Speakers on the stage at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday who spent much of the night railing against President Joe Biden’s border and immigration policies were not groundbreaking. Biden was enabling a “border bloodbath,” the crowd’s signs read, as congressional leaders accused Biden of enabling a border “invasion.”
Their use of inflammatory, inflammatory or extremist rhetoric to talk about immigrants and Democratic incumbents was also not new. “Americans are dying every day,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz thundered, “murdered, assaulted and raped by illegal immigrants that Democrats let go.”
what was Here’s how the Republican Party of 2024 fine-tuned its anti-immigration message to American voters in 2024: focusing on drugs, human trafficking, crime and public disorder, and distinguishing between “illegal” immigrants who threaten the fabric of America and the right kind of immigrants.
Kari Lake, an election-declining GOP Senate candidate from Arizona, summed it up earlier in the night: The GOP’s goal must be to “stop the devolution and build the wall.”
It all came on a night after Republican organizers tried to promote national unity in the wake of Donald Trump’s assassination attempt, and some speakers said they had scaled back their speeches.
But the Republican Party’s position on immigration may be more unified than it appears. Data show Americans are far more against all forms of immigration and more in favor of tighter border controls and immigration policies than when Trump first or second term ran for office.
Indeed, the America of 2024 is far more anti-immigrant than in the recent past, more skeptical of immigration, and more open to policies that would have seemed extreme had Trump been in office. That’s partly because there really was a spike in immigrant arrivals and border crossings after Biden took office and the pandemic subsided.
This anti-immigrant shift has been swift but sustained. Since 2020, the share of Americans who want to reduce all immigration levels has increased, from 28 percent in mid-2020 to 55 percent by June 2024. Gallup polling data.
Those analysts note that 2024 marks the first time since 2005 that a majority of the American public wants less immigration, and that anti-immigration sentiment is at its highest level since 2001, when the country was going through an anti-immigrant fervor. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Those changes are also happening across all sectors of the electorate. It’s not just white voters. Asada voter and esp Latino Voters are Chances are high Less immigration is wanted than in the past, and anti-immigrant sentiment is growing across all partisan groups, including among Democrats.
During the Trump years, the overall mood in the country has become more pro-immigrant as Democratic voters have become much more positive about immigration. That trend has shifted, even over the last year.
There is no shortage of opinions nuance. Voters are much more positive about legal immigration than illegal immigration. They are more supportive of building a wall along the southern border with Mexico than they were in the Trump years, but they are still receptive to providing a path to citizenship for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children (though even that support. These DREAMers have steadily declined).
Overall, though, when thinking about borders and immigration, many Americans now view the issue less about humanitarianism and human rights and more through a law-and-order lens, immigration researchers have observed.
All of this was reflected in the positions many Republican rising stars, candidates and elected officials took Tuesday night. Senate candidates, including Ohio’s Bernie Moreno, Arizona’s Lake and Wisconsin’s Eric Hovd, as well as former candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, have all touted the benefits of legal immigration and the American dream while battling the threat of fentanyl trafficking. and the immigrant drain on the American economy.
They warned of the threat that an “attack” on the southern border posed to the American dream. Moreno, himself a Colombian immigrant, insisted that he and his parents immigrated to the US “legally” – then “attacked Biden and the Democrats for encouraging it.”[ing] Millions of illegal immigrants to America.
Other Republican leaders, such as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Speaker Mike Johnson, threatened noncitizen voting by changing the fabric of the nation, “damaging[ing] Citizen, drain[ing] resources, and disruption[ing] election,” as Johnson said.
The closing message of the night rounded out this critique of the status quo: “You can’t have a nation without borders.” It’s an easy pitch to Americans who see immigration as a question of order and process: images of migrant caravans and river crossings are sickening, even if they don’t necessarily dislike the idea of expanding the American dream.
In 2019, with Trump in office, this strategic speech may not resonate with most Americans. But in 2024, this is becoming true for a growing segment of the electorate.
