How the Democrats Lost the Working Class on Immigration
In September 2022, we listened to a focus group run by progressive organizations. The participants, who were from different parts of the country, had voted for Joe Biden for president in 2020 but weren’t sure about the approaching midterm election. The moderator asked about migrants and about Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis sending them to Martha’s Vineyard, but the responses focused more on frustration with the Biden administration’s border policy. “Trump’s border policy was not to have an influx of migrants. President Biden reversed that.
There are now more than two million expected this year," one woman said. Another added that DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are “the first line of defense.
They are not getting the support they need." That frustration with Biden administration policy has only grown as hundreds of thousands of recent migrants have sought shelter in New York and other big cities. A great many of them are illegal immigrants who crossed the border undetected, or who were apprehended but have been released indefinitely pending court dates under the country’s rickety asylum procedures. Even Democratic officials, including New York City’s mayor and the state’s governor, have voiced their displeasure.
America as we know it wouldn’t exist without immigrants. The country’s successive industrial upsurges, from the early 19th to the late 20th centuries, would not have been possible without immigrant labor and inventiveness. But immigration has often had a dark side that invited conflict.
Divisions among immigrants and between immigrant and native workers was one reason why the U.S. failed to develop an effective labor and social democratic movement before World War I. Ironically, the restriction of immigration
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