The Rift in MAGA Over Immigration

The debate erupting within President Trump’s camarilla — known as MAGA World — over immigration has Twitter and the internet abuzz. It’s a moment to mark the opportunity the president-elect has to forge a compromise on an issue that has festered for decades. The contours of such a compromise would include a crackdown on illegal immigration and securing the borders while expanding levels of legal migration that America’s economy needs to thrive.The prospects of a deal of that stripe were mooted in these columns in light of recent reports that the surge of migrants in recent years has led the proportion of America’s population born abroad to reach a record high: 15.2 percent. That statistic loomed large in Candidate Trump’s campaign for re-election and is now prompting questions among some of his top advisers over whether to clamp down on the H-1B visas used to fill job vacancies in high-tech firms.Politico frames the debate as “Musk v. MAGA.” On one side, Politico reports, “are the right-wing MAGA faithful, who have been drawn to Trump in no small part because of his hardline stance on immigration.” On the other side are leaders in the tech sector and Silicon Valley, seen as “latecomers to the MAGA movement,” in Politico’s telling, “whose businesses depend on attracting the most talented highly skilled workers in the world to America.”The Sun has a long-held view of this. We certainly favor issuing more visas for educated strivers who want to come to America to work in high-tech and other advanced industries. Such immigrants — feature, say, Elon Musk — have helped put America in the van of the high-tech revolution. Yet we also favor the concept that economists call human capital. We believe that in a free economy it’s not only the educated who will contribute and prosper. Mr. Musk, and his colleague, Vivek Ramaswamy, have emerged as eloquent advocates on this head. We like how Mr. Musk put it in a posting last year on his social media platform X. “We should,” he wrote, “greatly increase legal immigration of anyone who is hard-working, honest, and loves America. Every such person is an asset to the countries. But massive illegal immigration of people we know nothing about is insane.” A policy debate like the one now emerging over immigration is a healthy sign for a political party, especially because any legislative action on this head will require, at least to some degree, support from Democrats on Capitol Hill. That’s in part because the slimness of the GOP majority in the House and the filibuster in the Senate mean that bipartisanship is needed to advance any legislation through Congress.The Democrats, in the aftermath of their electoral failures on November 5, have already been “acknowledging their party committed ‘political malpractice’ by bungling the issue of border security,” the Hill reported recently. The issue helped tilt the election toward President Trump and the Republicans. That suggests at least the possibility that some Democrats would be open to the idea of negotiating with the GOP on immigration issues. If that proves to be the case, it offers an opening for the wing in Trump’s coalition that is receptive to the kind of legal immigration that helps fuel economic growth. “We need people,” Trump himself has said regarding the need for more legal migrants. If his tax cuts get extended in the new Congress, these columns noted, the need for a growing workforce will prove even more acute — a point to be borne in mind amid the debate roiling the right today.

The Rift in MAGA Over Immigration

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