When Did Democrats Become So Lax On Immigration?

I didn't waste my time watching the Grammys on Sunday night, but while I was scrolling through X to wind down and catch up on the events of the weekend, I was inundated with the world's worst opinions by the tone-deaf elites of Hollywood.

Repeated refrains of "ICE out" and "F*** ICE" smattered my timeline, and while it isn't surprising to see so many out-of-touch celebrities parroting the same DNC talking points they've been spewing for decades, it got me thinking: when did this whole "no human is illegal, lax immigration stance start popping up on the left?

To be fair, there probably always has been a fair share of the lunatic fringe of the Democratic Party that have espoused these views, but Democrats at large haven't always been so pro-illegal immigration.

The Party Of The Working Class

Not too long ago, the Democratic Party was the "party of the working class, for the working class."

Whether that was true or not is another topic for another time, but as recently as the 1990s and 2000s, the DNC postured itself as the champions of the middle-class working man.

Part of looking out for the working-class American citizen meant making sure jobs went to American citizens first, so the fact that Democrats have more recently changed their tune on immigration is eye-opening.

If you don't believe me, just look at what some of the more prominent figures of the DNC had to say about illegal immigration as recently as a decade ago.

Barack Obama

Many know Barack Obama as the "Deporter-In-Chief," a pejorative used by the right to highlight just how hypocritical Obama's recent stance on immigration has been.

This was the man who, after all, appointed Tom Homan, Trump's current "border czar," as Immigration and Customs Enforcement's executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations in 2013.

What is even crazier is to hear Obama's public stance on immigration as recently as his second term in office.

During a 2014 address to the nation, the 44th President of the United States stated, "Our immigration system is broken. Families who enter our country the right way and play by the rules watch others flout the rules…"

Sounds like a far cry from the modern stance of almost every Democrat to the left of center.

Obama was even instrumental in overturning Bill Clinton's "wet foot, dry foot" policy regarding Cuban immigrants defecting to America, saying "Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal."

Speaking of Clinton.

Bill Clinton

In a 1995 State of the Union address, former President Bill Clinton sounded like the very people the left tries to frame as Nazis when he said, "All Americans … are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country…"

Clinton called on both "Republicans and Democrats" to curb what he called a disturbing trend, and even went so far as to call illegal immigrants "a burden on our taxpayers."

Funny, but I was told that illegal immigrants bring in so much tax revenue that we would be stupid to deport them.

This was in response to Americans missing out on jobs because of illegal immigrants entering the country and becoming cheap labor, a talking point that would have you labeled a xenophobic fascist by today's standards. 

He even used the term "illegal alien." Fancy that!

Hilary Clinton

We can't talk about Bill Clinton without also discussing his "better half," so here's Hilary on a talk show in 2003 discussing how she's "adamantly against illegal immigrants."

She even took things a step further and said that we need to "stop employing illegal immigrants."

But it gets even better!

During her 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton called for the deportation of illegal immigrants if they've committed a crime, "no questions asked."

Kind of like how the Trump administration is doing the same thing right now?

Bernie Sanders

This one might shock you, considering how radically left he is on a bevy of issues, but Bernie Sanders sat down with Vox's Ezra Klein to discuss the issue of "open borders."

When Klein asked whether Sanders' socialist platform meant opening the borders of the United States to help combat global poverty, the Vermont senator dismissed it as a "right-wing" stance (what?) and a "Koch Brothers proposal."

"It would make everyone in America poorer, then you're doing away with the concept of a nation state."

Wow, sounds like right-wing nationalism to me.

It makes sense, in theory, that Sanders would have held this position, considering he is pro-labor and pro-worker, and importing large numbers of immigrants would make it harder for blue-collar Americans to get jobs within their own country, but what do I know?

I'm just a racist bigot like Bernie, right?

Why The Change?

To be fair, it seems like the DNC started to change its stance on immigration right around the time Donald Trump became a serious threat to win the presidency in 2016.

Once Trump adopted an "America First" stance, it probably would've been political suicide for a left-leaning candidate to hold any position the Evil Orange Man held.

I believe you could also point to the large voter bases the Democrats cultivated through illegal immigrants, and changing their position on social issues isn't anything new for the Democratic Party.

Democrats were famously the party of Jim Crow Laws and the KKK, but when they started to curry favor with African-Americans thanks to FDR's progressive policies such as social welfare spending, they realized they had a voting bloc that was potentially an untapped goldmine.

The same goes for their support of gay marriage.

Similarly to how they were once staunch supporters of immigration reform, DNC figureheads like Obama and Clinton famously ran on marriage being between a man and a woman and outwardly opposed gay marriage.

As late as 2012 for Obama and 2013 for Clinton, the idea of opposing gay marriage was a nearly bipartisan issue.

Once it became en vogue to back LGBTQ+ causes, Democrats welcomed their new voters, and within a couple of years, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage and the rest is history.

So the next time a liberal tries to lecture you on how evil and fascist you are for supporting such barbaric policies, just remind them some of their political heroes were no different than the very man they try to paint as the next Hitler.