In a 2025 investigation, The New York Times reported that officials in President Joe Biden’s administration, in the wake of Biden’s 2020 election win, had viewed rising immigration as “a distraction” best ignored so that the administration could concentrate political resources on more important economic matters.
Scott Shuchart, a Biden appointee who joined the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in 2022, told the newspaper that the White House was “wishing the problem would go away so that they could focus on the things they cared about.”
But two years after Donald Trump leveraged voter dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s management of the U.S. southern border to win the 2024 election and enforce his immigration crackdown, the issue has suddenly become a secondary matter.
Amid the rising U.S. cost of living, a destabilizing war in Iran and a disrupted system of global commerce, the now-quiet border has relieved Democrats of their thorniest issue just in time for midterm elections.
From liability to advantage
For the past three decades, the Democratic Party and its candidates have struggled to develop and pass new immigration policies and communicate related political messages.
Bipartisan attempts at comprehensive immigration reform died on Capitol Hill in 2006, 2007 and 2013. Since then, a majority of Americans has trusted Republicans more with governing the issue. That has given the GOP an advantage when the salience of immigration policy has risen due to border crises and related high-profile events, even if that edge has recently narrowed.
In a February 2024 poll, 28% of U.S. respondents told Gallup that immigration was the country’s most important problem – matching the largest share since tracking began in 1981. By May 2026, that figure was 8%, a staggering drop in such a short period.
In a different poll by The Economist/YouGov, the share of U.S. registered voters who identified immigration as the country’s most important issue fell from 14% in October 2024 to 5% in September 2026.
Erik Iverson, a Republican Senate campaign pollster, recently told Axios that declining border crossings have reduced the urgency of immigration, depriving Republicans of an issue that previously energized voters and offered conservatives an advantage.
“You become a victim of your own success,” he said.
But this success is dubious. President Trump’s approval ratings on immigration are underwater.
In the RealClear Polling average from September to October 2026, his net approval was at negative 10.8%. In a recent Fox News poll, most Americans believe the Trump administration has “gone too far” in enforcing immigration laws, including 60% of independents.
Despite Republicans’ insistence that the mass removal of undocumented immigrants and a halt to new migrants would raise wages and make housing more accessible, Americans are experiencing high inflation rates, slow gross domestic product growth and sour consumer sentiment.
Ominously for the White House, Trump’s negative 10.8% net approval score on immigration is actually among his best. On inflation, the economy and foreign policy, his net approval rating is at negative 42.8%, negative 31.7% and negative 27.8%, respectively.
These dynamics bode well for Democrats’ midterm election prospects.
Republicans are now less concerned about immigration – what has been their greatest source of political energy and the left’s greatest political liability – as both parties’ voters are focused on other matters.
Despite the White House’s aggressive and frequently violent pursuit of undocumented immigrants, its proposal to end birthright citizenship, and its near closure of U.S. borders, even Democrats are no more likely to identify immigration as the country’s top issue today than they were previously.
According to The Economist/YouGov polling cited earlier, 1% of Democrats named immigration as their top issue in September 2026. In October 2024, 3% said the same.
Remarkably, without Democrats’ endorsement of a single new immigration policy idea, independents now express greater trust in Democrats than Republicans on immigration, 41% to 27%, according to a September 2026 Marist survey.
Democrats’ trial and error
Democrats’ sudden edge arises after a decade of trialing different approaches to counter the nativism and popular discomfort that Trump has harnessed.
Before Trump’s 2016 election victory and immediately thereafter, Democratic leaders sought to ameliorate the image of foreigners in the U.S., by highlighting that immigrants start more businesses, file more patents and commit fewer crimes than native-born U.S. citizens on average.
During this period, Democrats commonly cited immigrants’ acute vulnerability and their willingness and ability to fill critical low-skilled and high-skilled labor gaps. But the praise and pity produced resentment among many Americans who did not want an admissions system that elevated foreigners to a higher pedestal.
Toward the end of the first Trump administration, Democrats began citing the immense macroeconomic and fiscal benefits driven by immigrants’ long-term settlement in the U.S.
Economists attribute to immigrants the bulk of U.S. population growth from 1990 to 2015. And economists have shown that continued immigration mitigates inflation and extends the solvency of Social Security and Medicare funds. Immigration also provides workers for industries like construction, agriculture, food production and healthcare.
However, the benefits of these relationships for average voters tend to be diffuse and realized in the medium-to-long run. That makes them hard to recognize.
After the global pandemic halted most human mobility in 2020, the Biden administration sought to avoid the immigration issue altogether. It’s a strategy that Democrats have now carried over while the dynamics of being out of power still permit doing so.
No mandate for inaction
Should Democrats win majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives in 2026, the issue of immigration is highly unlikely to be resolved. As a matter of constitutional oversight, Democrats plan to commence investigations into the Trump administration’s abusive immigration enforcement tactics, questionable case adjudication and alleged corruption.
It will be almost impossible to pass meaningful immigration legislation in such an environment.
The Biden-era approach was a pivotal electoral liability in 2024. And the Obama administration’s series of immigration executive actions instigated a tennis match of such orders between subsequent administrations ever since.
Democrats will soon feel some pressure to develop bipartisan approaches to immigration governance that ensure order at U.S. borders and a strategy for immigrant selection and integration that is designed with the national interest in mind.
Anything less, and the dysfunctional system – with its massive political risks – will return.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Justin Gest, George Mason University; Institute for Humane Studies
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Justin Gest is affiliated with The Niskanen Center, The Aspen Institute España, America's Competitive Edge (ACE) Initiative, and the Migrant Rights Initiative at Cornell Law School.
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