Background on Immigration

• Xenophobia
• Border Crisis
• Deportation redux
• Border wall
• Northern Triangle
• Deportation Statistics
• DACA
• Family Separation
• Sanctuary Cities

Donald Trump has had strong views on limiting immigration since the 2016 campaign -- but those views now predominate the Republican Party. The Democrats in 2024 attempted to portray Trump/Vance as xenophobic and racist, but the Republican focus on the economic and social cost of "open borders" won out. Even Hispanics and racial minorities increased their support level of the Republicans -- those groups have long leaned Democrat, but that leaning slipped in 2024.

• TRUMP: Transnational gangs cross the Mexican border at will (Oct 2024)
• WALZ: Matthew 25:40 applies to Haitian immigrants (Oct 2024)
• VANCE: FactCheck: immigrants eating pets is slur from 19th century (Sep 2024)
• TRUMP: Illegal alien invasion: hordes resettled in your community (Mar 2024)
• BIDEN: Let Title 42 expire: more humanitarian asylum policy (May 2023)
• VANCE: Those who complain about southern border get called racist (Jul 2021)
• HARRIS: We have to honor the promise made to DREAMers (Jan 2021)

Trump also succeeded in painting Kamala Harris as the "border czar" who failed to secure the border. Harris' actual role was to address the "root causes" of waves of immigration from Central America -- see the Northern Triangle section below for details. But if there's a "border crisis", the right approach is to address the crisis, not address the root causes -- Trump successfully defined the playing field as a "border crisis".

• HARRIS: Will bring back the bipartisan border security bill (Sep 2024)
• HARRIS: Partner with Mexico to address the root causes of migration (Jun 2024)
• BIDEN: Promised "not another foot of wall"; but added Southern wall (Oct 2023)
• TRUMP: Would reinstitute family separation policy at the border (May 2023)
• TRUMP: No federal grants for police in sanctuary cities (Apr 2023)
• WALZ: Driver's licenses for undocumented, live with dignity (Apr 2023)
• TRUMP: I will sign a colossal increase in ICE deportation offices (Mar 2023)
• VANCE: Oppose amnesty; build the wall; double border agents (Oct 2021)

Trump's task in 2025 will no longer be anything about building a wall or any sort of reform -- it'll be all about deportation. The mainstream media is filled with analyses of which groups to deport first; how exactly deportation will work; how many people will actually get deported. That supercedes discussion of a border wall, and of DREAMer reform or any other long-term reforms.

• HARRIS: Our border agents need help & 1,500 more agents (Oct 2024)
• WALZ: Congress must enact immigration reform; Trump said "No" (Oct 2024)
• VANCE: Open to deporting anyone who came to the country illegally (Aug 2024)
• TRUMP: I built 571 miles of wall & made safest border in US history (Mar 2024)
• WALZ: We need to have comprehensive immigration reform (Jan 2024)
• TRUMP: We're going to have the largest deportation in US history (Jan 2024)
• BIDEN: Refugee cap up from 15,000 to 62,500, but promised 125,000 (May 2021)
• HARRIS: Fight for just & comprehensive immigration reform (Jan 2021)

• PRO-Border wall: (DHS): Currently wall construction continues at the southwest border with the administration's goal of 450 new miles of wall system on track for the end of the calendar year. The current status:
  • 341 new miles completed
  • 240 new miles under construction
  • 157 new miles under the pre-construction process
  • ANTI-Border wall: (USA Today): FactCheck: 307 miles of wall have been built, though just 5 miles are new

• TRUMP: Wall is working beyond our wildest expectations (Aug. 2020)
• BIDEN: Voted YES on building a fence along the Mexican border (Sep 2006)
• PENCE: Unsecured Mexican border is a national emergency (Mar 2019)
• HARRIS: Reform system, against "vanity project" of border wall (Feb. 2019)
• NEWS: Latest statements on Mexican Border from presidential candidates and political pundits

• Northern Triangle: (FAS 2019): Approximately 265,000 people have left the Northern Triangle region of Central America (composed of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) in each of the past five years, with the majority bound for the US. The Northern Triangle includes some of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, with a legacy of extreme inequality.

• TRUMP: Cut off aid $700M to Central American Northern Triangle (Apr 2019)

• BIDEN: $750M to Central America to address root cause of migration (Jun 2018)
• HARRIS: Coyotes out of business on very dangerous southern border (Feb 2019)

• PRO-Northern Triangle:
  (WOLA 2016): Five Facts about the Northern Triangle:
  1. High levels of violence continue to plague Central America's Northern Triangle.
  2. People are fleeing community-level violence, which is often personal and direct.
  3. Countries of the Northern Triangle are not providing security for their citizens.
  4. The dangers people are fleeing are documented in skyrocketing requests for asylum.
  5. There is no migration crisis at our border.
• ANTI-Northern Triangle: (Devex.com): The State Department has determined steps that "Northern Triangle" governments must take for resumption of full U.S. foreign assistance, but stated it has no timeline for determining if or when that may happen. The letter said the money was cut off last year as a "wakeup call" to the Northern Triangle countries "to demonstrate political will and do more to stop illegal immigration to the US."
• Coyote: (MarketWatch): "Coyote" is a common term for human smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border. With tighter immigration policies and increased patrols by U.S. authorities, many would-be migrants feel they have little choice but to use coyotes to guide them across the border. Coyotes can charge between $6,000 and $10,000 per person to smuggle into the U.S., often via dangerous crossings in the desert.

  

• Deportation Statistics: (OnTheIssues): There are two ways to reduce the population of undocumented aliens in the United States:
  APPREHENSION means preventing illegal immigrants from crossing the border (or turning them away once caught at the border);
  DEPORTATION means arresting and holding legal proceedings to remove undocumented aliens already within the United States.
  President Trump has increased apprehensions but only held steady on deportations. President Obama decreased both apprehensions and deportations.

• TRUMP: Deporting drug dealers, murderers, and "bad dudes" (Feb 2017)
• BIDEN: No deportations unless aliens committed a felony in the US (Mar 2020)

• Border Apprehensions: (CBP): Total Illegal Alien Apprehensions By President (annual total on Southwest Border):
  • Trump: 517,000
  • Obama 413,000
  • Bush Jr: 1,002,000
  • Clinton: 1,379,000
  • Bush Sr: 1,031,000
  • Reagan: 1,056,000
  • Carter: 752,000
  • Ford: 564,000
  • Nixon: 273,000
  • Johnson: 61,000
  • Kennedy: 24,000

  

• Majority Minority: As a result of its changed makeup and rapid growth, new immigration since 1965 has altered the nation's racial and ethnic composition. In 1965, 84% of Americans were non-Hispanic whites. By 2015, that share had declined to 62%. [Ed.: Whites are projected to become the minority nationwide by about 2045]
• ICE: ICE was created in 2003 and now has more than 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel in more than 400 offices in the US and around the world. ICE'S mission is to protect America from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety, through the enforcement of more than 400 federal statutes.
• PRO-ICE: (The Guardian): ICE is not responsible for patrolling or securing US borders; ICE is tasked with detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the US. Under Obama, the unit prioritized removing those who had committed serious crimes, but the Trump administration has broadened its mandate to target anyone in the US illegally.
• ANTI_ICE: (ACLU): Many of ICE's removal tactics take away even the right to a fair hearing in court, as the government rushes to judgment and tries to ram people through a rubber-stamp system that ignores individual circumstances.

• TRUMP: ICE guards dangerous southern border against criminal aliens (Feb 2019)
• BIDEN: Re-examine ICE & start from scratch (Jan 2019)

• PRO-DACA: (CNN Aug. 2020): The Supreme Court blocked Trump's attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program established in 2012 that protects undocumented immigrants [who were raised in the US, known as DREAMers] and allows them to work in the US. DHS announced the program would limit renewals to one year instead of two and still not accept new applicants.
• ANTI-DACA: (InformedImmigrant.com): On June 18, 2020, the Supreme Court ordered the Administration to start accepting new DACA applications. Though the Supreme Court ordered this, USCIS did not begin to accept new initial applications.

• TRUMP: Americans are DREAMers too; pass a bipartisan compromise (Jan 2018)
• BIDEN: Make DACA permanent; much work remains to be done (Jun 2020)
• HARRIS: Immediately reinstate DACA protection, including parents (Jun 2019)
• NEWS: Latest statements on DREAMers and DACA from presidential candidates and political pundits

• ANTI-Refugee: (Immigration Forum): The number of refugees accepted to the United States each year is set by the President in consultation with Congress. The refugee limit for 2020 is 18,000, the lowest is has been since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. The number of U.S. refugees from Syria and Iran dropped considerably in 2018 due to implementation of the latest version of the Trump administration's travel ban.
• PRO-Refugee: Inscription on the Statue of Liberty since 1903:
  "Give me your tired, your poor,
  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

• TRUMP: Protect America by banning refugees from terrorist countries (Mar 2017)
• BIDEN: Refugee policy is an embarrassment (Feb 2019)
• PENCE: Muslim-country ban has solid constitutional foundation (Feb 2017)
• HARRIS: Welcome refugees and immigrants, instead of a border wall (Feb 2019)
• NEWS: Latest statements on Refugees and Asylum from presidential candidates and political pundits

• Family Separation: (CNN 2020): In 2018, the Trump administration announced the so-called "zero tolerance" policy: criminal prosecutions of every adult illegally crossing the border. Doing so resulted in the separation of thousands of families, including those with infants, some only a few months old, because children can't be kept in federal jail with their parents.
• PRO-Family Separation: (CNN 2020): Several immigrant rights organizations are outraged by a new choice U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is presenting to migrant parents: Separate from your child or stay together in detention indefinitely. It is in compliance with the Flores court agreement, which prohibits ICE from holding minors for more than 20 days.
• ANTI-Family Separation: (Texas Tribune) Lawyers submitted a court filing with a grim update: They have not yet been able to reach the parents of 545 separated children. About two-thirds of those parents are believed to be somewhere in Central America--without their children.

• TRUMP: Didn't start family separation but ended it (Jun 2019)
• BIDEN: Reunite families; end outrageous treatment (Jun 2019)
• HARRIS: Kids whose parents crossed border are treated like criminals (Jul 2019)

• Sanctuary Cities: (America's Voice): There's no single definition of what is a sanctuary city, but generally speaking, it's a city (or a county, or a state) that limits its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents in order to protect low-priority immigrants from deportation, while still turning over those who have committed serious crimes.
• PRO-Sanctuary City: (CNN 2018): In the early days of his administration, Trump signed an executive order trying to keep federal funds from going to sanctuary jurisdictions. Roughly 300 sanctuary jurisdictions rejected more than 17,000 detention requests, between 2014 and 2015.
• ANTI-Sanctuary City: (WhiteHouse.gov): Sanctuary cities are preventing Federal authorities from locating and arresting dangerous criminal aliens and removing them from our country.

• TRUMP: Cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities (Nov 2015)
• PENCE: End sanctuary cities; those policies drive wages down (Oct 2016)
• BIDEN: Sanctuary cities exist because feds can't enforce their laws (Sep 2007)
• NEWS: Latest statements on Sanctuary Cities from presidential candidates and political pundits

• Border Fence: Dealing with the Mexican border provides a primary difference between Democrats and Republicans in the 2016 election. Republicans (and some moderate Democrats) call for building a fence; progressives oppose it as just another form of devaluing Mexicans. Building a fence is more about politics than about construction logistics; focusing on the construction aspects implies support for overriding the political difficulties.
• Anchor babies: Opponents of illegal immigration decry foreigners who travel to the United States while pregnant, have a child in the U.S., and then use that child's citizenship to get the rest of the family into the U.S. This law is based on the 14th Amendment, which says that any person born in United States territory is automatically a citizen. It was passed after the Civil War to ensure citizenship for all former slaves.
• Talking about immigrants means talking about Latinos: half of all immigrants today are from Latin America. And talking about immigrants means talking about the Latino vote: 70% of Latino voters supported Obama in the last election. The most important demographic is that Latinos make up 17% of the voting population now, but that will rise to 29% by 2050.
• Latinos support immigration reform (and in particular, amnesty) with the same lopsided support with which they support Democrats: over 70% favor amnesty.
• The Latino vote will become increasingly determinative of future election results, which is why Republicans are so actively recruiting Latino candidates (for example, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL), to try to switch the current party loyalty.
• Comprehensive reform is a politicized buzzword that means “provide amnesty and citizenship benefits for illegal immigrants already here, while securing the border and prosecuting illegal employers against new illegal immigration.” Opponents of comprehensive reform would prefer a piecemeal approach: their buzzword is “secure the border first,” before dealing with any benefits or any other issues.
• President Obama in late 2014 issued an Executive Order deferring deportation of five million illegal immigrants who came to America as minors (known as DREAMers, for the DREAM Act). Opponents claim Obama unconstitutionally bypassed Congress. Supporters claim that Congress failed to pass comprehensive reforms for years, so Obama had to act unilaterally.

• Anti-immigration advocates often seek Official English status (the US has no official language), which would enforce assimilation of non-English speaking immigrants. Similarly, anti-immigration advocates seek to terminate Bilingual Education, which is currently funded in school systems with large non-English-speaking populations.
• The "Simpson-Mazzoli Act" refers to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, was the immigration reform supported by President Reagan. Its opponents claimed that it granted amnesty in exchange for tightening immigration law, but that the tightening never occurred while the amnesty did.

• In April 2010, the state legislature of Arizona passed a law, S.B. 1070, which allowed state police to check for legal papers of people suspected of being illegl immigrants.
• Proponents say that the AZ law only enforces federal law in a circumstance where the federal government has failed to enforce its own law.
• Opponents say that the AZ law constitutes "racial profiling", and targets Latinos and especially Mexicans.
• The author of the AZ law, State Senate President Russell Pearce, was subjected by the people of his legislative district to a recall vote as a result of the AZ law, and lost his seat in Nov. 2011.

• The US admits about 660,000 legal immigrants per year (1998 figures).
• The Immigration Act of 1990 allows for 480,000 immigrants with family in the US; 140,000 immigrants in needed employment fields; and the rest under per-country limits and diversity limits.
• Foreign-born people accounted for 8% of the US population in the 1990 census; in the decades prior to 1930, the figure was 13%.
• About 5 million illegal aliens reside in the US (1996 figures).
• 55% of all illegal aliens come from Mexico. (Other Latin American countries account for another 20%).
• 40% of all illegal aliens live in California. (TX, NY, FL, and IL account for the next 40%).
• The illegal alien population is growing by about 275,000 each year.
• The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) runs the Border Patrol as well as interior enforcement.

• Pro-immigration advocates sometimes accuse anti-immigration advocates of racism, because of the large Hispanic component of current immigration. In that view, immigration restrictions are seen as limiting growth of the Hispanic population.
• Anti-immigration advocates often seek Official English status (the US has no official language), which would enforce assimilation of non-English speaking immigrants. Similarly, anti-immigration advocates seek to terminate Bilingual Education, which is currently funded in school systems with large non-English-speaking populations.

• The biggest components of the immigration debate is how many legal immigrants to allow, and how to prevent illegal immigration.

• Liberals and libertarians generally oppose restricting immigration. Look for buzzwords like "promote diversity" to define the liberal attitude, or "we're a nation of immigrants" to define the libertarian attitude. Any reference to providing illegal immigrants with services beyond emergency medical treatment, or any reference to "clemency" for illegal immigration, implies a strong pro-immigrant stance.

• Moderate liberals and libertarians will oppose restricting immigration while paying lip-service to restrictions on illegal immigration. Look for buzz-phrases like "promote immigration, block illegal immigration" and "separate the functions of the INS and the Border Patrol," which mean the same thing.

• Conservatives and populists generally favor restricting immigration. Look for buzzwords like "protect our borders" or "strengthen the INS". A call for "Official English" is a strongly anti-immigration stance, because most immigrants are from non-English speaking countries. That's the same attitude as "End bilingual education," which focuses primarily on Spanish-speaking immigrants.

• Moderate conservatives and populists will favor restricting illegal immigration while paying lip-service to allowing legal immigration. The result is the same as moderates in favor of immigration: calls for separating out legal immigration from illegal, but with a focus on enforcement against illegals instead of a focus on respecting immigrant rights.

• H-1B Visas refer to visas for "specialty occupations." Generally, H-1B visas are issued in the fields of science, technology, engineering, or other professional services. H-1B visa holders are non-residents but may apply for permanent green cards.