On the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump and various other Republican politicians repeated a specific line of reasoning when making a pitch to nonwhite voters: The “border invasion” that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were supposedly responsible for was “crushing the jobs and wages” of Black, Latino, and union workers. Trump called it “economic warfare.”
This line of reasoning — that immigrants are taking away economic opportunities from those already in the U.S. — has historically been a source of tension for both native-born Americans, and older immigrants.
Much of this argument has been challenged by economists, but the politics are effective. The main claim here is that an influx in low-skilled laborers not only pushes down the cost of goods but negatively impacts preexisting American workers by lowering their wages.
The evidence for this actually happening, however, is thin: Immigrants also create demand, by buying new items and using new services, therefore creating more jobs. Still, the idea remains popular.
Even as far back as the Civil Rights era, economic concerns created divisions. Even the most iconic figure of the Latino labor movement, Cesar Chavez, launched an “Illegals Campaign” in the 1970s — an attempt to rally public opposition to immigration and get government officials to crack down on illegal crossings. And Chavez publicly accused the federal government of abdicating its duty to arrest undocumented immigrants who crossed the border.
Of course, Chavez’s views were nuanced — and primarily rooted in the goal of creating and strengthening a union that could represent and advocate for farmworkers and laborers. But they are a great example of the deep roots that economic and identity status threats have in complicating the views of working class and nonwhite people in the not-too-distant past.
What makes this era of immigration politics perhaps a bit more complicated are the added concerns over fairness and orderliness that many nonwhite Americans, and even immigrants from previous generations, feel.
California Rep. Juan Vargas, a progressive Democrat, told me that there’s a sense among his constituents that recent immigrants, both legal and not, are cutting the line, or not paying their dues.
He told me about a conversation he had with a constituent who said she disagrees with his stance on immigration policy, even though she once “came across illegally too” and lived in the U.S. for 15 years without documentation:
“I started talking to her, and she said, ‘You know, these new immigrants, they get everything. They get here and they get everything. We didn’t get anything, and so I think they should all be deported.’ ”
Some immigration researchers describe this as part of a “law-and-order” mindset. Americans, many of them nonwhite or descended from immigrants, feel conflicted about images of border disorder and perceptions of urban crime.
These views help explain why there’s a vocal group of Democrats, including Latino Democrats, willing to work with Trump and Republicans on immigration reforms that take a tough-on-crime approach, like the Laken Riley Act, which expedites deportation for undocumented immigrants charged with certain crimes.
Some 46 House Democrats (including Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania) and 12 Senate Democrats ended up voting for the Laken Riley Act. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona argued that the bill represented where the Latino mainstream is now on immigration.
Even some Democrats in solid blue areas of the country agree, to an extent. “People want the border secure,” Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Texas, told me. “People don’t want persons who have committed serious, violent crimes in this country.”
That’s not to say Democrats think the party should abandon the defense of immigration as value. No lawmaker I spoke to said that. But they stressed that they understand they’ll need to be strategic in what they support because their constituents are divided, too.
Christian Paz is a senior politics reporter for Vox.com.
