Trump-Approved Immigration Reform? Biz Leaders Are Still Dreaming.
They plan to ‘split the baby.’ Immigrants, scarred and mistrustful, aren’t convinced.
WHEN 150 BUSINESS LEADERS GATHERED for orientation ahead of a day of meetings with members of Congress Wednesday, they strategized about how to get Republican lawmakers to see immigration politics from their perspective, despite Trump and the national mood.
The representatives of the American Business Immigration Council (ABIC), a coalition of 1,700 employers and CEOs, settled on a variation of the good cop/bad cop routine—“the storyteller” and “the hammer.” One person would tell the story of how their business relies on immigrants. Stories are both psychologically persuasive and arm lawmakers with talking points they can use to defend controversial votes. The storyteller is sort of the good cop.
Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, which represents 5,600 members, was clearly the hammer.
“We either import workers or we import our food,” he said, matter-of-factly, providing the most memorable line of the day.
Many of the ABIC representatives at Wednesday’s “fly-in” were Trump supporters, but they knew the realities of their companies and industries and were keen to explain how they fit into the broader economy to any lawmakers who would listen.
“A clear message from the election is the American people want strong borders and a strong economy and the president has successfully secured the border, with border encounters down 94 percent,” said ABIC CEO Rebecca Shi, who noted the employers she works with span the manufacturing, agriculture, health care, hospitality, housing, and construction sectors. “We want Congress to do the second half, secure the economy and secure our workforce in order to bring prices down.”
The legislative route to achieving the “second half” is a little blurry, but one possibility is to reintroduce legislation by Rep. María Elvia Salazar (R-Fla.), which she called the Dignity Act when she introduced it in 2023. The bill would clear a path for Dreamers to gain legal status and for workers who fit certain criteria to be allowed to remain in the country. While Salazar has not yet reintroduced that legislation, she and Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.) did reintroduce the American Families United Act, which would allow the federal government to exercise discretion on a case-by-case basis when it comes to the removal of an undocumented person who is married to a U.S. citizen.
But when Salazar was asked by a reporter at ABIC’s press conference on Wednesday how she would respond to those who say she backs amnesty, she had a sharp rejoinder.
“Amnesty is what undocumented people have right now: free roads, free hospitals, and free schools,” she said. “We want to go from amnesty to dignity.”
Then she went for it: “We’re going to cut the baby in two,” by which she apparently did not mean that she would find a Solomonic way to determine the truly just outcome, but rather that each side would get half a baby. She said her framework, backed by Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), will not make all Democrats or Republicans completely happy, but since Trump has “fixed” the border, it is the logical next step to help bring people without criminal records out of the shadows. Standing to benefit the most, she said, are the agriculture, hospitality, and construction industries.
“Republicans and Democrats will fix, once and for all, 40 years of a broken immigration system,” she said. “The Dignity Act caters to 10 to 15 million people who have put food on the table year after year or built homes, and have brought growth to our economy.”
IT DOESN’T TAKE a historian or immigration lawyer to identify problems with Salazar’s reading of the current political moment. While she said Trump is delivering on promises to close the border and go after gang members, the administration has also taken a wrecking ball to the immigration system, gutting asylum, refugee, and temporary protected status programs while embarking on an authoritarian dream sequence that includes shipping Venezuelan men who have common tattoos but, in many cases, no criminal records to Guantánamo Bay or a brutal Salvadoran prison.
Rick Swartz, who founded the National Immigration Forum and worked on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (also known as the “Reagan amnesty”), was simultaneously pained and humored by her words.
“I’ll have what she’s smoking,” Swartz said. “Every bone in Stephen Miller’s body contradicts that delusional wishful thinking. If she gets Miller to say ‘We’ll do legalization for 6 million people now that we kicked out the worst of the worst,’ great! I’ll nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
I asked Salazar: Why should the scarred and traumatized immigrant community, whose members are being attacked irrespective of whether they have green cards or legal status, trust Republicans to lead this effort?
She said they should trust the plan because she intends to advocate this legislation while flanked by a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
“Very simple—you introduce legislation and ask the Lord to help you and guide you,” she said, returning to a biblical theme: “It’s time to do something revolutionary and give them a dignified life in the promised land.”
Artemio Muniz, the founder of the Texas Federation of Hispanic Republicans, took part in the meetings with Texas lawmakers and staff, including Reps. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), Morgan Lutrell (R-Tex.), Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.), and Monica De La Cruz. In these conversations, it was Muniz playing the part of the hammer. He said he believes this is the “best chance” for immigration reform “because, for the first time, an administration is listening to the American people on security first. We need that before we do anything compassionate.”
“They are waiting on President Trump for guidance,” he said of the lawmakers who met with him. “I heard that repeatedly. We believe they’re waiting for a declaration from President Trump to signal that he did the job on securing the border, and once he does that, you’ll see that guidance they seek—a line in the sand on which immigrants could benefit.”
I’ve known Artemio a long time. I believe he and other more reasonable Republicans might believe this is true. But I find it hard to follow the thinking here: Trump is supposedly going to give up his immigrant bashing in favor of a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner along the southern border? Politically, immigrants are too useful of a bogeyman for Trump to give up: The animus he loves to stir up against them creates political energy he can then harness and direct towards other goals.
What Immigrants—and Americans—Actually Hear on Immigration
BEYOND THE TRUST GAP Trump has created with immigrants after assailing them and the rule of law, we should think about what Americans actually hear from lawmakers on immigration.
In an analysis of AdImpact data, the immigration group Catalyze/Citizens found that during the 2024 election, Republicans spent over $573 million on anti-immigrant TV ads in twelve battleground states, while Democrats countered with $107 million on immigration-related ads. This was not a sudden asymmetry: From 2018 to 2022, Republicans spent $183 million on anti-immigrant ads that ran in eleven battleground states and congressional districts, while Democrats only put $19 million into their own immigration-related ads.
So as immigrants and mixed-status families are being bombarded with attacks from the federal government, Americans across the country are slow to stand up for them because for years they have had their views on immigrants hardened through a ceaseless drip of hostile messaging.
Rachel Roberts, the president of the American Mushroom Institute, told me her headquarters are in Pennsylvania because that’s where two-thirds of her industry is, and the surrounding community has a large immigrant population. She says workers are still showing up to work—for now.
“I’m continuing to feel grateful to the workforce given the fact there is so much rhetoric flying around,” she said. “This should be a community that is viewed as healthy for the economy and our schools, and you shouldn’t have a question of whether or not they belong and whether their work is valuable.”
Sam Sanchez, the founder and CEO of Third Coast Hospitality, is a Trump supporter. But he said the pandemic showed that people collecting unemployment checks were in no rush to return to work. Restaurants would have failed, he said, if not for immigrants who returned to work. Many who came back to cook, wash dishes, and wait tables didn’t qualify for unemployment because they are undocumented.
Sanchez also said that while many hope for a bipartisan fix, only Trump can signal to Republicans that it’s okay to stop demonizing immigrants.
“That’s why it’s so important there’s a bipartisan bill, but no one is going to lead it,” he said. Only one person can: “President Trump has to lead it and deliver it.”
One Last Thing
We all got served a real smörgåsbord of bad immigration news this week. Sam Stein, Tim Miller, and I covered much of it in a YouTube video that dropped yesterday.
What I would like to highlight is a truly bizarro bit of ‘Only in Trump’s America’ insanity, courtesy of the Sunshine State. A CNN headline reads: “Florida debates lifting some child labor laws to fill jobs vacated by undocumented immigrants.”
No big deal—a modest proposal, really. Anytime you get an opportunity to overturn child labor laws so that 10-year-old Timmy from Tallahassee can start working nights at the factory because you scared the undocumented workers away, you’ve got to seize it by the throat.
Sending back 530,000 immigrants in the US with green cards who are here working and contributing shows clearly where this administration stands. These aren’t people who have broken the law. I don’t understand how business owners can support him.
Well, yeah, Adrian's work here is now on my short list. None of this shit happens in a vacuum, and his insights on what's going on in the minds of our immigrants is required to understanding the totality. A well-administered program for people to enter and stay in the country so they can contribute to our economy is vital, and that can has been kicked down the road by both parties since forever. It's something that would take a metric shit-ton of money and infrastructure to do right. But there are lots of interests who do not want to see that, from cheap-labor mavens to no-borders zealots. Most American citizens (who have not had their limbic systems hijacked by screaming moral panics about marauding brown people)? They really really like the benefits of available labor, if nothing else. Here in Atlanta, we have roving gangs of Guatemalans viciously building, replacing, and repairing roofs. It's what they do, damn them. Or did. I'm sure their absence will cause no hardship at all as America becomes Great again.