Outrage over immigration is a primary reason Donald Trump and the Republicans have returned to power. Just before the presidential election, 56% of Americans told Pew Research they support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. In his first days in office, President Trump signed executive orders declaring a national emergency at our Southern border, allowing troops to be deployed there, and ending birthright citizenship as defined in the 14th Amendment.
Many of these actions won’t stick legally — or prove popular with voters. Deep down, Americans love immigrants because we see ourselves in them. According to the National Park Service, 40% of us trace our ancestry through Ellis Island, the East Coast immigration station that operated between 1892 and 1954. We want an orderly process where people are vetted, barred from most taxpayer-funded transfer programs and able to work and pay taxes legally.
A Ronald Reagan-appointed federal judge immediately blocked Trump’s action on birthright citizenship, calling it “a blatantly unconstitutional order.â€
The same Pew poll showing a majority in favor of mass deportations reveals even more significant numbers of Americans in favor of admitting more high-skilled workers (79%), letting international college grads stay (77%), and letting immigrants married to citizens remain (58%). And 64% of Americans think undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay if they meet specific requirements, such as passing a background check or having a job.
Even among Trump’s biggest supporters, there’s a fierce fight over immigrants on H-1B visas, granted to 85,000 highly educated foreign workers annually. While MAGA activists want the program scrapped, Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX running Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, has said he will “go to war†in support of the visas. Trump has declared that he likes “both sides of the argument†but favors expanding H-1Bs because “you’ve got to get the best people.â€
Trump’s ambivalence reflects that of the American people. Despite being “a nation of immigrants†(the title of a bestselling 1958 book by then-Sen. John F. Kennedy), we have never been comfortable with newcomers. All of the fears about current immigration levels are either exaggerated or flat-out wrong. While the southern border was egregiously poorly managed for most of Joe Biden’s uninspiring presidency, unlawful border crossings dropped to a four-year low at the end of last year. Vice President JD Vance’s unfounded campaign claims that Haitian refugees were spreading disease and eating cats in Springfield, Ohio, were flatly contradicted by city officials, as were reports that Venezuelan gang members took over apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado.
As Cato Institute policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh has documented, legal and illegal immigrants have lower crime rates than native-born Americans. In any case, violent crime is declining nationally and is lower than it was in 2020, the peak year of COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns.
Nor are immigrants “stealing†American jobs, either at the low end or the high end of the employment market. Since November 2021, the unemployment rate has been at or below 4%. Unskilled immigrant workers pick crops, staff kitchens, do domestic jobs and work construction, all job markets that post many more jobs than are ever filled. The average H-1B visa job in tech pays about $132,000 a year, and there is scant evidence that employers pay foreign workers less than native Americans.
When Trump defended the H-1B program at a joint press conference with tech titans like Larry Ellison of Oracle, he stressed, “People like Larry, he needs engineers … like nobody’s ever needed them.†As the low unemployment rate shows, we need more workers, not fewer.
All employers should be free to hire the best people for their job openings, too. Immigrants tend to be self-starters and ambitious, which helps explain why they are 80% more likely to start companies and have higher labor force participation rates than native Americans (67% vs. 62%). They flow to vibrant areas like Texas, Florida, and New York City, which need workers.
It’s understandable that, after a pandemic, a period of high inflation and economic and social anxiety, and weak leadership, Americans would be ambivalent about immigrants. But today’s newcomers deserve the opportunities that our grandparents and great-grandparents had as they came through Ellis Island — and caused just as much fear as today’s do on the surface. Their presence benefits us even more than it does them.
