They're all hypocrites. But the final hurdle of ratifying an amendment requires 3/4 of state legislatures to be on board. And while the rural gerrymander projects have been alarmingly successful, that's still pretty far off.
So on the balance, I feel pretty good about this. For at least the next 3 elections. And if Musk keeps following in Ye's footsteps, he'll be a washed-out has-been by then.
Both parties are anti-immigration in practice. The only difference is in their posturing to their respective bases around election time.
Consider that the last major amnesty was under Reagan and the last major tightening of immigration rules was the IIRAIRA under Clinton. The modern deportation machine was really spun up by Obama - he removed more people from the US than any other president, almost 1% of the entire US population was deported by Obama. 50% more than Dubya and more than Trump. [1]
It's been two years under full-on Democratic party rule, the remain-in-Mexico policy is being walked back but still in effect. [2] Children are still being separated from their parents at the border. [3] [edit] The public charge rule still exists, but was returned to the classical definition. [4] Indian-born folks are still in 50+ year queues to get green cards subject to deportation at the whims of their employers. Consulates abroad still have year-long backlogs for appointments to get visa foils so people here, legally, in the US, cannot leave the US as they wouldn't be able to get back in without a new foil. I have friends who haven't left the US in years to see their families.
More of the US-Mexico border wall was built under Obama/Biden than it was under Trump, and Obama was behind the implementation of the biometric exit control program.
I would definitely say that the progressive caucus inside the Democratic party is pro-immigration. If it were not for the two party system, this would be its own party. Regrettably this sub-group does not have a ton of influence on their party’s policies, but their influence has been growing for sure since 2018, getting almost a 100 seats in this years mid-term election. Not all districts have the option of voting a progressive (which most likely happens in a democratic primary vote), and quite a lot of times a progressive actually looses to a moderate (or even a conservative in the case of Cisneros vs. Cuellar in TX-28). But my feeling is that the progressive caucus has not stopped growing, my hope is that this will result in a significant reform in the kind of immigration policy the democratic party endorses.
I'd lean that vs the reast of the world, both US parties are very pro immigrant
For example, neither party has revoked all visas and sent everyone home, and both parties have presided over plenty of immigrants both entering the country and becoming citizens.
The long queues and things are that the US is immigrant friendly, but with rate limits. It's one thing to leave the rate limits alone, another to reduce them, and another to increase them
It may seem that this is relative (and from a humanitarian perspective, it may very well be), but from a marxist perspective this is not a relative issue. While the owning class can have free flow of capital, any restriction on the freedom of movement is bad, as it creates low-cost-labor zones which the workers are unable to migrate from and can be exploited by capitalist enterprises. Advocating for free-movement of people is pro-immigration, advocating against it is anti-immigration. And advocating for forced removal of people (i.e. deportation) is both anti-immigration and anti-human-rights.
"Both parties are anti-immigration in practice. The only difference is in their posturing to their respective bases around election time."
Looking at the vast share of immigrant population in the US, "anti-immigration" means something very different from what I would expect.
Orbán's government in Hungary is anti-immigration in the classical sense. Last year, they received 40 asylum requests - out of more than half a million total in the entire EU.
The exact definition of natural-born citizen has never been tested. This is literally the only part of the constitution which uses that term, and it isn’t defined. Some interpret it to mean born of US parents, regardless of actual birthplace.
Regardless, we can be confident that a naturalized citizen like Musk doesn’t meet the requirement.
With the recent exception of COVID, there has not been a significant reduction of even legal immigration during the periods when the supposedly "anti-immigration" party was in power.
