Comparing the candidates’ immigration policies
Americans have long considered immigration to be one of the most important policy issues. Unprecedented surges in illegal border crossings during the first half of the Biden administration have raised immigration to an even higher priority than usual with U.S. voters. An August 2024 Economist/You Gov poll found that 87 percent of respondents considered immigration to be important, which trailed several other issues asked about in the poll, including inflation, jobs and the economy, health care, taxes and government spending, national security, crime, foreign policy, education, civil rights, and civil liberties. However, when asked which issue was most important, twelve percent of respondents selected immigration, which trailed only inflation and jobs and the economy. This post summarizes the current state of U.S. immigration, the candidates’ positions on immigration policy, and public support for those positions.
U.S. immigration facts
In fiscal year 2022, the United States issued about 1.02 million permanent visas, which are also known as “green cards.” Of the 1.02 million people granted permanent legal resident status, 42 percent were immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, which is an unlimited visa category. Another 16 percent received their green cards under family-sponsored preferences and 27 percent received them under employment-based preferences; both of those categories are subject to annual limits. In addition, 8 percent converted from refugee or asylee status to legal permanent resident status, 4 percent were admitted under the Diversity Visa Program, and 3 percent received their green cards through other smaller programs. The United States also issued more than 6.8 million temporary visas in fiscal year 2022 to people entering the country for tourism, business, education, medical treatment, or work.
The United States also admits refugees and asylum seekers each year on a temporary basis, until they can apply to become legal permanent residents. The primary difference between refugees and asylum seekers is that refugees apply for admission from outside the United States, while asylum seekers apply after arriving in the United States. The President sets the annual refugee limit, after consulting with Congress. The Biden administration set a limit of 125,000 refugees for fiscal year 2022. In addition, the United States granted asylum to about 39,000 people in fiscal year 2022.
There are also about 2.5 million people in various programs that allow them to stay temporarily in the United States, but that are not a pathway to legal permanent resident status. About 1.1 million of these people are present under various humanitarian parole programs, about 700,000 are present under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, and about 550,000 are present under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Fewer than 200,000 people are lawfully temporarily present under other programs.
In addition to the about 3 million immigrants who are considered to be unauthorized but are allowed to be temporarily present in the country under the programs described above, there were about another 8 million unauthorized immigrants at the end of 2022. About half of these unauthorized immigrants entered the country legally but overstayed their temporary visas and about half entered the country illegally. About 3 million of those 8 million unauthorized immigrants had active removal proceedings in immigration court.
The key issues in U.S. immigration policy typically involve (1) how aggressively the government should pursue the removal of the 8 million unauthorized immigrants who do not have permission to stay temporarily, (2) whether some of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants should be given a pathway to citizenship, (3) how aggressively the government should patrol the border to prevent any additional unauthorized immigrants from crossing illegally, (4) how the government should handle asylum seekers who arrive at the border seeking to immigrate to the United States, (5) how many family-sponsored and employment-based visas the government should grant each year, (6) how many diversity visas the government should grant each year, and (7) how many refugees the United States should admit each year.
The candidates’ positions on immigration policy
Vice President Harris hasn’t released her full immigration policy yet, but she has said that she supports the bipartisan border bill that was proposed earlier this year. That bill would have granted 50,000 new family-sponsored and employment-based visas each year for five years. It would have continued to provide temporary status for DACA recipients who reached age 21 and aged out of the program. It would have allowed the government to close the border if certain border crossing thresholds were surpassed and required it to do so if higher thresholds were surpassed, although it excepted unaccompanied children from those closings. It would have narrowed the government’s ability to parole migrants into the country while awaiting an immigration hearing. It would have shifted the hearing of asylum claims from immigration courts to immigration officers to try to ease the immigration court backlog. It would have raised the initial screening standard for asylum claims to screen out more asylum seekers more quickly. It would have automatically granted work permits to asylum seekers who passed the expedited asylum process and also to asylum seekers whose screening was delayed for at least 90 days. It would have authorized more than $18 billion to hire more border security and immigration officers. And it would have provided $1.4 billion in aid to cities and organizations providing services to migrants. In addition to touting the bipartisan border bill, Vice President Harris has expressed support for providing a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, although she hasn’t explained how many of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants would benefit from that policy. She seems to have moved away from some of her prior positions, such as decriminalizing the act of crossing the border illegally and overhauling Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Former President Trump has said that he would continue his prior immigration policies. In particular, he would require migrants to remain in Mexico while their asylum cases were processed. He would continue construction of the border wall. And he would reinstate the travel ban on people from certain countries that were largely Muslim. In addition to these prior policies, he has promised to significantly increase deportations of unauthorized immigrants. He has also said that he will try to end birthright citizenship, although most legal experts believe that would not be possible without a Constitutional amendment. Former President Trump opposed the bipartisan border bill, which was a key factor in its failure to advance out of the Senate. However, some argued that he opposed that bill more for political reasons than for policy reasons, as he did not want to allow President Biden to pass major immigration legislation in an election year.
The following table compares the candidates’ stated or implied positions on the seven key issues described above.
Public opinion on immigration
Two recent Pew surveys addressed many of the key issues summarized in the table above. It found a surprising amount of agreement in positions on those issues across parties. The following table summarizes those findings, showing the percentage of respondents who said that each issue was either very or somewhat important. As the table shows, there is bipartisan agreement that it’s important to allow those who came to the U.S. illegally as children to remain (such as DACA recipients, although remaining does not necessarily mean a pathway to citizenship), to increase security along the U.S.-Mexico border, to increase staffing and resources available to patrol the border, to require people to apply for asylum before arriving at the border, to provide safe and sanitary conditions for asylum seekers, to make it easier to sponsor family members to immigrate here, and to take in civilian refugees trying to escape violence and war. In addition, most Republicans (and most Americans) think it’s important to increase deportations of immigrants here illegally and make it harder for asylum seekers to be granted legal status and most Democrats (and most Americans) think it’s important to establish a way for immigrants here illegally to stay (although staying does not necessarily mean a pathway to citizenship).
The above table shows mixed results in terms of the candidates’ positions. Most Americans would probably agree with former President Trump about removing more unauthorized immigrants and patrolling the border more aggressively. However, most Americans would probably agree with Vice President Harris about increasing family-sponsored immigration and at least maintaining refugee admissions at current levels. It is not clear from these questions which candidate would have more support for their positions on giving unauthorized immigrants a pathway to citizenship, handling asylum seekers, or setting diversity visa limits. However, the results suggest that Vice President Harris’s positions on all of those issues may have greater public support.
However, polls specifically asking about public preferences between the candidates on immigration show a slightly different result. A Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll found that 47 percent of voters trusted former President Trump more on immigration, while only 38 percent trusted Vice President Harris more. Another poll from The Hill found that former President Trump had a 16 percentage point advantage over Vice President Harris on voters’ trust to address challenges at the southern border, which was his largest advantage on any issue.
Therefore, while it appears that Americans may prefer more of Vice President Harris’s stated immigration policies, they trust former President Trump more to handle immigration. This disparity may be due to Vice President Harris’s frequent policy shifts and occasional blunders on immigration issues. She has been linked to President Biden’s policies on immigration more so than on any other issue and immigration has consistently been one of President Biden’s least popular issues. Therefore, there may be little incentive for former President Trump to adopt more moderate immigration policies, as voters’ preferences on this issue may be driven more by trust than by policy.
