Democrats know they messed up big time on immigration. Now they are trying to figure out how to fix their many mistakes on the issue.
The New York Times interviewed several Democratic lawmakers who acknowledged that the party essentially ceded the issue to President Donald Trump and Republicans who put forth solutions to address the border crisis that ballooned under the Biden administration.
The article notes how Americans’ attitudes toward legal and illegal immigration have shifted over recent decades. It notes that 55 percent of Americans supported a decrease in immigration last year, according to a Gallup poll. The author notes that this is “nearly twice as many as in 2020, and the first time since 2005 that a majority had said so.”
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) told The New York Times, “When you have the most Latino district in the country outside of Puerto Rico vote for Trump, that should be a wake-up call for the Democratic Party.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) pointed out that Democrats “got led astray by the 2016 and the 2020 elections, and we just never moved back.”
He further noted that Democrats “looked feckless, we weren’t decisive, we weren’t listening to voters, and the voters decided that we weren’t in the right when it comes ot what was happening with the border.”
Neera Tanden, who heads the Center for American Progress told the newspaper that Democrats must become more sensible on immigration and start pushing for new restrictions to appeal to the American public, which is decidedly not of the open borders persuasion.
“I’m happy to argue with Stephen Miller or anyone else about why they are wrong,” she told the newspaper. “But the way we’re going to be able to do that is to also honestly assess that the border has been too insecure, that it allowed too many people to come through and that we need to fix that.”
The Center for American Progress published a lengthy article on Sunday detailing the type of immigration policies Democrats could use in their platform. The piece proposes a massive overhaul of the US asylum system that would curb abuse while protecting legitimate asylum seekers. The author argues that the system has become “a backdoor way for people to come to the United States and work without valid asylum claims.”
Under this plan, the government would expedite the asylum application process. It would shorten the timeline to 30 days from start to finish. It would also raise the legal standard for asylum claims by requiring applicants to prove “by a preponderance of the evidence,” that they face prosecution in their home countries.
The government would establish Border Processing Centers (BPCs) close to ports of entry where applicants would remain while their cases are adjudicated. In essence, it would seek to end the “catch and release” policies favored by the Biden administration.
Of course, not all Democrats are on board with moving away from a radical open borders agenda. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) said, “Democrats have to stop talking about the issue of immigration within a Republican frame” and that “This is about power, control, terror, and it is about racism and xenophobia.”
“Donald Trump wants to make America Jim Crow again, and then some,” she vomited.
This debate within Democratic circles comes as the Trump administration pursues its mass deportation efforts. Some seem to understand the errors Democrats made in discussing immigration. Cecilia Muñoz, who spearheaded the Obama administration’s domestic policy council, told The Times that “We, and I include myself in this, created a vacuum on this issue that we allowed the current president to fill.”
This is true. Democrats have been avoiding the immigration issue for over a decade. The only time they would engage in the conversation was when they wanted to complain about Trump’s policies. The Times noted that aides “urged Mr. Biden to avoid the subject and stay focused on the pandemic, the economy, Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, issues more politically favorable to him.”
It is almost as if they thought that if they ignored immigration, the problem would magically vanish. But it didn’t — and it won’t anytime soon.
Now that Trump is back in office, Democrats have resorted to lawfare to combat his immigration policies. But this is not a tenable long-term solution. If they want to win over the public on immigration, they are going to have to present actual solutions, something they have not shown interest in since the days of Obama.
Of course, they could just go the Pressley route and simply call people racist and xenophobic for wanting a coherent plan on immigration. That “Jim Crow” line will certainly shame millions of Americans to support open borders, right?
Wrong.
What people like Pressley fail to realize is that everyday people want a government that will protect its citizens while ensuring the immigration system is workable. This further shows how out of touch some Democrats are on the issues.
But one thing is clear: Democrats can’t win on this issue if their only arguments are “Orange Man Bad!” It is not enough to be against his policies. They have to demonstrate what they are for. The truth is that if Democrats are not willing to think of a better solution to the immigration problem, Republicans will continue to win on the issue.
Still, Democrats have been showing since last November that they still have no clue how they got their derrieres handed to them. In light of this, it is unlikely that they will form a viable messaging strategy anytime soon, which means Republicans might just keep power after the upcoming midterm elections.