The coming immigration fight

And it isn't between Republicans and Democrats

This is a long note, but it’s an important topic and will be the center of American politics for the next couple of months at least.

About a week ago I saw a tweet/post by Newsweek editor-at-large Josh Hammer along the lines of “If President Trump goes along with amnesty, he’ll be betraying the people who voted for him.” So I invited Josh back to the show and we talked about that (among other things).

I think you’ll find this interesting and timely: Josh Hammer of Newsweek on Whether Work Visas for Illegal Aliens is 'Amnesty'

My take is that while a significant percentage of Trump voters did (and do) support unlimited deportation of illegal immigrants including workplace enforcement at farms, hotels, Home Depot parking lots, etc., many other Trump supporters understood his campaign promises to be focused on deporting illegal alien criminals (meaning having committed serious crimes while in the US) and those who already have orders of removal issued against them — and not a much broader dragnet aimed at removing any illegal alien ICE can find. An unscientific poll of my listeners who voted for Trump had about 1/3 supporting mass deportation of all illegals and about 2/3 supporting intense focus on criminals.

Josh noted multiple polls showing something like 60% of Americans in favor of mass deportation. My response is that those polls were taken before Americans really knew what mass deportation looks like, especially when done in a way to meet a numerical quota rather than with focus on deporting particular types of illegal aliens, i.e. those who have committed crimes.

As I’ve watched this play out, my take has been that following a policy of “every illegal alien should be deported” rather than the sort of prioritization that Trump campaigned on would be a political loser for Republicans even as the MAGA base, amplified on X, cheer out loud.

Also, whether or not ugly scenes of various enforcement actions are very common, the media will replay and amplify them in order to turn the public against at least certain types of enforcement. You might not like that but it will definitely work. Indeed, it already is working.

Before proceeding, I’d note one other thing: I do not believe Donald Trump is anti-immigrant or even really anti-illegal immigrant, though he is clearly (and properly) anti-illegal immigration. What’s the difference? As a builder, Trump knows the importance of immigrant, including illegal immigrant, participation in the work force and also doesn’t begrudge people wanting a better life for themselves and their families. That’s not the same as saying it’s OK to have a porous or open border; in a sense it’s separating individuals from the larger policy question.

Far too many people forget this repeated line of Trump’s:

Thus, I have consistently believed that President Trump is NOT with the folks who want to restrict ALL immigration and not even fully with the folks who want to deport EVERY illegal immigrant.

But just because Trump isn’t quite on board with a particular part of his base doesn’t mean he won’t, at least for a time, act as if he isn’t. For example, there’s no way Trump is as anti-abortion as his base is but he made a promise (and kept it) to nominate Supreme Court justices who would be likely to overturn Roe v Wade. But he would not go along with a Congressional effort (which I don’t expect to see at this point) to pass a federal law to restrict abortion.

Similarly, on immigration, the loudest “deport them all” voices, including Charlie Kirk, the corrupt Steve Bannon, and even Josh Hammer (whom I like a lot), are overestimating Trump’s commitment to their viewpoint and overestimating their influence over him.

So, back to public opinion: I’ve believed for the last couple of months since Trump advisor Stephen Miller apparently ordered a daily deportation quota (which pushed ICE to do raids based on quantity rather than quality of the targets) that the base would cheer…and everybody else would grimace.

That has now shown up in an important poll (that’s getting a lot of attention) from Gallup: Surge in U.S. Concern About Immigration Has Abated

Regarding immigration into the US generally, “the share wanting immigration reduced dropp(ed) from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. At the same time, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.”

When asked, “On the whole, do you think immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for this country today?”, 64% of Republicans say yes, up from 39% a year earlier.

Republicans are a bit schizophrenic on the issue with 77% claiming they support deporting all illegal aliens (down from 84% last year) but 71% supporting a path to citizenship for those illegally brought to the US as children (up from 64% last year.) In fact, 59% of Republicans support some path to citizenship for illegals even if they came as adults (up from 46% last year). I have to say I’m somewhat skeptical of that last data point; it’s difficult for me to imagine well over half of Republicans favoring that sort of broad amnesty.

In any case, you put together Trump’s history as a businessman (who almost certainly used illegal immigrant labor), as a guy who’s VERY focused on the economy and economic growth and on keeping food prices, in particular, under control, and as a guy who understands and values his base but also recognizes larger political trends outside of his base, and it’s not at all surprising that the president is pushing for some sort of work visa program (at least for farms, initially) that would allow farmers to sponsor aka “vouch for” a worker and allow the worker to remain in the country legally in that employment.

The needle they have to thread is simple to understand and difficult to achieve: how to implement a plan like that without the base revolting with crimes of “no amnesty!” as Josh Hammer did that day I saw his post on X.

You can see the dynamic begin to play out in the answers to a reporter’s question during the cabinet meeting last week where Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem emphasized the need for some sort of plan while insisting that there will be no amnesty.

If I were in the Kirk/Bannon/Hammer camp, I’d say that any such plan is amnesty. They view “amnesty” as a bad word and politically, outside of the left wing of the Democratic Party, it functions that way now. (Never misunderestimate the power of language.)

But again, these people likely have less sway over Trump than they think and perhaps don’t understand Trump as well as they think…maybe because he’s so far given them a false sense of security as he used them to corral votes in the 2024 primaries and general election.

I often say — and it’s a line I heard but didn’t come up with myself — that “leaders don’t follow polls; they change them.” Trump has been very good at this and on no issue more than immigration. After all, when he ran for president in 2016, immigration was initially not in the top issues that voters cared about. He changed that; he made it a key issue, sold himself as the answer, and won the election.

While Trump won’t be running for re-election again, he does have to worry about the midterms with history suggesting that Democrats will retake the house. But history doesn’t always repeat and Trump does not want to be the lamest of lame ducks just two years into this term, facing a Democratic House that will not give him a win on anything important even if theoretically they would agree with him. Thus, Trump must care about swing-district elections and in those places the most aggressive immigration enforcement is a liability not an asset.

A plan that allows some illegals, who work hard, have been here for years, and haven’t committed serious crimes, to stay, is a political winner, at least to the extent that there remain any swing voters in this country. Furthermore, Trump is very much motivated by a strong economy (despite his harmful tariff policies) and understands implicitly that deporting millions of current workers will hurt growth and tax revenue, as noted in a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: Declining immigration weighs on GDP growth, with little impact on inflation

I expect Trump to spend more time trying to convince the folks I’ve named earlier that his plan isn’t amnesty. It won’t work. The question then will be whether those folks will aggressively criticize Trump in ways that would depress turnout of the base in the midterms (though the Trump base aren’t reliable midterm voters anyway) and hand the House to the Dems because Trump isn’t pure enough for them on immigration enforcement. Do MAGA influencers whose livings come from their association with Trump want him to be blaming them next November for Dems taking the House (or, much less likely, the Senate)? Naaaah.

Finally, the other error that major MAGA influencers seem to be making repeatedly is to believe that their Trump-supporting followers value the influencers’ opinions as much as (or more than) Trump’s decisions. That is sheer folly on their part.

These MAGA folks like the influencers because the influencers support their man. If the influencers diverge from Trump, the risk is MUCH more to the influencers than to Trump. MAGA voters will stick with Trump. I think Charlie Kirk, at least, knows this. He will find a way to rationalize what Trump is doing in order to not lose followers, influence, and revenue. (This is just what he did when Trump attacked Iran.) Because Trump has the power to change opinion among the base; the influencers, much to their chagrin, will soon realize that they really don’t.