Do Americans care about immigrants?

Before we even get into the specifics of what makes immigration feel like an intractable problem—i.e., compromise is hard because particular approaches are unacceptable to one side or another—I think we need to have an honest conversation about a more basic question: do Americans really care about immigrants? (I will say “we” and “our” throughout, because I think the current system is one in which we’re all complicit, even if we like to believe that we aren’t.)

There are several subsidiary questions. Americans is an overly broad category, so, which Americans care, and which Americans do not? Also, which immigrants do Americans care about, and which do we not care about? Also, what do we mean by “care”: to consider a matter of import, or to show care for?

Beyond asking these subsidiary questions, we can also pick apart the larger question, because it opposes “Americans” and “immigrants,” who, of course, are often one and the same.

Nevertheless, I ask these questions because I’m not convinced that enough Americans care enough about immigrants to be sufficiently motivated to do anything about immigration.

We tell ourselves the comforting fiction that the United States is a nation of immigrants. It is true that most of our families, at some point in the past, came from somewhere else. For Americans who don’t empathize with immigrants today, this idea gives them cover to assert that their families immigrated the right way, and that, unlike immigrants today, their ancestors assimilated by learning English, becoming citizens, and embracing the Anglo Saxon creed as the national norm. The late political scientist Samuel Huntington is their champion; see his 2004 book Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. For those who do empathize with immigrants today, the idea that we’re a nation of immigrants is almost a moral plea for us to recognize that our ancestors aren’t that different than those who flee persecution and seek opportunity now. But historians like Kelly Lytle Hernández have argued that the United States has never been a nation of immigrants; instead, we’ve been a settler colonial nation and also an empire. This seems like a more honest way of understanding our past and present, which helps to explain why we continue to do nothing about immigration. What looks and feels like paralysis is actually part of our DNA, so why expect anything different?

Perhaps the status quo is acceptable to us, so long as we can keep down the cost of our food, clothes, electronics, homes, and manicured lawns. The sight of many thousands of migrants gathered at the U.S.-Mexico border is uncomfortable, but maintaining the status quo means that the sight of them becomes the acceptable cost of having those who’ve made it across the border and settled in our communities continue to toil away in kitchens, garment factories, and our children’s bedrooms, where they sing lullabies in their native languages. Understood in these terms, the answer to the question about whether Americans care about immigrants seems to be yes, so long as we continue to benefit from their labor, but don’t have to experience the discomfort of thinking about their demands for rights in addition to their acceptance of responsibilities.

I’m not the first person to say these things. See Ernesto Galarza’s book Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story, published in 1964, the same year that the Bracero Program was terminated. Or, see the 2004 film, A Day Without a Mexican, which is about a day when Californians wake up to find that all the Mexicans are gone, leaving lawns unkempt, food uncooked, and children without care. The premise is better than the movie itself, so I’m not recommending it as a good movie. A better one is the brilliant film by Alex Rivera, Sleep Dealer (2008), which tells the story of Memo, who hooks into machines at the U.S.-Mexico border that allow him to control robots laboring in the United States. In each of these different works, the fantasy is the same: the ability to have access to Mexican labor, without having to deal with rights-demanding Mexicans; the ability to chew them up and spit them out, with a slight warning about what the world might look like if their labor were to disappear.

Maybe this is the way of the world? Permit me a brief digression to tell you about two incidents in a Dartmouth College fraternity basement. On one occasion, I was arguing with a fraternity member about climate change. I took the position that humans created it, and we also have the ability to stop it (this was circa 1998 or 1999, when our ability to stop it seemed like more of a possibility). His response was, yeah, humans are doing what humans do: behaving selfishly and ruining the earth. I was shocked by his acceptance of the situation and his belief about human nature. On another occasion, I was engaged in an argument about the role of the United States in the Cuban Revolution. I said the United States had behaved in an imperial, self-interested way. My adversary’s answer was, yes, of course, and that’s what national power is all about. To my surprise, he illustrated the point by putting me in a headlock, pinning me to the ground, and yelling in my ear, “this is what power feels like.” He repeated it several times, as if he were teaching me a profound lesson about how the world works. Maybe he was?

Since these experiences, I’ve never been surprised by the starkness of the views of self-described libertarians, who seemed to run rampant at Dartmouth. But to bring the conversation back to immigration, I still have their voices in my head when I consider the possibility that too many Americans simply don’t care about immigrants; that many Americans believe that immigrants are here to make our lives easier, rather than pursue their own interests, and that, as a sovereign nation, it is the right of the United States to regulate their coming and going as it pleases.

To be clear, I don’t think this view represents the view of all Americans. Maybe it doesn’t even represent the views of a majority of Americans. Plenty support immigrants’ rights, and have fought for them tirelessly. But I do believe that enough Americans think that our first and maybe only concern should be for our own well-being, and that considering the plight, aims, and humanity of migrants is only secondary. I think this is an ugly perspective, but I also believe it’s one that those who see things this way should be honest about. When asked whether they even care about immigrants, if they respond by saying that we’ve got them all wrong, and they do, in fact, care, then we might follow up by asking them which immigrants they care about, and how they’ve manifested their care. If we can’t have this conversation openly, then we’ll remain stuck in a world of political posturing and half measures, and we’ll keep limping along as we have for decades.

This is just my opinion, and there has been a lot of good writing on immigration this week. Here are some other things to look at:

Mike Bebernes, “Biden’s new border policy won’t fix immigration, but will it help,” Yahoo!, January 11, 2023

Rafael Bernal and Rebecca Beitsch, “Hispanic Caucus split between rage and lukewarm reception to Biden’s new border plan,” The Hill, January 7, 2023

Stef Kight, “Biden’s sudden centrist push on immigration,” Axios, January 13, 2023

Greg Sargent, “To defeat Trumpism, stop letting MAGA stunts drive the debate,” The Washington Post, January 11, 2023

Farah Stockman, “Biden’s Visit to the Border Is Bound to Be Awkward,” The New York Times, January 8, 2023

And here are a couple reports on opinion surveys:

“Equis Key States Series: Immigration Memo,” Equis Research, September 6, 2022

“Poll: 72% of Americans Say Immigrants Come to the United States for Jobs and to Improve Their Lives,” Cato Institute, April 27, 2021

And this is just the tip of the iceberg!! There’s so much more out there. I want to know about all of it. Here’s my plea: I want to hear your critiques of the perspective I’ve offered, I want to know what your perspective is, and I want to know what you’re reading. How can we make progress on immigration, and land in a better place than we’re in today?