Democrats Are Increasingly Pro-Immigrant. Here’s Why
Stephen Henderson and guests discuss the specific ways we are seeing attitudes shift among Democrats.
Over the last 15 years or so there has been a 49-point swing in public opinion polling as to whether respondents see immigration as a net positive or net negative for America, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.
Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst for the Reason Foundation. She recently wrote a piece for Reason Magazine titled “Democrats Have Never Been More Pro-Immigration, Thanks to Trump.”
Dalmia speaks to Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson alongside Ryan Devereaux, investigative journalist covering immigration enforcement, the drug war, and national security for The Intercept.
Devereaux has been covering the case of Scott Warren, a humanitarian activist is facing 20 years in prison for offering water, food and clothing to two migrants who crossed the border illegally.
In Reason Magazine, Dalmia writes:
What explains this Democratic romance with immigrants?
Part of it is that a general revulsion at Trump’s border cruelty — his child separation policies, internment-style camps for Central American asylum seekers, deportations of people who’ve built lives in America — is generating a pendulum swing in a pro-immigration direction.
In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last fall, 61 percent of the respondents said that “immigration helps the United States more than it hurts” and 28 percent said it hurts.
