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Notes -
Nearly two years ago, I wrote:
After listening to a recent interview of Carlos Odio, a pollster focused on Latino voters, I truly do believe that the stance above represents the message the broadest number of Americans can agree to and/or might tolerate. American politicians, leaders, and statesmen ignore this and they will make mistakes in one of the ever salient topic of US electoral politics. What was really clarifying for me though is the terminology, which unlocks my thinking of what it means to "support immigrants" and "not support immigration", bolded mine:
The pair of academics mentioned, based on my research, are Yotam Margalit and Omer Solodoch who wrote on Against the Flow: Differentiating Between Public Opposition to the Immigration Stock and Flow. They are among the first to really separate people's attitudes towards stock vs flow. What Odio mentions about Latino Trump voters supporting pathway to citizenship I think is referring to this poll.
What is especially important, I think, is by looking through the lens of stock vs flow, we can very quickly figure out the problems and mistakes that both the left and right makes on immigration.
Biden's and the left's failure with immigration is because they confused supporting immigration as also supporting immigrants. There was a perception after 2012 and 2016 and 2018 that Latinos was on the side of the Democrats and are a loyal and committed base. And by handwaving the national debate on immigration as a Latino issue, Democrats, especially under Biden, made moves that they think Latino voters would like. But we can see those moves are actually pro-flow instead of pro-stock and that's not what the people wants, bolded mine:
If the above sounds familiar to you then it's because it echoes the chump effect that has been linked before on this forum.
On the other hand, Trump's and the right's failure with the ongoing deportation campaign is because they're confusing attacking immigrants with attacking immigration. Trump best issue is with regards to immigration and securing the border. Trump even went on Univision and talk about immigration in 2024 and laid out his case about criminals and illegals. Latinos shifted for Trump in 2024. Yet once in office, one can see how the mistake Trump makes is the reverse of Biden, where anti-stock moves are being confused as anti-flow, which is also not what people want, bolded mine:
I think Odio was referring to this poll back in April 2026, where Latinos (and All Voters) highest approval is on Trump's handling of "Border Security" (versus "Crime and Public Safety", "Immigration", "ICE in American Cities", "The Economy"). But anyway, what Trump is running afoul of what's called "Ethics of Proximity" or "Moral Distance" (couldn't find a good link for this). These concepts overlap, and one could imagine there is a spectrum in which one can put individuals closer to stock or close to flow, with higher in stock means closer in moral distance, and therefore rules that might seemed harsh but fair from a distance becomes cruel and unjust up close.
In summary: if the thesis of the Biden era is "pro-flow is pro-stock, we are pro-stock, therefore we must be pro-flow", and the anti-thesis of the Trump era is "anti-stock is anti-flow, we are anti-flow, therefore we must be anti-stock", then hopefully the future (successful) synthesis on the immigration debate is one who is able to say and do "stock is not flow, we are pro-stock but anti-flow, therefore we will do just that".
I agree that it's important to understand this distinction as it exists in people's minds, but think that once you factor in incentives, most of the distinction is mental/bias/illusion and trying to be pro-stock but anti-flow is largely pointless and hypocritical. That is, I agree with your assessment that most normal people are pro-stock anti-flow while most politicians are either pro-both or anti-both, but I consider the normal position to be the fallacious one.
People respond to incentives. Millions of illegals flock to our shores because they expect a better life here. They expect a better life here because they we have implemented policies which will enable them to have a better life here even if they cross illegally. Every dollar of welfare, every dollar earned under the table at a job, every anchor baby, every forgiven crime, is another reason to come. If people who spent months making their way to the border, taking risks and spending their last money to sneak across it, were met with immediate detection and expulsion, they would not come. If people who managed to avoid detection had to spend their entire lives living in fear because the instant anyone found out about them they and their entire families, including children would be immediately deported back to their home country even decades later when they had no property or connections there anymore, they would not come. I admit that doing this to actual families would carry with it a high cost, so does dropping nukes on someone. But once you do that and people see you do that, they wise up and do whatever it takes for that not to happen to them. It's status quo bias to look at all the illegal immigrants and imagine us being ruthless to everyone like this forever, but the long term outcome of anti-illegal immigration policies is that we will almost never have to do it because people will stop crossing illegally in the first place. We don't have to punish anyone for crimes they don't commit, but it requires punishment when they do, and more importantly it requires consistency. We can't have half the presidents being harsh on illegals and half being lenient, they have to all actually enforce the law.
It is not economically feasible for us to perfect police the border with no leaking. We have to stem the tide at its source: the incentives. You cannot meaningfully be anti-flow while dangling the carrot of American Citizenship to anyone who thwarts you, even if it feels bad to take the carrot away after they've stolen it. Suck it up and do the right thing, and stop letting superficial proximity biases distort good policy.
I agree with both @lollol and @MathWizard - the median voter in the Anglosphere wants a secure border and minimal in-country enforcement (apart from the expeditious deportation of foreign criminals), and this doesn't work very well in practice. As well as the incentives point, illegal immigrants can arrive by overstaying tourist visas, not just by jumping the border - and before the current wave of "refugee" arrivals most did.
But I don't think this means you should be "pro-stock and pro-flow" or "anti-stock and anti-flow". Once we understand that you can't make sane immigration policy by pandering to the median voter, I think you should try to make policy in the national interest, and that means distinguishing between wanted and unwanted immigrants. The Canadian and Australian experience is that if you are visibly trying to do this (by which I mean actually trying, not pretending to try) the public will tolerate a reasonable number of mistakes. Trump, of course, is not doing this - almost nobody thinks that deporting military spouses over paperwork issues is a good idea, but the administration (and its noisiest very online supporters) want to do it as a show of commitment to "deport them all". What is going on here - if we assume the administration is at least marginally competent, the answer is obvious - Trump's mass deportation policy is about putting on a show for his base, not about appealing to the median voter.
As a separate issue, effective in-country immigration enforcement requires a citizen register including biometric data. (And once you have that, you effectively have ID cards even if you don't require people to routinely carry the card). The US basically has this, but it is split between various databases (particularly the SSA and State DMVs) in a way which makes using it for immigration enforcement ineffective. The UK doesn't, which is why we had the Windrush scandal when we tried to do serious in-country enforcement. I think the MAGA base would now support ID cards, but a noisy minority of Republicans profoundly wouldn't. But in any case, ID cards are less unpopular than either open borders or mass deportations of well-behaved settled illegals.
I feel like you could atleast make the argument for why “being mean and doing cruel things” is an optimal policy.
When the gap between the right and left is gigantic on immigration then being cruel to the stock of foreigners the last administration let into the country is a viable threat for when you are out of power.
When Dems will offer Asylum plus American money when in power then many will come. Being cruel and doing things like throwing a German military wife into gitmo for a year accomplishes a viable counterweight to Dems open borders and free stuff in a way that “maybe we will catch you when in power and put you on a Delta flight to your home country does not”.
Also don’t think we’ve put a German wife in Gitmo but we’ve done some cruel things and works fine as a proposal and we probably should do that.
This is all magnified by the fact that America is ran by executive orders and laws don’t mean anything so our government effectively hinges on the electoral college. It’s an all or nothing election.
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