Part 6: Most Americans hold contradictory feelings and expectations about immigration. This perpetuates paralysis and instability in immigration politics.

I have read many opinion polls on immigration and spoken with people who self-describe as inclusivist or restrictionist. Many, if not most, Americans have conflicting feelings and expectations about immigration. These conflicts may not be spoken or even self-acknowledged. Many people appear to feel as follows: “I like immigrants, but not so many.”

An individual’s thoughts about immigrants and immigration policy arise from a sponge-like absorption of family, workplace, neighborhood, customer and patient service, and other encounters, past and present. It cannot be overemphasized that the entire political class in the United States, with the exception of radical restrictionists, has failed to stimulate any open and thoughtful discussion of immigration. The stereotype-drenched style of public discourse on immigration leaves the country wide open to exploitative behaviors, such as presidents running immigration policy by fiat.

At this point, very early in the Trump administration, there has yet to arise an articulate defense of an inclusivist vision of immigration, or simply a defense of the status quo.

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