{"id":8959,"date":"2022-09-26T16:16:01","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T16:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8959"},"modified":"2022-09-26T16:16:01","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T16:16:01","slug":"when-republicans-talk-about-immigration-they-dont-just-mean-illegal-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8959","title":{"rendered":"When Republicans Talk About Immigration, They Don\u2019t Just Mean Illegal Immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The distinction between legal immigration and illegal immigration is often not clear-cut, though. Consider that only a minority of unauthorized immigrants, 38 percent, entered the country without proper documentation in 2016, according to research conducted by the Center for Migration Studies<\/a>. Instead, the majority of unauthorized immigrants who entered the U.S. that year, 62 percent, overstayed their temporary visas, meaning they initially arrived in the U.S. legally but proceeded to remain illegally with expired paperwork. Moreover, the Pew Research Center<\/a> looked at 2017 data from the Department of Homeland Security<\/a> and found that almost 90 percent of those who overstayed their visas were from neither Mexico nor Central America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, this doesn\u2019t change the fact that a lot of media attention remains focused on illegal immigration<\/a>, especially in the context of the southern border. Republicans are also still probably more concerned over illegal immigration than over legal immigration. When Gallup asked Americans in March how personally worried they were about illegal immigration<\/a>, 68 percent of Republicans said \u201ca great deal\u201d \u2014 27 percentage points higher than the overall share of Americans who said they were worried a great deal and 50 points higher than the share of Democrats who said the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s this overwhelming concern around illegal immigration \u2014 regardless of its accuracy \u2014 that helps explain why Republican politicians still give the topic so much oxygen in their campaign materials. They know illegal immigration is a huge flash point for their voters \u2014 at the very least, this is something I\u2019ve found in researching the platforms of various Republican primary candidates running for state and federal office. And yet, I\u2019ve also found that when you look at the actual immigration policies Republican politicians have successfully enacted, efforts to curb legal immigration have been much more successful than policies meant to restrict illegal immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take former President Donald Trump. While illegal immigration was a central pillar of his campaign<\/a>, especially in 2016, his administration proved much more adept at implementing policies that limited legal immigration than illegal immigration. A week after he took office, he notoriously signed an executive order<\/a> that initially limited immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. Moreover, throughout his four years in office, Trump also pursued a number of measures to uproot the process for asylum seekers<\/a>, from banning certain situations in which people were eligible for asylum to introducing new protocols that made the asylum process longer. And later, the coronavirus pandemic unleashed a series of travel restrictions<\/a> from the Trump administration in early 2020 that contributed to an 18 percent decrease in the average number of monthly green cards<\/a> and a 28 percent decrease in non-immigrant visas<\/a> compared with President Barack Obama\u2019s second term. Meanwhile, Trump\u2019s early campaign promises to collect and deport all undocumented immigrants<\/a> never panned out, and his infamous wall \u2014 at least how he envisioned it \u2014 has yet to be built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s policies may present obvious examples, but the former president is not the only one proposing policies that limit legal immigration. Republicans in Congress have also started to take up legislation that whittles down such pathways. For instance, when Republicans controlled the Senate in 2019, Sens. Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley and then-Sen. David Perdue reintroduced the RAISE Act<\/a>, which proposed restricting family-based immigration policies in addition to instituting a host of other caps. (An earlier version, which specifically outlined halving the number of green cards<\/a> issued annually, had previously failed to come to a vote in 2017, when Cotton and Perdue first proposed it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill also explicitly linked legal immigration to the economy with its focus on highly skilled immigrants, which it defined as immigrants who could help with \u201cimproving the fiscal health of the United States<\/a>\u201d without jeopardizing jobs that could otherwise be held by American citizens or as \u201cprotecting or increasing the wages of working Americans.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Republicans Talk About Immigration, They Don\u2019t Just Mean Illegal Immigration<\/a><\/blockquote>