The American Dream is there for the taking. Stephanie Keith/Getty Images.
Nico Perez is a business owner, a husband, and a father of a four-year-old girl, with another child on the way soon. In many ways, then, he’s your archetypal Trump voter, living the American Dream as MAGA-world soars. But get to know the landscaper, as I have, and he becomes rather more unusual. Perez, after all, is a first-generation immigrant, a Mexican American whose mother carried him across the blazing Sonora Desert. More than that, Perez has become a furious critic of open borders himself, even as he’s exhausted by progressive pieties about what the state should ultimately be for.
This isn’t just a personal story. For if last year’s election saw Perez — who spoke to me using a pseudonym — go red for the first time ever, his brothers did too, alongside 42% of all Latino voters. That, it goes without saying, should really worry Democrats. For decades, they relied on the group to cross the electoral line in the sand, and as recently as August, the CEO of Voto Latino predicted a wave of young Hispanic registrants would push Harris to victory. Now, though, it’s clear that strategy is dead. And if the white liberal establishment hopes to revive it, it must finally take people like Perez seriously, viewing them as go-getting individuals rather than faceless members of a passive ethnic bloc.
On the surface, it was inflation that pushed Latinos like Perez to the Republicans. “My business runs on gas,” the 28-year-old says, explaining how rising energy bills were costing his firm $10,000 a year. Quite aside from his own family, you can spot similar sentiments right across his state and hometown. In November, Trump won 42% of Pennsylvania’s Hispanic vote, up 15 points from 2020. In Erie, a chilly Pennsylvania town nuzzling the Great Lakes, voter turnout surged across several Hispanic areas. Erie’s Latino voters followed Perez in plumping for Trump, with many clearly drawn to the Republicans promise to “drill, baby, drill” and keep cost-raising regulations to a minimum.
In truth, though, the Democrats’ problems with Latino men goes way beyond the transient vagaries of economic policy. Speak to Perez, a stout, baby-faced 28-year-old, and that challenge can be grasped in a single word: immigration. “No human is illegal” may pass muster at the local gastropub. But 54% of Americans oppose liberal border policies, and Perez is among them. As he puts it: “Biden’s open borders really pissed me off.”
Learn a little about Perez’s background and this may seem surprising. Nico and his parents, Juan and Maria, came to America illegally, wrapping their ankles in garlic to ward off snakes and sleeping in caves at night. From there, like so many immigrants, they worked in the shadows. In the summer, they picked apples. In the fall and winter, they laboured in northwest Pennsylvania’s vineyards. “As a kid,” Perez recalls, “I didn’t know much about it [the family’s legal status]. I just knew I couldn’t go to Mexico and to stay out of trouble.” The second part, at least, was easy. A good student himself, his mom was “big” on education. “There is no need to work,” his dad always told him. “You have to go to college.”
In 2011, Nico’s father, with the backing of an employer, started the green card process. He eventually earned citizenship, which was conferred to his children. Nico’s mom, who lacked effective legal counsel but possessed plenty of reflexive honesty, confessed to carrying her baby boy across the border. This inadvertent admission to “human smuggling” caused her to be extradited, and earned her an automatic 10-year ban on returning. “She didn’t even think of the repercussions of admitting she smuggled her son,” Nico sighs, looking away to keep his composure. “If she had lied, then no 10-year ban.” Since 2011, Maria Perez has lived with her sister in central Mexico. The family is still waiting on the appeals process. Nico, for his part, tries to be stoical. “It is hard,” he says. “We talk to mom two-to-three times per week.” But his eyes betray a pain that goes deep.
Eight years later, in 2019, Perez again encountered the immigration system, when he married his sweetheart. Hailing from a village near his birthplace of Manuel Doblado, a sleepy town of 40,000 in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, he met Sofia online. It helped, too, that the pair had friends in common. For three years, he travelled to Mexico to see his wife, and later their daughter Luciana. It was very hard for him, he concedes, but even tougher on his wife. “She was very isolated.”
Eventually, Sofia and Gianna got their citizenship. Apart from his mother, waiting for a judgement from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the family is now reunited. But that leaves an obvious question: as an illegal immigrant himself, albeit one who finally regulated his status, why is Perez sceptical of more recent arrivals? The answer, perhaps, has something to do with the way immigration policy has changed over recent years. Yes, they snuck across the border, but the Perez family earned their way later. His mother even paid for her honesty with deportation. These days, though, Perez argues the system discourages discipline. Though immigrants can expect to wait up to a decade for their asylum claims to be processed, many are eligible for federal and state funds. “In my dad’s neighbourhood,” he says, “nobody works, they don’t have jobs.”
It’s tempting to be sceptical of this rhetoric. The United States has always been built by immigrants — English, Irish, Italian — reaching the city on the hill before slamming the drawbridge behind them. Yet study the numbers and Perez does seem to have a point. From 2021 to 2023, over six million people arrived at the southern border, up from 1.7 million between 2018 and 2020. Almost half of these were released into the US pending adjudication of their asylum claims. More than that, Perez’s claims about funding do appear to jibe with the facts. In the past, undocumented immigrants were ineligible for state aid. Today, those who would have been undocumented are now asylum seekers, making them eligible for a driver’s license, work permits, and government support. Lin Manuel Miranda’s claim that “immigrants get things done” still holds true: the foreign-born work at higher rates than the native-born. But perception, especially in politics, is reality.
In short, then, “open borders” is far more than just a Right-wing talking point, something even Democrats are starting to concede. “The border is a mess,” says Adam Frisch, a candidate for Congress in Colorado. “That doesn’t make you a racist.” Will Marshall, the president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, makes a similar point. “Biden opened the doors to the border and [faced] a huge backlash,” he tells me. “Polls show that people believe that illegal workers depress wages. They [also] resent that they get social benefits.”
Once again, these arguments are backed by numbers. Immigration unquestionably primes economic growth — but it also depresses wages for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. One study estimated this loss at nearly 10% of a low-skilled labourer’s pay. Pro-Publica reports that Perez’s resentment is common in immigrant communities across the nation. Yes, it is ironic that those who were once were undocumented feel aggrieved because the path is now easier. But progressives have a choice. They can wail and stamp their feet, or accept that many recent arrivals have visceral reactions to the immigration issue born from emotional scars. Newsflash: humans are complicated.
Nor, of course, are these sentiments limited to immigrants. In 2020, less than a quarter of voters wanted more immigration restrictions. Today, that number has jumped to 55%. As Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow with the Migration Policy Institute, lately admitted: “There is no constituency left in this country that favors large-scale immigration.”
This poses another question. If open borders are so unpopular — not least among Latinos, a group vital to liberal success — why would Democrats go ahead and promote them anyway? Ironically enough, the answer can probably be found at the feet of another bloc: white liberals. A tiny sliver of the electorate, less than 10% of voters, they hold positions well to the Left of the average American. Yet by dominating the ranks of journalism, academics and politics, they set the parameters of left-of-centre debate. I should know. I’m a liberal college professor. My wife is a renowned research scientist. We swim in the bright blue seas of white liberal groupthink, even if we collectively have no clue about how out-of-touch those “No Human is Illegal” yard signs truly are.
And if what Frisch calls the “cultural demagoguery of the high and mighty” is bad enough on the immigration debate, it’s equally damaging downstream. For if unfettered migration, and the generous state support that comes with it, implies a well-intentioned desire to turn the US into a European social democracy, it’s clear that Nico Perez and many other immigrants just aren’t interested. “I always had a hustle,” he says, evoking his capitalist spirit as he goes. In high school, that hustle started with buying and reselling old cellphones and new Air Jordans. During Covid, he bought and resold PlayStations and Xboxes. Consoles were in high demand during lockdown, allowing Perez to make up to $8,000 a month even as a student. Nor did he neglect his supply chain, getting to know his UPS driver and leaving drinks for him by the door.
Eventually, Perez and his dad started a landscaping business. It’s booming. Nico, his father, and their five full-time employees work 60-65 hours a week, landscaping in the summer and ploughing snow through the long Erie winters. “They work their asses off,” he beams of his immigrant employees. “They say: ‘I don’t have a family. I want to work hard and help you. If you eat, we eat.’”
And if this hard-scrabble approach speaks to why, rightly or wrongly, Perez sees himself as different to more recent immigrants, it also hints at the limits of liberal obsessions over “equity” — let alone the idea, remarkably popular among progressives, that worldly success is largely beyond an individual’s control. If, to be blunt, Perez’s father could dodge snakes and sweat picking grapes, and if Nico himself could make near six figures while still a teenager, why can’t everyone else? “You can’t just appeal to people’s material interests,” is how Marshall puts it. “You have to appeal to their moral interests. The overeducated classes breed people who are disgusted by American values and that conveys to voters. Working people don’t want handouts, they want prosperity and the American Dream.”
For Democrats, then, the way back starts with understanding bedrock American values, and building a political economy that balances collective security with personal prospects. In practice, this probably looks a lot like the “moral capitalism” that so anchored the liberal coalition during the post-war boom, even as it also shares much with Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting populism. Not that Nico Perez has time for such high-flung thinking. He’s far too busy, even after Trump’s recent executive order repealing birthright citizenship. “I have mixed emotions about it,” he says of the news. “The border is a mess. But I’m so busy running my business that I have not taken much time to consider it.”
It’s a telling ambivalence. If Trump follows his hardline rhetoric to its extremist conclusion, Democrats surely have a path back to power. Like Perez, after all, immigrants support immigration. But like their native-born peers, they also want boundaries and restraints, and the space to enjoy the fruits of their labour as ambitious new Americans. For Perez, at least, that’s nothing too grand. He tells me of a day last October, when he took his baseball-mad father to his first ever Major League game. There, amid the popcorn and the crowd, they watched their beloved Yankees take on the Cleveland Guardians. The elder Perez is a stoical man, for good reason. From the desert sun to the toil of manual labour, he’s spent his life fighting for his kids, even as he can’t now share in their success with his wife. Yet that day in the stands, Nico says his father was transformed. “He was yelling and screaming,” he recalls. “It was great to see.” The very image of an American Dream, albeit a modest one, and one liberals should surely take more seriously.
Jeff Bloodworth is a writer and professor of American political history at Gannon University
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SubscribeThe attempt to transform the US into a Social Democracy was always antithetical to the American entrepreneurial spirit.
The Progressive movement in the late 19th and early 20th was fairly radical but it wasn’t an anti-work movement. They were agitating for better conditions in a brutal environment. Long hours, meager pay and extreme physical risk. Today’s progressives think everybody should be entitled to a “Living Wage” to “live with dignity.”
The Progressive Movement used to be centered around dock workers, farmers and coal miners. Now its centered around part time baristas and waiving the student loans of grad students in prestigious fields of Interpretative Dance and Cultural Anthropology.
Most first and second generation immigrants can’t relate to the disingenuous performance theatre and fake outrages of the New Left. They’ve seen real struggles and they take pride in work. They’re not waiting for technology to abolish private enterprise so everyone can sit around idle all day collecting a check.
The progressive movement may have claimed to be the advocates for “dock workers, farmers and coal miners” but those people could never stand the progressives.
Probably true but at least there was some interest convergence. I see no reason why anybody today that finds dignity in work would align with theatrical progressivism.
I will never be able to comprehend why would anyone try to take away people’s dignity of purpose via handouts.
Few things are more demeaning to a human being than the presumption of needing welfare. I am a former refugee woman with an accent to this day. I had to fight off “compassion” quite a few times. People with enough initiative to leave their country have the initiative to find & keep work short of becoming physically debilitated via accident or illness.
The bigotry of low expectations I was subjected to may have contributed to me becoming a STEM graduate MBA e-commerce world-champion. In English, via prestigious Australian (I live in Melbourne) universities.
Two points mentioned sum up why Latinos voted red this time. The first is the Democrat Party has 10% of it’s members are rich liberal left members who control the liberal media and the second is that the border is a mess. That would be enough reason for any young Latinos starting a family to look to te future and not the past.
Fantastic article. I keep trying to tell my Democratic friends how easy it would be regain a commanding majority: just ditch a few barking mad policies (defund the police, open borders, genital mutilation of children, dudes playing on girls’ sports teams), all of which are, by their own admission now, utterly untenable and offensive to almost everyone, and folks like “Nico Perez” above would return to the fold.
You heretic. They’ll burn you at the stake before they admit there’s anything wrong about those policies.
They are their USPs! 🙂
Well, maybe, maybe not. When you make a choice to be an R or a D, you adopt a world-view. With the Ds, it’s the worldview of victimhood – everyone is oppressed, no one can do it by effort. If you are an R, it’s the worldview of the lone frontiersman – plant our own tomatoes, shoot our own Indians. Changing one or two policies does not change the underlying viewpoint.
You’re a deplorable whether you’re white or Latin or black. All you have to do is believe in John Smith’s message that got him elected to head the Jamestown colony in 1610 because they were starving to death while sitting on their behinds: Work or you don’t eat.
We deplorables know that real socialism doesn’t work. Not talking about Social Security; I’m talking about the progressive Dems, about Harris/Biden/Obama. But it goes beyond that. US = bad, and the enemy of my enemy must be my friend. So let’s bankrupt the US like Saul Alinsky recommended. Let’s play pattycake with Islamists who hate disobedient women even more than gays. Cognitive dissonance beyond anything we’ve ever seen. The only problem is they just can’t sell this. Even now, Bernie says they have to enlighten the deplorable minorities.
Last week in the UK, there was an article in a socialist magazine called The New Statesman, which reported on a discussion with Thomas Piketty, the French economist. Mr Piketty’s message in several books is the problem of inequality.
In this discussion he compared Donald and Bernie, two characters exactly the same but at opposite ends of the spectrum. He argued against calling Trump a ‘Populist’, a term which is supposed to mean a bad smell, because that would mean that you would have to call Bernie a Populist as well. I think he is right about the word but wrong in suggesting that Bernie and Donald are equals, in fact, not just wrong but very, very wrong.
Going back to Piketty, my problem with these socialists is that they work sitting behind a computer making comments about a world which they don’t really know. The same with most of the students who seem to appear from universities. They are talking about something they don’t have experience of in any way, so their discussions are only theories. In fact, Bernie and Trump know a lot more about the world if only because they are old men, but Trump a lot more than Bernie because of the story of his life.
“The overeducated classes breed people who are disgusted by American values and that conveys to voters. Working people don’t want handouts, they want prosperity and the American Dream.” In case of GB this equates to Brown, Starmer, Bliar, Thornberry, Reeves, Corbyn, Nandy et al
The ‘overeducated classes’ have studied luxury subjects, to augment their luxury beliefs.
Studying subjects more likely found in the Arts and Humanities faculties, they don’t intend to use their higher learning to create wealth, or something that others are willing to buy. Instead, their goal is to land in a position where they can direct others, directing those that realised that wealth creation, in a free market, is the way to a contented life, free from political intrigue and harassment.
And it hasn’t worked out that way, has it, with those in control being disconnected from Reality. That’s why the Left is falling out of favour, and Industry isn’t as boyant.
No discussion of the possibility that the Democrats work with or are even controlled by organised crime, especially in California.
This is a actually a major problem no one wants to confront and any discussion of gets branded as “conspiracy theories” but the cartels are massive organized organizations that have effectively co-opted multiple other governments, why do we think they would ignore threats to their business that rely on open and easy borders. It’s an open secret that in many southern border states the cartels have an active influence in state and local elections, why would it be a stretch to assume they don’t seek to influence national elections as well.
Been saying this since clinton: China provides the ideology, cartels bankroll. The DEM party is clearly this.
From the statistics you quote in the article, the headline could have also read:
Why a majority of Latinos vote democrat.
That fact seems to get lost in your narrative.
And what you and most liberals are ignoring is that the D vote in hispanics went from 85% to 64%. Hispanic voters elected Trump.
Shhh. Wait till the percentage dips below 50%. It’ll be fun to see what he does then.
“There is no constituency left in this country that favors large-scale immigration.”
Oh, so wrong. We favor immigration, not illegal immigration.
You can favor immigration, but large scale immigration?
You can have open borders, or you can have a welfare state. You can’t have both.
It seems reasonably obvious that there are two strands to population movement, aka immigration; pull and push. Pull is obvious – the USA is wealthy country offering economic opportunities and the rule of law. Push is the dire state of the countries from which the immigrants originate.
I suggest that by far the best way to cool the desire to move would be to improve conditions in the source countries, but Trump seems to have just cancelled every means of doing so. I’m sure that the Chinese will be very happy to step in to benefit the rulers, but they are not going to want to improve the lives of the mass of the population.
“If Trump follows his hardline rhetoric to its extremist conclusion, Democrats surely have a path back to power.”
He won’t. Quote: ‘Don’t take Trump literally, but do take him seriously’.
Democrats are reminiscent of the socialists of the early 20th century who built their movement on caring about workers’ rights despite despising workers. Minorities are no different, they will be despised by the liberal establishment if they are not Left-wing.
The potential consequence today is this: immigrants currently in the country are not a unified group. They come from different backgrounds with little in common. But if they are deported aggressively and inhumanely, there is a real risk of mobilizing them—a scenario no one wants.
I don’t support the current scale of immigration, nor do I think uncontrolled migration is a solution. What we need is a well-structured immigration strategy involving other countries. It makes little sense to say we need immigrants while many of our own citizens struggle with poverty, welfare dependence, and insecurity. Perhaps the real issue isn’t immigration but failed education system—two very different concerns.
IMHO, the real danger is unexpected mobilization including the cartels. When families are torn apart, it becomes deeply personal, and that’s when people are driven to take action.
US Congress myst get off its tax cutting rear. Actually legislate a coherent immigration policy. For example: if one million green cards are legal each year (I do not know the fact), but the economy can absorb 2 million new workers per year without depressing wages noticeably, then issue 2 million.
Then legislate harsh restrictions on public welfare to legal, and illegal immigrants alike. Legal wouldn’t be here without there being a job, so welfare nit necessary. Illegals are just that.
Strictly limit family migration to legally married spouse and blood children. No abuelas, no tios, no primos.
Double down on background checks for criminals.
Redefine political refugee asylum to actual threat to life.
Legislate.
I spent 11 months in an Austrian refugee camp 38 years ago. Likely to keep us refugees from stealing & other crimes, we received free lodging, as much good quality food as anyone wanted & a modest monthly monetary handout. The difference between Austria’s economy & the economies of the countries my fellow refugees & I came from was so vast, this modest monetary handout killed all ambitions in many. It is quite terrifying to start from the very bottom of society in a foreign land, taking high stakes’ chances. Many became & remained welfare dependent in Australia – my adopted country – also.
Progressive left want votes, not citizens. Hence the handouts with upward mobility fully hobbled by same handouts, and enviro regulation, and all sorts of other regulation.
To boil this down, this thin sliver of the white professional class is praying (?) for a MAGA overreach to regain relevance. Lol.
Asylum seekers are not, by definition, illegal aliens. Their situation differs greatly from that of the Perez family- for starters, it is *legal* to assist asylum seekers. The Perez family is okay with getting here illegally, and then transitioning into legal, naturalized immigrants who cut into line but heaven forbid anyone else do that?
Why wasn’t the mother also represented by the father’s competent legal council? Why didn’t she become a citizen (she was married to one? Or not?) when the father did? There’s a lot more going on than was covered by this article.
“Nico” wants what he wants, and what he doesn’t want is to share the opportunity he received as an illegal immigrant.