What Supporters of Illegal Immigration Don’t Understand

America is a big country. So a political issue has to be pretty salient to be top of mind on both coasts. Such has been the case with immigration. Earlier this month, residents of Los Angeles turned to rioting to resist the Trump administration’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants. In New York, Democratic candidates for mayor have fallen over themselves to profess their own spirit of resistance. One of them, City Comptroller Brad Lander, even got himself arrested.

But it’s not just Los Angeles and New York. Across the fruited plain, the presence of a vast population (estimates vary, but even around 10 million would be larger than all but ten states) has been a consistent preoccupation of our politics. Donald Trump’s rise and sustained political success would not have been possible without the resultant popular frustration. It shouldn’t be hard to understand why. There are very real negative consequences of having such a population within our borders.

It shouldn’t be hard to understand why, but some struggle. Defenders of L.A.’s lawlessness — or what Abraham Lincoln called “mob law” — barely bother to defend it rationally. New York’s Democratic mayoral candidates have at least attempted to articulate a rationale for resisting the enforcement of immigration laws. Some have gone further than that. New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has promised to use her “bully pulpit as mayor” to undermine Immigration and Customs Enforcement. State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has stressed that he would ensure no city resources were complicit with ICE. State Senator Zellnor Myrie has invoked the Tenth Amendment as a means to “ensure that we are not carrying out the federal government’s immigration policies.”

Andrew Cuomo, a moderate only in the context of this Angolan civil war of a primary, has sounded similar. The former New York governor has highlighted his prior record of resisting Trump-driven immigration enforcement. But by progressive lights, Cuomo made an egregious error. Bogged down in a discussion during one of the mayoral primary debates about the minutiae of municipal contracts, he referred to “illegal immigrants.” Lander, the aforementioned stunt arrestee, chastised him. “I’m sorry, is that what you said? What did you call them?” Cuomo returned to the terminology of “undocumented” for the rest of that debate.

It is typical of progressives, such as the dispiriting options realistically on offer in the New York election (can we demand a recount?), to dwell so obsessively on language. They seem to believe that politically correct wording could eliminate this particular problem their city faces. It cannot. Dire circumstances forced Eric Adams, the current mayor (running as an independent this fall), into what passes for progressive hard-liner status about illegal immigration. Adams had the temerity merely to complain about the stress placed on the city by the immigrant influx.

The burden of such migrants on public resources helps sustain immigration as an issue. But if it were only a fiscal question, it would not have endured so long, and in such a charged fashion. There is far more at play. Consider the abiding challenge to popular consent. The migrant crisis in New York has subsumed parts of the city. Entire blocks of hotels, and vast portions of public parks, have become symbols of the neglect of our laws. And so often, these transformations have happened seemingly in secret and away from public view, as though governing authorities were ashamed of actions whose results they enabled. As in New York, so also elsewhere.

Consider also whether such treatment serves illegal immigrants themselves. A distressingly large portion of them enter into personally risky arrangements to secure their passage into this country. It is a perilous journey. For many, it incurs some unpayable debt to those who have brought them in. And what many have waiting for them when they arrive is life in a shadow society. Their illegal residence doesn’t just cut them off from proper avenues of social and civic life; it makes them vulnerable to predation and exploitation. In the latter case, they are often taken advantage of by businesses, which are prone to defending the broken immigration system that allows them cheap labor. As in New York, so also elsewhere.

At bottom, this is a controversy about one of the most fundamental aspects of a polity: the meaning of citizenship. New York’s Democratic mayoral candidates repeatedly elided this meaning, offering no meaningful distinction between those here illegally and those not. As in New York, so also elsewhere: Democrats nationwide are similarly incapable. So long as this remains the case, Trump’s immigration policies, whatever their excesses and errors, will continue to resonate with the public — even when there might be better ways to address the problem. To believe, as Trump does, that illegal immigration is a problem is to assert that American citizenship does, in fact, mean something. It certainly means something to legal immigrants. Not for nothing have they dramatically shifted in favor of Trump’s approach in recent years.

America is a big country. It can welcome new arrivals. Throughout its history, it has. Most of us can trace our origins to some prior immigrant. America is unique, Lincoln believed, in that those who embrace the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, whatever their race, “have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.” In that sense, it need not be some progressive bromide to say that we are a nation of immigrants. But we must also be a nation of laws.

Jack Butler is submissions editor at National Review Online, a 2023–2024 Leonine Fellow, and a 2022–2023 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies.

Reprinted with permission from National Review by Jack Butler.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.