Alex Nowrasteh
On June 12, reporters and political commentators were abuzz with news that the Trump administration told ICE agents to “hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture, restaurants, and operating hotels.” His administration’s announcement launched 100,000 tweets crowing about how Trump is in the pockets of big business, a premature op-ed at National Review titled “Trump’s New Amnesty Would Cover About Two Million Illegal Immigrants” (a new amnesty implies the existence of an old amnesty), and a reignition of the TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) meme.
Trump officials announced this morning that they are reversing their guidance from last week. Cato’s immigration scholars didn’t fall for last week’s announcement, and you shouldn’t have either.
Here’s a bit of information that will help you interpret Trump’s immigration announcements: He doesn’t like immigration, and he’s a committed enforcer of immigration laws. Thus, any announcement that he’ll pull back or otherwise liberalize is simply not true. This rule of thumb holds every time except when the courts force him to pause. Some members of his administration may like legal immigration or oppose intensive enforcement, and they may even get control of ICE’s PR department or Trump’s Twitter account for a few hours or days. But their announcements don’t mean anything, and they will be reversed. Just like here.
The Trump administration opposes illegal immigrants and legal immigrants, low-skilled and high-skilled immigrants, family-based immigrants, and employment-based immigrants. The only exception may be H‑2A migrant workers for agriculture, one of the few visa programs he didn’t terminate in his last year in response to COVID-19. The economic harms don’t matter, which is why Trump canceled the student visa program. That’s a big deal because foreign students are the first link in a chain that leads to highly skilled immigrants becoming citizens. By ending that, Trump is terminating the pipeline for the highly skilled immigration system. Perhaps the system will adapt, but that’s uncertain. If it does, Trump will find another way to end it.
The TACO (Trump always chickens out) meme isn’t relevant in immigration, and it’s barely relevant in trade. Trump has pulled back from the most destructive tariffs after the markets reacted. But the US effective tariff rate is still about six times higher than before he took office. That means he’s winning on trade.
What could signal a real change in Trump’s immigration policy? Stephen Miller leaves the White House. Nativism is Miller’s main public policy issue. He’s helped staff DHS and other departments with nativists, he’s written many of Trump’s speeches on immigration, and he relentlessly pushes immigration enforcers to do more. Trump believes in it, too, but less so than Miller.
If Miller leaves, then that would be an actual sign of changing policy unless a more strident nativist were appointed in his place. Miller’s position in the administration is the canary in the coal mine. If he’s removed, nativists should start worrying, and economists, lovers of American liberty, and the rest of us should start rejoicing.
In the meantime, the judicious, thoughtful, and intelligent observer of immigration policy will ignore announcements by ICE or Trump’s tweets that contradict the administration’s core nativist policy opinions.