Where Do We Go From Here?

Hello Friends,

I have had this post in my drafts since this past spring, dragging my feet on putting it out. But in light of the results of the 2024 election that we all witnessed, I feel that the time has never been more right. Like many of you, I share the disappointing and glim outlook for the next four years. In preparation for this election cycle, I spent the entirety of my last undergraduate year at Montclair State University working on a Senior Research Project that was close to my heart. I picked the issue of Immigration Policy in the U.S. and hoped to find an answer to the phenomenon of how immigrants in the U.S. themselves become anti-immigrant. My title for the project was "Empathy Crisis at the Southern Border". This past February, I witnessed the issue of immigration leapfrog from lower on the list of importance, to being polled as the number one issue Americans wanted reform on. The last time immigration was the number one issue was by no surprise in 2019 with an election on the horizon. I knew it would be important but could never have imagined it would be a defining issue that hands the keys to the Oval Office back to President Trump.

Before I get into what my data bore out in my project, I would like to explain the two lenses I used to craft this project. I used a legal analysis to give a historical timeline of U.S. Immigration Law and a sociological analysis to measure the role of policy, politicians, and the media in fueling anti-immigrant sentiments. My working hypothesis was based on the data and scholarly research available that concluded that the “Overton window” is a major source of these sentiments. For those unfamiliar, The Overton window is used in political science terminology to mean the realm of acceptable debate and discourse on a particular issue.?

Unfortunately, the issue of immigration has become highly politicized and dehumanizing to new immigrants. Watching some major news channels, you can hear immigrants described as criminals, drug dealers, gang members, and animals. This framing comes despite all the empirical data suggesting that undocumented and legal immigrants are largely model citizens who commit crimes at a vastly lower rate compared to U.S.-born citizens. The fear of this group threat has become acceptable to be repeated and touted.? From a policy standpoint, this culminated in Democratic politicians adopting the Republican framing of harsh and restrictive immigration reform. As seen last in February during the crafting of the Bipartisan Border Bill that failed to pass.

As we sat and listened to both candidates offer their plans to tackle immigration policy. The rhetoric was different but the policy was not ideologically distant. Unfortunately for Vice President Harris, she had to fight off the attacks from former President Trump that she is in favor of open borders and weak on immigration policy. Which is a 100% unfounded from her policy proposals from her platform. In response, she has attempted to outflank Trump to his right on immigration policy and pointed to her support of the Bipartisan Border Bill that was squashed in February by President Trump. Make no mistake, this bill that she was in favor of was written in co-sponsorship by one of the most conservative Senators in the country James Lankford. The reality check that Democrats should take from this election result is that you are never going to out-racist or outflank President Trump on immigration policy. The Trump rhetoric was filled with dehumanizing lies and scapegoating of an entire population of human beings. This coupled with the mass deportation policy pushed out by Trump, made the necessity to separate from Trump's immigration policy even greater. When a politician can stand up and say that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country and blatantly lie about immigrants eating people's pets. We have to wonder how this is not disqualifying in the year 2024.

The Overton window is so extreme on immigration policy that it is responsible for even established immigrants in the U.S. to turning against new immigrants. As we saw in the election results, the Latino community overwhelmingly delivered at the polls for President-Elect Trump. The group threat and continued rhetoric of immigrants bringing crime/ taking economic opportunities from U.S. workers has done its damage. The real tragedy of this debate is we waste time that should be spent moving us closer to a new pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and to speed up the much-needed due process in our immigration system. There was a time not too long ago in the Trump era when you couldn't even bring up a border bill to consideration without protections for Dreamers or a new pathway to citizenship included. Where has the Democratic Party gone? My deep fear for every Democratic election loss is not only how much progress will be reversed but that the Democratic Party will fail to recourse and learn the error of their ways.

Friends, it is clear that our work is cut out for us and we need to be the new path forward. To exemplify what this looks like, I think we should remember the wise words of Martin Luther King Jr when he said “If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” In application to the next four years, this means not sucumming to doomerism and checking out from politics . Our path forward is one where we do not compromise our values no matter how far the Overton Window pulls. If you sincerely care immigration policy and can weed through the dehumanizing rhetoric, this is at the very least what needs to be done. My first proposed resolution was to make the immigration system fairer. We can start by massively increasing the number of immigration judges and cutting down the intense backlog of cases to resolve. Currently, over 3 million cases are waiting to be resolved in our immigration court system. By doing this we can award every immigrant and asylum seeker their legal right to due process found in the Constitution. The second proposed resolution is to improve and increase overall education in our country on how our immigration system operates. As much as it pains me to say it, Americans are not well-educated or well-informed on the issue of immigration law. Coupled with both parties being conservative on the border, this only works to confirm the rhetoric spewed by the most extreme. Many will say the popular phrase “I have no problem with immigrants BUT they should come to this country legally” without knowing the true mechanics of our immigration system. As a collective, we need to have a full understanding of where our immigration system fails to deliver. If we can achieve this we will be able to work towards a humanitarian resolution to our Empathy Crisis at the Southern Border. For those interested in learning how the U.S. immigration system operates, I suggest reading the following sources:

https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/why-legal-immigration-nearly-impossible#overview-legal-immigration

https://www.cato.org/blog/new-research-illegal-immigration-crime-0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWOys51THP0

If anyone has any questions I am more than happy to answer them below, thank you!