One of the notable facts accompanying Donald Trump’s return to the White House is the cratering support among the American people for immigration of all types. Biden’s lax border policy generated a backlash against immigration far greater than Trump’s first presidential campaign did in 2015–2016. The 46th president’s neglect of the southern border and encouragement, often through funding of NGOs, of migrants to enter the United States not only sharpened public disapproval of mass migration but also turned the issue into an electoral goldmine for Republicans.

In a cruel irony for immigration moderates, Biden’s permissiveness did more damage to the public perception of their cause than did Trump’s hostility. From a combination of ideological zeal and fecklessness, Biden’s administration discarded “Remain in Mexico” and other Trump border policies that, by the end of Trump’s first term, had reduced immigration’s political salience (and arguably boosted Biden’s prospects in 2020). And one cannot attribute Biden’s immigration policy to a wholesale desire to overturn his predecessor’s legacy, since, on questions of industrial protection and China, for instance, he opted generally to continue Trump’s approach.

Biden and his party’s radicalism on immigration was pivotal in Trump’s victory in November; Trump himself believes that it was the issue that gave him the White House for a second time. It’s worth highlighting three dimensions of Democrats’ approach to the issue that are often overlooked, concerning, respectively, how it affected public perception of the party; how it shaped Americans’ relationship with their own major cities; and how it patronized Hispanic Americans.

First, consider Democrats’ incessant attempts, over many years, to portray Trump as uniquely extremist and a special threat to our most cherished norms of governance. Despite these efforts, and to the shock of liberals, Republicans won narrowly among voters who believed democracy was threatened. Why did Democrats fail in casting Trump as extreme? One reason is that, on immigration, the public could not be talked out of the view that the Democrats were the extremists—that the party’s conduct and policies were far from both popular consensus and recent American practice. Compared with their effective refusal to enforce immigration law, Trump’s blunt pronouncement, “If you don’t have borders, then you don’t have a country,” sounded like common sense.