The Window Seat: Is Rhetoric on Either Side Helping the Immigration Narrative?

Can U.S. Americans still view immigration outside of a partisan lens? Or have the narratives become so split that it’s impossible to find room for collaboration? 

While sifting through immigration documents released by the Trump administration over the past year, I noticed that official language in policies can focus on “deterrence,” “invasion,” and warnings of “civilizational erasure.” The language isn’t surprising, especially amid a rise in right-wing politics,  with leaders across the United States and Europe tightening their tone on immigration. 

It is crucial to acknowledge that surges at the border can overwhelm border patrol agencies and strain the economics of some border towns and inland cities like New York as we saw during the  Biden administration. At the same time, immigrants—including undocumented ones—provide significant benefits to the broader economy. 

The normalization of having to “deter” asylum seekers or treat immigration as an “invasion” creates a public sphere dominated by nativist rhetoric—shutting down productive discussion of economic and social realities, and abandoning empathy for those seeking a better life.

When politicians scapegoat one public concern with another, it encourages the creation of purely partisan stances, which shut down constructive debates and only worsens polarization.

But then there’s the Democratic Party, which is hopefully realizing a disconnection between its own rhetoric and what people actually want. The language throughout the past decade, which is realistically more popular among affluent communities on the left than the working-class, has not helped democrats get elected to office. It often takes on a social-justice type vocabulary that,  while not inherently problematic, often tends to assume voters’ needs and that votes will be cast based on identities, which does not reflect reality.

It’s starting to seem that on the right, the border is a breach, but for the left it’s purely a test of values—which is a narrative that, as the Biden administration’s humanitarian-crisis at the border demonstrated, unfortunately doesn’t hold up in reality. 

Outside of the U.S. two countries are experimenting within the left’s rhetorical laboratory, which could prove to better reflect the reality of immigration and what voters want. Denmark and Spain’s immigration rhetoric, though very different from each other, showcase an interesting break away from far-right, academic left and business right talking points. 

In 2022, Denmark’s center-left political party, which acknowledged immigration from a working-class perspective, secured a tight victory. While the party campaigned on rising inflation, welfare, and climate concerns, it took a more traditionally right-wing approach to immigration and campaigned on concerns such as the straining of social services and wage competitiveness to address concerns in a way that wasn’t on the far right.

In Spain, Prime Minister Sanchéz diverges from many European leaders on immigration. He uses working-class language to defend immigration by discussing its economic benefits and treats immigrants as an asset for an aging workforce.

It would be interesting to see if the Democratic Party adopts any of the strategies used by those two counties. While neither are completely immune to simplifying issues, what matters is that policies connected to the rhetoric do suggest an approach that aligns better with reality. As immigration helps offset Spain’s aging economy, the country’s economy is growing faster than all the other EU nations, reflecting some refreshing truth in its rhetoric.

I am not arguing that we all must become experts on something as complex as immigration to risk uttering an opinion about it. But real, bipartisan solutions look meek as long as we give into rhetoric that is desultory and focused on in-groups and out-groups. 

I feel resigned listening to my peers discuss immigration, arguments that often mimic popularized rhetoric. There is, today, a stark contrast between talking points and critical debate. Analyzing immigration through a partisan lens results in a victory for nobody; either way we ignore the origins of the rhetoric and their faulty promises leading to a solution. 

During the Biden administration, the surge at the border meant many migrants faced dire conditions in overwhelmed shelters, children were left unaccompanied, and mass expulsions carried out under Title 42. During the Trump administration we are faced with a threat to human safety through ICE escalations as the government carries out mass deportations.

If we don’t start demanding an end to the narratives—to champion facts, empathy, and reasoned debate over blatant persuasion; if we can’t start recognizing the flaw in our current immigration rhetoric and acknowledge where these talking points come from, we stand little chance of the collaboration needed to better and save the lives of millions.