Editor’s Note: Although partisans on both sides of the aisle have warned that the stakes of the upcoming presidential election could not be higher, the two campaigns themselves have been remarkably light on policy substance. With Election Day now less than two weeks away, we reached out to dozens of thinkers, writers, and analysts and asked them about their biggest concerns about a potential Trump or Harris administration.
Today’s entry focuses on immigration policy, which includes topics ranging from mass deportations, disregard for the severity of the border crisis, and a pivot toward curtailing legal immigration.
Trump’s mass deportation proposal ignores a huge economic and social cost.
For people who value free markets and limited government, this presidential election is a choice of evils—but one of the evils is much greater than the other. Trump’s terrible immigration policies are massive. And, unlike Kamala Harris’ worst policies, they can largely be implemented through executive power alone, without the need for new legislation.
Trump’s mass deportation proposal would cause immense damage to both immigrants and U.S. citizens. It would create disruption, increase prices, and cause shortages. It also destroys more American jobs than it creates, because many U.S. citizens work in industries that depend on goods produced by undocumented workers. Drastic cuts in legal immigration would exacerbate the economic damage. Cutting migration would also worsen the federal government’s dire fiscal situation.
The proposal would also undermine civil liberties. Such large-scale efforts routinely result in the detention and deportation of even U.S. citizens due to poor due process protections—a problem likely to be exacerbated by the enormous scale of Trump’s plans.
Both deportation and new immigration restrictions would also consign millions of would-be immigrants to lives of poverty and oppression, for no better reason than that they were born to the wrong parents in the wrong place. Conservatives and others who condemn the evils of socialism should oppose barring migrants fleeing socialist oppression in places like Cuba and Venezuela. They should also oppose the economic central planning inherent in government efforts to severely restrict the free movement of goods and labor across international borders. Right-wing nationalist central planning is objectionable for the same reasons as the socialist kind.
Crucially, mass deportation and severe new immigration restrictions could all be pursued by Trump without new legislation. That’s because Congress has delegated broad discretion to presidents on immigration policy, and courts are generally more deferential to the executive on immigration issues than almost any others. It’s an unjustified double standard, but it’s unlikely to change soon.
Some of Trump’s more extreme immigration plans might still be struck down by the courts. Some will also be impeded by liberal sanctuary jurisdictions (though red states and localities might actually help Trump). But the constraints imposed by federalism and judicial review on this issue are generally weaker than those likely to be faced by Harris if she tries to pursue her own more dubious policies—such as price controls and rent control—through unilateral executive action. (Harris has recently scaled back the price control plan.)
Harris does have some flawed immigration policies of her own, such as her endorsement of President Joe Biden’s badly flawed Trump-lite asylum restrictions. She would do better to emphasize the expansion of options for legal migration. But Trump’s immigration plans are vastly worse.
Trump’s immigration policy is not the only issue at stake in this election. But it would take a lot to outweigh the enormous harm likely to be caused by it. Harris’ many flaws don’t meet that high standard, especially when we also consider Trump’s other negatives.
—Ilya Somin is a professor of law at George Mason University and the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom.
Harris represents a continuation of lawless and unpopular immigration policy.
The biggest concern about a Harris administration is that it would represent a continuation, or even intensification, of the past four years of immigration lawlessness.
Despite Harris’ claims of being a born-again border hawk, everything else points in the opposite direction. Putting aside her administration’s policies—which according to a House Judiciary Committee report resulted in the release of close to 6 million illegal border-crossers—her extreme legislative record while in the Senate and the regulatory agenda already in place point to a continued undermining of immigration enforcement.
Her repeated invocation of the immigration bill put forth by the Biden administration in its first days is also telling. It would have legalized all illegal aliens who’d arrived at least one month before its introduction and did not contain even the pretense of enforcement to prevent future amnesties. The bill, dubbed the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, was so outlandish that it was never even considered in committee in the Democrat-controlled 117th Congress.
Even if Congress didn’t go along with these elements of Harris’ agenda, her administration would almost certainly continue to use asylum and parole as the means of running a parallel, extra-statutory immigration system. This ongoing usurpation of Congress’ role in deciding who gets to move here is consistent with the presidency’s arrogation of authority over war-making.
A Trump administration can be counted on to restore immigration enforcement, but there are still two things to look for.
First, will it adequately prepare to ensure that the moves needed to restore order are politically sustainable and aren’t stopped by the courts? In 2017, the misnamed Muslim ban was at first so slapdash that it caused chaos at airports among immigration inspectors confused by it. The policy—essential for national security—was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court as a legitimate exercise of power explicitly delegated to the president by Congress. But that was only after running an avoidable political and legal gauntlet. Whether those staffing a potential second Trump administration learn from those mistakes will bear watching.
The second concern is that Trump’s repeatedly stated support for mass immigration—so long as it’s legal—will result in some regrettable decisions. For instance, Trump has said that every foreign student should get a green card upon graduation, regardless of major—even students at community colleges. Canada tried something similar and the resulting rapid growth in the immigrant population placed great strain on housing, health care, and other services. A Republican Congress would be unlikely to go along since Trump’s supporters actually are immigration restrictionists, but it too will bear watching.
—Mark Krikorian is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
A historic crackdown on legal immigration is not the answer to our demographic troubles.
If Donald Trump becomes president again, everyone expects a historic crackdown on illegal immigration. But a historic crackdown on legal immigration is a safer bet.
At the end of Trump’s last term, border patrol arrests were 64 percent higher than when he entered office, but he had slashed virtually every classification of legal immigration: refugees, family, employment, and temporary visitors. It is just easier for an anti-immigrant president to make illegal what was once legal activity than to stop illegal activity.
Since President Joe Biden has gone even further in streamlining legal entries, Trump’s cuts are likely to be even more severe this time. The Biden administration’s program for refugees entering legally from abroad is now operating at the highest level since the 1990s, and it has created private sponsorship programs for refugees and parolees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Trump has promised to end those parole initiatives and suspend refugee admissions. He would institute “an even bigger” immigration ban on immigrants who happened to be citizens of disfavored nations.
For those worried about the country’s economic health, America’s demographic trends aren’t improving. Economic growth depends on a strong labor force, which will require immigration as more Americans retire. The U.S.-born, prime-age employment rate is near record highs already, but there are still millions of open jobs. Without immigrants, there is no hope for future job growth.
Trump occasionally hints at a better vision of immigration, talking about “beautiful doors” in his border wall or giving green cards to foreign students. But nearly every policy during his last term moved in the opposite direction. If you care about America’s economic future, you should care about Trump’s legal immigration plans.
—David J. Bier is the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.
A second Trump administration would go after legal immigration too.
The major potential threats from a Kamala Harris or a second Donald Trump administration could range from a continuation of governance as usual to catastrophe. Thus, my criteria for choosing the worst policy must meet these three criteria:
- The policy is solely within the president’s ability to enact,
- The candidate has either attempted, supported, or accomplished the policy before, and
- The policy would impose enormous economic and social costs on the United States.
Considering those three features of potential policies, my biggest concern is that a second Trump administration will practically end legal immigration to the U.S. The Supreme Court ruled in its 2018 Trump v. Hawaii decision that the president can restrict legal immigration in whatever way he wishes so long as he uses “national security” as justification.
Furthermore, the Trump administration learned how fragile the legal immigration system is during the pandemic. Multiple government agencies, including the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture, and others are involved in visa approvals and issuances for applicants overseas. Obstructing the operations of one or all those departments is all that’s required to stop visa issuances and applicants overseas have effectively no legal recourse—but they could always attempt to immigrate illegally.
Domestic visa applicants, such as the many millions on temporary visas who desire and are eligible for green cards, have more recourse and they would be less obstructed. It took over a year for visa processing at U.S. embassies to recover after the brief shutdown during the pandemic. If enacted early in the second Trump administration, it would take even longer for the legal immigration system to recover after four years of clinical death.
There’s every reason to believe that President Trump would massively restrict legal immigration and could essentially end it, with a likely exception for temporary lower-skilled agricultural workers. Trump reduced legal immigration during his first administration, even before the pandemic, when he virtually ended it entirely except for low-skilled temporary farm workers. He has not changed his mind since then.
Such policies ignore that immigrants are enormously economically beneficial. They increase the supply and demand sides of the economy, expanding production and consuming goods and services produced by others. They account for most of the growth in the workforce and are almost twice as likely to start a business. They are almost 50 percent more likely to patent, more likely to work, and they generally pay more in taxes than they receive in government benefits. For instance, new research from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the recent surge of immigration into the U.S. will reduce deficit spending by almost $900 billion over the next decade.
But the president has the power to unilaterally restrict legal immigration by vague appeals to national security. President Trump did it before and there’s evidence he’d try it again.
—Alex Nowrasteh is the vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute.
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