- We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border. (audience cheering) - [Narrator] That phrase, secure our border, appears at least 10 times in the 2024 Democratic Party platform. It's a major shift from 2020, where the phrase doesn't appear even once. Harris and the Democratic Party have adopted a stricter stance on the border as voters have soured on immigration levels. - Democrats don't like seeing chaos at the Southwest border any more than Republicans. - [Narrator] But at the same time, Republicans' opposition to immigration has reached a high. - The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country. - [Narrator] Here's why both parties and the electorate are looking for stricter border policies and what that means for November. One reason behind the change in rhetoric is a change in which policies voters say they want. Let's look at four popular immigration proposals.

Before the 2020 election, Democrats favored pathways to citizenship while Republicans favored more restrictive policies like expanding the wall. Both parties viewed hiring more border agents favorably. This year, those views have shifted. While even more Republicans want to see an expanded wall and more deportation, Democrats are also seeing those proposals slightly more favorably, even as they still want pathways to citizenship. A lot of these policies that people indicate they're supportive of are pretty directly contradictory to each other. And ultimately, if I had to guess what that means, it just means that people are looking at this issue and saying, It's been so broken for so long, I just need my politicians to try something to fix it. So why the shift over the last four years? To start, border crossings have increased nearly fivefold after low numbers at the beginning of the pandemic, many people seeking a form of legal protection called asylum.

And the backlog of asylum cases has been growing. And I believe the asylum system is broken. And my constituents, whether they be right or left, believe the asylum system is broken. [Narrator] Senator Chris Murphy chairs a subcommittee that oversees funding for Homeland Security. The asylum system inside the United States is so overwhelmed that it often takes 5 to 10 years for those asylum claims to be processed. That broken system became an incentive for people who didn't actually have legitimate asylum claims to come to the United States because they essentially knew that they could stay here for years, maybe even a decade, before anybody found out that they didn't have a valid claim. [Narrator] In 2022, border cities started busing migrants to blue-led sanctuary cities like Denver, New York, DC, and Chicago, which struggled to provide enough housing and other resources. This issue will destroy New York City.

- Once word spreads that, by the way, there's a free bus for you to New York, New York is also going to provide you free shelter for basically as long as you need it. New York was like, well, I mean, yeah, we have a right to shelter, but we don't have any more shelters. And so that's why I think this came to the forefront in those places where it maybe wouldn't have otherwise. - [Narrator] While some measures enacted by the Biden administration have started to bring crossings down, the surge is part of why Murphy says Democrats are prioritizing border security. At the center of Harris's proposed policy is reviving a bill that House Republicans voted down earlier this year. - And so even though Donald Trump tried to sabotage the border security bill, it is my pledge to you that as president of the United States, I will bring it back up and proudly sign it into law.

(audience cheering) - It's really central to Democratic messaging because for years, the Democrats under Biden have been blamed as the source of all the problems on the border. And this was the first time where they were able to say, Actually, we're the party of solutions. - [Narrator] Murphy was the bill's Democratic negotiator. - There is much more talk in the Democratic Party of welcoming people to this country, but Democrats wanna welcome to this country in a legal way. - The bill included resources to help speed up the asylum process and limit the number of people who could claim it. And it included traditionally conservative policies, like funding to build the wall. - As somebody who worked very closely on the 2013 bipartisan bill, I couldn't believe how many concessions the Democrats gave to Republicans. - [Narrator] Alex Conant was formally the communications director for Senator Marco Rubio. - Every time the Democrats in 2013

gave us a little bit of border security. We had to give concessions on what to do with undocumented immigrants in the country in terms of giving them some sort of legal status, ultimately a pathway to citizenship. There was none of that in the 2024 bill. - [Narrator] Harris has said she plans on addressing pathways to citizenship in addition to passing the border security bill. - Sort of going moderate on the issue of immigration is a great way for Democrats to signal that they are moderate on other issues as well. - [Narrator] More restrictive policies appeal to a more middle-ground section of the electorate and are popular with more moderate Democrats. For Trump, immigration has been a winning issue. His policies lean heavily on increasing deportation and building a wall, stances that have built on his proposals from 2016 and 2020, and that are viewed favorably by his most staunch supporters. - I think one of the things Donald Trump does on immigration

is he approaches it from a lot of different angles. He talks about immigrants taking American jobs. He also talks about it from a criminal perspective. I don't think that's held up in a lot of statistics, but when you look at voters who are concerned about crime and then they see these stories about illegal immigrants causing the crimes, I think Trump's crackdown is something that appeals to them. - [Narrator] In the most recent debate, Trump mentioned immigration or the border in his responses to questions on the economy. - And they're coming in and they're taking jobs. - [Narrator] Tariffs. - Well, bad immigration is the worst thing that can happen to our economy. - [Narrator] January 6th. - I ask, what about all the people that are pouring into our country and killing people? - [Narrator] And election integrity. - And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in,

they're trying to get them to vote. - I think Donald Trump has redefined what it means to be a Republican, and at no issues that are more apparent than on immigration, where the party is far more skeptical of legal immigration, far more concerned about illegal immigration now than it's ever been in the past. - [Narrator] But Trump's rhetoric does risk alienating voters who may be on the fence. - In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. - When you talk about immigrants eating dogs and cats without any evidence, that's crazy. And so I think, to the extent that, you know, he can get off track and go too far on even an issue as winnable as immigration, that's a challenge for his campaign because it does turn off the moderate Republicans and independent voters who like his underlying policies but have concerns about his temperament.

- [Narrator] Democrats also risk going too far in trying to appease voters. - There is a sort of very vocal immigrant rights community on the left, but so far you haven't actually seen many of those immigrant rights folks break with, you know, Kamala or the Democrats in a way that some, let's say on the issue of Gaza and the war in Israel, have. I think that they have sort of recognized this is a really tough issue, and when we have two choices, this is the better of the two. - [Narrator] For Harris especially, these stricter policies could appeal to independents who make up a majority of undecided voters right now. - It's a delicate balance for Kamala because she can't just be tough on the border, right? Polling shows that most Americans actually wanna hear a sort of split message that we're going to be tough, but we're also going to be generous.

to people who deserve our generosity. (bright music)

Trump and Harris’s Immigration Policies: 2020 vs. 2024 | WSJ

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