As Democrats and other center-left parties struggle to understand why working-class voters have turned against them, they reach readily for economic explanations. Yet most flinch from confronting another potent driver of blue-collar anger — uncontrolled immigration.
Of course, that’s partly an economic issue too. But it also illuminates the deep rift between elite and popular opinion on emotive questions of national sovereignty, cultural identity and democratic agency in deciding who can enter one’s country and become a citizen.
Stopping illegal immigration has been President Trump’s most reliable rallying cry. His call to wall America off from a flood of “criminal aliens” in 2016 helped him forge a strong bond with non-college voters. He went back to the immigration well in his 2024 comeback, when those voters again ranked the issue as a top concern, second only to high living costs.
Hostility to mass migration also is the rocket fuel propelling neo-nationalist populists in Europe. These include the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which recently made startling gains in state elections; France’s National Rally, now leading polls ahead of next year’s presidential election, and the United Kingdom’s fast-rising Reform Party.
