First let me say that I am 100% pro-immigration. People don’t deserve to suffer because of where they are born, so those brave enough to come to the US, legally or illegally, deserve to stay here. Furthermore, immigrants both legal and illegal contribute immensely to the economy and commit crime at a lower rate than native-born US citizens.
My argument is a political one. The claim: Democrats should adopt right-wing rhetoric and policy views on immigration, particularly illegal immigration.
Immigration is Democrats’ Primary Political Liability
A lot of centrists commentators (some of my favorites) have given their takes on what Democrats should do. A lot of it centers on rejecting excessively woke institutions and excessively burdensome regulations.
I feel like these are looking past the elephant in the room. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of these are good ideas politically. Voters don’t like affirmative action or trans women in women’s sports or sacrificing energy production for climate goals. But what they really hate, what fueled Trump’s rise in 2016 and was the second biggest factor in his 2024 re-election (besides inflation), is immigration. Particularly illegal immigration.
Under Biden, voters became extremely right-wing on immigration. It’s always been an issue that voters trust Republicans more on, but it’s become the single issue on which Trump and Republicans have the biggest advantage. There is also I think some reason to think polls are underestimating how right-wing people are on immigration - Nate Cohn did an experiment in 2022 where they gave people money to respond to surveys, and one of the most significant differences they found from their regular phone surveys was that people paid to respond had more right-wing views on immigration.
Things will probably improve as Trump becomes more unpopular, but even if voters are moderately pro-immigration, it’s bound to still be a worse issue for Democrats than other issues. It’s also worth noting the left-wing coalition on immigration - college educated people - is much worse for Democrats’ chances of winning the Electoral College and Senate than the coalition on like healthcare or abortion.
And Democrats desperately need to do better electorally. They’re really screwed in the Senate. In 2024:
19 states were D+5% or greater (partisan lean, ie relative to national margin)
6 states were between D+2 and R+2
1 state (Arizona) at R+4
24 states R+10 or greater.
That is fucking horrifying. That means that to take back the Senate, Democrats need to be almost flawless, for several consecutive cycles, in winning swing states. The one thing that makes it better is that Democratic Senate candidates are generally much stronger than Republicans, but they can only do so much to escape partisan gravity
Immigration Does Not Dwarf Other Issues
The smartest reply is that yes, immigration is a toxic issue for Democrats, but it just matters way more than everything else. Unfortunately, this reply is wrong.
First, to the utilitarians in the audience. There are a lot of different areas with importance rivaling immigration where Democrats are significantly better. This won’t be a rigorous analysis of the QALY comparison between each of these areas and immigration, but just to throw them out there:
Animal welfare pretty clearly dominates immigration, and Republicans are significantly worse on this than Democrats, although obviously the contrast isn’t as big as the one on immigration.
Similar things can be said about AI policy.
On nuclear war, Trump is uh not the most sane actor and significantly more likely than a Democratic president to launch nukes. There is shockingly little process standing in the way of the president in launching nukes.
On pandemic preparedness, needless to say Democrats are the ones who want to invest in that.
On PEPFAR, Democrats are fighting to keep it while Trump has halted the program, even though the administration alleged to go back on their initial plan to freeze the funds.
On economic growth, Democrats have shown significantly better macroeconomic management, aiming higher on stimulus in 2021 and 2008. Now Trump wants to destroy the economy with insanely high tariffs.
On climate change, Democrats passed major legislation instituting tax credits incentivizing the switch to clean energy + electrical vehicles, and Republicans were responsible for the death of permitting reform that would have helped unlock America’s green energy future.
If you’re not a utilitarian, I’m sure you have other issues you care about similarly deeply to immigration but which are less politically costly.
But I think the main thing that dominates immigration is something that will appeal to utilitarians and normal people alike: democracy and rule of law. Trump tried his hardest to overturn the 2020 election. He spent all his first term breaking every democratic norm imaginable, and more are undoubtedly in store for us. This term, his newest surprise has been lawbreaking. Withhold money that Congress has allocated. Fire IGs without proper notice. Give access to the treasury system to an unelected dude. All of this is plainly illegal.
The solution to these problems is twofold.
One, beat the hell out of these fuckers in as many elections as you can. Do it so they have less time in office to break things, and so you can install your own law-abiding people to important positions (judges, bureaucrats, state election officials, etc.). Do it for all the policy reasons discussed above. Do it to force them to moderate and break with Trump. Conceding immigration will be very helpful in beating Republicans.
Two, get the Republicans to become more sane by bringing fiscal issues back to the forefront. We desperately need pro-democracy and pro-rule of law people back in the Republican party - as elected officials, bureaucrats, or judges. There are a lot of these people really passionate about fiscal issues waiting in the wings, but they either can’t make their way in or don’t want to. If we refocus US elections to be about fiscal issues, even a bit, we can get more of these people back into the GOP. And the way to do that is to take away the venom that Trump and his ilk use to keep culture wars in the forefront - immigration.
What Democrats Should Do
Conceding on immigration means a bunch of different things:
Shut the fuck up about left-wing views on immigration. Never utter a single word about how immigration is America’s strength or how we need to work toward a pathway to citizenship.
Don’t attack Trump on immigration. There is a ton of other stuff to attack Trump on, pick something else instead.
Demonize immigrants a little bit. Call them illegals, talk about how they’re bringing drugs and crime to the US. Don’t go full Trump, but we can’t afford to speak in left-wing language about this stuff.
Work with Republicans on border security bills. I’m glad to see congressional Democrats having already done that for Laken Riley Act, even if the legislation itself is bad and somehow manages to make the immigration system even more broken.
Give up on increasing legal immigration. Sorry, we’ve lost this battle. Maybe one day when this stuff is less salient.
State Democrats should comply with the deportation operations of the Trump administration, at least in some situations. I am a bit less sure about this one, both because what happens on the state level is less relevant to national politics and because it might be hard for Democrats to comply with deportation operations without losing their primary, but I do think it’s worth doing at least sometimes.
And for the next Democratic administration:
Bring deportations up at least to Obama-first-term levels. Deportation numbers are also very much a function of how many people are entering, but I just mean bring the (deportations/immigrant) level up to Obama’s first term.
Be open about your immigration enforcement. One of Biden’s flaws, at least at first, was that he was doing tough immigration enforcement - keeping the Remain in Mexico policy in place - but then not talking about it.
I’m not super optimistic on Democrats heeding my advice, beneficial as it may be. I’m glad to see them have taken substantial steps to the right on immigration before and after the 2024 campaign, but I don’t think they’ll go as far as they should. If nothing else, though, I hope that this piece can at least shift the Overton window on this stuff a bit. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in politics. Winning elections means giving the voters what they want.
For me, your main argument can be summarized as:
1) Immigration policy is important, but other policy areas are even more important (Immigration Does Not Dwarf Other Issues)
2) Democrats are clearly better on these other issues.
3) Democrats need to move significantly rightward on immigration to win
4) Because these other issues are more important, Democrats should give up immigration to win.
If you had asked me before 2020 what my most important policy area was, I would have said immigration (skilled immigration in particular). The moral case for allowing others to achieve an American standard of living is obvious and powerful, and the global economic returns to immigration are absolutely enormous. Take one example, economist love free trade; most think that removing trade barriers would significantly improve living standards. Most estimates of the (one time) global growth gains to removing all trade barriers are on the order of 10% of GDP. The global growth gains to open borders are an order of magnitude larger; they have been estimated at >100% of GDP.
(This fact was off the top of my head, but a quick search gave this paper https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18307/w18307.pdf which estimates 116%)
This might not make immigration the number one issue; animal welfare and pandemic prevention still seem more important. But there isn't always that much daylight between Democrats and Republicans on animal welfare and pandemics anyways, and we shouldn't give up on such an important issue just because it isn't the absolute most important issue.
Another argument goes like this: Due to competitive pressures and thermostatic public opinion, each party is going to win a similar number of elections. From this perspective, giving up on significant moral commitments to achieve power 10-20% more of the time is unacceptable. We should instead keep to our main commitments and only moderate on issues where the stakes are much lower.
So I hope this makes it clear why I came in skeptical of your argument.
However, I do think you have some things right. Your list of other important issues was quite good, although I do not think that the difference between democrats and republicans on all of them is that large.
In particular, Democrats are significantly better than Republicans on supporting PEPFAR, Ukraine, and fundamental and essential government institutions (elections, rule of law, basic science funding), in a way that really was not true until this election. I also think that with Donald Trump, we are in an electoral emergency that makes Democrats winning much more important than normal; future Republicans (hopefully) will be much more normal on most of these issues. This makes winning at any cost much more important.
That being said, I still think that it is really hard to overstate the costs of giving up on immigration. The benefits (to current Americans and to immigrants) of increased immigration, especially skilled immigration, are enormous. I also don't think it is easy for a political party to capitulate on a policy area and then pick it back up in the next election. If we give up on immigration, we might be kissing it goodbye for a decade or more.
As an aside, skilled legal immigration polls well (I think) and is much more beneficial per immigrant on a global QALY basis than unskilled immigration. It feels like Democrats could moderate on immigration while still supporting particular policies that poll well and have particularly large benefits.
I am fine with democrats moderating on border security, the language we use, possibly even deportation levels, but not the entire issue. Beyond that, I think there are many better issues to moderate on or give up on entirely.
Finally, and this is more unrelated to the urgency of the current moment, a fight over the centrality of immigration in the Democratic party feels somewhat existential to me. It feels like a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party.
It is not obvious to me that the Democratic party is unequivocally good, or that it will continue by default in a positive direction. Democrats generally have instincts and a self-identity based around helping the less fortunate. That is good, but it does not guarantee that their policies are always beneficial or that they always govern correctly. For example, YIMBYs, Ezra Klein, and Abundance liberals have made the case quite well that despite good intentions Democratic policies/governance includes many bad things, and more broadly Democrats are in a coalition with many people who are inclined to distrust markets, discount the benefits of technology, and demonize their political enemies in ways that are politically and socially destructive. And maybe you are better Democrats than I am, but there are plenty of important things I disagree with the Democratic Party about (e.g. permitting, medical innovation).
Therefore I see my main role as a Democrat is to fight to move (or keep) the party in my direction on the issues I care most about, not to do whatever it takes to help the Democrats win, and then hope that the Democrats in power prioritize my issues over different Democratic priorities I don't like as much. (This is especially true since many issues I care about most, like existential risk and animal welfare, are first to get cut when elected Democrats have to prioritize.)
As an analogy, was it good for the deficit hawks, or the foreign policy hawks, or even the pro-lifers that Donald Trump won in 2016 and 2024. Their party won the election, but is it good for the causes they support? One takeaway from the Tea Party movement and from Trump is that making a bargain with the populist portion of your base can be a very bad idea. Republicans have now committed to protecting social security, Trump's foreign policy is unrecognizable to Republicans a decade ago, and being pro-life is no longer a litmus test inside the Republican Party. On any of these issues, it's not clear to me that the Republicans are ever coming back.
When I look at old school Republicans who still support the party under Trump, I sometimes think "why even bother being a Republican?" Similarly, I feel like if the Democratic Party is not going to support immigration, even when it becomes unpopular, why even bother being a Democrat?