Trump needs Mexican cooperation to fight illegal migration. Caption: Getty
Donald Trump returned to office issuing a range of executive orders that toughened up immigration enforcement. These include using the armed forces to facilitate deportations, boosting the number of troops at the border, and reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy, which requires asylum-seekers to apply in Mexico, while blocking those who trek to the US border. To the surprise of pundits, polls suggest robust public backing for many of these measures, not least mass deportations.
One clear reason is economic: Mass low-wage migration depresses wages, especially on the lower rungs of the labour market. Progressives would do well to come to grips with this reality, even as the Trumpians would be wise neither to overstep their mandate nor to limit their policy to showy and polarising deportation actions.
To see why, it’s worth examining the history. Between 1965 and 1995, the share of Americans who favoured lower immigration rates rose to 65%, up from a third. The shift in attitudes corresponded with a dramatic rise in low-skilled legal — and especially illegal — immigration. Migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border reached 1.64 million in 2000, more than double the rate in 1980 (the 2000 peak would be surpassed under Team Biden).
Mass illicit immigration was and continues to be a feature of the neoliberal model that first took hold in the Seventies. The neoliberal order establishes the primacy of the market over state and society by promoting the free flow of goods, capital, and, crucially, people (that last element is often omitted by progressive critics of neoliberalism). Unsurprisingly, the decade that saw the highest volume of illegal immigration was the Nineties — an era of unfettered globalisation, deregulation, and free trade epitomised by the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Nafta facilitated the exploitation of cheap labour south of the border by outsourcing manufacturing jobs to Mexico. The agreement was also devastating for Mexican small farmers, who couldn’t compete with subsidised US agriculture. The resulting mass of indigent farmers migrated largely north into the open arms of American agribiz—the same force responsible for ruining their livelihoods. In 1990, the share of illegal farm workers in the United States was just 12%. By the turn of the millennium, it was about half, where it has remained since.
Until the 2010s, many Democrats embraced a comparatively hard line on illegal immigration, in keeping with the party’s working-class base. In his 1995 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton lamented how “the jobs [illegal immigrants] hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants”.
Back then, it was free-market Republicans like Ronald Reagan who celebrated the exploitation of illicit labour in jobs “Americans won’t do”. Never mind that these jobs were overwhelmingly occupied by Americans prior to the arrival of millions of illicit workers. Never mind, too, that native-born workers still form the majority of the workforce in sectors with large numbers of illegal employees, such as construction, household labour, dry cleaning, and landscaping.
An earlier generation of labour leaders and social democrats viewed mass illegal migration as one component in a broader suite of policies, including outsourcing and union-busting, meant to squeeze wages. United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez, for example, repeatedly denounced illegal migration and would make a point of alerting the authorities to employers hiring such workers. In 2007, Bernie Sanders said: “On one hand you have large multinationals trying to shut down plants in America, and on the other hand, you have the service industry bringing in low-wage workers from abroad”. The result: “wages go down”.
Negative sentiment toward immigration is driven by the net volume and type of immigration to a given country, dividing native populations from newcomers over wages, skills, and cultural background. The last variable, culture, is mercifully less salient in the United States, given the country’s spectacular capacity to assimilate migrants. In sufficient numbers, though, low-skilled illegal immigration necessarily provokes a backlash, including in cases where migrants and the native-born otherwise lack meaningful cultural differences.
To be fair to open-borders advocates of the Left and the libertarian Right, public opinion had been comparatively indifferent to large volumes of low-skilled legal immigration until recently — that is, except among Republicans. Plus, despite high overall immigration, illegal immigration declined dramatically after 2000, with border crossings plateauing at around 300,000 a year in the 2010s. By this point, the Nafta shock in Mexico gave way to the low-growth but resilient Mexican economy of today, leading to a 90% reduction in illegal entries by Mexicans. Mexico’s role as a source of outmigration was soon eclipsed by the likes of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
Successive presidents also oversaw crackdowns at the southern border and boosted deportations. The Obama administration instituted family detention, deporting 2.9 million people in its first term and 1.9 million in its second. By comparison, the first Trump administration managed 1.5 million deportations, including a smaller proportion of violent criminals.
Then came the social-justice revolution of the mid-2010s, which consummated the Democratic Party’s capture by college-educated professionals. Mantras such as “no human being is illegal” gathered strength in Democratic circles as activists denounced Obama as the “Deporter in Chief”. The progressive zealots got a boost from Trump I, the cruelty of whose child-separation policies did wonders for the cause of limitless migration. Despite the first Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy, illegal immigration remained unchanged up until the pandemic; pandemic-induced travel restrictions caused overall immigration to fall near zero in 2020.
At that point, more Americans (34%) favoured increased immigration than disfavoured it (28%) for the first time. Emboldened in their opposition to Trump, Democrats excised what little immigration dissent remained in the party. Having previously called open borders a “Koch Brothers proposal”, Bernie Sanders embraced a moratorium on deportations and called for decriminalising border crossings under pressure from the liberal press.
The Biden administration followed suit, announcing a temporary pause in deportations and adopting a near limitless interpretation of asylum law. While a global surge in immigration was to be expected following the end of pandemic restrictions, voters correctly interpreted Democratic policy as offering an unprecedented incentive to would-be migrants. At least 10 million foreign nationals without legal permanent status entered the country since 2021, per the Congressional Budget Office, the most of any four-year period in history.
In June 2024, Biden backtracked, issuing an executive order barring migrants from soliciting asylum when average daily encounters exceed 2,500. The result was a decline in monthly crossings by around 80%. The move was supported by minorities and working-class voters but abhorred by affluent progressives. Indeed, by the end of 2024, monthly crossings were lower than under Trump prior to the pandemic.
So here we are. The question now is how tough immigration enforcement should be, and whether Republicans — and eventually, Democrats — will once again overreach in their respective preferences.
The starting point for the debate is a simple proposition: namely, that mass deportations are entirely justified, representing a return to Obama-era deportation policy. Under Biden, a total of 1.49 million newcomers were removed — a shockingly paltry figure, given the total number of unlawful entries. Currently, Team Trump seems to be prioritising the 1.4 million migrants who have received final orders of removal. Logistically speaking, it will be difficult to deport even this number anytime soon.
The goal of the new administration should be to craft a lasting immigration policy benefiting American workers. This will require gaining buy-in from Democrats where possible. Improving the asylum system requires sending a signal to migrants they are certain to be deported unless they have a credible claim of asylum. At the same time, employing more immigration judges for the current asylum backlog is eminently desirable and an area where Republicans could work with Democrats. It’s counterproductive for the sitting president to antagonise deportees’ receiving countries — however obnoxious their leaders may also be.
A points system based on migrants’ skills — ideally similar to that used by Canada prior to the pandemic — should also be adopted. While it’s true that Americans have historically tolerated high levels of low-skilled immigration, restrictionists are correct that chain migration doesn’t ultimately serve the national interest or workers. Shifting from family-based to skills-based migration would go a long way toward taming the anti-immigration fervour of the GOP base.
During his first term, Trump expanded Obama’s family-detention policy in an effort to deter migrants of all stripes. This and later family separation was what resulted in the administration’s failure to deport more violent criminals than its predecessor: Trump I turned public opinion against itself. Disturbingly, Trump’s proposal to expand migrant detentions in Guantanamo Bay suggests a willingness to double down on past failures, though the administration appears to be prioritising removals with infractions beyond just illegal entries thus far.
Further, the Remain in Mexico policy was a marked improvement that helped curtail the 2018 spike in illegal immigration, whose revival will similarly benefit the current asylum backlog. Contrary to progressive critiques, Mexico as a whole isn’t unsafe, with many migrants residing in vibrant metropolitan areas while they solicit asylum. Then as now, the policy’s success will turn on Trump’s willingness to maintain a productive relationship with Mexican leaders.
Like her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has displayed a willingness to work with Trump, making record arrests of migrants and drug seizures, as well as constructing facilities to receive deportees. Having cajoled Mexico (and Canada) into substantial action, the effectiveness of the president’s tariff threats cannot be denied. Given his decision to impose tariffs anyway, however, it will be hard for either country to justify continued cooperation with Washington.
Republicans should also note that their rationale for a military intervention in Mexico directly contradicts the premise of the Remain in Mexico policy. If carried out, an invasion would fuel a migratory catastrophe. If or when Mexican cartels’ recent terror designation is taken to its logical conclusion, the resulting torrent of actual refugees would undo decades of declining illegal immigration from Mexico. Trump could, instead, aid Sheinbaum’s proposal to expand the recently inaugurated Maya Train into Central America, a prospect certain to deter migration by creating jobs and fuelling development.
Finally, if Trump is truly serious about deterrence and American workers, he should support the passage and aggressive enforcement of mandatory E-verify. Forcing employers to confirm the immigration status of workers — and making an example of those that don’t — would go a long way in curtailing migrant exploitation and raising wages for native workers.
Progressives should back these efforts. As it is, their simultaneous defence of unrestricted low-skilled immigration and opposition to H1B visas serves the class interest of their professional constituents. After all, the exploitation of H1B workers directly undercuts the bargaining power of high-skilled college graduates — the same group that benefit from a ready supply of undocumented maids and landscapers. But this policy mix has proved deeply unpopular with the non-college majority that decides US elections.
In the same vein, it’s telling that the immigration rhetoric of populist Republicans — such as Vice President JD Vance — echoes that of pre-Trump labour Democrats. This isn’t to say that the comparably oligarchic Republican Party is truly representative of working-class interests. It does, however, speak to the changing nature of both parties’ coalitions.
Progressives can continue dismissing the impact of illegal immigration on wages — relying, ironically, on the same neoliberal economists they would otherwise condemn. The reality, however, is that working-class voters will continue to believe that their wages will be undercut by foreign workers willing to work harder and for less than they would.
Democrats should recall the counsel of the civil-rights icon Barbara Jordan: “For the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process”. For their part, Republicans should avoid an overestimation of their mandate that has and likely will once more empower their progressive enemies.
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SubscribeTrump has just been elected with a mandate to implement these very measures.
The author and/or the pundits are surprised?? What kind of nonsense is this?
The progressive kind – the kind that comes with a host of blind-spots in-built.
Pundits are not historians. If they were, they’d know that from the beginning of recorded history up until the past few decades, including most of the first 150 years of American history, there has never been a notable instance where any native group of people welcomed an uninvited influx of foreigners into their land. For most of recorded history, the movement of people was related to conquest, people moving into an area as conquerors and making slaves of the natives or fleeing to avoid such a fate. At times, the line between the two blurred considerably. Were the Romans conquered by migrating tribes from central Asia fleeing more hostile tribes or were the Romans simply overwhelmed by mass migration that destabilized their society so completely that they simply imploded? It wasn’t really until the Age of Discovery when Europeans traveled to all corners of the world that the movement of people wasn’t nearly always directly related to violent conflict. From then to now, opposition to migration over a certain level has basically always produced civil strife and discontent. I challenge anyone to point to an example from 1500-present where there was near universal acceptance of mass immigration anywhere in the world.
Pundits are not historians. They’re probably journalists or communications majors or one of those dozens of degrees in nonsense subjects that didn’t exist when my parents were born or even when I was born and have been somehow conjured into existence since then (gender studies and what not). They didn’t take anything beyond the basic watered down generic history taught in general studies that has been highly corrupted by the same liberal ideology that has corrupted most of academia. Further, they probably took a lot of fluff classes that were light on classical liberal arts like literature and history and heavy on the aforementioned conjured up nonsense, sometimes directly from the very professors who did the conjuring.
There are usually reasons that things are the way they are. You aren’t the only person who has noted how clueless our so called pundits are. It started when academia was corrupted by disillusioned hippies and socialist types back during my parents generation. This poison has now spread into the media, politics, lower levels of education, and general society and it’s having civilization scale effects, effects like pundits unable to understand basic common sense and ordinary people that do have common sense looking elsewhere for information, the so called alternative media, which is a fancy way of saying one of a large number of random persons on the Internet who aren’t educated (or indoctrinated) in anything but decided just discussing things that happened didn’t require a college degree. Thank God for the Internet, as it’s a perfect remedy for elite capture of media and academic institutions. It’s basically the modern equivalent of the printing press, and the pundits are the modern equivalent of the confused and angry bishops of that era who had to deal with people who could read the text themselves and call BS when needed for the first time.
Are these articles written by failed polytechnic lecturers/teachers, or does UnHerd groom them to appear that way?
I stopped reading after that line and went straight to the comments. You nailed it.
Massive illegal migration doesn’t just depress wages….it puts upward pressure on housing costs, crowds hospitals & schools, aggravates crime and has cost $480 billion across the country just during Biden’s Administration alone – not to mention 250,000 fentanyl deaths. It’s time for millions to be booted.
If a “case” has to be made for stopping illegal immigration, that’s a problem but here we are. Open borders are bad enough on their own; they are wholly incompatible with a welfare state.
Post-modernists, like Obama, Merkel, Blair, Biden, Cameron, Trudeau, Albenesi (to name but a few), and the political apparatus of the EU, abhor the notion of the ‘nation state’. They adhere to the vision and politics of the ‘global village’: they believe that all people are equal everywhere (no matter their cultural, religious and political moralities and practices, that national borders breed nationalism and fascism, that human rights trump any other moral, legal or business consideration, and that free movement of peoples around the world is the ultimate Shangri-La, the supreme utopian state of existence. Just consider the massive mess that the EU has created in dispensing with its borders, and the huge (at the time) one-off admission of 1 million migrants into Germany that Merkel dumped on all EU members. Of course, that record has been smashed by the UK Tory government which has overseen net migration into the UK topping 1 mill per annum!
Good luck to Trump. I hope he succeeds in dealing with the enormous influx of illegals into the USA that Obama and Biden facilitated. But I cannot begin to imagine how he will achieve this; not least because of the hugely powerful ‘deep state’ that will do everything it can to thwart and destroy him.
It is quite amazing that Trump is accused of being a “threat to democracy” for doing the very thing that he campaigned on and what the people are crying out for. I don’t recall “the people” demanding massive illegal immigration into their countries.
“Cesar Chavez, for example, repeatedly denounced illegal migration and would make a point of alerting the authorities to employers hiring such workers.”
Gee, it’s disturbing to learn Cesar was a racist.
Touché
My recollection is that Cesar was a Chicano.
“Progressive”. How I loathe that word.
Liberals and progressives hate e-verify. I mention it frequently when progressives talk about employers who benefit from illegals. Basically, progressives want unlimited illegals. Why? Because compassion.