What Americans Really Think About Immigration

Activists may not want to hear it, but the truth is immigration is a political loser. This is the sort of political analysis we’ve heard from centrist and liberal political operatives wary of repeating the mistakes of 2016. That was the year the British public voted to leave the European Union, sending shockwaves through the West. The Brexit vote was largely seen as driven by xenophobia—Leavers warned that remaining in the EU would allow migrants to flow unchecked across the channel. And across an ocean, many heralded Donald Trump’s victory as proof that the American public was hostile to newcomers and would no longer tolerate significant levels of immigration.

But just last week, the Biden administration issued a rule seeking to make it harder for people to request asylum in the United States. It’s a decision made in the context of the president’s tough reelection chances and reflects the hope some have that cracking down at the border could gain him some political points.

Attitudes toward immigration—particularly in the U.S.—are a lot more complicated than many political commentators would have you believe. Vaguely cracking down at the border often doesn’t address the very real concerns people have about how immigration policy is working. Views of immigration are highly contingent on the method of entry and the perceived scarcity of jobs and housing—not to mention the country of origin of the incoming immigrants and the intangible feeling about whether the country “controls” its own borders or if people are gaming the system by coming illegally.

In this episode of Good on Paper, our guest is John Burn-Murdoch, a columnist and chief data reporter at the Financial Times. He helps me break down what influences public opinion on immigration.

“We only have this single word, immigration, to talk about this enormously varied phenomenon,” Burn-Murdoch tells me. “I think [this] is really unhelpful for the debate because, generally speaking, whether we’re looking at the U.S., the U.K., Europe, the concern that people have is not with people coming to work in the country; it’s not with people coming to study in the country. It’s a concern with people who are arriving in the country without any clear pathway into society, as it were, and this general sense that there is a lack of control over what’s happening.”

Listen to the conversation here:

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Jerusalem Demsas: This is Good on Paper, a policy show that questions what we really know about popular narratives. I’m your host, Jerusalem Demsas, and this show was born out of my writing here at The Atlantic.

Over the years, I’ve written about a bunch of things—from the local politics of housing to the strange politics of student-debt-relief efforts—and the throughline of many of my articles has been a nagging feeling that there was something wrong with the broad narratives that defining a particular public conversation or policy debate.

On this show, there’s no one “right answer” we’re trying to find. And, of course, all facts are subject to interpretation. And you’ll hear a lot of my and others’ opinions.

But the goal is to make arguments based on research and data, to poke holes where narratives have gone beyond the facts, and, occasionally, to give narratives their due. After all, many of them exist for good reason.

Today’s episode is about a topic I have thought about a lot: immigration.

In recent years, one overarching narrative has seemed to define the political debate, and that is that immigration is seen as a loser for the left and a winner for the right.

This narrative has been hard at work in the Biden administration and among our congressional representatives.

[Music]

Just last week, President Biden issued a rule that seeks to make it more difficult for people trying to seek asylum to do so. His new order mirrors that of Trump-era policies he once condemned. This about-face is clearly political. Biden’s poll numbers against Trump are concerning to the White House, and immigration has long been a sore spot. Many believe that cracking down at the border is a good way to improve Biden’s reelection chances.

But does that theory make sense?

Now, this episode was taped before this latest move from Washington, but the political theory underpinning that