Presidential elections and immigrants

SIGNIFICANCE: After attaining American citizenship, immigrants can vote in national elections. Because they tend to identify with their ethnic, racial, or religious groups, many immigrants tend to vote in blocs. This makes them prime targets for the attention of political campaign strategists. Throughout American history, immigrants have been alternatively courted and attacked by organized political parties embroiled in presidential campaigns. At times, immigrant issues have dominated national policy agendas; at other times, such politically controversial issues have been ignored or shunned. 

The nexus of immigration and national-level politics is the presidential campaign. The United States hasat besta mixed record of embracing immigrants in this important electoral process. Because of ongoing neglect, the voices of immigrant groups have often been quiet in American public policymaking. Moreover, presidential elections by their very nature have tended to reinforce strong intragroup bonds of new American citizens. During the late nineteenth century, urban political machines sprang up as informal organizations serving the political interests of immigrants on both the national and local levels. By the twenty-first century, urban machines were nearly extinct, but immigration issues continued to occasionally rise to the top of national political agendas.  

Mixed Enfranchisement

The United States has been called the “first new nation”the first modern Western country formed without a European feudal and aristocratic past as its historical bedrock. This means that at some basic level, American presidential elections have always hinged upon the voting efforts of immigrants. However, despite America’s status as the first new nation, the degree of success in extending voting rights to immigrants since the American Revolution can be fairly described as mixed. 

During the early decades after the creation of the American nation, the drafting of the US Constitution, and the early elections of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, the rate of foreign immigration into the United States was steady but slow. During the decades-long lull in significant immigration, the political identity of the United States matured. The immigrants and descendants of immigrants already on American shores began to recognize themselves as a distinct group. In terms of American political development, this was very important. Perhaps ironically, the immigrants who would later come from Europe would be seen as “outsiders” to an established political process. 

Early American voting laws began to reflect this newfound electoral xenophobia. In a nation that fewer than seventy-five years earlier had been started by foreign immigrants seeking new beginnings, rules and regulations began to take shape to limit the voting rights of new immigrants. Enfranchisement is the right of a person to cast a ballot for an elected official. Its oppositedisenfranchisementbegan emerging in the United States during the 1830s and 1840s. 

Prior to the US Civil War of 1861–65, a partisan battle between the emergent Whigs and the Democratic Party spilled over into public law. The Democratic Party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson thrived. The Democrats had created something known as the spoils system, in which party backers were rewarded with government jobs. The Whigs stood in opposition to this Democratic success and somewhat effectively united native-born voters against immigrant voting rights. In 1840, the Whigs chose as their candidate for president William Henry Harrisona decorated leader in the war against American Indians on the western frontier. 

The Whigs perceived that the Democrats had developed an advantage over them by supporting laws allowing immigrants to vote. The Whigs represented the more affluent and established members of American society. In early American elections, there were no voting registration laws, but as the sense of community felt by existing American residents grew, registering voters began to make sense to them. The idea of transients voting in elections was seen as something to stop by this reactionary element of the electorate. It can be argued that registration laws were first developed as a reasonable method of stopping voting fraudsuch laws were more likely enacted to discourage poor people from voting. 

During the nineteenth century, Americans experiencing poverty were most frequently immigrants. With the potato blight in Ireland during the 1840s and the rapid influx of Irish Catholics to eastern urban centers, native-born Americans began to lobby for voter registration laws. Without a doubt, some of these laws were blatantly aimed at new waves of Irish, German, French, and Dutch immigrants. One anti-immigrant proposal sought to extend the length of time immigrants had to wait before they could qualify for citizenship and vote. Some anti-immigrant leaders even pushed for waiting periods as long as twenty years of citizenship before naturalized citizens could vote. 

Mid-Nineteenth Century Changes

After a few years of success, the Whig Party began to fade from the national political scene during the 1850s. However, it was quickly replaced by the Know-Nothings. The Know-Nothing Party had begun as a secret nativist society called the Order of the Star Spangled Banner. The party was progressive on some issuessuch as women’s rightsbut in general stood for unabashed bigotry. The Know-Nothings openly expressed fear over Irish Catholic workers settling in Boston and New York. They saw the Irish as un-American and feared that they took their marching orders from the Roman Catholic pope. 

Along with the surging Republicans and the fading Whigs, the Know-Nothings pushed for state voting laws establishing literacy tests and grandfather clauses. These laws required such things as civics tests and minimum residency requirements before individuals could vote. During the nineteenth century, the legal hurdles placed in front of voterslater known as Jim Crow lawswere not aimed solely at Black Americans. Rather, they were directed toward eastern European immigrants and others who were not established property-owning Protestants. 

At various times in American history, members of very different immigrant groups were feared for their possible political influenceChinese immigrants in California, Italians in New York, and Cubans in Florida all held this distinction. However, some regions of the United States were more tolerant toward immigrants than others. For example, Minnesota and Wisconsinperhaps because of their residents’ heritage of Scandinavian egalitarianismhave generally been more embracing of the foreign born. Likewise, immigrants who moved to the western frontier during the nineteenth century and stayed away from the eastern seaboard were better able to gain political acceptance. 

Urban Political Machines

In contrast, political life during the nineteenth century could be harsh for many urban immigrants. Low-paying factory jobs and thick foreign accents did not easily gain them entry into the landed classes. The importance of property-owning status and high educational achievement made it difficult for immigrants to gain political acceptance. Consequently, local elections were often sealed off from members of poorly organized and politically naive immigrant groups, and presidential elections were generally completely out of reach of new Americans. Moreover, immigrants typically could neither run for office nor get their issues onto the political agenda. 

Because immigrants lacked representation in both public candidacy and voting, their political problems were only compounded. Muckraking works such as Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle documented the harsh work and living conditions of the immigrant working poor. Their oppressed, low-class status was directly linked to the lack of political representation in a supposedly democratic nation. Most often presidential candidates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as James Garfield and Benjamin Harrison, did not stand strongly for immigrant and minority rights. 

However, at least one political tide was turning. After the Civil War and the onset of urban industrialization, European immigrants formed close-knit communities that housed their own forms of political expression. For example, Slavic communities that provided labor for the coal industry in Pennsylvania embraced one another in insular neighborhoods. Soon enough, the close-knit nature of immigrant communities, usually centered on ethnically flavored churches, lent itself naturally to political organization. 

Urban political machines were born not only to clutch onto political power, but also to give a voice to immigrants. Machine politics was a locally born phenomenon that also provided the first roots of immigrant political power exercised on a national level. Political machines taught immigrants they could organize and help change government policies. Through the machines, immigrants learned about their civil rights and were even encouraged to cast votes for their preferred candidates. By supporting the political candidates put forward by political machines, immigrants gained patronage jobs in government. At the turn of the nineteenth century, waves of new Americans were learning the lessons of politics. 

American presidential elections are not monolithic national electionsaccumulations of individual state elections held on the same day. The aggregated electoral votes of the individual states determine who the president will bethe federal system has always granted power to state electoral systems. During the nineteenth century, the individual state systems were dominated by political machines in large urban centers in which immigrants played increasingly important roles. 

As urban machines composed of distinct ethnic groups gained political ground in cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, they became national-level power brokers. Because immigrant political power was nested in urban centers, these machines could “deliver” votes for federal level candidates, including the presidents. Many political historians have noted that President John F. Kennedy’s electoral victory in 1960 was delivered with the blessing of the Daley machine in Chicago. However, the political power of European immigrants peaked with Kennedy’s victory. 

Immigration Policy

Public policy scholars have long known that when an ethnic or racial minority candidate wins elected office, new public policy tends to more closely follow the particular needs of the candidate’s group. As European immigrants assimilated into the greater American melting pot during the mid-twentieth century, the unique needs of other immigrant groups have become more visible. 

By the late twentieth century, American immigration policy debate was focused on the struggles of recent Latin American immigrants. While some immigration policy issues diverged from their counterparts of a century earlier, other commonalities remained. For example, Hispanic immigrants faced the same kinds of workers’ rights issues that daunted European and Asian immigrants during the nineteenth century. Perpetually assuming the role of the newcomer in a developed American economy, immigrants have always had acute concerns about workplace safety and fair wages. 

Issues of political representation have remained as well. Hispanic Americans gained ground in winning public offices, but White native-born Americans continued to dominate campaign politics. New Mexico’s Hispanic governor Bill Richardson was a possible candidate for president in the 2008 electionhe could not match the support for fellow Democratic Party nominees Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. 

Under the US Constitution, only natural-born American citizens are eligible to become president. A child of naturalized citizens can hold the highest office, however, and some have suggested such a candidate could represent a turning point for immigrant affairs. President Obamawho made history as the nation's first Black presidenthad a Kenyan father. Obama’s election was hailed by some as potentially marking an ascendancy of immigrant as well as ethnic minority candidates, although others saw Obama's Black American identity as superseding his connection to the immigrant experience. 

In the twenty-first century, the United States was included in a global issue shared by economically advanced countries in which non-immigrant populations in developed countries experienced declining birth rates and longer life expectancies. The result was that older societal segments in the developed world were growing larger, while numbers in younger demographics contracted. Many Western countries met labor shortfalls by encouraging the entrance of a large number of immigrant workers. These same societies, nonetheless, came to feel that their native cultures were at risk by the presence of foreign newcomers. Ironically, many of these Western countries had culturally transformed societies outside their borders as colonizers in previous centuries. This situation had reversed itself in the twenty-first century. Some countries, such as Canada, were forthright in acknowledging their dependence on immigration to meet labor and population replenishment needs. In other countries, right-wing nationalist movements emerged and threatened to become the popular ruling party, a situation not experienced in Europe since the end of World War II in 1945. Countries demonstrating these trends included France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, and others. 

Furthermore, in the early twenty-first century, immigration remained strongly associated in public perception with Latin American countries in particular. The issue of undocumented immigration became a key political topic in presidential election cycles and elsewhere. Along these lines, immigrant issues were initially most salient in Mexican-border states such as Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Texas, but grew increasingly mainstream across the country. Generally, conservatives espoused stricter immigration laws while progressives emphasized human rights and the value brought by immigrants to the US. As the political sphere became more and more divided along partisan lines, these positions became entrenched in Republican and Democratic ideologies. Both sides called for significant reformthe treatment of apprehended undocumented immigrants and fundamental questions of the requirements of citizenship. 

By 2008Latin Americans and many other immigrant groups were considered reliable Democratic Party voting blocslargely due to the Republican Party's harsh stance on immigration. However, some analysts indicated that beyond that core issue, many immigrant populations, in fact, held relatively conservative social views that could align them with Republicans. Still, immigrants overall were seen as turning out in favor of Obama in his successful 2012 presidential reelection bid. 

By the 2016 presidential election, undocumented immigration once again became a crucial issue in campaigning and debates. After announcing his bid for the Republican nomination in 2015, presidential candidate Donald Trump made combating undocumented immigration one of the cornerstones of his platform. Trump singled out Mexican immigrants as one of the biggest threats to Americagoing so far as to claim that Mexico was largely sending criminals over the border. To curb immigration from Mexico, he adamantly proposed building a border wall and insisted Mexico would pay for its construction. Additionally, Trump initially proposed banning all Muslim immigrants before altering his stance to one of "extreme vetting" in 2016. Despite widespread controversy over his xenophobic and racist rhetoric, Trump narrowly won the presidency in the Electoral College even though he lost the popular voteindicating his nationalist message resonated with many Americans. The immigration issue was seen as key to Trump's success, leading many scholars and pundits to further investigate the resurgence of anti-immigrant sentimentparticularly among rural and working-class White Americans. 

Trump continued to pursue anti-immigrant policies while in office, such as building the border wall and detaining and separating migrant families. He also continued to make racially charged statements around issues of immigration. While opponents condemned Trump's inflammatory comments, his supporters and fellow Republicans largely played into his message of border security andmore subtlyWhite nationalism. This partisan division continued to play a key role in American politics heading into the 2020 presidential electionwith both Republicans and Democrats using immigrant issues to motivate voters. Although Democratic challenger Joseph Biden did not himself have strong ties to immigrant groups or identity, his running mateSenator Kamala Harriswas the child of Indian and Jamaican parents. Although Biden defeated Trump in both the Electoral College and the popular vote, analysts observed Trump unexpectedly saw significant gains among Hispanic American voters in some areas. 

In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, the issue of immigration was at the forefront of American political campaigns. The Republican Party made immigration a primary opposition strategy during Biden's presidency (2021–25). Republican governors took up the immigration mantle during the interim period between the 2020 and 2024 campaigns with actions that kept the issue a constantly reported topic in the media. These included actions such as the Republican-led effort to impeach Secretary of the Department of Homeland SecurityAlejandro Mayorkas. Other highly publicized actions included Texas governor Greg Abbot's deployment of the Texas National Guard to its border with Mexico and Florida governoran early presidential candidateRon DeSantis’s campaign to bus immigrants to northern states. By 2024, these efforts succeeded to some extent, as many Americans had come to view immigration controls as a national priority and favored more entry restrictions. Democratic Party candidates at the national and state levels shifted their messaging to align with this trend. Immigration, as expected, had a prominent role during Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

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