The Opinions - Lydia Polgreen on What’s Missing in Our Conversation About Immigration

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

In this episode, the deputy Opinion editor Patrick Healy talks to the columnist Lydia Polgreen about the global panic around migration, and what President Trump’s efforts to curb it mean for the United States and its position in the world.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. The rest of the show's production team includes Derek Arthur and Vishakha Darbha. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Carole Sabouraud, Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker, Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. 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 Patrick Healy, Deputy Editor of New York Times Opinion, and this is the first hundred days, a weekly series examining President Trump's use of power and his drive to change America. This week, I wanted to talk to my colleague, the columnist Lydia Pullgreen. For the past year, Lydia has been reporting from around the world about migration and how the global population is shifting. She's looked at who wins and who loses when a country decides there's too much immigration. In many of the wealthiest countries,

like the United States, these changes have sparked a wave of conservative political victories and policies. Now, as we all know, Donald Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations. That hasn't happened in a widespread way yet. But as administrative, has started a very public clampdown in ways that courts have ruled unlawful or unconstitutional. Trump wants to utterly reshape immigration in America and how America sees immigrants. And I wanted to talk to Lydia about what he's doing here and where it may lead our society. Lydia, thanks for coming in today. It's a pleasure, Patrick.

So, Lydia, I wanted to touch first on two cases that have been in the news and that You and I have both been watching, Kilmar Abrago-Garca-Garcia, who was accidentally deported to El Salvador, and Ramesa Ozturk, the student arrested from Tufts. How do you think about these two stories in the context of your years as a foreign correspondent and also as someone who has covered migration so deeply? Yeah, I think that both of these cases speak to something that goes really to the heart of the question of what kind of country we want to be. And for both of these cases, the way that, in a manner that seems to me completely lawless, the Trump administration seems to be trying

to demonstrate a do not come here message that they will exercise an extraordinary amount of discretion in power in deciding who is undesirable and seeking to remove them from this country without any sort of due process. And these cases to me speak to something that I think Americans have a really hard time wrapping their heads around, which is the idea that maybe people just won't want to come to the United States. We have these policies of restriction that are so harsh and so draconian that people might look around the globe and say, you know what, actually, like, maybe that's not the place for me. Maybe there isn't the opportunity that I thought that there might be. And one of the things that I've done in my travels is really talk to a lot of

people, particularly people who oppose migration, and ask them the question, how would it feel to live in a country that people wanted to leave, rather than be a country that people wanted to come to. And the tension of that dynamic of people worrying that outsiders are going to come and take the good things that they have without appreciating that those outsiders wanting to come and participate in what you have rather than take, it gets lost on people. And I fear that the United States is becoming a country that really wants to turn its back on what it has gained. from being a place that people want to come to. Liddy, you just got it something that puzzles me so much about this.

For much of my lifetime, so many Americans took pride in the fact that people from El Salvador and Turkey, students from China or Western, Eastern Europe, wanted to come to America. And now, as you were also saying, it seems like many people now seem very, frankly, comfortable with the idea that this had wants to either stop some of those people for coming or actually remove them. As you look at our recent history, is there a moment that stands out to you that makes sense about why this kind of shift happened among Americans? Yeah, I mean, I've spent a lot of time just thinking about the polling on immigration in the United States, particularly at this moment where we've seen support for Donald Trump really

crater on the issues that he has traditionally done quite well on. And the one place he's actually been above water is actually on immigration. And I think that what that reflects is a deep sense of unhappiness among Americans. And Americans, really, of all races and backgrounds, including Americans of immigrant backgrounds, a sense that things had just really gotten out of control. And I think that it's very easy to look at the situation that was on unfolding under the Biden administration and say, you know, we effectively had open borders. But we've had a kind of political kind of deadlock on migration for a very long time, right? There has not been a serious immigration reform bill in Congress since the 1980s.

We're talking in the Reagan administration. And I think that when Americans talk about wanting to crack down on immigration, I think what they're really looking for is some sense of control. in some sense that there is an orderly process, that they're quite happy for newcomers to come to the United States and join our community, but there needs to be some way for that to happen in an orderly fashion. And in the midst of that, I think you've had a very opportunistic Republican Party under Donald Trump

that has realized that for them, blocking any sort of immigration reform, is actually really good politics because it means you can use the specter of a huge, huge flood of migrants coming into the country as a perpetual boogeyman that, you know, this is why we need to be in charge because otherwise we're going to have some sort of invasion. And it's really worked well for them. And I think that what you're seeing when you pull the American people on this issue is actually a desire for compromise. They want something that makes sense. And instead,

we're presented with a binary choice between open borders and what we're seeing right now, which is basically shipping people off to foreign gulags. And obviously, that's not the range of options. There is a huge range of options. But in the meantime, I fear that we're doing extremely serious and really long-lasting damage to the reputation of the United States as a global destination. Liddy, I'm having one of those moments of deja vu that you and I get after like decades of working at the New York Times and being reporters. I just led this focus group of Trump supporters on Monday night. And the most animated part of the focus group, by far, was about immigration. And they touched on several of the words that you just touched on, this desire for some kind of

control, a sense that things got out of control. A couple of them remember that moment in the summer of 2019 when all the Democrats who were running for president against Trump stood on a debate stage and raised their hand, essentially for kind of sort of a sense of open borders. And these were people in the focus group who were Democrats who voted for Democrats in 2016 and 2020 and then flipped to Trump in 2024. They wanted the control that they thought that Trump could get. But they also felt that sense of like the puzzle, like what is the right outcome? And this is the thing, Lydia, about Trump.

He promised to do a lot of the things when he was running for president that he is now doing. He was true to his word to some degree. But I think what so many people that I've heard from over these last 100 days have said is that they didn't expect students to being snatched on sidewalks by mass federal agents, that they didn't think things like that happened in America. And so I am wondering how you see this kind of ultimately playing out. Will Americans accept this for very long? Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to point out that the polling is on immigration broadly. but that when you ask about specific tactics and policies, the support plummets, right? I mean, Americans are, as recent polling captures it, are horrified by the masked agents that you talked about, the idea that people are being shipped off without due process.

I don't think these are things that Americans buy in large support. But I think that the reality is that perhaps they trust that Donald Trump will be able to make some kind of a deal without realizing that Trump's entire political project requires not. making a deal. And in fact, there was a deal that Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the Senate came together on, and Trump, who was not even president at the time, came in to block it, right? So clearly there's no desire. I think that one of the big themes that I've tried to hit on in this series that I've done about migration is that migration is actually a pretty rare phenomenon. You know, it's in an all-time high, but at the same time, it involves just 4% of the population of the world, right? And so that means that 96% of the population of the world

lives in the country where they were born. And if you really think about it and you imagine migrants as being human beings like you and me, then that makes sense. I mean, to pick up and leave where you're from and go a long distance, leave everything behind, make a new life where you don't speak the language, where you might not know anybody, where your educational credentials will be devalued, that is actually just a huge, huge, huge thing to do. And I think that immigration reform that actually reflected the fact that people want to be able to seek out opportunity, but also go back to their country where they're from, and have some kind of back and forth, I mean, that someone might want to come and spend some time in the United States and then go back to where their family lives,

where their culture is, and that we need to really imagine the full human lives of people who choose to come here and value those and think about ways to have a system that reflects that. And I think, like, those focus group people that you talk to, I think they would intuitively understand that because they themselves have experienced that. You know, maybe you move to New York City, but ultimately your heart is always in, you know, rural Nebraska because that's where you're from. And in some ways, that's what's missing in our conversation about immigration is just a real recognition that these are people who want to live lives, that we would recognize as lives that we live ourselves.

I get the sense in talking to people that you may be right. They may be open to that kind of flexibility, fluidity, kind of the non-binary, but that they want security first. They want to see evidence that both parties take this seriously. They want some sense of control. But I do think also they're influenced by a point you made earlier that even though it's only 4%, the boogeyman effect has really taken hold for a lot of. people, that they see it as larger. I remember in 2018 during the midterms, you know, allies of

President Trump tried to make it sound like there was going to be this invasion over the southern border that was going to reach Minnesota, and Minnesota was going to be in such danger. And it did briefly have like a real impact. And I empathize with a lot of these Americans who want some kind of change, who want to see that commitment first. but aren't quite sure what happens next. And Lydia, I have to say, I think the biggest question on my mind is I don't know whether Americans will ultimately accept,

if we get there, armed military camps in the southern states that become full of migrants being deported. Because it sounds like if Trump really goes full-scale mass deportation, you may have some of these places erected, and you may have images and stories coming out that will make Americans look themselves in the mirror and say, you know, is this what I want in my country? And I do wonder in your experience overseas or just in America, you know, what do you think the tolerance would be for that? I think the tolerance could potentially be quite high. I think we have these individual

stories that are quite compelling. But I think that if you've been told over and over again that this is a crisis, this is a crisis. And the answer is we can only solve this crisis by having these huge armed camps in parts of the United States. But the other thing is that this deportation regime is actually not going particularly well. I think he has not gotten the numbers he promised, right? He's not gotten the numbers that he promised. It seems to me that there's been a reluctance to do kind of mass roundups at workplaces. I mean, why are we hunting after students when, you know, there's all of this kind of low-hanging fruit? And I think that what that reflects is the sort of real political reality, which is that, you know, undocumented migrants are a really big part of the fabric of our communities and economies.

And at the end of the day, the price that Americans would have to pay in terms of the way that their lives would change is just intolerable. You know, I mean, we already have a crisis in housing construction. And small business owners who are facing worker shortages. And I think that the solutions that are being offered by the Trump administrations are, you know, I'm using air quotes here, solutions that actually have huge, huge, huge knock on effects that people are not going to like. And I think that that becomes a real political problem. And I think that that's why you're seeing them, you know, have this kind of opportunistic plucking people off the streets approach. Lydia, I want to dig into the series on migration that you've been working on. and particularly the fact that while so many countries have enacted policies to keep migrants out,

countries across the world are going to need them more than ever, as you were just saying, whether it's because of jobs or, frankly, because of plunging birth rates. What has your reporting revealed? I should say that this series actually predated Trump coming back to office. But I think that what I've seen is that there is just an absolutely huge mismatch between the needs of societies that are, as you said, facing hugely declining birth rates and have like very, very real worker shortages. But I think also need the new blood, the new dynamism, the new ideas that migration has reliably brought,

particularly when people from poorer countries migrate to wealthier countries. They bring with them new perspectives and new ways of thinking. that I think have really brought a tremendous amount of innovation to the countries where they arrive. And I think that that is a story that we've been very used to celebrating. And it was not until the Syrian Civil War when huge numbers of Syrians really had no choice, but to leave Syria and about a million of them went to Europe,

it sort of started this cascade of events, I think, that have defined our politics ever since, you know, calling into question the core tenets of the post-war agreements about refugees and how, you know, we have a responsibility to provide asylum to people. And we've just been living in the shadow of that ever since. And it strikes me, though, that it's not just about people. I mean, people, I think, are ultimately manifestations of a broader set of questions about human progress and about globalization. So I think that in some ways it's really, reflecting a sense of having reached a bit of a dead end, that societies that ultimately are saying,

we don't want more migrants, are saying we don't have any more to, we don't see a future. We don't see progress happening in our society. We have to hunker down and really focus on taking care of our own. And I think it's very hard for them to imagine a world in which no one wants to come into their country. You know, I think it's hard for Americans to imagine that. Letia, why does migration cause such an impact on how regular people think about their countries and societies and themselves? Because I would argue that the migration you were talking about from Syria, parts of the Middle East, had a more profound effect on Europe over the last 10 to 15 years and how people in certain countries thought about themselves, thought about their lack of control, became resentful or angry, than the Ukraine War or Brexit or Putin and Orban and the rise of kind of authoritarian, you know, more than anything else. But what is it about migration that sets people off so much?

Well, change is hard, you know? I think that figuring out how to live alongside people who don't look like you, who maybe speak a different language, who are, you know, practice a different religion. this has always been a human challenge. And this country was really built on waves of different kinds of people coming here. And that was always uncomfortable. There was, you know, there have been periods in the history of the United States where certain groups of people have been declared undesirable. You know, the Chinese Exclusion Act, you know, the 1924 Immigration Act that basically set very, very, very harsh quotas that ended up tragically keeping huge number of Jewish people who would have very much liked to have left Europe in the run-up to World War II to seek safety in the United States, many of them scientists, people who could have made extraordinary contributions to the United States. And I think that, you know, we can look back on that and see that as actually a tremendous loss for America. One economist who I spoke to had written a paper about the impact on

innovation from that Restriction Act in 1924. And in the paper, she wrote that the loss to American in science during this period was the equivalent of eliminating an entire physics department at a major university each year between 1925 and 1955. But I think that at a moment where I think a lot of people are looking at their lives and wondering what the future looks like and if this kind of story of limitless expansion and always moving forward and being able to take the best people from all across the world and integrate them into our society, but then also have them teach us new. things. I mean, this is that sort of fantasy version of the United States that you and I,

you know, we're both Gen Xers, you and I grew up with. You know, this is what we learned in civics class. I think that there's a real sense that, you know, kind of upward incline, you know, of our prospects is over. And what you get is the politics that we're in right now. So interesting to me, Liddy, what you're getting at, the relationship that Americans have to change. And I feel like migration encapsulates that so, powerfully because people, again, have to kind of look at themselves in a mirror and ask, who am I? Who do I want from my neighbor? What am I comfortable with? Why am I uncomfortable with this? Those are really hard questions, especially, I think, for a society that may feel like

things are out of control. Yeah, and I think that, look, I spent most of my life living outside of the United States in countries with very, very real problems. You know, and so I am not that sympathetic to Americans who feel that things are out of control because I've lived in places where things were actually out of control, you know, where the state's ability to exercise monopoly on violence was, you know, tenuous at best. This is a rich country. This is a country of people who just don't have problems in the way that other people in the world have problems. And so I think that that's part of the answer is that I think we struggle. to imagine what real privation and real problems might look like. Absolutely. Lydia, in your years as a reporter and a columnist, you've covered autocrats, authoritarian, you've covered reformers, small D Democrats. You have insight into what drives leaders

and why societies are drawn to certain kinds of leaders at certain points. What does it say to you about America, and our society that half the country wanted Trump back as president. Well, not quite half. I get into fights with that. I sometimes say not quite half, and people are like, can't you cut him some slack? He basically got half. No, absolutely not.

Absolutely not. This man is a monster. You shouldn't cut him any slack. Okay. I personally don't believe that the president of the United States needs any slack. You're the most powerful person in the world, and facts matter. But anyway. Okay.

Some of our fellow Americans feel the way, but what does it say to you about what America? You know, why did this country want him back? I think that it all speaks to this desire for some kind of change, you know, and the way that that's been interpreted and the way that that is, you know, people will grab at the options that you give them, you know. And I think there is a feeling that the country is not going in the right direction. There's dissatisfaction over globalization, over migration, over all of these big of the state of the economy. There's just all of this roiling dissatisfaction under the surface. And, you know, I think when you have a leader who has a simple story of how they can fix problems and a voting population that feels that it is constantly being sold a bill of goods, lied to, promises made, and then promises not kept,

that there's a certain attraction to someone who's offering up simple solutions. And, you know, the reality is that we have had these kind of binary choices for much of my lifetime, right? I remember in the 2004 election when George W. Bush was reelected, everyone thought that was just the biggest catastrophe that they'd ever experienced. They just couldn't believe after WMD and, you know, the tax cuts, all of the things that Bush had done that he had done that he had. he could be reelected. And it seemed after John Kerry lost that the Democrats were just going to be in the wilderness for a generation, you know. But then what happened? A singular figure emerges. Things change. There's a global financial crisis, right? And I think, like, if you look at the 2012 election on where the shoe was on the other foot, right? The Republicans losing that election thought that they needed to go in this, you know, completely central. moderate direction, and what happened? A singular figure emerged who came in and upended everything. And again, I don't want to compare Barack Obama to Donald Trump because I think they're very, very different men, but I think that what they have in common is that they were able to articulate a clear and extremely compelling vision of where they were going to take the country. Absolutely. And so, you know, we're in this moment where I'm not saying that we need to.

to get down on our knees and pray for a savior. But I actually feel like we're in a moment where both parties are facing this problem. People want to be inspired. I think the American character is to prefer inspiration over fear, you know? But barring that, if you don't offer inspiration, the boogeyman is the next best thing.

I think that's so true, Lydia. And I would just add that Donald Trump also inspired a lot of Americans, but I think he did fail to deliver in that sense, especially during COVID. And now with what's going on with the economy and tariffs, he may have had a very consequential first hundred days, but he may well end up having a pretty historically unpopular presidency.

Lydia, I want to end with going back to the world and America's role in the world and what Trump is doing to that role. You have been so thoughtful over the years about America's promise and what America gets wrong. It's fundamental flaws. And I just want to ask you, what do you see Trump doing to America's role in the world at a time when the world needs America and America needs the world? Yeah. You know, I think that having spent most of my life living overseas and particularly living in poor countries in Africa and in Asia, there's such a

mix of admiration, longing, and resentment for the United States, right? That experience of dependency, of needing American aid or needing America's assistance, if you're a NATO country, of kind of living in a global economy that's dominated by the United States has been a source of just extraordinary resentment, you know? And what I think Donald Trump has done is actually given people permission, around the world to give full voice to that anger and resentment at the United States that has always kind of bubbled below the surface. You know, America has been the Hale Fellow well met on the global stage for a very long time. You know, people are happy to see us, but then also resent our self-satisfaction and our wealth and our military power, but then also depend on it. And so I think that,

and not to get too psychoanalytic about all of this, but like I think that what I think that what we're seeing right now is in some ways an almost euphoric sense of liberation from having to pretend that America is some kind of benevolent player in the world and that all has been well in the global compact that's set by America. And I just think it's going to be fascinating to see how the world reorients itself. And I think the United States will lose. I think the United States will lose a lot from not being part of those conversations. That's the knock-on effect that I really wonder about Trump, Lydia. If Americans are kind of tired of the world and want to break from it and the world is tired of America and Donald Trump and doesn't trust this country, what does that lead to?

Yeah. I mean, the United States doesn't really have a lot of experience of being just one of many countries in the world in, you know, the past century, right? We don't know what it's like, you know, for people not. to want to trade with us or not to want to come to us or not to want to use our money. And I think that it's very hard for Americans to imagine what it's like to be more isolated. I mean, you know, my mother's from Ethiopia. And for many years, she traveled on an Ethiopian passport. And, you know, she'd get pulled aside at the Frankfurt airport and couldn't go into the city with us when we had a long layover because they suspected that she was going to abandon her husband and children

and live on welfare in Germany. I don't know what they suspected. And so it's been really striking to me to see the number of Americans who are thinking like, hmm, should I be thinking about building a life somewhere else? Do I need options? You know, America was the world's option. And, you know, if it's no longer the option for outsiders, what does that mean for American? What does that mean for our options? And I think we're headed for a period, if things go on this continued trajectory, of profound decline. Lydia, thanks so much for joining me. This was great, Patrick. Thank you so much for your really thoughtful questions. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Feshaka, Darba, Christina Samuelski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Brusek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amon Sommi. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.