Pro-migration activists and business lobbies are telling President Joe Biden’s inner circle that it is politically safe to open the border if they also push back against the GOP’s “border chaos” theme.
“The administration is repeating the mistakes of 2015 by underestimating the power of a border security argument” against voter worries, Ali Noorani, the director of the business-funded, pro-migration National Immigration Forum.
Without that broader PR campaign, he told Politico for a July 6 article, “they run the risk of losing [support from] the moderate voters who said, ‘You know what, I want a more rational approach to immigration, but still one that keeps us safe.’”
The article was headlined, “Biden allies brace for GOP attacks when southern border reopens.”
The push comes as Biden’s officials hint they will drop the Title 42 border barrier that was built by President Donald Trump amid the coronavirus crisis.
Biden’s deputies are hinting they will partially drop the barrier this month to let migrant families rejoin their illegal migrant husbands in U.S. cities. They are also hinting that they will drop the barrier in August to let more migrant job-seekers enter the country via the asylum process.
But those changes will likely spur massive migration, as many migrants will be allowed to move into U.S. communities in search of jobs and schooling for their children. That inflow will depress American families’ wages, crowd their schools, spike their rents, impose more chaotic diversity in their culture and politics — and fuel anger against Biden’s fellow Democrats.
There is growing evidence that the economic impact of loose borders is recognized by some White House officials. For example, this Tweet from Biden’s account touted the wage-boosting importance of tight labor markets:
But Biden’s partly-hidden loose border policies can survive public worries if officials also reframe migration away from economics and towards a “humane, orderly and safe” process for sympathetic women and children, according to migration advocates led by Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us group of West Coast investors.
The investors created FWD.us in 2013 to help deliver a greater inflow of foreign workers, consumers, and renters to help spike their Wall Street investments. They also support easy amnesties, easy access to imported H-1B visa workers, and unrestricted global trade.
The breadth of wealthy investors who founded and funded FWD.us was hidden from casual visitors to the group’s website early in 2021. But copies exist at the other sites.
Zuckerberg and his FWD.us group have been bankrolling many of the small grass-roots groups — and astroturf groups. Collectively, they urge welcome for illegal migrants, many amnesties, and more migration under the “humane, orderly and safe” theme.
The theme is already being pushed by Vice President Kamala Harris and by Alida Garcia, a White House hire who formerly worked for the FWD.us group. Garcia also worked for Harris in California before Harris was elected to the Senate.
The White House’s pr0-migration faction is pushing the “humane, orderly, and safe” theme to women voters. For example, Garcia retweeted this Tweet from Biden’s office:
The business groups also are trying to minimize alarm in suburbia by minimizing media coverage of the border crisis. Politico reported July 6:
A former Obama immigration official who is close to the Biden administration acknowledged Biden is vulnerable on the border. “His immigration number is low, there’s no doubt about it,” the person said. But in order for it to drag his overall approval rating down, the person said, lifting Title 42 would need to lead to “visual chaos on the border.”
In prior years, such visible migrations — especially when echoed by TV news — can radically shift polls. In July 2014, the unprecedented rush of adult and child migrants wrecked President Barack Obama’s ratings, according to a 2014 report by the Associated Press:
Obama’s approval rating for his handling of immigration dropped in the poll, with just 31 percent approving of his performance on the issue, down from 38 percent in May.
…
Santiago Moncada, a 65-year-old Texas resident, said he ultimately believes the children need to be deported. “My heart goes out to them,” said Moncada. “It needs to be done only because we need to send a message saying our borders are closed.”
In May, advocates working for FWD.us boasted they have worked with border officials to shift media coverage of the border towards uplifting stories about families and tearful reunifications.
The “humane, orderly, and safe” strategy seems to be helping to boost female support for Biden’s loose border policies.
For example, a Harvard Harris poll of 2,006 registered voters, conducted June 15-17, showed that voters split 50 percent to 50 percent when they were asked, “Is the Biden administration creating an open border or is it just trying to enforce immigration laws more humanely?”
Similarly, a Washington Post poll from June 27-30 showed that men split 56 percent against and 31 percent for Biden’s border policies. That 26-point gap was narrowed to just 11 points among women who split 46 disapprove, 35 percent approve. Among whites college graduates, men disapproved of Biden’s policy by a 21-point split, while women showed a 1-point split.
But the Washington Post poll also showed much latent opposition to Biden’s agenda, with large shares of voters declaring they have “no opinion.”
In 2018 and 2020, President Donald Trump lost when he pushed a negative immigration agenda and did not offer positive gains to blue-collar families and white-collar professionals. Trump’s negative strategy helped Democrats steal his non-ideological, swing-voting suburbanites with a more comforting message offering security and quiet.
In 2021, the GOP is not offering a positive agenda to win more support from women on migration issues.
Instead, the establishment GOP is still pushing the vague and negative “border chaos” theme that the FWD.us groups are carefully capturing and redirecting — especially for women — with their rival “humane, orderly, and safe” theme.
For example, a June 1-3 poll by the Senate GOP committee dedicating to electing Republicans only get a 48 percent strong agreement when voters answered the question: “Has the recent surge of illegal immigrants on our southern border made you more or less likely to support Democrat candidates in the 2022 election for Congress?”
The White House’s pro-migration faction is also trying to sway Biden by surrounding him with pro-migration advocates. On July 4, for example, advocates such as Garcia made sure that representatives for illegal migrants got their message to Biden on Independence Day:
The deep public opposition to labor migration is built on the widespread recognition that legal immigration, visa workers, and illegal migration undermine democratic self-government, fracture Americans’ society, move money away from Americans’ pocketbooks, and worsen living costs for American families.
Migration moves wealth from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to investors, from technology to stoop labor, from red states to blue states, and from the central states to the coastal states such as New York.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.