Migration politics are tough because rival factions in the GOP constantly push for their different goals, President Donald Trump told an audience of Hispanic supporters and business executives.
“Frankly, it’s the hardest job that I’ve had — the hardest job,” Trump told his Hispanic supporters, adding:
Because they’ll say “You’re too tough” or “You’re too soft.” “Get tougher!” “Get softer!” No matter what you do, it’s always tough.
But politicians have to prioritize the voters, Trump told the Hispanic business executives on September 30: “We have to have the votes.”
The comments show the President is delivering incremental gains by pushing his 2024 mandate amid resistance from business and ethnic groups, responded Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
If the president just said, “Look, I want to give you business lobbyists here who paid $1,000 a plate to hear me talk … whatever you want,” that would be bad. He’s not saying that. He’s saying this [issue] is tough. You guys want one thing, other people want something else, and I’m constantly pulled in both directions. That’s a look behind the curtain, and is encouraging in the sense that he at least is acknowledging that he’s pushed [by business] in the wrong direction.
Incremental gains are the best way to win strategic success, Krikorian said:
I’m not willing to concede that he’s doing the best he possibly can given current pressures. But he’s doing a lot more than any other president, and so you know, I’m happy to take half a loaf … But the point is, if you’re willing to settle for something as long as you’re moving in the right direction, you know you’re operating in reality. This administration is clearly moving in the right direction, even though there are areas where they’re not doing as much as they should be doing.
Since his inauguration, Trump has been zig-zagging between his pro-American voters and his pro-migration donors. The pressure is rising as his border and deportation policies are pressuring CEOs to hire Americans instead of cheap, compliant, and hard-working migrants.
For example, Todd Schulte, the president of the major pro-migration lobby group, FWD.us, recently complained about the scale and ambition of Trump’s effort to deport the migrant workers, renters, and consumers favored by investors:
[It is] bad for immigrants, bad for immigrants who are citizens, bad for Latinos and blacks and all sorts of people who are getting caught up in an expanding profiling and criminal justice system.
Schulte’s group is working alongside various Hispanic business executives and ethnic groups as they push Trump to OK a legalized inflow of wage-lowering migrant workers.
But Trump is also facing renewed pressure from his active supporters who say that his agencies are deporting too few migrants and accepting too many visa workers. He’s also facing more pressure from American college graduates who have been pushed out of jobs and careers by U.S. companies’ increased use of H-1B workers and other visa workers.
“If he gets tough on the issue, the voters will reward him,” said Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project and a member of the Mass Deportation Coalition. He added:
People should make their voices heard. This is still a constitutional republic where voters allegedly matter, and so I would advise the President to remember that each billionaire has one vote, and the voters have a lot more.
Politicians need to “dance with the girl you brought to the prom,” Howell said.
So far, Trump has stuck with his election promise to block illegal migration. He is also backing the Department of Homeland Security, which each month is arresting roughly 50,000 illegal migrants for deportation.
That focus is popular among GOP-leaning voters and ensures his migration policy is his most popular issue area.
“We have to have the votes,” Trump told his Hispanic audience, adding:
Otherwise, we have these lunatics with the open borders. We’ll have the open border lunatics. They’ll open the borders… They’ll let the lunatics in every prison… But we’ve gotten thousands of murderers out of our country… You saw 25 million people walked across the border into our country [under President Joe Biden], and many of those people were not people that you would want in this country.
And frankly, it’s the hardest job that I’ve had — the hardest job, because they’ll say “You’re too tough” or “You’re too soft.” Get tougher, get softer. No matter what you do, it’s always tough.
But we’ve been very strong and for the last 17 months… we had zero people [illegally crossing the border]… We have people coming in, but we have them coming in through a legal process. Legally, we have them coming in legally.
In front of TV cameras, Trump pushes a hard-nosed policy against criminal migrants:
But Trump should do more, for example, by sending officials to quietly pressure companies that hire illegal migrants, said Krikorian:
He should be doing more [company] audits — not showy raids — but just audits by officials who don’t have guns or badges. Just guys in briefcases bringing the IRS and the Labor Department with them and doing a paperwork colonoscopy on your payroll, especially if there’s some reason to believe this is an employer with real problems. That’s something they could do a lot more of, I think, and you know, wouldn’t necessarily create significantly greater political pressure than he has to face now.
Overall, pro-American groups gain more with gradual modest wins than by lunging for one big win, Krikorian said:
I’m not willing to concede that he’s doing the best he possibly can given current pressures. But he’s doing a lot more than any other president, and so you know, I’m happy to take half a loaf… But the point is, if you’re willing to settle for something as long as you’re moving in the right direction, you know you’re operating in [political] reality.
“He needs constant encouragement” from voters to buck pressure from business and ethnic lobbies, Krikorian added.
