Amid the terror inflicted on the immigrant community by the Trump Administration, it’s easy to forget how recent it was when there was a hopeful movement toward transforming the country’s immigration system in a humane, sensible way.
In 2013, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators passed legislation that included increased border security and a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants in the country. In addition to the late Senator John McCain, the “Gang of Eight” included Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s Secretary of State.
The GOP-led House of Representatives refused to vote on the legislation, citing procedural concerns—chief among them that it lacked the support of a majority of House Republicans. But out in the wild of the conservative media-sphere, the true reasons for its failure began to emerge.
The narrative, which gained steam leading into the 2016 Presidential election, was that a pathway to citizenship amounted to “amnesty” for people who had “broken the law.” The talking heads on Fox News used this to shape public sentiment, but they were also reflecting what many in their audience already believed. Namely, that being in our country without going through the byzantine process of naturalization was a crime worthy of upending someone’s life.
For those who claimed to support immigration for those who “do it the right way,” their proposed solution—reform the immigration system, but only after every undocumented immigrant has been deported—created a veto condition they knew could never be met. It betrayed their real goal, which is eliminating immigration from our southern border altogether and, more importantly, reducing the rate of Black and brown bodies who are in the country.
Two examples, one from history and the other from Trump’s chief oligarch, prove this point.
From Indifference to Indignation
The story of the United States is a story of immigration. Its plotlines include genocidal imperial immigration that many in our nation will celebrate this year, and the forced migration of chattel slavery. It also involves the voluntary migration of people from around the world seeking a better life.
During roughly the first century of the nation, immigration regulation (outside of chattel slavery) was loose and informal. It was mainly a state’s issue, less about “who gets in” and more about “who is excluded.” This changed with the discriminatory Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which marked the first time the federal government officially restricted immigration based on race or ethnicity.
Further restrictions led to a national quota system beginning in the 1920s, which established caps on regions of origin from where immigrants were allowed to seek U.S. citizenship. These quotas overwhelmingly favored granting citizenship to immigrants from northern and western Europe and imposed the greatest restrictions on those from southern and eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, immigrants from Mexico and Central America were recruited to fill labor shortages, but they occupied a gray area under the quota system that regulated European migration. Their cheap labor was viewed by the U.S. as necessary for economic growth, while their presence in the country was seen as temporary and expendable.
The result was that during the mid-20th century, U.S. immigration from around the world was robust, but naturalized citizenship favored those from Western and Northern Europe—i.e., “white people.”
Despite all this (or, more likely, because of it), immigration was not an issue the public paid much attention to. A 1960 Gallup poll found that only 1% of U.S. adults named it as the most important problem facing the nation. Even so, the same survey showed that Americans viewed occupational skills as the most essential requirement for granting citizenship to immigrants.
Set against this backdrop, there was widespread support for President Johnson’s signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965. That law ended the quota system that was based on national origins in favor of one that took into account job skills, familial connections, and refugee status.
So why did Americans go from being indifferent about immigration in the 1960s to it being a matter of ultimate concern today?
In 1960, 9% of immigrants to the U.S. were born in Latin America or the Caribbean, with 3% coming from Asia. Over two-thirds (67%) came from Europe. By 2013, the year the Gang of Eight attempted to reform what had become known as our “broken” immigration system, 52% of immigrants were coming from Latin America or the Caribbean, with 27% coming from Asia. Only 13% were coming from Europe.
As the average immigrant’s skin color in the U.S. has grown darker, the rate of adults who name immigration as their number one concern has risen from 1% in 1965 to over 10% in recent election exit polls.
And it isn’t just the average immigrant’s skin color that is growing darker. In 1980, those labeled “non-Hispanic white” on census surveys made up 79.6% of the U.S. population. Now, the percentage is closer to 56%. (The rate was likely in the high 80s just before the landmark 1965 immigration legislation, but the census didn’t separate “white” from “non-Hispanic white” until 1980.)
Are these things connected, or is it mere correlation?
Most Republicans typically employ the dog-whistle strategy to answer this question. But recently, they’ve begun to say the quiet part out loud.
Great Replacement
During his years as a Fox News personality, Tucker Carlson popularized the Great Replacement Theory, a racist conspiracy that claims “white” demographics are being deliberately replaced through immigration. As an example, in 2021, he stated that, “There is a strong political component to the Democratic Party’s immigration policy … They are trying to replace the population with people from the Third World.”
It is impossible to overstate how much Carlson’s rhetoric, dating back to the immigration battles that emerged in 2013, shaped the racist narrative used by Republicans when describing immigration. It isn’t a stretch to draw a straight line between pre-1960 immigration policy in the U.S., Carlson’s Great Replacement Theory rhetoric, and Donald Trump’s famous “shithole country” comments, in which he openly wondered why we don’t have more immigrants coming from Scandinavian countries.
On January 8 of this year, a random X user who regularly posts openly racist content shared the following thought: “If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. Remember, if non-whites openly hate White men while White men hold a collective majority, then they will be 1000x times more hostile and cruel when they are a majority over Whites. White solidarity is the only way to survive.”
X is a cesspool of hatred, Russian bots, and trolls. Because of this, it can be easy to dismiss the most incendiary comments as unworthy of anyone’s attention. This instance, however, is notable for one particular reason: Elon Musk, the owner of X, an informal Trump advisor and, arguably, the person most responsible for Trump’s 2024 election, quote-posted with a one-word commentary: “True.”
As of this writing, not a single high-level Republican has denounced Musk’s post.
It’s time we stop pretending that the “broken immigration system” narrative is anything other than a real-life example of white supremacy.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.