President Trump’s executive order suspending most immigration for 60 days in response to the coronavirus united activists on both sides of the issue in opposition to his edict, but it will nevertheless resonate with voters, analysts say.
The fierce response from liberals was expected. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez accused Trump of using “bigotry as a shield for his own incompetence.” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries called Trump the “xenophobe-in-chief.” Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Joaquin Castro described the order as “an authoritarian-like move to take advantage of a crisis and advance his anti-immigrant agenda.”
But the reaction from groups that support lower immigration levels and tighter border security was barely more favorable.
“However well-intentioned, this executive order will provide little relief to Americans,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies. “Mr. President, your Executive Order promises to protect American workers,” said a statement from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “What it truly does is protect powerful business interests that want to undermine American workers.”
NumbersUSA President Roy Beck praised the principles guiding the order, but wrote, “Unfortunately, the corporate lobbyists and other immigration expansionists in the White House persuaded the president to significantly water down the Proclamation that was supposed to carry out those lofty spoken principles.”
These groups, considered strong supporters of the president, were not happy with the limited scope of the order and particularly the decision to exempt temporary workers, arguing that this was in tension with the stated goal of protecting workers in a period of mass unemployment due to coronavirus shutdowns. Their concerns were amplified by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The White House said these programs would be reviewed.
“The pause applies to only a few immigrants who represent a tiny fraction (about 5 percent) of total annual admissions, and will actually re-start admissions that have been paused, well before this health crisis is over, and well before the employment crisis is over,” wrote Vaughan.
The conflict is part of a larger pattern: Immigration hawks have a place at the table in the Trump administration they were denied under both Barack Obama and George W. Bush. And they have their most influence in Washington since Barbara Jordan, a black Democratic congresswoman from Texas who was both a progressive and a restrictionist, chaired an immigration reform commission under Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Senior adviser Stephen Miller is their leading representative in the White House. But these groups don’t set the immigration agenda by themselves, and competing voices play a role in shaping policy.
Miller was reportedly deployed to reassure these activists in a White House conference call. “We all need to be out there publicly promoting this vital action and emphasizing that we have a president that stands with American workers, and we have a political opposition in this country that does not,” he said, according to NBC News.
Federation for American Immigration Reform President Dan Stein liked Trump’s tweet announcing the executive order, telling the Washington Examiner that it displayed good political instincts. “By Tuesday night, it was clear that the lion that roared was merely a mouse, and that the actual policy change was more form than substance,” Stein said. “But it probably got the job done politically.”
That is the key issue as the president heads into his reelection campaign. Many strategists believe Trump still owns the hawkish side of the immigration argument regardless of the policy details, while Democrats will attempt to use it to mobilize Hispanic and some suburban voters against him. An April USA Today Ipsos poll found that 79% of those polled would temporarily halt immigration during the pandemic, with broad support across partisan and racial lines.
“People trust the president’s instincts on this,” said a former South Carolina Republican official who is involved in a large voter registration and mobilization effort for the fall campaign. “To them, the order is common sense.”
Trump has struggled to deliver on immigration-related campaign promises like building the wall and was widely denounced when his enforcement of border policies produced images of children in cages. But he has succeeded in getting some border barriers built and reducing illegal crossings after they spiked last year. He has held the line on ending the popular Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which he called during the 2016 campaign an “illegal executive amnesty.”
Democrats have moved left on immigration, calling for decriminalizing illegal crossings and decreasing deportations, which Republicans believe Trump can use to his advantage. Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden dubbed the coronavirus-related China travel ban “xenophobia and fear-mongering,” a fact that has already figured prominently in attack ads launched by a major pro-Trump super PAC.
