How to Win Workers on Immigration
Restricting immigration at the border and providing a legal path for hard-working residents isn't a contradiction. It's common sense.
In a recently conducted YouGov survey, designed by the Center for Working Class Politics and the Labor Institute, 63 percent of 2024 voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin said they supported “granting legal status to all illegal immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least 3 years and have not been convicted of a felony.”
Supporters surprisingly included 36 percent of those who voted for Trump last year.
That wording was taken directly from the American National Election Studies survey (ANES) of 28,311 respondents between 1996 and 2020. In my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, the ANES survey was used to zero in on white working-class voters’ opinions across the country. The results were startling:
In 2016, only 32 percent supported granting legal status to undocumented (“illegal”) residents. By 2020, support had jumped to 62 percent.
We expected that voters of all shades and persuasions may have turned against immigrants after Trump highlighted the issue in his three campaigns, focusing attention (with the often-relentless help of Fox News) on a number of horrific but rare violent crimes apparently committed by the undocumented. He threatened the mass deportation of undocumented residents in 2016 and 2020 and then began a campaign of highly visible deportations after winning the presidency in 2024. And then there was JD Vance’s lie about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating their neighbors’ pets.
But as the chart below shows voters in these key swing states, all of which voted for Trump, still supported legalization, as of April 2025. (3,000 voters were surveyed.)
Here are the results broken down by the 2024 presidential vote in those four states.
By party identification:
By ideology:
By class:
And by ethnicity:
The survey also shows that support for legalization is highest among younger voters: 76 percent of those 30 years of age and younger support legalization.
But isn’t immigration the big Right-wing issue?
There is a big difference between controlling immigration at the border and criminalizing hard-working undocumented residents. You can be for secure borders and restrained immigration while also supporting legalization of the 11 million undocumented workers now living in the shadows.
Our analysis shows that a majority of voters are compassionate towards immigrants and understand that having 11 million people living and working without legal protections is not good for them or for working people in general.
Undocumented workers find it very difficult to exercise their rights. They can be forced to work for lower wages in poor conditions and have no easy recourse to complain about it without fear of being reported by their employers to ICE. Those we surveyed clearly understand that this places downward pressure on wages in many occupational categories, hurting American workers as well as immigrants.
Arguing that undocumented workers do jobs that U.S. citizens no longer want to do completely misunderstands the labor market. If wages are pushed up, instead of down, good-paying jobs would be filled both by U.S. citizens as well as legalized immigrants.
So why aren’t the Democrats on it?
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. But I suspect that the Democrats have drifted so far away from the working-class that they don’t understand that legalization of undocumented workers is a working-class issue. I don’t know who does their polling, but I would bet they are not asking the kind of questions we are asking. They have long ago stopped trying to understand the needs and interests of working people.
For whatever reasons, the Democrats are letting Trump stomp all over undocumented workers. Yes, there is concern about specific immigrants who have been illegally detained and deported. Yes, there is mumbling about providing citizenship for Dreamers – those born here with undocumented parents. But there is radio-silence about hard-working undocumented workers receiving legal status. This is a fight the Dems are choosing to avoid.
Trump’s weaponization of the immigration issue might have Democratic politicians on the defensive, but there might be another reason they’re choosing not to engage. The group that most wants immigrants to stay in the shadows are those who profit from low-wage labor.
There is a vast ecosystem of sub-contractors and temp agencies that supply undocumented workers for warehouse operations like Amazon’s and food processing plants, like those of JBS and Tyson. Tens of billions of dollars in extra profits are made off the backs of these workers, few of whom have any way to exercise normal employee rights, much less fight to unionize. They can and are being exploited.
The employers who have their hooks into these undocumented workers also have their hooks into both political parties. They are not keen on uplifting their lowest-paid employees or having those who receive their political donations fighting for their rights.
The travesty of the two political parties not fighting for the rights of these working people, even with strong polling supporting such a fight, is just one more reason why we need a new political entity, one that focuses on the needs and interests of all working people.
The billionaires have two parties: We need one of our own!
This post originally appeared at Wall Street’s War on Workers. It is reposted here with permission.
 | A guest post by
|
Good stuff. I think most people, even Trump voters, aren't against immigrants or immigration, but they are against illegal immigration (and that includes most Hispanic residents and/or green card holders). When talking heads on MSNBC and CNN seriously ask in the run-up to the 2024 election "who's going to do construction work if we deport illegal immigrants?," it shows that the Democrats have really lost the plot. The supposed "left" party, giving up the humanitarian lens of immigration, and supporting illegal, underpaid, protection-free and often dangerous labor for skilled, (formerly) high-paid jobs? They sounded more economically to the right of the Republicans.
I was involved in letter-writing campaigns to keep undocumented people in my building, who are incredibly hard workers with good families and great neighbors, during the first Trump administration. Deporting people like that is plain cruel and counterproductive. We did however see a massive upswing in new migrants during the Biden presidency in NYC that were forced to compete for already ridiculously expensive and scarce housing, resources and infrastructure, and that was also cruel (to migrants and citizens). It's also true, even if you don't like Trump's rhetoric, that cartels involved in the fentanyl trade, violence, human trafficking and extortion of other immigrants have become a problem that we just shouldn't accept as a civilization.
Work should be safe, legal and have protections, and having undocumented people with the threat of deportation hanging over their head working in our country is a problem for everyone. We also need immigrant workers, now and especially if we do manage to bring more production back to the States (and we should; not utilizing exploited workers around the world should be our goal), but it should above-board, and with a path to citizenship. You're right that no one seems to fight for these goals, and somehow the Democrats have mostly become much worse on anything that would actually benefit working people.
Immigration is probably the most misunderstood issue in America. There is so much misinformation, lies, false narratives and fear mongering stoked by the GOP with help from Fox, conservative mass media and social media platforms.
Immigrants cannot vote, a majority cannot receive government assistance, they commit significantly less crime than native born Americans, they are more entrepreneurial than Americans. They do NOT carry illegal drugs or Fentanyl into America. Most cross our Southern border legally claiming, “asylum status”. They are fleeing unsustainable conditions that in large measure is blamed on American actions (US demand for illegal drugs, lax gun laws in Texas and emerging Climate Change effects).
Immigrants are not aliens from outer space; they are human beings, brothers and sisters of the American workforce. They build our homes, take care of children, work hard to supply food from our farms and are the cornerstone of our high-tech industry. They are the life blood of our American economy and culture. They are what makes America great ... for the last 50 years!
The bottom line .... we need immigrants as much as they need us! Embrace them, don't demonize them. We are all related to immigrants!