It wasn’t groundbreaking that the speakers who took to the Republican National Convention stage spent much of the night railing against President Joe Biden’s border and immigration policies. Biden was enabling a “border bloodbath,” crowd signs read, as congressional leaders accused Biden of enabling a border “invasion.”
Nor was it new to see them use provocative, inflammatory or extremist rhetoric to talk about immigrants and the Democratic incumbents. “Every day, Americans are dying,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz thundered, “murdered, assaulted, and raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.”
What was clear is how the Republican Party of 2024 has fine-tuned its anti-immigration message for the American electorate of 2024: focusing on drugs, human trafficking, crime and public disorder, and distinguishing between “illegal” immigrants who threaten the fabric of America and the right kind of migrant.
Sentiment highest since 2001
Indeed, the America of 2024 is more anti-immigrant than in the recent past, more skeptical of immigration, and more open to policies that would have seemed extreme if they had been enacted when Trump was in office. Since 2020, the share of Americans wanting the level of all immigration to decrease has shot up, from 28 percent in the middle of 2020 to 55 percent as of June 2024, according to Gallup polling data.
Analysts note that 2024 is the first time since 2005 that the majority of the American public has wanted less immigration and that this anti-immigration sentiment is at its highest point since 2001, when the country was going through another bout of anti-immigrant fervor after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Those shifts are also happening across all sectors of the electorate. It’s not just white voters. Nonwhite voters and especially Latino voters are more likely than in the past to want less immigration, and anti-immigrant sentiment is rising across all partisan groups, including among Democrats.
During the Trump years, the overall mood of the country shifted to be more pro-immigrant as Democratic voters became much more positive about immigration. That trend has shifted, even over the past year.
The opinions don’t lack nuance. Voters are much more positive on legal migration than illegal immigration. Overall, though, when thinking about the border and immigration, many Americans now seem to view the issue less as one about humanitarianism and human rights, and more through the lens of law and order, immigration researchers have observed.
All of this was reflected in the position of many Republican rising stars, candidates and elected officials. They warned of the threat that an “invasion” at the southern border posed to the American dream.
The Republican convention’s message rounded out this critique of the status quo: “You can’t have a nation without borders.” It’s a simple pitch to those Americans who view migration as a question of order and process — upset at images of migrant caravans and river crossings, even if they don’t necessarily dislike the idea of extending the American dream.
In 2019, while Trump was in office, this strategic speech might not have resonated with most Americans. But in 2024, it’s ringing true to a growing share of the electorate.
Christian Paz is a senior politics reporter at Vox.
