. Republicans have mastered the art of framing — binding immigration to fears of economic precarity, inflation and cultural displacement. Their claims are almost entirely false, but in the war for attention, where emotion shapes reason, they are winning.
Democrats are losing ground with Latino voters because they’re making the wrong pitch. Many Latinos don’t primarily see themselves through the lens of systemic racial oppression. Rather, they see themselves as strivers pursuing the American dream, akin to past waves of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants. That self-perception makes them more receptive to conservative messages on crime and immigration, especially when Democrats frame politics as a moral fight over racism rather than a populist argument about working families striving for about economic security.
Any moral argument about immigration has to be tethered to material self-interest. Mr. Trump’s promised wave of mass deportations would not just hit border towns — it would gut the national economy and disrupt essential industries. In 2022, undocumented workers paid an estimated $96.7 billion in taxes, helping fund services they can’t fully use. Removing a large number of undocumented workers would shrink the country’s G.D.P. by an estimated $4.7 trillion over 10 years, strain local budgets and spike inflation.
With undocumented migrants making up about a sixth of the construction industry and nearly a third of key trades such as drywall and roofing, removing even a portion of them would disrupt home-building at a time when high interest rates have already slowed supply, outweighing any potential drop in demand. Agriculture, where about 70 percent of all crop workers were born outside the United States and at least 40 percent are undocumented, would face supply chain breakdowns and soaring food prices. Past crackdowns haven’t created jobs for American-born workers — they’ve just made life more expensive for everyone.
Democrats need to show America that for decades, the Republican Party has blocked reform, preferring a two-tiered system that fuels resentment and division. But the party must also acknowledge how President Joe Biden’s approach — though more humane than Mr. Trump’s — struggled to offer clarity. His administration expanded legal pathways while increasing deportations and restricting asylum and creating a policy landscape that felt chaotic.
This is the “credulity chasm” — where public perception and reality diverge, and where Republicans thrive. The right tells a simple, visceral story: Immigrants are to blame for economic hardship, for crime. Democrats need their own story, one rooted in both moral clarity and material interest: A stable immigration system isn’t just about compassion; it’s also about economic security — lifting wages, countering corporate exploitation and creating economic prosperity for all. The G.O.P.’s real immigration policy isn’t enforcement; it’s low wages and legal limbo, ensuring a precarious underclass that keeps workers — immigrant and native-born — divided. Democrats must expose that con and flip the frame: This isn’t a border crisis; it’s a labor crisis, and the real villains aren’t migrants — they’re the politicians and corporations who profit from instability.
Progressives and Democrats also need a sharper narrative on the role of private interests that profit from poorly constructed immigration policies. Take the recently passed Laken Riley Act, which creates a system where even minor accusations against undocumented migrants can lead to detention, driving up demand for privately run detention facilities that are paid billions in taxpayer dollars. The bill was sold to the public as a moral crusade and a public good, but it funnels public resources into private coffers, particularly the private prison industry, which donated over $1 million to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign.
Further, Democrats should be aware that opinions shift fast. While some voters support vague calls for deportation, most recoil from the actual mechanics of mass removals. A poll conducted by Axios-Ipsos in January found that while 66 percent of Americans support the idea of deportations, only 38 percent back military enforcement of those removals, just 28 percent favor using military funds, and a third support family separations. Even among Republicans, less than half back military deportations. This critical disconnect gives Democrats an opportunity to expose the real human and economic costs of driving migrants out.
In the United States, undocumented workers pick the crops, build the houses, staff the hospitals and care for the oldest and youngest in our families — all work that is essential to the country’s prosperity, and yet such workers are locked out of its protections. The solution isn’t border theatrics or mass deportations — it’s a path to citizenship and labor protections for many of the millions of undocumented workers already holding up the economy. Legalizing their status wouldn’t just protect them; it would also strengthen wages, expand worker power and stabilize the very economic foundation for all workers. Allowing millions of undocumented people a real path to citizenship offers an escape hatch from the enforced underclass status the current system imposes on them.
Democrats don’t need to overcomplicate this — they just need to throw a punch.
The fight ahead is about building a coalition disciplined enough to win. That means resisting the easy impulse to turn on one another, or to retreat into purity politics or performative outrage against politicians or activists. Instead, we need to channel our anger into real leverage: organizing, persuading, forcing the political system to respond to us on our terms. The real victory isn’t just surviving another fight; it’s changing the conditions so that we never have to fight like this again.
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