False Assumption Registry

Border Surge Not Key Voter Issue

False Assumption: A surge at the border from lax immigration policies would not be an important issue to most voters, and stronger enforcement would alienate Latino and progressive voters.

Summaries Written by FARAgent (AI) on February 25, 2026 · Pending Verification

For years, many Democratic strategists and liberal commentators treated the border as a noisy issue, not a decisive one. The working belief was familiar: most voters cared more about jobs, health care, abortion, and democracy than about migrant numbers at the Rio Grande, and a harsh turn on enforcement would repel Latino voters, younger progressives, and suburban moderates who disliked Trump-style politics. That view did not come from nowhere. After the backlash to family separation and "kids in cages," a more humane line looked both morally safer and politically smarter. It also fit older electoral theories, including the idea that demographic change would reward a party seen as welcoming rather than punitive.

Warnings came early. Even before Biden took office, reports noted that rolling back Trump restrictions could trigger a new surge, but many insiders seem to have assumed the politics would remain manageable. Then the numbers climbed. Encounters at the border doubled and kept rising; shelters, border stations, and later big-city systems in places like New York and Chicago came under visible strain. By 2024, Gallup and other polls found immigration and the border near the top of the "most important problem" list, and some post-election analyses argued that anger over illegal immigration helped Trump with working-class voters, including some voters of color.

The case for the old assumption has not vanished. Some researchers and immigration advocates argue that migration flows were driven heavily by conditions abroad, that deterrence policies often fail or backfire, and that Biden did not simply "cause" the crisis by changing the tone in Washington. They also note that Latino opinion is not uniformly restrictionist or permissive, and that progressive voters can punish leaders who embrace crackdowns. Still, growing evidence suggests the old confidence, that a border surge would not matter much politically and that tougher enforcement was mainly an electoral liability, is increasingly questioned in both the United States and Britain. The debate now is less about whether voters notice, and more about how much policy can change the flows and which coalition pays the price.

Status: A small but growing and influential group of experts think this was false
People Involved
  • Joseph R. Biden Jr. entered the 2020 transition convinced that a more humane approach to unauthorized immigrants would restore America's moral standing without becoming a major political liability. As president-elect he received repeated briefings from his own immigration experts warning that pledges to reverse Trump-era restrictions would trigger a surge in crossings. Biden seemed to grasp the risk yet took no steps to add deterrents before Inauguration Day. The predicted chaos arrived on schedule and immigration became a dominant issue in his approval ratings. By late 2024 the same warnings were cited in retrospectives on how his administration lost public faith in border policy. [4][1]
  • Ron Klain, Biden's first chief of staff, joined senior strategists Mike Donilon, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, and Anita Dunn in the belief that stronger enforcement would alienate Latino and progressive voters. These longtime Democratic operatives judged the scale of likely migration manageable and the political backlash overstated. They steered the White House away from early deterrent measures that transition experts had recommended. The result was two years of steadily rising encounters before any serious course correction. Their reading of voter priorities shaped the administration's initial posture on the border. [1]
  • Steve Sailer published a November 2000 VDARE column that used exit-poll data to argue George W. Bush needed more white votes for a comfortable Electoral College win rather than chasing unreliable Hispanic volume. The piece was dismissed by Republican strategists as fringe demographic alarmism. Sailer kept returning to the numbers showing that California's demographic shift had locked in one-party rule without delivering the expected national payoff for outreach. His warnings remained outside the mainstream conservative consensus for two decades. [3]
  • Pete Wilson was the California Republican governor who in 1994 campaigned against state subsidies for illegal immigration despite being down 20 points in the polls. He won by 15 points after making the issue central. The victory was treated by national GOP strategists as a regional anomaly rather than evidence that restrictionist messaging could succeed with working-class voters. Wilson became a cautionary tale cited for years as proof that tough enforcement was electoral poison. [3]
▶ Supporting Quotes (41)
“Mr. Biden seemed to grasp the risk. But he and his top aides failed to act on those recommendations.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“Mr. Biden and his circle of close confidants — including Ron Klain, who was chief of staff during the president’s first two years, Mike Donilon, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Anita Dunn — made two crucial errors. First, they underestimated the scale of migration that was coming. Second, they failed to appreciate the political reaction to that migration — believing that stronger enforcement would alienate Latino and progressive voters”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
““Denmark’s Social Democrats have gone down what I would call a hardcore approach to immigration,” “They’ve adopted many of the talking points of what we would call the far right.””— British Labour Government Considers Danish Social Democratic Government's Anti-Immigration Policies
“Shabana Mahmood sent officials to Denmark to study its immigration system. At the Labour conference in September, Mahmood promised to “do whatever it takes” to regain control of Britain’s borders.”— British Labour Government Considers Danish Social Democratic Government's Anti-Immigration Policies
“Karl Rove’s Republican Brain Trust, egged on by their Democratic and media friends, repeatedly explained: Sure, the GOP would lose votes with every immigrant let in, but the Republicans would make up for it on volume.”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“you wouldn’t want to be like California Republican governor Pete Wilson in 1994 (who came from twenty points behind in the polls to win by fifteen by campaigning against subsidizing illegal immigration)”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“On November 28, 2000, while the Bush and Gore campaigns were still arguing over hanging chads in Florida, Sailer wrote a blog post. Citing exit-poll data, he demonstrated that if Bush had increased his share of the white vote by just 3 percent—if 57 percent of white Americans had voted for him, rather than 54 percent—he would have won in a landslide.”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“Mr. Biden seemed to grasp the risk. But he and his top aides failed to act on those recommendations.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“Mr. Biden seemed to grasp the risk. But he and his top aides failed to act on those recommendations.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“Former Biden administration officials told The Times that Mr. Biden and his circle of close confidants — including Ron Klain, who was chief of staff during the president’s first two years, Mike Donilon, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Anita Dunn — made two crucial errors.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“experts advising his transition team warned in a Zoom briefing in the final weeks of 2020, according to people with direct knowledge of that briefing. That jump, they said, could provoke a political crisis. “Chaos” was the word the advisers had used in a memo during the campaign.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“In a new working paper that draws on detailed data from Customs and Border Protection, we show that new restrictions on border crossings under both Biden and Trump had little immediate effect.”— Fact Checking the “Success” of Trump Border Patrol Policies
“Biden removed or expelled 3.3 million border crossers—three times as many as Trump. Biden even managed to remove a similar percentage of crossers as Trump’s four years.”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
“Mr. Biden seemed to grasp the risk. But he and his top aides failed to act on those recommendations.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“experts advising his transition team warned in a Zoom briefing in the final weeks of 2020, according to people with direct knowledge of that briefing.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“Former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and his allies are arguing for the return of the policy, practically describing it as a magic wand that will restore order to the border.”— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“Stephen Miller, a Trump senior advisor, told The New York Times a new order could be based on “severe strains of the flu, tuberculosis, scabies, other respiratory illnesses like RSV and so on, or just a general issue of mass migration being a public-health threat and conveying a variety of communicable diseases.””— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“The bureaucratic charge was led in 1976 by the Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Leonard F. Chapman, who published an article in Reader’s Digest entitled "Illegal Aliens: Time to Call a Halt!", warning Americans that a new "silent invasion" was threatening the nation: When I became commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in 1973, we were out-manned, under-budgeted, and confronted by a growing, silent invasion of illegal aliens.”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
““The horrible situation we see today when it comes to immigration in America was created by Donald Trump by executive order,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said in an interview. “The good news is what is done by executive order can be undone by executive order. So we are setting out to get back to a stable, thoughtful system of immigration.””— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“President-elect Joe Biden will take office under pressure to repudiate and rescind many, if not most, of the more than 400 executive actions President Trump has used to tighten the U.S. immigration system.”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“someone who views immigrants as a benefit to the nation — the complete opposite of Trump’s view.”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
““Just doing away with it will invite chaos,” said Rodolfo Karisch, who retired in January as the chief of the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector in South Texas.”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
““It’ll be a matter of managing expectations,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “Biden will have to say: We intend to do this, but we have to do it well so that we don’t re-create horrid conditions at the border.”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“In the pick of Alejandro Mayorkas to head DHS, Biden found someone who touched all bases. A Jewish Cuban immigrant with prior service at not only the DHS but as head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Mayorkas is a minority, loyal, experienced and a known commodity to the activists clamoring for a re-write of the last four years of progress.”— What a Glimpse of Biden’s Cabinet Tells Us About His Immigration Policy
““The refugee program is also an important tool of American foreign policy and has enhanced our global standing and security,” wrote Blinken in a 2018 New York Times op-ed that ended by warning that “if Mr. Trump effectively shuts down the refugee program, he will be plunging the world — and Americans with it — into greater darkness.””— What a Glimpse of Biden’s Cabinet Tells Us About His Immigration Policy
“Andrea Egan, the general secretary of Unison, the biggest Labour-affiliated union, called on Friday for the government to change course and defend “migrants and refugees” after the party came third behind Reform UK in Gorton and Denton, Greater Manchester.”— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
“Diane Abbott, the independent MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, told the Guardian that Labour should “turn to more progressive policies on issues such as immigration and asylum”.”— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
“Mahmood insisted on Friday that Labour would push on with the changes: “The levels of illegal migration are putting immense strain on our country, and our public services – creating division within communities across the country.”— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
“We at HIAS know Secretary Mayorkas well, and can attest to his leadership and his strong character, and all he has done to protect the homeland, including the security of the Jewish community,” said HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield.”— Jewish Organizations Unite Against Dangerous Conspiracies
““This guy was vetted by both the Biden and Trump administrations, and that’s not the issue here, the vetting. Nothing failed with the vetting,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac”— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
““You have to take a broader view that this is a president that has a documented history of using tragedies, using external developments, using things like the pandemic as pretext to pursue specific ends when it comes to immigration,” said Jorge Loweree, managing director at the American Immigration Council.”— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
““They’re putting all these hundreds of thousands of people in limbo because of the action of one person, and that doesn’t do anything to improve our national security,” she said.”— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
“In the Hispanic Caucus speech, Biden touted his “policies that process [inadmissible aliens] in a fair and fast way”—which is to say only one way: into the U.S.”— The BorderLine: Boggled by Biden’s Border Crisis? Relax, AOC Is in Charge
“First, she wants more of your federal tax dollars for cities to house, feed, and educate the millions pouring through Biden’s open border. Second, she wants Biden to grant work authorizations to illegal immigrants jumping the line in front of those waiting to come legally. Third, she wants Biden to “extend” Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans”— The BorderLine: Boggled by Biden’s Border Crisis? Relax, AOC Is in Charge
“Political experts John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira convincingly use hard data -- demographic, geographic, economic, and political -- to forecast the dawn of a new progressive era.”— The Emerging Democratic Majority
“At a rally this week in Madison Square Garden, Donald Trump asked for what he calls his “favorite chart” to be beamed onto the giant screens.”— Essay | How the Democrats Bungled the Politics of Immigration
“Kirk rejects without explanation putting a moratorium on immigration. Rather than restrict immigration to reverse the trend, Kirk endorses the survival “strategy” endorsed recently by Yoni Applebaum at The Atlantic: Republicans must reject “anti-immigrant” stances and instead do more to reach minority demographics.”— What Is Conservatism, Inc. Actually Conserving?
“For conservatives to embrace gay marriage is not an intuitive position by any means, but Kirk and his boosters have done exactly that, denouncing those with questions about this development as “homophobes.””— What Is Conservatism, Inc. Actually Conserving?
“77% of Trump supporters ranking it as one of their top three issues, compared to just 14% of Harris supporters”— How immigration swung voters of color to Trump
“It involves this column he co-authored with Tory Gavito, one of the founders of Way to Win.”— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
“You and your colleagues have been railing nonstop about how dangerous Donald Trump is, about how antidemocratic and racist he is, and how much of a threat to vulnerable people he is.”— On—Deep Breath—Donald Trump And “Gender Queer” And Parker Molloy And Chris Geidner And Matt Yglesias
Organizations Involved

The Biden Administration inherited detailed transition memos urging modest deterrent measures to prevent a border surge. It rebuffed those recommendations and proceeded with rapid reversal of Trump policies on asylum, wall construction, and Remain in Mexico. Officials continued to frame stronger enforcement as likely to alienate key Democratic constituencies. The result was a sustained increase in encounters that strained cities from the Rio Grande Valley to New York and Denver. Internal reviews later catalogued the missed early warnings. [1][4]

Denmark's Social Democratic government faced rising asylum claims and a populist challenge in the mid-2010s. It responded with temporary refugee status, tight family reunification rules, and explicit rejection of permanent settlement for most arrivals. Asylum claims fell to a 40-year low while the far-right remained marginal. British Labour officials later traveled to Copenhagen to study the model after their own byelection setbacks. The Danish experience became an awkward data point for those who had insisted tough enforcement would empower the right. [2]

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1973 began framing undocumented migration as a silent invasion that required more agents and funding. Commissioner Leonard F. Chapman published a widely read Reader's Digest article that helped secure bureaucratic resources. The agency and its successors spent the next four decades expanding enforcement infrastructure on the assumption that tougher controls would reduce flows. The undocumented population nevertheless grew from roughly three million in 1986 to twelve million by 2008. [12]

Way to Win, a progressive donor collaborative, produced a post-2024 election report arguing that Democrats lost because they had not been sufficiently populist on economic issues for working-class voters of all races. The group maintained that immigration and cultural questions were secondary and that the party's error lay in insufficient focus on the wealthy. Its analysis circulated among nonprofit networks that had helped shape the Democratic agenda. [30]

▶ Supporting Quotes (23)
“a New York Times examination of Mr. Biden’s record found that he and his closest advisers repeatedly rebuffed recommendations that could have addressed the border crisis faster”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“Denmark has a Social Democratic government and one of the smallest far right parties in Europe, precisely because its moderate politicians have decided that democracy means giving the people what they want.”— British Labour Government Considers Danish Social Democratic Government's Anti-Immigration Policies
“a New York Times examination of Mr. Biden’s record found that he and his closest advisers repeatedly rebuffed recommendations that could have addressed the border crisis faster”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“the American establishment’s standpoint on immigration policy had drifted not exactly into Open Bordersism, but into anti-anti-Open Borderism: any American who wanted to do anything to violate the sacred right of any of the other 8 billion Earthlings from moving to the United States is probably a vicious racist”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“Several recent retrospectives in the New York Times are the latest in a line of pieces cataloguing the Biden administration’s costly mistakes at the border.”— Fact Checking the “Success” of Trump Border Patrol Policies
“data obtained by the Cato Institute through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) challenges this narrative.”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
“his positions threatened to drastically increase border crossings, experts advising his transition team warned”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“It took CBP officials on average 15 minutes to process an encountered migrant under Title 42.”— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“In March 2020, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an order under Title 42 of the U.S. Code allowing for the quick expulsion of migrants because of “a serious danger of the introduction of COVID-19.””— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“The bureaucratic charge was led in 1976 by the Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Leonard F. Chapman”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“we argue theoretically that border enforcement emerged as a policy response to a moral panic about the perceived threat of Latino immigration to the United States propounded by self-interested bureaucrats, politicians, and pundits who sought to mobilize political and material resources for their own benefit.”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“Navigating between activists’ demands for a total rejection of Trump’s policies and the complex reality at the border”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“Mayorkas is a minority, loyal, experienced and a known commodity to the activists clamoring for a re-write of the last four years of progress.”— What a Glimpse of Biden’s Cabinet Tells Us About His Immigration Policy
“Senior Labour sources insisted that the home secretary would continue to roll out changes to asylum policy, dismissing as “plain wrong” claims that it would further alienate Muslim voters.”— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
“The statement was organized by Jewish Council for Public Affairs and signatories include HIAS, Ameinu, Democratic Majority for Israel, Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), Jewish Labor Committee, J Street, Jewish Women International, Keshet, National Council of Jewish Women...”— Jewish Organizations Unite Against Dangerous Conspiracies
““You have to take a broader view that this is a president that has a documented history of using tragedies, using external developments, using things like the pandemic as pretext to pursue specific ends when it comes to immigration,” said Jorge Loweree, managing director at the American Immigration Council.”— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
““They’re just going taking this one very tragic incident and expanding it … just using it as an excuse to do what they’ve always intended to do and go after individuals from, as the president said, Third World countries.””— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
“Biden’s DHS announced not only an 18-month extension of Temporary Protected Status for the 180,000 Venezuelans already in the program, but a legally dubious expansion of the status to include nearly half a million more who have arrived since”— The BorderLine: Boggled by Biden’s Border Crisis? Relax, AOC Is in Charge
“As Kirk and his allies see it, the Fuentes fans, who call themselves “groypers,” have been trying to “hijack” campus conservatism by injecting “white nationalism” into the debate.”— What Is Conservatism, Inc. Actually Conserving?
“Way to Win, which bills itself as “a donor collaborative that invests in data-driven strategies to fund new media and grassroots efforts to win long-term political change.””— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
“Way to Win is embedded in a network of “the groups” Adam Jentleson mentioned... They “tend to be nonprofit organizations dedicated to advancing a single issue or set of related issues that they often hope to get on the Democrats’ agenda,””— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
““In Zapata, however, these questions have been met with mild chuckles to outright frustration. The shift, residents and scholars of the region say, shouldn’t be surprising if, instead of thinking in terms of ethnic identity, you consider the economic and cultural issues that are specific to the people who live there.””— On—Deep Breath—Donald Trump And “Gender Queer” And Parker Molloy And Chris Geidner And Matt Yglesias
“the serial incompetence of mainstream economists in analysing immigration... For part of their incompetence is utterly failing to produce useful models of the capacities of economies and societies to absorb immigrants.”— Net Zero + Mass Immigration => National Populism
The Foundation

Biden insiders entered 2021 convinced that a border surge would not register as a top concern for most voters and that stronger enforcement would alienate Latino and progressive constituencies. The belief seemed credible after years of elite interaction with immigration activists who framed any restriction as xenophobic. Ordinary Latino polling later showed substantial support for greater border control, yet the assumption continued to guide early White House strategy. [1]

The notion that restrictive policies would hand victories to the far right drew strength from the 2015 Danish experience when right-wing parties gained on the immigration issue. Social Democrats responded by adopting tougher rules on temporary status and family reunification. Asylum claims dropped sharply, the far right stayed contained, and the Danish model became the subject of quiet study by other center-left governments. [2]

Economic explanations for anti-immigration sentiment centered on the belief that newcomers depressed wages and increased inequality for low-skilled natives. Labor-market studies appeared to support this channel. Subsequent cross-national work found that cultural and group-identity concerns often predicted backlash more reliably than pocketbook effects, even in places where immigrants were net fiscal contributors. [6]

The assumption that border policy itself drives migration flows rested on timelines that aligned Trump restrictions with lower crossings and Biden's inauguration with the surge. Detailed enforcement data showed only modest immediate effects from major policy changes. Labor demand, global information flows, and regional instability proved stronger correlates of encounter levels. [7][9]

▶ Supporting Quotes (35)
“and also that a border surge would not be an important issue to most voters.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“believing that stronger enforcement would alienate Latino and progressive voters”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“In 2015, the country had a centre-left government in trouble and a right-wing populist party surging in the polls, with immigration increasingly worrying voters. Downing Street is interested in how a centre-left party managed to defeat the Danish People’s Party”— British Labour Government Considers Danish Social Democratic Government's Anti-Immigration Policies
“In the Electoral College, to be precise. In 2000, Bush lost narrowly in a number of northern Rust Belt states like Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, so if he had only performed three percentage points better among whites in every state, he would have cruised to an Electoral College landslide of 367 to 171 instead of squeaking to his notoriously thin edge.”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“the bipartisan consensus that the only way the Republicans could possibly win another presidential election was via amnesty for illegal aliens and other immigration-boosting devices.”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“Mr. Biden had pledged to treat unauthorized immigrants more humanely than President Donald J. Trump, who generated widespread backlash by separating migrant children from their parents.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“One recurrent worry among natives is that immigrants may drag down salaries, especially at the lower end of the income distribution, possibly also increasing inequality.”— The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
“Even though immigration as a whole is economically beneficial to receiving countries (Dustmann and Preston, 2019), immigrants may compete with natives for jobs.”— The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
“Not only natives over-estimate the size of the immigrant community; they also believe that immigrants are poorer, less skilled, and culturally or ethnically more distant than they actually are.”— The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
“believing that stronger enforcement would alienate Latino and progressive voters... most Hispanic ethnic activists that Biden insiders know are racist anti-whites. Klain, Dunn, and the Donilons don’t interact with ordinary Latino voters”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“Democratic elites have come to assume that all people on earth have a civil right, as embedded in the Zeroth Amendment engraved on the Statue of Liberty by Founding Father Emma Lazarus, to move to the United States if they really want to.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“the Biden-era spike in border crossings started before Biden took office and ended before he left office”— Fact Checking the “Success” of Trump Border Patrol Policies
“Americans like to assume that our border policy drives migration, and not the other way around.”— Fact Checking the “Success” of Trump Border Patrol Policies
“Many believe Biden caused this increase in migration by reducing border enforcement. However, data obtained by the Cato Institute through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) challenges this narrative.”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
“Expulsions did not deter migrants, even among demographics universally expelled. The percentage increase in evasions of Border Patrol increased as much as Border Patrol arrests, implying that releases did not cause the crisis”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
“Mr. Biden had pledged to treat unauthorized immigrants more humanely than President Donald J. Trump, who generated widespread backlash by separating migrant children from their parents.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“Arrivals at the southwest border slowed in the early days of Title 42’s use, likely due to it acting as an early deterrent as well as general pandemic-related travel restrictions worldwide. However migrant encounters began increasing in May 2020, less than two months after the order’s imposition, and have remained high ever since.”— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“The logic of using enhanced border enforcement as a strategy for immigration control was laid out by Todaro and Maruszko (1987), who drew upon neoclassical economics to conceptualize migration as a cost-benefit decision... In theory, then, enhanced border enforcement works by raising the costs of migration enough to offset an expected earnings gain”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“Chavez (2001, 2008) has documented the steady rise of what he calls the “Latino Threat Narrative” in the U.S. media from the 1970s through the 1990s... illegal migrants, Mexicans, and Latinos general have now come to occupy the low-warmth/low-competence quadrant of disgust in American social cognition”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“The horrible situation we see today when it comes to immigration in America was created by Donald Trump by executive order”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“the party came third behind Reform UK in Gorton and Denton, Greater Manchester.”— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
“This uses the rhetoric of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory — which states that Jewish people favor liberal immigration laws in order to “replace” native-born citizens.”— Jewish Organizations Unite Against Dangerous Conspiracies
“We have had two lengthy ecclesial documents on the subject: the 1990 note of the Ecclesial Commission “Justice and Peace,” titled, People of Different Cultures: From Conflict to Solidarity; and the 1993 Pastoral Guidelines of the Episcopal Commission for Migration, titled, I Was a Stranger and You Welcomed Me. Both documents—very extensive and analytical—are above all (and rightly) aimed at building and spreading a “culture of welcome” in Christianity. The studies, though, lack a bit of realism”— Cardinal Giacomo Biffi: On Immigration
“He was vetted by counterterrorism authorities and had received what is known as chief-of-mission approval, verifying his work for U.S. forces as part of the process to gain a green card.”— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
“Biden also claimed he’d directed his staff to make “historic increases in the number of refugees admitted from Latin America.” He may believe he did, but the number admitted last year from around the entire world through the formal U.S. Refugee Admissions Program was a paltry 25,000.”— The BorderLine: Boggled by Biden’s Border Crisis? Relax, AOC Is in Charge
“In five well-researched chapters and a new afterword covering the 2002 elections, Judis and Teixeira show how the most dynamic and fastest-growing areas of the country are cultivating a new wave of Democratic voters who embrace what the authors call "progressive centrism"”— The Emerging Democratic Majority
“With bold type and bright colors, it shows the dramatic rise in illegal border crossings into the U.S. over the past four years.”— Essay | How the Democrats Bungled the Politics of Immigration
“The chart fails to note that the increase in illegal border crossings began in the last months of Trump’s presidency, but the trend is unmistakable”— Essay | How the Democrats Bungled the Politics of Immigration
“it’s up double digits from 63% five years ago in February 2019.”— Fox News Poll: Voters say the US-Mexico border is a big problem
“Kirk acknowledges that the demographic shifts concerning the America Firsters are real and that leftists are celebrating those changes. But Kirk ends up backing the leftist premise that such demographic shifts are inevitable.”— What Is Conservatism, Inc. Actually Conserving?
“Respondents were presented with two options, both larded to the gills with partisan buzzwords. One option was the “lefty” choice and one was the “righty” choice. That’s a major confound”— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
“Inclusive populism is a worldview that makes it clear where the real problems in the country are coming from: a wealthy class leveraging a rigged economy that has taken $79 trillion from the bottom 90%, vs. too many immigrants coming here or trans rights going too far.”— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
““Treating Latinos as a monolith.” “Ascribing Trump’s success in South Texas to his campaign winning more of “the Latino vote” makes the same mistake as the Democrats did in this election: Treating Latinos as a monolith.””— On—Deep Breath—Donald Trump And “Gender Queer” And Parker Molloy And Chris Geidner And Matt Yglesias
“Mass prosperity rests on cheap energy: that is much more important than, for instance, free trade. The Industrial Revolution is really the Mass Access To Cheap Energy Revolution. ... by 1850 the average English person has at his or her disposal more than ten times the amount of moveable, deployable fuel energy per person used by the rest of the world’s population.”— Net Zero + Mass Immigration => National Populism
“All the experienced costs of mass immigration—higher rents and house prices; increased congestion; downward pressure on wages and increased fiscal stress (if importing significant numbers of low-capital/skill immigrants); downward pressure on social trust and corrosive effects on the norms and rules that underpin institutions (if importing lots of people from very different cultures); increased crime (if importing significant numbers of people from higher crime cultures)—are then magnified.”— Net Zero + Mass Immigration => National Populism
How It Spread

The American establishment's prejudice against restrictionists labeled realistic demographic analysis as white nationalism and kept it outside respectable discourse. This framing spread through elite media, academic circles, and campaign strategy sessions that treated enforcement advocates as racists. The Great Awokening of the late 2010s reinforced the view among younger staffers that humane policy carried little political downside. [1]

British Labour MPs and affiliated unions denounced the Danish Social Democrats for adopting what they called far-right talking points on temporary status and family reunification. Media coverage amplified the charge that such measures alienated Muslim and progressive voters. Polling after a difficult byelection showed majority support for the tougher approach even among Labour and Green voters. [2][17]

National media from the 1970s onward increased use of words such as crisis, flood, and invasion when describing Mexican immigration. The coverage helped shift public opinion toward greater concern and provided politicians with language that mobilized voters. Self-interested actors on both sides of the aisle found the narrative useful for fundraising and attention. [12]

Books such as The Emerging Democratic Majority portrayed demographic change as an inevitable and largely positive force for progressive politics. The analysis influenced Democratic resource allocation toward growing suburbs and immigrant communities. Later elections showed limits to that realignment when working-class voters of multiple races moved toward restrictionist messaging. [23]

▶ Supporting Quotes (34)
“the American establishment’s standpoint on immigration policy had drifted not exactly into Open Bordersism, but into anti-anti-Open Borderism: any American who wanted to do anything to violate the sacred right of any of the other 8 billion Earthlings from moving to the United States is probably a vicious racist”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“But some in her party are against going down the Danish route, with one left-wing Labour MP saying it was too “hardcore” and contained echoes of the far right.”— British Labour Government Considers Danish Social Democratic Government's Anti-Immigration Policies
“By Sailer’s lights, this meant that Republicans should drop their disingenuous platitudes and campaign openly as a white-identity party.”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“Sailer and other far-right heretics, many of whom Buckley had banished to the fringes of the movement years earlier, now reconvened online. They built their own publications (The American Conservative, Taki’s Magazine, VDARE), and promoted them using new tools such as WordPress and Twitter and Reddit.”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“experts advising his transition team warned in a Zoom briefing in the final weeks of 2020, according to people with direct knowledge of that briefing.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“Currently, 57% of Republicans, up from 37% in January, say immigration is the top problem. Independents show a modest uptick, from 16% in January to 22% now... Residents of the East (36%) and South (31%) are more likely to say immigration is the biggest U.S. problem”— Immigration Surges to Top of Most Important Problem List
“One explanation for why natives hold distorted views is that the media and political entrepreneurs shape voters’ beliefs by increasing the salience of immigration and the fear of diversity, in order to gain political support.”— The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
“at least in recent times, anti-immigration sentiments are channeled towards support for right-wing parties. Since voters most likely to suffer from immigrants’ competition are unskilled, and because right-wing parties have historically been associated with lower redistribution, this pattern cannot be reconciled with a simple economic story”— The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
“Biden’s dull old moderate Democrat advisers were influenced by the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, as embodied in their younger advisers, to push policies that would seem nuts in either 2011 or 2025.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“It was only in 2001 when the new Republican president got to the left of the NYT on immigration that it switched to being pro-amnesty. And it was only after being financially bailed out by Mexican monopolist Carlos Slim in early 2009 that the NYT became viciously anti-realist on immigration.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“If there’s one thing that Democrats and Republicans agree on, it’s that Trump deserves credit for closing the southern border—and that the Biden administration is to blame for the mass border crossings of 2021–2023.”— Fact Checking the “Success” of Trump Border Patrol Policies
“The prevailing narrative that blames Biden overlooks the real causes of the crisis”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
““Chaos” was the word the advisers had used in a memo during the campaign.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“One year after the use of Title 42 was ended and amid ongoing record encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, some politicians are expressing nostalgia for the public-health authority. Even some congressional Democrats have pointed to the discontinuation of Title 42 as one reason for the current border morass.”— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“Massey and Pren (2012a) likewise found that newspaper mentions of Mexican immigration as a crisis, flood, or invasion rose in tandem with border apprehensions from 1965 to 1979, pushing public opinion in a more conservative, anti-immigrant direction”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“The rise of illegal migration created a golden opportunity for self-interested actors to engage in the systematic framing of illegal migrants as criminals, portraying them as neither warm nor competent”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“The Biden campaign’s immigration proposals are loaded with the wish-list items of immigration advocates and Democratic activists.”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“In his naming his choices to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the State Department, Biden has established a tone that is distinctly anti-Trump and pro-mass immigration.”— What a Glimpse of Biden’s Cabinet Tells Us About His Immigration Policy
“Conventional centre-right politicians have, again and again, taken their cue from economists and treated immigration as an economic issue—when it is so much a cultural one. This is why such politicians have, again and again, proved to be incompetent at cultural politics and been pushed aside by national populists.”— Individualism and cooperation: I
“If your default view of immigration is that it is about humans, treated as interchangeable widgets (“economic agents”), moving between societies—societies that are conceived as free-floating arenas for transactions, where efficiency is overwhelmingly the dominant concern—then the immigrant absorption capacity issue seldom arises.”— Individualism and cooperation: I
“despite calls for a reversal from unions and left-leaning Labour MPs after the Green party’s byelection victory.”— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
“The statement highlights the danger of the language of “invasion” and “replacement” used by House members involved in proceedings against Secretary Mayorkas.”— Jewish Organizations Unite Against Dangerous Conspiracies
““[It’s a] colossal waste of resources. Refugees are already vetted to the fullest extent before they get here, and every person who’s a non-citizen or in a temporary status here is continually vetted when they’re here.””— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
“In a Sept. 24 “Face the Nation” interview, she praised Biden for the additional protected status for Venezuelans, saying this would allow them to support themselves by working legally.”— The BorderLine: Boggled by Biden’s Border Crisis? Relax, AOC Is in Charge
“ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR AND A WINNER OF THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY'S ANNUAL POLITICAL BOOK AWARD”— The Emerging Democratic Majority
““Look at that, it rises faster than an Elon Musk rocket ship,” he said to the cheering crowd.”— Essay | How the Democrats Bungled the Politics of Immigration
“Some 8 in 10 voters say Congress is to blame for a lack of action”— Fox News Poll: Voters say the US-Mexico border is a big problem
“The groypers have been showing up to Kirk’s events to air their grievances about the failures of mainstream conservatism and its wholesale embrace of the LGBT+ agenda and mass migration.”— What Is Conservatism, Inc. Actually Conserving?
“82% of Trump supporters say it is very important to their vote in the 2024 election, up 21 points from 2020”— Immigration attitudes and the 2024 election
“According to The New Republic (which got exclusive access to an early copy), the report reveals “the Real Reason Democrats Lost in 2024.””— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
“This is exactly how lefty weirdos on Bluesky discuss these issues. It’s the laziest, most transparent attempt at derailing.”— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
““It’s the national media that uses ‘Latino.’ It bundles us up with Florida, Doral, Miami. But those places are different than South Texas, and South Texas is different than Los Angeles.””— On—Deep Breath—Donald Trump And “Gender Queer” And Parker Molloy And Chris Geidner And Matt Yglesias
“elite politics is dominated by performative status games. One is a Good and Very Serious Person by affirming the correct narratives. ... Mainstream journalists, government bureaucrats, advocacy non-profits, academe—these social milieus are all pervaded by such narratives.”— Net Zero + Mass Immigration => National Populism
“conventional centre-right politicians to either adhere to, or pander to, those elite status games. This particularly applies to politicians obsessed by getting mainstream media coverage.”— Net Zero + Mass Immigration => National Populism
Resulting Policies

The Biden administration in its first weeks reversed several Trump-era border measures including the Migrant Protection Protocols and construction of the border wall. Officials acted on the belief that these steps fulfilled campaign pledges without risking a sustained surge. Migrant encounters doubled within a year and continued climbing. [13][4]

Title 42, originally issued by the CDC in March 2020 under Trump, permitted rapid expulsion of nearly three million migrants without standard asylum processing. The policy was retained for more than two years under Biden before ending in May 2023. Recidivism rates rose sharply during its use because it blocked asylum claims and allowed immediate retries. [10]

From 1986 to 2008 Congress and successive administrations increased Border Patrol staffing fivefold, patrol hours fourfold, and funding twentyfold. The buildup rested on the assumption that higher enforcement would deter future flows. The undocumented population grew substantially during the same period and circular migration patterns gave way to settled communities across all fifty states. [12]

Labour's post-byelection asylum reforms in Britain included temporary refugee status and extended waits for permanent leave to remain. The measures drew internal party criticism that they echoed far-right rhetoric and would alienate core voters. Party leadership continued the rollout after polling showed broader public support. [17]

▶ Supporting Quotes (28)
“They offered a range of options to avert that crisis, by better deterring migrants. Mr. Biden seemed to grasp the risk. But he and his top aides failed to act on those recommendations.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“The pre-September scheme allowed spouses, partners and dependants under 18 to come to the UK without fulfilling the income and English-language tests that apply to other migrants.”— British Labour Government Considers Danish Social Democratic Government's Anti-Immigration Policies
“Rove wasted $20 million advertising in California in 2000 anyway”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“After Mr. Biden became president, migrant encounters at the southern border quickly doubled, then kept rising.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“The bill ultimately failed to pass a Senate vote, but it faced an uncertain fate in the Republican-led House of Representatives even if it had passed. The House passed a tougher immigration bill in 2023 that the Democratic-led Senate has not taken up and President Joe Biden promised to veto.”— Immigration Surges to Top of Most Important Problem List
“On Feb. 13, the House, by one vote, approved impeachment articles against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas over his department’s failure to secure the U.S. border.”— Immigration Surges to Top of Most Important Problem List
“We will discuss issues about redistributive policies, but we will not cover the broad literature on preferences for redistribution in general (Alesina and Giuliano, 2011). Our work will remain focused on the issue of redistribution only when related to immigration.”— The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
“Mr. Biden had pledged to treat unauthorized immigrants more humanely than President Donald J. Trump, who generated widespread backlash by separating migrant children from their parents.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“Take President Trump’s notorious family separation policy. After that highly publicized policy took effect in spring 2018, arrivals of families did not plunge.”— Fact Checking the “Success” of Trump Border Patrol Policies
“after the Supreme Court first allowed President Trump to end asylum at the border in September 2019, arrivals at the border remained steady.”— Fact Checking the “Success” of Trump Border Patrol Policies
“Novel and perverse enforcement policies: The Title 42 expulsion policy incentivized repeat crossings by returning people to Mexico, where they could immediately attempt to re-enter the United States.”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
“After Mr. Biden became president, migrant encounters at the southern border quickly doubled, then kept rising.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“Asylum seekers and other migrants arriving at U.S. borders without prior authorization to enter were expelled nearly 3 million times during the life of the Title 42 pandemic-era order, which was in effect from March 2020 until May 2023.”— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“In 1965, when Congress passed amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act that placed the first-ever numerical limits on immigration from the Western Hemisphere, while at the same time cancelling a longstanding guest worker agreement with Mexico... by the late 1970s Mexico was placed under a quota of just 20,000 legal resident visas per year and no temporary work visas at all”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“From 1986 to 2008 the undocumented population of the United States grew from three million to 12 million persons, despite a five-fold increase in Border Patrol officers, a four-fold increase in hours spent patrolling the border, and a 20-fold increase in nominal funding.”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“Biden has pledged to rescind the Migrant Protection Protocols — also known as the Remain in Mexico program — that have sent more than 67,000 asylum seekers back to Mexico”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“immediately end construction of Trump’s $15 billion border wall.”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“Former Vice President Joe Biden said if elected, his first priority would be dismantling what President Trump had achieved in the immigration arena. After that he would move on to drastically increase the number of immigrants who enter the U.S. through refugee, asylum and foreign worker programs.”— What a Glimpse of Biden’s Cabinet Tells Us About His Immigration Policy
“Mahmood will argue next week that migration policies – including forcing people to wait 20 years before being able to claim leave to remain – were entirely consistent with Labour values.”— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
“the impeachment would be based solely on disagreements over policy — an unprecedented break from tradition and an abuse of the House’s powers.”— Jewish Organizations Unite Against Dangerous Conspiracies
“Lakanwal, who served in a CIA-backed counter-terrorism unit during the war, came to the U.S. under Biden but was approved for asylum under the Trump administration.”— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
“Temporary Protected Status is one of the bogus methods used by Biden (and others before him, though nothing like this scale) to allow otherwise illegal aliens to remain in the U.S. and work here, grossly abusing immigration law.”— The BorderLine: Boggled by Biden’s Border Crisis? Relax, AOC Is in Charge
“The Republican takeover of Congress in November 1994 seemed to show that Clinton's win and Perot's strong showing were flukes.”— The Emerging Democratic Majority
“7 in 10 blame the Biden administration for the lack of enforcement at the border.”— Fox News Poll: Voters say the US-Mexico border is a big problem
“39% said most undocumented immigrants should be deported, up from 26% in 2016 and 28% in 2012”— Issues and the 2024 election
“there’s no need for Democrats to moderate on any hot-button issue... “inclusive populism,” a messaging strategy that focuses on the true causes of voters’ ills — parasitic rich people”— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
““The margin of victory was three states that had Biden winning margins of 0.63, 0.3, and 0.23 percentage points.” That would be Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, respectively.”— On—Deep Breath—Donald Trump And “Gender Queer” And Parker Molloy And Chris Geidner And Matt Yglesias
“Australia is the latest developed democracy to experience conventional centre-right politics being threatened by a national populist surge. ... the Albanese Government sharply cutting back its immigrant quotas. (As Australia enforces its borders, the official immigration quotas actually matter.)”— Net Zero + Mass Immigration => National Populism
Harm Caused

Migrant encounters at the southwest border doubled and then rose further after the 2020 election, overwhelming processing stations and straining shelter systems in towns along the border and in sanctuary cities such as New York and Denver. The influx contributed to visible disorder that eroded public confidence in the immigration system. Anger over illegal migration became a central factor in Donald Trump's return to the presidency. [1][4]

Record crossings peaked above 300,000 in a single month in late 2023. Cities reported sharp increases in demands on shelter, health care, and law enforcement budgets. Congress reached a historic low of 12 percent job approval amid repeated failure to pass border legislation. [5]

Enforcement measures such as family separations and summary expulsions produced documented cases of family disruption and prolonged detention without reducing overall arrival numbers. Title 42's rapid expulsions blocked asylum claims for hundreds of thousands of migrants and produced recidivism rates that climbed from 7 percent to 27 percent in two years. [7][10]

In Britain small-boat crossings reached 1,269 in a single weekend, fueling a polling surge for Reform UK and contributing to Labour's poor showing in a subsequent byelection. Public services in some localities reported strain and community tensions rose. [2]

▶ Supporting Quotes (35)
“migrant encounters at the southern border quickly doubled, then kept rising. New arrivals overwhelmed border stations, then border towns, and eventually major cities like New York and Denver. Anger over illegal migration helped return Mr. Trump to the presidency”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“Anger over illegal migration helped return Mr. Trump to the presidency... How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“It comes as a further 1,269 migrants crossed the English Channel in small boats on Thursday and Friday, the latest Home Office figures show. There are parallels with the UK today, as Reform UK maintains its polling lead over Labour.”— British Labour Government Considers Danish Social Democratic Government's Anti-Immigration Policies
“We’ve already seen what immigration has done to the two-party system in Chicago and California.”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“The Democrats’ plan has been to achieve one-party rule by using immigration to juice their vote totals while ginning up hatred of white men to keep their unwieldy Coalition of the Margins from collapsing in internecine strife.”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“New arrivals overwhelmed border stations, then border towns, and eventually major cities like New York and Denver. Anger over illegal migration helped return Mr. Trump to the presidency.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“The recent bipartisan negotiations took place in response to a record number of border crossings at the southern border in recent months, peaking at over 300,000 in December. An influx of migrants in U.S. cities has also stressed social services there.”— Immigration Surges to Top of Most Important Problem List
“Perhaps related to its unsuccessful efforts on immigration and a foreign aid package, Congress’ job approval rating has fallen to 12%.”— Immigration Surges to Top of Most Important Problem List
“The standard finding is that, on average, immigration triggers natives’ backlash, increases support for anti-immigrant, populist parties, and lowers natives’ preferences for redistribution.”— The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
“immigration has emerged as one of the most salient political issues in both Europe and the US. It was at the center of the 2016 US presidential elections, and featured prominently in the debate surrounding the Brexit referendum. In many European countries, immigration is one of the factors associated with the rise of populism”— The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
“cruel immigration policies don’t guarantee low border crossings.”— Fact Checking the “Success” of Trump Border Patrol Policies
“During President Joe Biden’s term, Border Patrol arrested an unprecedented number of immigrants who crossed illegally into the United States.”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
“Title 42 also cut off access to asylum, incentivizing more Border Patrol evasions. Novel and perverse legal migration policies: Title 42 not only banned asylum for people who crossed illegally but also prohibited legal entries by asylum seekers”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
“Recidivism, which is CBP’s term for the re-encounter within a year of a previously encountered migrant, surged under Title 42, rising from 7 percent of all encounters made by the Border Patrol in fiscal year (FY) 2019 to 27 percent in FY 2021.”— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“Blocking access to asylum was a departure from decades of law... This precedent, set in motion by the Trump administration, likely informed President Joe Biden’s recent support for a now-abandoned bipartisan Senate bill that would have resumed expulsions once an average of 5,000 encounters occurred in a day.”— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“From 1986 to 2008 the undocumented population of the United States grew from three million to 12 million persons... turning what had been a circular flow of male workers going to three states into a settled population of families living in 50 states.”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“research also suggests that it reduced the rate of return migration and redirected migrant flows to new sectors along the border with Arizona and then toward new destinations throughout the United States”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“U.S. authorities took nearly 1 million migrants into custody along the border in 2019, leaving detention cells packed and agents overwhelmed during the worst border crisis in more than a decade.”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“At the U.S.-Mexico border, tens of thousands of migrants with pending asylum claims are waiting to enter the United States, some in squalid tent cities that resemble refugee camps. U.S. border agents have been making arrests at a soaring rate — more than 2,000 per day in recent weeks”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“If infrastructure construction lags... there will be congestion costs from mass immigration which people will notice every working day. Competition for positional goods... will increase. ... This collapse of support for conventional centre-right politics has happened in polity after polity”— Individualism and cooperation: I
““Illegal migration is undermining the contract between government and its citizens – eroding support for the asylum system entirely.””— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
““We are deeply concerned that such bigotry and divisiveness will only make our community, and so many others, even less safe at this tenuous moment,” reads the joint statement.”— Jewish Organizations Unite Against Dangerous Conspiracies
“Otherwise, such situations will inevitably provoke pernicious crises of rejection, blind attitudes of xenophobia, and the insurgence of deplorable racial intolerances.”— Cardinal Giacomo Biffi: On Immigration
“Since the Wednesday shooting killed 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom”— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
“Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke outside a formerly grand hotel in Manhattan, now used as a migrant shelter, about the city’s difficulties housing, feeding, and controlling over 60,000 illegal aliens, many of whom have been exceedingly belligerent to their American hosts.”— The BorderLine: Boggled by Biden’s Border Crisis? Relax, AOC Is in Charge
“But in the end, 85% of them won’t complete the asylum application process or qualify. And under Biden, they stand next to zero chance of being deported whatever the outcome of their cases.”— The BorderLine: Boggled by Biden’s Border Crisis? Relax, AOC Is in Charge
“Bush's aggressive prosecution of the war against the terrorists in the fall of 2001 lifted him in public esteem and may have delayed a Republican collapse in 2002.”— The Emerging Democratic Majority
“the trend is unmistakable—and has proved to be one of Kamala Harris’s biggest political liabilities as Election Day approaches.”— Essay | How the Democrats Bungled the Politics of Immigration
“71% of voters think he’s mostly failed at "improving border security." Biden’s worst job rating is on immigration: 31% approve vs. 66% disapprove.”— Fox News Poll: Voters say the US-Mexico border is a big problem
“Since 2019, concern has increased across the board, most notably among Democrats (+27 points saying emergency/major problem), voters ages 65+ (+25), Hispanic voters (+22), Black voters (+21), and women (+17).”— Fox News Poll: Voters say the US-Mexico border is a big problem
“This “strategy” is nothing more than a capitulation to the Left, the same surrender that has laid the country, and the party, so low for decades.”— What Is Conservatism, Inc. Actually Conserving?
“this clearly led to a genuine political crisis that had ramifications for the Democratic Party... “Publicly, the Democratic politicians have described mounting crises in their cities,”... “want help with overflowing migrant encampments, packed shelters, and busted budgets.””— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
““Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Zapata County’s vote in a hundred years.” “non-white minorities moved toward him.””— On—Deep Breath—Donald Trump And “Gender Queer” And Parker Molloy And Chris Geidner And Matt Yglesias
“Net Zero means raising the price of energy, thereby narrowing access to it, and, in particular, narrowing the range of economic activity that is commercially sustainable. Even without increasing the population, that will increase contestation over resources. Add mass immigration to the mix, and that contestation becomes much worse.”— Net Zero + Mass Immigration => National Populism
“downward pressure on wages and increased fiscal stress (if importing significant numbers of low-capital/skill immigrants)”— Net Zero + Mass Immigration => National Populism
Downfall

The chaos predicted by transition advisers materialized in 2021 as encounters doubled and kept rising, producing the very political crisis that had been outlined in late 2020 briefings. New York Times reporting later catalogued the ignored recommendations and the administration's slow response. [1][4]

Immigration surged to the top of Gallup's most important problem list in February 2024 with 28 percent of Americans naming it the nation's top issue, the highest share since 2019. A record 55 percent described large numbers of illegal immigrants as a critical threat, up eight points in a year. [5]

A working paper examining nine major enforcement actions from the Obama through Biden administrations found few large immediate effects on border encounter levels. FOIA data obtained by the Cato Institute showed the Biden administration had dramatically increased interior detentions, removal flights, and total removals compared with the prior administration. Encounters began falling before Biden's June 2024 executive order as labor-market conditions cooled. [7][9]

Denmark's center-left government demonstrated that hardline policies on temporary status could reduce asylum claims to a 40-year low while containing the far right. British Labour officials studied the model after their own electoral setbacks. More In Common polling found that a majority of Labour and Green voters supported the tougher measures, contradicting claims of widespread alienation. [2][17]

▶ Supporting Quotes (32)
““Chaos” was the word the advisers had used in a memo during the campaign. The warnings came true, and then some.”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“She is impressed that Denmark has driven down the number of successful asylum claims to a 40-year low - with the exception of 2020, amid pandemic travel restrictions.”— British Labour Government Considers Danish Social Democratic Government's Anti-Immigration Policies
“And Florida’s Hispanic voters are mostly Cubans and Puerto Ricans who don’t care about the plight of Mexicans. In all the articles about what a genius strategist Karl Rove was in pushing immigration, nobody could explain how his ploy would pay off in any important Electoral College states.”— Why I Wasn't Profiled in The New Yorker
“The warnings came true, and then some... Anger over illegal migration helped return Mr. Trump to the presidency.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“Significantly more Americans name immigration as the most important problem facing the U.S. (28%) than did a month ago (20%). Immigration has now passed the government as the most often cited problem, after the two issues tied for the top position the past two months.”— Immigration Surges to Top of Most Important Problem List
“A separate question in the survey finds a record-high 55% of U.S. adults, up eight points from last year, saying that “large numbers of immigrants entering the United States illegally” is a critical threat to U.S. vital interests.”— Immigration Surges to Top of Most Important Problem List
“the empirical regularities observed across a variety of settings point towards the higher importance of non-economic factors.”— The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
“The warnings came true, and then some... a New York Times examination of Mr. Biden’s record found that he and his closest advisers repeatedly rebuffed recommendations that could have addressed the border crisis faster”— Is the NYT Becoming Realist on Immigration?
“we recently studied nine of the most prominent new enforcement actions of the last decade from Obama to Trump to Biden. We found few large, immediate effects on numbers at the border.”— Fact Checking the “Success” of Trump Border Patrol Policies
“In fact, the border crisis began before Biden took office and ended before he left. From his administration’s first day in January 2021, Biden actually increased border enforcement—arrests, detentions, and removals of border crossers all increased.”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
“The actual causes of the increases in illegal immigration were: Unprecedented labor demand, which incentivized and funded migration from around the world... Unprecedented access to information about migration through the Internet and social media”— Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 1: Summary
“The warnings came true, and then some.”— How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
“The month before the end of Title 42, in April 2023, there were nearly 73,500 gotaways, according to federal data obtained by the Cato Institute; two months later, the number had more than halved, to 32,800.”— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“The use of Title 42 at the border was not uniform, and it diminished over time; just 41 percent of overall encounters while the order was in effect led to expulsions.”— Title 42 Postmortem: U.S. Pandemic-Era Expulsions Policy Did Not Shut Down the Border
“studies indicate that the surge in border enforcement had little effect in reducing unauthorized migration to the United States (Hanson and Spilimbergo 1999; Hanson, Robertson, and Spilmbergo 2002; Davila, Pagan, and Soydemir 2002; Hanson and McIntosh 2009, 2010; Massey and Riosmena 2010; Angelucci 2012; Massey, Durand, and Pren 2014).”— Why Border Enforcement Backfired
“Other Border Patrol veterans and officials who spoke to The Washington Post expressed similar alarm about the possibility of a new migration crisis in the middle of the pandemic.”— Biden plans to spurn Trump immigration restrictions, but risk of new border crisis looms
“Yes, the Bondi Massacre was a galvanising shock, but that voters were beginning to arc up was already clear. ... both major parties experienced a polling dip”— Individualism and cooperation: I
“Labour sources have pointed to polling from More In Common showing that a majority of Labour and Green voters supported many of Mahmood’s proposals.”— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
“Last week, Mahmood visited Denmark to see how its centre-left Social Democratic party had tackled migration using hardline policies.”— Shabana Mahmood vows to stick with hardline migration policies after byelection defeat
“This impeachment is nothing but a dangerous distraction for Congress, the Administration and the country from those essential duties.”— Jewish Organizations Unite Against Dangerous Conspiracies
“Trump administration throws out policies limiting migrant arrests at sensitive spots like churches”— Trump administration throws out policies limiting migrant arrests at sensitive spots like churches
“The Trump administration has paused all pending asylum applications for those from across the globe seeking refuge in the U.S.”— Trump ramps up immigration crackdown after shooting
“According to a recent poll, only 23% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the border, while 62% disapprove.”— The BorderLine: Boggled by Biden’s Border Crisis? Relax, AOC Is in Charge
“Ever since 1994, Republicans have lost ground in Congress and in the country.”— The Emerging Democratic Majority
“It is the chart that Trump was starting to show a crowd at the rally in Butler, Pa., in July when he turned and was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet. He credits the chart with saving his life.”— Essay | How the Democrats Bungled the Politics of Immigration
“Eight in 10 voters feel the situation at the border is either an emergency (41%) or a major problem (37%)... While that 78% is down from a high of 85% in October 2023, it’s up double digits from 63% five years ago in February 2019... Immigration follows at 21%”— Fox News Poll: Voters say the US-Mexico border is a big problem
“The economy is the top issue for voters, with 37% prioritizing it in deciding their vote for president. Immigration follows at 21%”— Fox News Poll: Voters say the US-Mexico border is a big problem
“In the wake of the Donald Trump moment, conservatism is up for grabs: white identitarians, “Catholic integralists,” paleocons, and American nationalists all sense an opportunity for greater representation.”— What Is Conservatism, Inc. Actually Conserving?
“the New York Times investigation that starts with the foreboding sentence “In the weeks after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president, advisers delivered a warning: His approach to immigration could prove disastrous.””— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
“After Biden was elected, there was a massive spike in Border Patrol apprehensions... Biden “and his closest advisers repeatedly rebuffed recommendations that could have addressed the border crisis faster”— Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
““Nearly everyone speaks Spanish, but many regard themselves as red-blooded Americans above anything else. And exceedingly few identify as people of color. (Even while 94 percent of Zapata residents count their ethnicity as Hispanic/Latino on the census, 98 percent of the population marks their race as white.)"”— On—Deep Breath—Donald Trump And “Gender Queer” And Parker Molloy And Chris Geidner And Matt Yglesias
“What Australia has in common with the pattern in the UK, and the rise of AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) in Germany, is the combination of Net Zero (or equivalent) with mass immigration leading to a national populist surge. ... the 14 December 2025 Bondi massacre by an Islamawi immigrant father and his locally-born son brought these concerns into sharp relief”— Net Zero + Mass Immigration => National Populism
Sources
Related False Assumptions
ID: FA-20260225-cfadc689 · Created: 2026-02-25T21:17:31.617425 · Schema v3

Know of a source that supports or relates to this entry?

Suggest a Source