The Opinions - America's Next Story: Michelle Goldberg

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

Joe Biden’s immigration policies may have contributed to Donald Trump’s winning a second term, but a year later, Americans are increasingly unhappy with the president’s aggressive deportation tactics. For the final installment of the America’s Next Story series, the columnist Michelle Goldberg joins David Leonhardt, an editorial director in Times Opinion, to discuss her strongly held belief that America is, at its best, a nation of immigrants and that should inform how the country moves forward.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] the full transcript here: https://nytimes.com/2025/12/22/opinion/next-american-story-michelle-goldberg-immigration.htmlThis episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm David Leonhardt, an editorial director in New York Times Opinion. And this is America's Next Story, a series about the ideas that once held our country together and those that might do so again. We the people, in order to form a more perfect humor. Ask not what your country can do for you. That's what you can do for your country.

That America is too great for small dreams. Change is what's happening in America. And we will make America great again. God bless you and good night. I love you. I'm closing out this series with my colleague Michelle Goldberg, who's a Times columnist. When we asked Michelle what she thinks should define America's next story, she said immigration. That makes a lot of sense.

Immigration is a topic that's come up a lot in this series. both because it is central to America's identity and because it helped put Donald Trump back in the White House in 2024. For that reason, a lot of Democrats have grown skittish about the subject. But Michelle says they're wrong to be. In fact, she says they should run toward immigration as an issue. In this conversation, she and I talk about how making America more affordable for everyone could inspire voters to be more welcoming toward newcomers.

And we both reject Donald Trump's cruel immigration. policies, while holding out hope that he might spark a backlash that could actually lead to a more humane future for American immigration policy. Michelle, thanks for being here. Hey, thanks for having me. You suggested that we talk about immigration in this conversation, and specifically that it's important that we reclaim the idea that America is a land of immigrants. Given that this has been a series about what America's next story should be, and quite clearly, the post-Trump story, why do you think that's the place to start? Well, first of all, because I just think it's the best thing about America, quite simply.

It's like the thing that we do have historically done better than others. We absorb immigrants. We integrate immigrants. You know, I mean, I still am very sentimental about the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty. And historically, we've gone through these periods of racial nationalism like we're in right now, people who want to define America as, you know, a sort of ethnic community and periods of civic nationalism where America is about ideas and values, ideas and values that are sort of open to anyone who is willing to do the work of embracing them. And I grew up, I think probably you grew up, at a time when civic nationalism was so ascendant, we barely even thought of it as an ideology. It was just the sort of, you know, basic American idea. It was unchallenged. Or if it was challenged, it was challenged only around the margins.

And the thing that Donald Trump and the people around Donald Trump, Stephen Miller in particular, have done so effectively, is to basically take a sledgehammer. to the idea of civic nationalism. And I think that Democrats spent so much time taking it for granted that there was no need really to make an affirmative case for immigration on a moral and ethical bases, but also just as a source of renewing American vitality. But I think rebuilding civic nationalism, rebuilding the idea of immigration as a positive good. And to me, the sort of sink, source of American greatness, if America's ever going to be a great country again, which, you know, I think is very much up for debate. But if it is, I don't see any other way that you do it. And to your point about this shouldn't feel too strange, because many of us,

any of us of a certain age, have lived through a period in which that was the norm, we can just think about the way that Barack Obama, and maybe more to the point Ronald Reagan, talked about immigration. I ask you to trust that American spirit, the spirit that burned with zeal in the hearts of millions of immigrants from every corner of the earth who came here in search of freedom. It is this wonderful thing that many people who want to work hard, often many people who are quite talented, want to come to this country. And if we want to think about an American... At least wanted. Yeah, that's interesting. Wanted. I'm actually still pretty optimistic that if we could get a president other than Trump that people will still want to come to this country. It's not

like there's a country that's displaced us as the place where people are going to aspire to go. I don't think. But I agree with you. It's at more risk than I thought it was. And so I assume you're thinking about a language that recapture some of that. Is that right? Or do you think that civic nationalism needs to be different from what it was in the past? Well, I think, I mean, in as much as, I think it needs to build on that tradition. Right? I think it needs, you need to reclaim that tradition, but obviously you're speaking to a new set of concerns. So first of all, you're kind of speaking at a time when you can't take that for granted as a baseline American ideal. When Reagan or Obama invoked those ideas, they were invoking a sort of unifying consensus belief. And now there's panic about immigration and just there's, you know, sort of a sort of a disfying consensus belief. And, and just there's, you know, sort of a disdiscay. general perpetual panic about the contours of who Americans are. I mean, it's hard to, you see it in Europe, you see it in Donald Trump's kind of like monstrous national security

strategy, which seeks to project this kind of nativism abroad and undermine tolerance in Europe. But there's this panic about, quote unquote, Islamization, or how Muslim, how Muslim and migrants are seen to be changing. I think nobody has made the case that America, again, is just so much better at absorbing people than, you know, traditionally many European countries. And I mean, you know, America has its problems. It has obviously its, you know, kind of underserved neighborhoods. I'm not trying to sugarcoat it. But there's something that, like, America should be proud of, American Americans should be proud of,

as opposed to sort of cowering and assuming that the worst effects of mass migration in other countries are going to be our destiny. I think that's a really important point. I mean, when you look at the research

and the best research that I've read has been done by economists named Leah Bustan and Ron Abramitsky, and they, They look over more than a century and they use census records to look at how immigrants do in the U.S. and how they assimilate and climb the economic ladder. And it's really striking that the immigrants of the last several decades, who are predominantly Latino and Asian, have climbed the ladder at an extremely similar rate to the overwhelmingly

European immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And as you said, we're better at this than much of Europe is. Right. Have been better. And we're taking this advantage that we've had in setting it on fire. Yes, we have been better, and I hope we'll continue to be better. And there are two reasons why I think that this is going to be especially important going forward. I mean, one is just that you're going to have the most diverse generation in history becoming adults.

And if you're worried about kind of American disunity now, think, imagine how much worse that gets when you have an explicitly kind of white nationalist, which I would argue is what Trump has an explicitly white nationalist vision of what it means to be an American. And then another thing that I think the right is rightly concerned about, but all of its solutions are wrong, is there's a lot of, I think, warranted anxiety about falling birth rates everywhere in the rich world. And I think that these conversations can be really icky for leftists and liberals, and so they often don't want to engage them. But it really is true that, you know, we don't want to be on the trajectory that Japan or South Korea is on where you become like a dramatically

aging and dramatically shrinking society. Now, nobody anywhere in the world, has figured out how to substantially increase birth rates. So eventually, the country that is able to attract and integrate young immigrants is going to have a huge advantage. And again, we were sort of set up to have that advantage. And now we're foreclosing it. One of my favorite things about your column, Michelle, is how much time you've been reporting and going out in the country and listening to people. And I'm curious when you think about the reporting you've done and you think about this issue, how can you imagine that politicians and other leaders can take the next step for people and say to someone, whether they're a native-born American or an immigrant, someone who's already here, say to them, here is how your life will be better if we are once again a nation of immigrants.

So, first of all, I actually think that most Americans are already sort of there. I mean, there was a huge backlash to the way that Joe Biden handled the border. But public opinion on this is pretty thermostatic. And we're already back to a place where in polls more Americans say that immigration is a net positive than a net negative. It's also just, it's much easier to make these arguments for the benefits of immigration when people don't feel like they're operating from a position of like extreme scarcity and fear, right? When people feel like they can't afford their own lives and things are spiraling out of control, then I think they're probably much more open to arguments about, well, it's because all these other people that you don't know are taking something from you. I mean, you hear Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance say the traffic will be better and the schools will be better and the hospitals will be better.

Your wages will be higher. all these problems you have are going to go away after we conduct this mass deportation campaign. We flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens. And at the same time, we weren't building enough new houses to begin with even for the population that we had. So what we're doing is trying to make it easier to build houses or also getting all of those illegal aliens out of our country. And you're already seeing it start to pay some dividends. Nobody in practice thinks that the shrinking of their community makes their life better. You know, like my kids go to public school in New York City.

And the big problem with New York City public schools is that they're losing enrollment, not that they're over-enrolled. And we have probably many more undocumented immigrants than most places, right? Nobody feels like a town or a city that's shrinking is becoming at the, same time more desirable. I want to come back to the question of what a future immigration policy should be and what lessons we should take from Biden. But I do want to spend one more minute on Trump. His policies are so extreme. They're so cruel. I could pick any number of examples, the one that's on my mind because I just watched some of the videos of her is a young woman named Ani Lucia Lopez Bayoza, whom you may have heard about. She lived in Texas. and she was going to Babson College up in Massachusetts and was coming home to surprise her parents

over the Thanksgiving holiday, and ICE picked her up at the airport in Massachusetts. And seemingly, based on what the lawyers have said, without due process, deported her to Honduras, a country she hadn't been to since she was a little girl. And when you listen to her story and think about the many other stories like it, I think there are many, many Americans who either are or will be offended by the way that Donald Trump, including Americans who voted for him, is conducting this policy.

Right. I mean, you see this on Joe Rogan. You know, you see this on some of the podcasters that we're all in with the MAGA movement. Now they're looking at it and saying like, no, wait, what is this. You know, this isn't what I've, I mean, that is what you voted for, but I don't think they necessarily realized that that's what they were voting for. I mean, I'm also really haunted by what's happening to. these Afghan refugees who are here because they helped our military and our government during the long war in Afghanistan, who are obviously not safe returning to Taliban rule, who we're going to send back, right? We're sending back refugees from Iran. We're sending back refugees to Russia who are getting conscripted the minute that they step off the plane. You know, and you're We severely need to make a sort of ideological case against this, right? Like, there's sort of no religion, I don't think, on earth that would countenance this treatment of human beings. But I think we need to go beyond just like we're not going to do this and explain, like, why this, you know, thing of ours that Donald Trump has disassembled was so precious.

Okay, so now let's turn to Biden. And parts of this conversation that I find harder to think about. Avoiding Trump's cruelty and his extremism and his racism seems really straightforward to me, morally, and even politically in most respects. But then the question is, okay, what should come after Trump? And I think Biden's immigration policy wasn't just a failure of politics or explanation. but was also a failure of policy. And I think that because I think even in this country that is so good at incorporating immigrants into our society, there have to be limits. And the Biden folks, I think, were fairly disdainful of those limits.

And I think this may be an area where you and I are in a little bit different place, which is part of why I want to talk about it. So can you give your diagnosis of what the Biden folks got wrong? The essential problem at the border, and tell me if you disagree with this during the Biden years, was the abuse of our asylum system, right? I think you would agree with that. I agree with that. I don't think it was even that much on their radar. And I'll admit it wasn't really on my radar that people were so up in arms about this. And, you know, this is one of those places where I am like, will admit to being pretty out of touch with American. public opinion. I mean, I live in New York City. I saw the influx of migrants, including, you know, some at my kids' school. And I thought it was like a problem for them. You see all the time now these little kids on the subway selling candy, you know, sometimes with their mother, sometimes not. I don't like that because they should be in school, but it's not a problem like for me, right? So I never felt this.

sense of disorder or a grievance, and part of that is just me being kind of out of touch and missing something that was clearly going on with a lot of people, and I suspect that maybe many people in the Biden administration were the same. They just didn't feel it, and they maybe weren't in touch with the people who did feel it. I've heard this from immigration advocates that another real failure was, I mean, Greg Abbott did this thing that was, you know, kind of malevolent but really politically brilliant, which is to start busing all these migrants from the border all over the country to places that didn't have the infrastructure to absorb them. And, you know, as a result, ended up making some parts of Blue America.

kind of more skeptical of immigration. Something I've heard from immigration advocates, I've heard them say that they think that if the administration had been willing to kind of surge resources and try to manage that influx and not just put it on state and local governments to sort of handle as best they can,

then they could have ameliorated that crisis a lot. Maybe. I mean, I'm, I've grown, I think a lot of immigration advocates in this country basically are in favor of more and more immigration. And I understand why they're in favor of that. But I think the fundamental problem was the Biden administration allowed too much immigration. They send, when you say aloud, what do you mean? Like, what do you think that they should have been doing? I think that they should have been, you know, surging resources to the border. I think that they wanted to do that legislatively. That was a big. failure. So short of ending asylum, what do you think they should have been doing to lessen this

flow of immigration? I think they made at least three big mistakes. When Biden ran, he not only rejected Trump's rhetoric, which I think was appropriate, but he just kept sending the message that, come, we want to welcome you. I would in fact make sure that there is, we immediately surged to the border. All those people are seeking asylum. They deserve to be heard. That's who we are. where a nation says if you want to flee and you're fleeing oppression, you should come. People in Latin America understandably heard that as come, we will let you in. And the number surged pretty much immediately after he took office. Then they took office and did a whole bunch of executive actions to make it harder to deport people

and easier for people to get temporary status here through various policies. And then they spent much of 2021 and 2022 claiming they really couldn't do anything. about this, that it wasn't about their policies. It was about COVID or Venezuela. And then suddenly, when they feared for their re-election in 2024, the Biden administration got stricter about who could come and get in and apply and the numbers really fell. So I completely agree with you. This is a really hard problem. And it's hard because ultimately it involves telling a lot of people who don't qualify for asylum in a political way, but who would benefit from living here. Sorry, you can't come because we're not going to admit anywhere near most of the people who'd like to

come to our country. But I, to me, what's important about the lesson from the Biden administration is that the levels themselves were part of the problem. And I think it'll be hard to get back to something if a Democrat tries to rerun the Biden strategy. Well, I don't think any Democrat wants to rerun the Biden strategy. Right. I mean, I think that there's a, a sort of understanding whether or not they believe it was kind of substantively catastrophic. I think there's a wide understanding that it was politically catastrophic. And maybe that's where you and I have the real disagreement about whether it was, you know, a substantive problem or a political problem. But, I mean, I sort of see the reverse.

I think that, you know, Democrats now are going to be inclined to kind of fight the last war and show that they, they too, can be really. tough on the border. And to some extent that's necessary. I mean, there's a certain threshold of migration and this may be something that you can even like discover empirically, although I don't know, beyond which that like regularly and in almost every country triggers right wing reaction. And so I think that, you know, one goal of American immigration policy should be to stay below that. Yes. But you and I are having a conversation about undocumented immigration, which is, you know, the thornyest issue because it involves enforcement against desperate and suffering people. But we're also seeing a wholesale attack on legal immigration. Yes, we are.

You know, we're seeing a wholesale attack on bringing over, you know, the kind of best and the brightest. scientists and, you know, mathematicians and the kind of people that we, who are in many ways responsible for, like, America's unparalleled prosperity. And, you know, that's the maybe the easier thing for the next Democratic president to solve, because we just should be letting those people back in if they still want to come. And, you know, I don't think we should underestimate how frightening it is. I don't know if you hear this, but when I talk to highly skilled immigrants, like, you know, close friends, people with green cards. And there is a constant sense of, you know, even if I got thrown into ICE detention, like maybe I would get out,

but, you know, three weeks in really torturous conditions can kind of break a person. And so if you're just kind of going through your life, feeling that at any moment you could be plunged into a Kafkaesque nightmare that would leave this permanent imprint on your soul, you know, then maybe an offer from Canada or an offer from Denmark or something starts to look really, really nice. Yeah, I think there's huge fear among people who have any tie to the immigration system, including naturalized citizens. And I think there's huge fear. among Latinos, even many who were born in this country. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And it's justified. Yeah, it is justified. When you think about the future, what kind of immigration policy do you want us to get toward it? For the longest time, people talked about a grand bargain in which we would have both money for border security and enforcement of our laws inside the country. And we would also add new pathways for legalization, including for people, who were already in this country and had come here illegally,

but who'd followed the law since they'd been here? To you, is that still conceptually the right framework, even if the political language probably needs to change so it doesn't sound so repetitive? Yes, I think so. Although, I mean, again, whether or not it's possible, I have no idea. I mean, my guess is that you would need a pretty substantial wave election

for that to... become possible. But yes, I mean, I think that that's, you know, is one of these things like like Israel, Palestine or something, where the outline of where you want to get to isn't the hard part, right? Like, the hard part is all of the like, you know, sort of intractable interests that need to be balanced in order to get there. I mean, the one thing that I think about a little bit differently is that I used to think that if our immigration system was tilted towards skilled immigrants the way that Canada's is, that there would be less backlash. And given the like utter rage that you see in some quarters towards Indian immigrants in particular,

who are mostly seen as, you know, kind of highly. skilled immigrants, I no longer think that's true. And I think that especially as many of these kind of jobs and technology that were once seen as a safe path to the middle class are lost to AI, there's going to be like more and more of a reaction to outsiders who are seen as kind of, quote, unquote, taking those jobs. Yes. In a narrow way, I'm sort of optimistic that we could get an overhaul of immigration law within normal politics. Because if the post-Trump Republican Party loses in a significant way, I just mean Democrats having

control of Congress and the presidency in 2029, which who knows if that'll happen, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility. I think people will see their cruel immigration policy. is a central reason that they lost. And if Democrats can get it together to get rid of the filibuster, it to me is not out of the question that politics could change more quickly

than it seems like it sitting here today. And we really could have a better set of immigration laws in the 2020s. But maybe I'm naively optimistic about it. No, I don't know. And, I mean, again, like, I don't think that anybody thought 10 years ago that the truly monstrous set of politics

policies that we now see would be possible. Exactly. And so, you know, the sort of only hope that you can take from that is that with both, like, the right narrative and the willingness to use political power on its behalf, things that one seemed impossible can become possible. Yes. You know, you use this word at the beginning of our conversation, scarcity, that sticks with me. And I actually think is a really nice way to try to wrap up this series, which,

is even if I'm narrowly optimistic about the possibility of better immigration law within the next several years, in a way, our problems with immigration are related to so many of our other problems, which is many Americans have felt a sense of scarcity. And when people feel scarcity, politics get really nasty and they're not generous. And we began this series at the Jefferson Memorial talking about the ideas that animated the founders, flawed though the founders, were. And I'm curious when you think ahead to 2026 and the 250th anniversary of the country and the notion that you and I share, which this is a country of ideals, it's not a country of religion or ethnicity, I'm curious in the broadest terms how you think about what should be the ideals

that we aspire to live up to, to come out of this incredibly dark period that Donald Trump has dominated. Well, I think that if you're going to come out of it, and that's, you know, to me, very, very much an open question. You know, you would need the same sort of both political struggle and political will that allowed us to emerge from a previously gilded age, right? Only the, you know, kind of malefactors of great wealth have, you know, much greater wealth and much less of a sense of social responsibility than they ever had before.

I mean, what you need to sort of break the back of that and restore some kind of fair system of taxation, some sort of reinvestment in American infrastructure is, you know, again, And it's just like the enormity of it, I think, seems quite overwhelming. But I don't know about you, but I just don't see any other way out. I don't either. And look, it's a weird form of optimism to say that the country's overcome worse problems before, because our problems now are really big. They're bigger than I expected us to have, if you had asked me 10 or 15 years ago. But it's also true.

We've overcome bigger problems. And we've done so often with people who sketched a new vision of what was possible here and changed politics in truly surprising ways. And I just want to say in terms of that vision, I mean, people are hungry for that. Like I think we have different views about Zoranamadani. But I keep thinking about his, the victory speech he gave when he said, you know, this is a city of immigrants and now it's going to be led by an immigrant. and, you know, he's someone, I think, who has been able to combine both this kind of, you know, cosmopolitan vision of American or at least New York identity, which may be a slightly distinct, with this war against scarcity. And in doing so, you see how that inspired people, right? I mean, you see, like, how that vision, whether or not you think he can accomplish that vision, that vision has the power to most.

It's certainly mobilized people in New York. And yeah, maybe you and I might differ on how well it will travel outside of New York. Well, I don't think that particular bit, you know, I mean, I think, look, I don't think you want to run, you know, a self-described democratic socialist in Virginia. But I do think the combination of like, we are like a welcoming cosmopolitan polyglot society, maybe not everywhere wants to be that. But I think a lot of people actually do want that. And with a grand. focus on how people are able to afford their lives. Like those two things, I think, do travel. Before I even got to The Times, so this was, must have been a decade ago, when Donald Trump was first entering our lives, I went to this town called Twin Falls, Idaho. And it's this, like, fascinating place. There's a small town in Idaho, you know, kind of pretty far from the nearest airport that had been a center of refugee resettlement. And so it's a fascinating place. It's a small town in Idaho, you know, kind of pretty far from the nearest airport, that had been a center of refugee resettlement. And so it's a like this little town was one of the most cosmopolitan places you've ever been. And people were really proud of that. It became a big source of tension around the time that Donald Trump entered

the scene. But for a long time, people had taken pride in how, you know, kind of opening and welcoming their town was. And so I don't think we should be naive. Not every place wants to be kind of a multicultural utopia. But there's also, you know, there's a lot of places where, you know, even if they think that the border is chaotic and they, you know, have sort of mixed feelings about mass immigration conceptually can appreciate what these kind of new people that they know have brought to the places that they live. One thing that Mom Dani makes me think about is when you think about the, modern era of American politics, roughly the 21st century. In it, we've had Zoran Mondani elected mayor of New York coming from absolutely nowhere. We've had Donald Trump elected president twice. And we've had Barack Hussein Obama, as his critics like to call him, elected president

twice, not long after he was an obscure Illinois state legislator. And so I do think that think that there is this real hunger for something other than the ordinary and that whoever is the next successful politician, whoever follows Trump, whoever is the national version of Mondani, if they don't tap into that desire for something fresh and something new and something exciting, they're probably not going to succeed. Yeah, no, I think that that's absolutely right. You know, I mean, it seems like at least possible that if a Democratic at wins in 2028. It's someone that if we mention their name now, we would both say, like, who? Which will certainly make it more interesting. Michelle Goldberg, thank you very much.

Thank you so much. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Veshaka, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amun Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski.

The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.