While I agree that Democrats need to settle on a unified message on immigration, the fact that the Cygnal poll gets the visual while the Gallup poll doesn't, suggests that you are putting your thumb on the scale a bit.
Because the Gallup poll tells a significantly different story than the Cygnal one.
"Please tell me whether you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose each of the following proposals. Deporting all immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home country?"
Favor: (Strongly or regular) Oppose: (Strongly or regular)
2025: 38% vs 59%
2024: 47% vs 51%
2019: 37% vs 61%
2016: 32% vs 62%
Please tell me whether you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose each of the following proposals. Allowing immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time
Favor: (Strongly or regular) Oppose: (Strongly or regular)
2025: 78% vs 21%
2024: 70% vs 30%
2019: 81% vs 18%
2016: 84% vs 15%
This does not show a consensus around "Deport all illegal immigrants regardless of other criminal status."
Somehow, "deport all illegal immigrants now" went from 38% vs. 59% in 2025 to 61% vs. 34% in 2026? Also, this is Cygnal (Who?) vs. Gallup (80+ years in the polling business).
I feel like your basic integrity forced you to link to the Gallup poll, but your sense of what makes a good argument meant that you didn't want to put up the actual Gallup numbers in the main body of the text.
There is a non-trivial cohort of left intellectuals who believe that even criminals are themselves victims of unjust, racist, late-stage capitalist society which drove them to desperation. For them, deporting criminals is basically an evil act that promotes the inhumane system further.
The question is how much influence do ideas like these have on mainstream Democratic politicians and their policies. It is a party with a heavy academic wing which isn't exactly ideologically moderate, so I would say "enough of an influence that it becomes an electoral problem".
Something difficult about this issue in particular is that the general public's knowledge of the immigration system as it actually exists is extremely low. Most people don't interact with the immigration system or understand much about how it works, which means the public makes a lot of baseline assumptions about legal immigration that are just wrong.
Many of the public seem to assume that there exists within our immigration system some "right way" for a person to enter the country. They imagine this way might involve waiting in a line, proving your economic capabilities, or similar,. Many voters with strong opinions on immigration would be deeply surprised at what the actual specifics of legal immigration looks like, how cruel and arbitrary and impossible the system can be for a normal person to navigate even when they do everything right.
I still remember the nightmares I had when going through the system with my immigrant spouse. Years of waiting and expense and planning, punctuated by moments when a random government bureaucrat can decide to tear apart your family for any reason or no reason at all. It was maddening to hear Republicans talk about "Joe Biden's open border" while living through that process, a process few Americans would ever accept if it were visited on them personally.
One reason you see some very strong left-partisans on this issue is because people who actually try to interact with the federal immigration system in good faith often become radicalized against it.
I guess my practical concern here is that the gap between policy and vibes can become very wide when people care deeply about immigration but deal with the system so little in their personal lives. If the Democratic nominee for 2028 runs on Noah's proposed policy, will he actually get any credit on this issue? Or will his Republican opponents simply lie about him and smear his policies as "Open borders" while average joes who don't pay attention to immigration nod along?
Getting rid of the land acknowledgements would certainly be nice. But it's sometimes hard to tell if the policy Democrats propose even matters much at all. Most people don't know or care what the current policy is, they just vaguely dislike foreigners and law-breaking and vote based on vague ideas and vibes.
I think you’re missing a key third plank — a legitimate guest worker program. During the Bush administration, a bipartisan committee came up with a good proposal that ultimately got shot down by Republicans. Honestly, I think because dysfunctional immigration suits their purposes. You cannot get Americans to do certain jobs, like pick peppers. Trust me, I’ve tried. Immigrants don’t take our jobs. They do things nobody else is willing to do. Temporary workers are a win-win. They make a fortune in their eyes. Our economy benefits. And then they go home.
And we have to acknowledge the need for some sort of amnesty program as well. I've always felt that if an illegal immigrant can show that they've been in the country for five years, have committed no crimes (even a parking ticket), have a job and have been paying taxes, and have learned English, then they are "in." The liberal media outlets do immigrants a disservice when reporters interview illegals who have clearly been here awhile but can't speak English. That does not go over well with conservative media consumers.
Masks are antithetical to the liberal notion of a self-governing citizenry. Moreover, we all learn as toddlers that bad guys wear masks. If you are wearing a mask (whether you are a federal agent or occupying a college quad), ordinary people on both sides are going to think you’re up to no good. Democrats should make “no masks” the rallying cry of any liberal immigration enforcement reforms.
What's discouraging to me is how reasonable the solutions seem to be. America could just do this, or, instead, what it has done: create chaos in its communities. And why on earth haven't employers who hire illegal workers been charged?
because nobody actually wants the economic consequences of doing that. people saying on a poll that they want to deport all illegal immigrants is cheap talk.
Half of people are less than averagely altruistic and impartial and all of them get a vote. Social media, the first truly decentralised mass media, has amplified this fact. Political elites have been bypassed and the standards of humanistic, universalist debate they were schooled to accept, and that progressives were best at, have been replaced with parochialism, slogans and memes. Progressives have to find a vocabulary and a platform somewhere between these two extremes. This is what Obama did. He succeeded electorally by casting his progressive arguments in the cadences of evangelical Christianity and by erring on the 'conservative' side in key areas of policy - e.g. addressing blue collar concerns about illegal immigration (without putting an army of thugs on the streets of cities that hadn't voted for him, it should be noted).
….While issuing decrees like DAPA and DACA that flooded the border and subverted the law.
It is called saying one thing and doing another, and I agree that is the Dems best hope. Worked in Virginia. Problem is getting it to work again once people figure it out
You are critiquing Rosa Luxembourg while Hitler eyes the Sudetenland. From this point on I see it as collaboration. This is an argument either outdated or much much too ahead of it's time. Radically misframed and one clock tick behind the feeling of the country.
Isn't the employment of illegal workers profitable enough that serious deterrence would require that the employers of illegal immigrants be punished with prison, not just fines?
I have an additional suggestion: One of the problems with the current asylum seeker process is that there are not enough judges to evaluate all the cases and this has created a large backlog. I believe that the cases are being processed in chronological order, which results in applicants being in limbo for several years - which makes it attractive to come into the country and get in that very long, slow line.
But what if we reversed the process and started evaluating cases starting with the most recent and then going backwards? If a person knew that coming into the country now and seeking asylum would result in a hearing in days, and not years, there would be less incentive to come in to the country when you know you don't have a valid claim. And if people start self-selecting, just like Noah's recommendation to hold employers to do a better job of screening their hiring, then the reduced influx of new cases will help to start processing the many existing cases.
This may not seem "fair" to our normal belief in the "get in line" way to treat people, but I think the positive result would be worth violating this norm.
Good points. All I see changing, though, is we’ll get candidates who will say normal-sounding things to get elected and then immediately reward the more extreme progressive activists and donors. It is where the money and enthusiasm is. Swing voters just don’t care (or donate) enough. See also: Virginia.
As for asylum, port of entry is not good. The southern border is a port of entry. They should apply at the US consulate in their home country or apply for asylum in the next country they reach (a bordering country to their own). The remain in Mexico policy was a good one. Of course, this would still allow Citizens of Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean countries to apply for asylum at the border or at an airport in the US, as is right. Everyone else can apply at a consulate in their own country or a neighboring country.
Of course, in America we have presidents who rule by decree, so no matter what immigration law we pass it will be trampled on by the next autocrat. You can’t have a working democracy without respect for the law- whether subverting the law by decree (see also Trump, Biden, Obama, GWB) or by mob rule (Minneapolis).
I don’t think we’ll have a working democracy until we get a critical mass of people willing to criticize decrees and mobs launched by their own “side”. Thanks, NS, for being willing to do battle and take some heat.
I think you may underestimate the extent to which working class people in "real America" resent the legal immigration process creating new elites who are seen as other, especially because they aren't Christian. There's real resentment there as well. I say this as the son of a gun range manager in rural Missouri who is also married to a product owner at Pepsi who was born in Punjab.
How do you plan on addressing the anger over the H1-B situation?
I agree with much of this analysis, particularly that Democrats need to avoid turning their opposition to Trump into bathetic nonsense. The Manichean legal/illegal distinction, however, introduces economic (and emotional) inefficiency. If someone is in the country for years and has established a productive life, paying taxes and contributing to the community, rooting them out is stupid. The system has to recognize when a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. The dividing line will have to be arbitrary but it is needed.
>> but they have flouted the American people’s democratic will
Noah, come on, this is fucking bullshit.
The current system is a broken hodgepodge that hasn’t been updated in decades. Its basic structure shares the same DNA as the original 1920’s KKK backlash policy.
When my ancestors came here, they had to wait 3-4 years TOPS. The earliest ones were given Indian land in Missouri by the literal fucking government for their trouble!
It’s fundamentally illegitimate, un-American, and was NEVER a conscious democratic choice made by ANY electorate since the 60’s, let alone by anything remotely fucking resembling today’s electorate, that today’s waiting period is anywhere from 7-27 years.
The only thing being “flouted” is how stupid and immoral the American people are for being ignorant of how long the “line” they’re so mad about people jumping, actually IS.
One thing is for certain. Democrats and progressives bear some responsibility for the s**t show that was the 2024 election and what we are experiencing today. People just didn't like the message. It was repellent to a lot of us, but I voted blue because Trump was an insurrectionist and betrayed his oath. He should never have been allowed to be president again. If we don't all learn the lesson that we need to be just a little less radicalized and absolutist on the left about things then the brown coats will just come back into office. I have no hope for a future where the Republicans become sane. So, it's incumbent for everyone else to counter them.
On a national level it appears the right has captured the populist mantel and will not give it up. Outside of pockets such as NYC, Progressives have no chance to take that away because a lot of their message just doesn't resonate with the broad populace.
It is time to counter position. I am looking towards Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Abigail Spanberger as the possible torch bearers. Let's see how they do.
While I agree that Democrats need to settle on a unified message on immigration, the fact that the Cygnal poll gets the visual while the Gallup poll doesn't, suggests that you are putting your thumb on the scale a bit.
Because the Gallup poll tells a significantly different story than the Cygnal one.
"Please tell me whether you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose each of the following proposals. Deporting all immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home country?"
Favor: (Strongly or regular) Oppose: (Strongly or regular)
2025: 38% vs 59%
2024: 47% vs 51%
2019: 37% vs 61%
2016: 32% vs 62%
Please tell me whether you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose each of the following proposals. Allowing immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time
Favor: (Strongly or regular) Oppose: (Strongly or regular)
2025: 78% vs 21%
2024: 70% vs 30%
2019: 81% vs 18%
2016: 84% vs 15%
This does not show a consensus around "Deport all illegal immigrants regardless of other criminal status."
Somehow, "deport all illegal immigrants now" went from 38% vs. 59% in 2025 to 61% vs. 34% in 2026? Also, this is Cygnal (Who?) vs. Gallup (80+ years in the polling business).
I feel like your basic integrity forced you to link to the Gallup poll, but your sense of what makes a good argument meant that you didn't want to put up the actual Gallup numbers in the main body of the text.
There is a non-trivial cohort of left intellectuals who believe that even criminals are themselves victims of unjust, racist, late-stage capitalist society which drove them to desperation. For them, deporting criminals is basically an evil act that promotes the inhumane system further.
The question is how much influence do ideas like these have on mainstream Democratic politicians and their policies. It is a party with a heavy academic wing which isn't exactly ideologically moderate, so I would say "enough of an influence that it becomes an electoral problem".
Something difficult about this issue in particular is that the general public's knowledge of the immigration system as it actually exists is extremely low. Most people don't interact with the immigration system or understand much about how it works, which means the public makes a lot of baseline assumptions about legal immigration that are just wrong.
Many of the public seem to assume that there exists within our immigration system some "right way" for a person to enter the country. They imagine this way might involve waiting in a line, proving your economic capabilities, or similar,. Many voters with strong opinions on immigration would be deeply surprised at what the actual specifics of legal immigration looks like, how cruel and arbitrary and impossible the system can be for a normal person to navigate even when they do everything right.
I still remember the nightmares I had when going through the system with my immigrant spouse. Years of waiting and expense and planning, punctuated by moments when a random government bureaucrat can decide to tear apart your family for any reason or no reason at all. It was maddening to hear Republicans talk about "Joe Biden's open border" while living through that process, a process few Americans would ever accept if it were visited on them personally.
One reason you see some very strong left-partisans on this issue is because people who actually try to interact with the federal immigration system in good faith often become radicalized against it.
I guess my practical concern here is that the gap between policy and vibes can become very wide when people care deeply about immigration but deal with the system so little in their personal lives. If the Democratic nominee for 2028 runs on Noah's proposed policy, will he actually get any credit on this issue? Or will his Republican opponents simply lie about him and smear his policies as "Open borders" while average joes who don't pay attention to immigration nod along?
Getting rid of the land acknowledgements would certainly be nice. But it's sometimes hard to tell if the policy Democrats propose even matters much at all. Most people don't know or care what the current policy is, they just vaguely dislike foreigners and law-breaking and vote based on vague ideas and vibes.
I think you’re missing a key third plank — a legitimate guest worker program. During the Bush administration, a bipartisan committee came up with a good proposal that ultimately got shot down by Republicans. Honestly, I think because dysfunctional immigration suits their purposes. You cannot get Americans to do certain jobs, like pick peppers. Trust me, I’ve tried. Immigrants don’t take our jobs. They do things nobody else is willing to do. Temporary workers are a win-win. They make a fortune in their eyes. Our economy benefits. And then they go home.
And we have to acknowledge the need for some sort of amnesty program as well. I've always felt that if an illegal immigrant can show that they've been in the country for five years, have committed no crimes (even a parking ticket), have a job and have been paying taxes, and have learned English, then they are "in." The liberal media outlets do immigrants a disservice when reporters interview illegals who have clearly been here awhile but can't speak English. That does not go over well with conservative media consumers.
First: No masks.
Masks are antithetical to the liberal notion of a self-governing citizenry. Moreover, we all learn as toddlers that bad guys wear masks. If you are wearing a mask (whether you are a federal agent or occupying a college quad), ordinary people on both sides are going to think you’re up to no good. Democrats should make “no masks” the rallying cry of any liberal immigration enforcement reforms.
What's discouraging to me is how reasonable the solutions seem to be. America could just do this, or, instead, what it has done: create chaos in its communities. And why on earth haven't employers who hire illegal workers been charged?
because nobody actually wants the economic consequences of doing that. people saying on a poll that they want to deport all illegal immigrants is cheap talk.
Half of people are less than averagely altruistic and impartial and all of them get a vote. Social media, the first truly decentralised mass media, has amplified this fact. Political elites have been bypassed and the standards of humanistic, universalist debate they were schooled to accept, and that progressives were best at, have been replaced with parochialism, slogans and memes. Progressives have to find a vocabulary and a platform somewhere between these two extremes. This is what Obama did. He succeeded electorally by casting his progressive arguments in the cadences of evangelical Christianity and by erring on the 'conservative' side in key areas of policy - e.g. addressing blue collar concerns about illegal immigration (without putting an army of thugs on the streets of cities that hadn't voted for him, it should be noted).
….While issuing decrees like DAPA and DACA that flooded the border and subverted the law.
It is called saying one thing and doing another, and I agree that is the Dems best hope. Worked in Virginia. Problem is getting it to work again once people figure it out
You are critiquing Rosa Luxembourg while Hitler eyes the Sudetenland. From this point on I see it as collaboration. This is an argument either outdated or much much too ahead of it's time. Radically misframed and one clock tick behind the feeling of the country.
You’re nuts
can you explain this opinion more concretely
Burn the witch.
Isn't the employment of illegal workers profitable enough that serious deterrence would require that the employers of illegal immigrants be punished with prison, not just fines?
I have an additional suggestion: One of the problems with the current asylum seeker process is that there are not enough judges to evaluate all the cases and this has created a large backlog. I believe that the cases are being processed in chronological order, which results in applicants being in limbo for several years - which makes it attractive to come into the country and get in that very long, slow line.
But what if we reversed the process and started evaluating cases starting with the most recent and then going backwards? If a person knew that coming into the country now and seeking asylum would result in a hearing in days, and not years, there would be less incentive to come in to the country when you know you don't have a valid claim. And if people start self-selecting, just like Noah's recommendation to hold employers to do a better job of screening their hiring, then the reduced influx of new cases will help to start processing the many existing cases.
This may not seem "fair" to our normal belief in the "get in line" way to treat people, but I think the positive result would be worth violating this norm.
Good points. All I see changing, though, is we’ll get candidates who will say normal-sounding things to get elected and then immediately reward the more extreme progressive activists and donors. It is where the money and enthusiasm is. Swing voters just don’t care (or donate) enough. See also: Virginia.
As for asylum, port of entry is not good. The southern border is a port of entry. They should apply at the US consulate in their home country or apply for asylum in the next country they reach (a bordering country to their own). The remain in Mexico policy was a good one. Of course, this would still allow Citizens of Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean countries to apply for asylum at the border or at an airport in the US, as is right. Everyone else can apply at a consulate in their own country or a neighboring country.
Of course, in America we have presidents who rule by decree, so no matter what immigration law we pass it will be trampled on by the next autocrat. You can’t have a working democracy without respect for the law- whether subverting the law by decree (see also Trump, Biden, Obama, GWB) or by mob rule (Minneapolis).
I don’t think we’ll have a working democracy until we get a critical mass of people willing to criticize decrees and mobs launched by their own “side”. Thanks, NS, for being willing to do battle and take some heat.
I think you may underestimate the extent to which working class people in "real America" resent the legal immigration process creating new elites who are seen as other, especially because they aren't Christian. There's real resentment there as well. I say this as the son of a gun range manager in rural Missouri who is also married to a product owner at Pepsi who was born in Punjab.
How do you plan on addressing the anger over the H1-B situation?
I agree with much of this analysis, particularly that Democrats need to avoid turning their opposition to Trump into bathetic nonsense. The Manichean legal/illegal distinction, however, introduces economic (and emotional) inefficiency. If someone is in the country for years and has established a productive life, paying taxes and contributing to the community, rooting them out is stupid. The system has to recognize when a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. The dividing line will have to be arbitrary but it is needed.
Right on; this essay is right on target and well put together.
>> but they have flouted the American people’s democratic will
Noah, come on, this is fucking bullshit.
The current system is a broken hodgepodge that hasn’t been updated in decades. Its basic structure shares the same DNA as the original 1920’s KKK backlash policy.
When my ancestors came here, they had to wait 3-4 years TOPS. The earliest ones were given Indian land in Missouri by the literal fucking government for their trouble!
It’s fundamentally illegitimate, un-American, and was NEVER a conscious democratic choice made by ANY electorate since the 60’s, let alone by anything remotely fucking resembling today’s electorate, that today’s waiting period is anywhere from 7-27 years.
The only thing being “flouted” is how stupid and immoral the American people are for being ignorant of how long the “line” they’re so mad about people jumping, actually IS.
One thing is for certain. Democrats and progressives bear some responsibility for the s**t show that was the 2024 election and what we are experiencing today. People just didn't like the message. It was repellent to a lot of us, but I voted blue because Trump was an insurrectionist and betrayed his oath. He should never have been allowed to be president again. If we don't all learn the lesson that we need to be just a little less radicalized and absolutist on the left about things then the brown coats will just come back into office. I have no hope for a future where the Republicans become sane. So, it's incumbent for everyone else to counter them.
On a national level it appears the right has captured the populist mantel and will not give it up. Outside of pockets such as NYC, Progressives have no chance to take that away because a lot of their message just doesn't resonate with the broad populace.
It is time to counter position. I am looking towards Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Abigail Spanberger as the possible torch bearers. Let's see how they do.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.