The Democratic Party and Its Rightward Shift on the Border
How did we get here from "no human is illegal"?
On September 9th, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance took to social media in response to a bizarre rumor centered around the small town of Springfield, Ohio. Originating days before, and spreading via the efforts of right-wing provocateurs, the story alleged that Haitian immigrants to Springfield were abducting and eating the pets of their white neighbors. Vance touted his record on the subject, stating that he had previously “raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio” and repeating the allegations of pet-eating by “people who shouldn't be in this country.” The problem with Vance’s story? The initial allegations were found to be entirely baseless and the Haitian community in Springfield is, in fact, residing there legally.
This incident is a particularly noxious one, but it is far from isolated amongst the rhetoric of the 2024 campaign season. The anti-immigrant talking points and policies of Donald Trump have been well studied since his first steps onto the political stage in 2015, and he has not abandoned them for this go-round. Always close at hand in the Trump campaign’s arsenal has been the accusation that President Biden, and his successor Vice President Harris, are weak on the border and that the country’s problems could be solved by just letting Trump have another crack at it.
Perhaps nearly as consequential in this election, though, has been the dramatic shift in tone on immigration from the Democratic Party. In the four years of the Trump presidency, a large part of the response of the resistance was defined by its opposition to Trump’s radical treatment and dehumanization of immigrants. The phrase “kids in cages” was an electorate-galvanizing indictment of a harsh border policy. On suburban lawns, signs declaring that homeowners believed “no human is illegal” sprang up in any polity where liberal voters could be found. Even the 2020 presidential hopeful Senator Kamala Harris supported the idea of decriminalizing illegal border crossings as her campaign worked to identify a progressive but not-too-radical, anti-Trump stance on immigration.
Flash forward four years and this sentiment has evaporated like water in the Sonora sun. We find the Democratic party engaged in a running debate that it is they, not Republicans, who truly believe in keeping America’s borders secure. In a February vote, senate Republicans rejected a Democrat-sponsored border bill, prompting Chris Murphy (D-CT) to express frustration with the result (and indirectly highlight the narrowing gulf in policy) declaring “They told us what to do. We followed their instructions to the letter.” Shortly after the failure of the bill, President Joe Biden moved via executive action to restrict asylum seeking. Kamala Harris, again a presidential hopeful, now releases ad spots highlighting her time as a “border state prosecutor,” featuring stock footage glamour-shots of border walls, and touting her support of the “toughest border control bill in decades.”
How does a party go from hammering their opponents on immigration policy to pushing bills written by those same opponents?
The simplest explanation for the rightward shift of the Democratic party on immigration is triangulation. With what appears to be a tight election on the horizon, political strategists have deployed the Clintonian tactic of moving policy positions towards that of the opposition. This hypothetically will undermine some of the advantage Republicans have on the subject (polls show that voters have more confidence in Trump on border) and blunt their line of attack. In the same way that health care reform and climate policy (both heavily featured in the run-up to 2020) have been largely absent from Democratic messaging, any position on immigration that could arch the eyebrow of a Pennsylvania independent for being “too radical” is also moved to the chopping block.
And there is reason to believe that what the average voter believes is “too radical” has shifted as well. According to Gallup polls, there has been an increase in American anxieties around immigration in 2024. Currently, 55% of the country believes that immigration should be decreased, a sharp jump from 41% just last year. This number is the highest since 1995 and reverses a long-term trend of nearly 30 years.
Though a surge in border crossings is undeniable, why Americans’ opinions on immigration have changed so markedly in recent years is less clear. Theories abound, including those that say Americans are unjustly laying their anxieties regarding post-pandemic crime spikes, inflation, and economic conditions at the feet of migrants. A series of political stunts in which red, border states began shipping asylum seekers to deep blue states like New York certainly raised the visibility of the issue, as did the failure of unprepared blue states to properly manage the sudden influx of migrants.
As numerous studies have shown, there is no correlation between immigration and increased crime or economic downturn, but in the eyes of American voters this can be a difficult argument to make. Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian resident of Springfield, Ohio, perhaps put it best in a New Yorker interview when he said: “Some people do not understand that at some point in time after Covid, the benefits that they used to receive for free were going to stop. But instead of looking for the truth, they just put it in their minds that those benefits that were taken from them were going to us Haitians. And they started to hate us.”
Digging deeper into the polls, we can perhaps get more insight into this electoral gamble. The opinion of Republicans weighs heavily on the overall Gallup numbers, with 88% of Republican voters in favor of decreasing immigration compared to 50% of independents and only 28% of Democrats. Pew Research polls also note that the number of Republican and Independent voters who say immigration is “very important” to them has spiked since 2020, while it has slightly decreased among Democrats. Safe then to conclude that this is not a policy aimed at the party’s base but rather towards independents and maybe even a handful of Republicans wary of Trump who could be swayed to abandon the GOP (perhaps in conjunction with endorsements from the likes of Dick Cheney and former Trump staffers).
Likewise, the gradual erosion of Democrats’ advantage with Hispanic voters may have hastened this recalibration. According to NBC polls, Harris leads Trump in this demographic 54% to 40%. A sizable gap, but far smaller than in previous elections featuring Trump. In polls taken around the same time in 2016, Dems enjoyed a 50-point advantage. This shrank to 36 points in 2020 and finally to the 14 points we see today. Trump’s best issue among these voters? 47% believe he is better on securing the border and controlling immigration compared to 34% for Harris.
The obvious question then becomes: “How will this sit with the party’s base?” Again, the polls provide a window into strategists’ potential thinking. Gallup shows that while the salience of the issue has increased, it sits far higher with Republicans and independents. 25% of registered voters polled say that their preferred candidate must share their views on immigration. However, this is not evenly divided by party identification. 43% of Republicans and 20% of independents feel this way compared with only 13% of Democrats, the implication to a hypothetical party apparatchik being that there is more to be gained than lost on the gamble.
Another often cited point in the need for a stricter border policy from Dems is the success of representative Tom Suozzi of New York’s 3rd district. Suozzi won his seat in February of this year in what many have called a bellwether election and he did so while deploying tough-on-the-border rhetoric. Soon after, he became co-chair of the Democrats for Border Security task force alongside Henry Cuellar (a Texas Democrat who was primaried in 2022 by Justice Dems over his anti-abortion stance). The task force was formed in March of 2024 with the objective of moving the party’s position on immigration. It is composed of 26 House Democrats, including many in difficult swing districts where they believe a tough-on-the-border approach can earn them electoral gains. Due to his tough-on-the-border stance and success in flipping a Republican-held district, Suozzi has been held up as a portent of things to come and a proof-of-concept for the idea that reshaping the party along these lines would be electorally beneficial.
With the reasoning around this rightward movement becoming more apparent, we can move on to the next question: How sound is their electoral logic? If Democrats have cast off the self-appointed role as defenders of the oppressed that they proudly wore during the Trump years, allowed the conversation on immigrants and the border to slide into Trump’s dangerous framing, and declined to provide an alternative vision, surely they must be reaping the dividends of their calculations, right? Well, not really.
The election is currently balanced on a knife’s edge, with most pollsters giving Harris a slight advantage thanks to a narrow lead in Pennsylvania. To be sure, the Democrats’ chance of winning the presidency is higher than it was when they signaled their shift with the introduction of the “bi-partisan” border bill. Largely though, this can be accounted for by the party moving on from historically unpopular candidate Joe Biden rather than any advantage on the subject of the border, where Republicans still hold an advantage.
Following the border bill and Biden’s executive actions to implement parts of it, the president’s favorability numbers saw no increase and he consistently trailed Trump throughout the year, until withdrawing from the campaign in late July. In April, his approval rating on border security and immigration sat at a dismal 28% compared with 69% disapproval. Since Harris was handed the reins in July, public opinion has begun to shift on many topics. In April, Biden sat 23 points behind Trump on the subject of who voters thought would handle the economy better, and 21 points behind on crime and violence. Harris has improved in both these areas, sitting only 9 and 6 points behind Trump respectively. Where is Harris still struggling to close the gap? Border security and immigration, where she has improved from Biden’s shocking 35-point deficit but still sits a distant 21 points behind Trump.
Let’s return for a moment to Tom Suozzi’s tough-on-the-border campaign. In winning NY-3, supporters of this theory will tell you, Suozzi was able to flip a Republican seat in a close House. But to lay Suozzi’s victory at the feet of his border policy is a considerable leap. The special election that won him the seat was held following the shameful resignation of the district’s previous representative: Republican George Santos. Before Santos, however, the seat had gone to a Democrat for five straight election cycles, with Suozzi himself having won three terms by comfortable margins! In fact: Santos’ vote totals were lower than all three of Suozzi’s in his earlier victories. The idea that Suozzi was an underdog or outsider in this race who galvanized voters though border control rhetoric is patently false: He was a popular local politician who had the closest thing possible to an incumbency advantage.
In all their calculations, the Democratic party has been too clever by half. Recall the disastrous Biden-Trump debate during which the president pivoted from a question on abortion (statistically his best issue) to ramble about the danger of immigrants crossing the border and sexually assaulting American women. Rather than stick to their strengths, the party has decided to meet Republicans on grounds of their foes’ choosing. In doing so they give credence to the Republican position and allow Republicans to define the issue. Democrats cannot win the fight on who is tougher on border control, because their opponents have proven time and again that they are willing to descend into barbarism on the issue. In ceding ground to this approach, the Democrats only further validate the rightwing worldview and signal that they believe Trump and his xenophobic cadre have been correct all along. It is a poor electoral strategy—and a morally calamitous one.
Featured image is No Human Being Is Illegal, by Kurman Communications LLC
