Immigration is a pocketbook issue, too.

I’ve wanted to talk here about immigration policy for awhile now. But I’ve been waiting to connect with an expert on the topic who could offer some insights into both the policy and politics. Andrea R. Flores is an attorney, policy expert, and media commentator with more than 15 years of experience trying to reform U.S. immigration law and domestic policy at the highest levels of government. She has served at the White House, the National Security Council, the Department of Homeland Security, and in the U.S. Senate, where she advanced legislation and executive actions to modernize the immigration system, strengthen border security, and implement judicial reforms.Beyond government, Flores has led national immigration policy teams at the ACLU and FWD.us, advised Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and began her career in New Mexico working on border security issues. She regularly comments on immigration and national security on outlets such as CNN and MSNBC, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and The New York Review of Books. She is also co-author of the New York Times bestseller Yes She Can.The issue of immigration is obviously critically important in its own right. But for those of you who are regular readers or listeners, see if you can spot some parallels between what Andrea’s saying about immigration—particularly with respect to the way Democrats have to offer an alternative—and some of the conversations we’ve had here about education policy.A Conversation with Andrea FloresWelcome to The Forum. I’m Josh Cowen, and I am happy today to have Andrea Flores here as an immigration expert, an attorney, a media commentator. I have been wanting to do a conversation or a newsletter on immigration policy for a while now. I was just sort of waiting for the right chance to have the right conversation. I think this is it, so I’m really, really glad to have Andrea here. Thank you so much.You have served at the White House, the National Security Council, Department of Homeland Security, the Senate staff. You’ve done a whole bunch of different things on this issue. Just before we get into the conversation, just tell us a little bit about yourself that’s sort of not in the top line bio.Absolutely. So one, thank you for having me. I am an attorney. I live in Washington, DC. But I actually got into this issue for both kind of personal reasons and academic interests. I grew up on the southwest border, so I’m from southern New Mexico, a city called Las Cruces.And I really sort of grew up at a time when border security and the question of immigration reform was a big national issue right after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. And really, ever since 2006 when I went off to college, I have been studying immigration and thinking a lot about how our country approaches that. I’m really interested in questions of reform, what it means to our future, both economically and politically.So I have been working in the immigration space since 2010, and really love to talk about it and help explain to people why they should also get excited and interested in it as well.The Republican Party has come away from thinking of immigration as something good for the country. With the rise of President Trump, we’ve seen a period where Republicans have really adopted the idea that immigration is actually bad for the country.—Andrea FloresImmigration reform keeps failing, in my view, even though parts of it poll well. Do you think maybe both parties kind of misunderstand about how ordinary voters actually think about immigration? What kinds of arguments have reformers overused, or underused?I have a Substack called Securing America’s Promise, and the entire premise is to explore why Washington keeps failing on this issue. I do really look at both parties. And if you just look at what has happened since 2010 is that prior to that point, you did have both parties at least say that immigration reform was a priority for them. They thought it was good for the economy, they thought it was good for national security, and you saw both President George W. Bush and President Obama actually put forth very similar big immigration reform proposals.And one of the things I’ve been exploring is, well, if you hear those facts, you think, why didn’t it work? And what has been an interesting phenomenon for the Republican Party is how they’ve come away from thinking of immigration reform as something good for the countryWith the rise of President Trump, we’ve seen a period where Republicans have really adopted the idea that immigration is actually bad for the country. And what I don’t think many people maybe appreciate is just what a break from past Republican politics that wasSo when you’ve had a party now since, I would say, 2015, saying immigration is bad, what you’ve had on the Democratic side is an inability to adjust to that new political reality. They don’t have another party that wants to really work with them on this issue, but they have also not offered a reason why they still think it’s really important to reform the immigration system.So I think one of the reasons it keeps failing is I don’t think any party is making the case for why immigration reform benefits your average American right now.Neither party is making the case for why immigration reform benefits your average American right now.—Andrea FloresTo this point about benefits: you’ve argued that immigration is not just a border issue, it’s a pocketbook issue. Can you walk us through that a little bit more about just kind of the everyday ways that immigration shows up in family budgets and housing and elder care, child care, food prices, you name it. Like, how are these things showing up in the economy that, like, really does land at the kitchen table?Historically, in times of growth for the American economy, we have really relied on immigrants for that growth, right? So you could even think in the COVID economy, like when we were recovering from COVID, an influx in immigration—we can get to why that was complicated—actually helped us recover faster than other nations because more people wanted to work us jobs than not.So take it to today. President Trump has argued, and many voters, understandably, kind of believed him: which is that fewer immigrants mean that my life gets better because it’ll be easier to get a job, or housing will be more affordable, but what you’ve seen is that when you disrupt how our economy has always worked, which has always had about 13% immigrant sort of population in the country, what it means that there’s fewer construction workers to make affordable housing.It means that there are fewer caregivers in rural states to help with elder care and child care, it means that food gets more expensive, because so many of our critical industries say dairy, say your milk prices, right? Almost half of the workforce in Wisconsin dairy farms are undocumented immigrants.So this has always been a fact of our economy, and I like to say, like, immigration has always made us richer and more prosperous. And when you reduce it really drastically, you have hospitals closing, schools closing, population shrinking, and that makes life more expensive for everyone. It’s not actually creating more jobs or creating more consumer demand.But once again, we need a party to actually explain those facts. And I understand why people may think immigration is just a public safety issue, a border issue, because that’s the only way they ever hear about it.A lot of my work and the focal point for this series here is on schools and kids and families. I want to ask about the immigration issue in the school space. The 1982 Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe, which says that public schools basically can’t deny services based on immigration status. How important do you think that decision is today? We know that conservatives are actually targeting this right now. It’s a big priority for the Heritage Foundation. I want to ask broadly about serving immigrants who are children, but also the political or the legal coalition behind that. Is it weaker now? Is this just another target for some of the same sort of Trump-era party politics that you’re describing?I think I’m very scared of that case being revisited, especially because Chief Justice John Roberts has written in the past about how he believes Plyler was wrongly decided. And it’s really not just the Heritage Foundation. I think people question: when immigrants come here, what services and benefits should they have? So once again, if you’re missing a party that could make an argument as to why Plyler was decided and why it’s important that we don’t ostracize immigrant children, that undocumented kids actually they create numbers in school that impact funding for American kids.There’s all these reasons why you don’t want to discriminate against children in the education system. But my fear is that we don’t even have an argument on immigration in the Democratic Party side right now. And so you can imagine Plyler coming up and people simply thinking, you know, that’s just taking resources away from kids. And so it’s why I think it’s so important that even saying the words “immigration reform” I’m not attached to. It’s just talking about: this is a way that our communities already function—you’re not losing a lot.But I want to raise one issue because I think it’s important, which was when you had what I have argued is a very mismanaged border under President Biden, then you saw what happened when kids were coming into schools very quickly, and there were real resource questions. And integration questions.And because that administration couldn’t meet and, you know, get emergency funding out, and call it a crisis, all these things. We’re going to have a harder time arguing some of the benefits we’ve seen from a decision like Plyler. So I want to be honest with viewers that it got more complicated after the Biden border crisis.They are sending the message globally that immigrants will be treated horribly here.—Andrea FloresIf immigration levels keep falling, or enforcement chills migration even without formal legal changes like Plyler or whatever else, what sectors or communities do you think feel it first, especially with respect to the argument you’re making about the economic issue, like, is this just a big city issue? Is this a rural issue? Is this just a southern border issue? How do you think about—I don’t want to say message targeting geographically, but—who feels this kind of thing first?Well, we can even just unpack this current administration and one of the first impacts everyone will really see is the World Cup. We’ve seen that that should be a major economic event for the cities hosting games. And what is happening right now is they have empty hotel rooms, right?That is a chilling effect from foreign travel, because this administration is sharing that if you come here just even on a tourist visa, you could end up in detention for 20 days. And so they are sending the message globally that immigrants will be treated horribly here.And we’ll see that in the World Cup, and that’ll be less of an economic driver. Look at Nevada: Las Vegas tourism rates are down. That is always an early economic warning sign that we have or we’re losing our competitive edge, bringing tourists into the country. But then let’s go further.When you have states like Texas, they’re attacking in-state tuition for undocumented students. They’re trying to criminalize going to the hospital for immigrants. I mean, that chills everything from small businesses. People stop leaving their houses. We’ve seen where there have been big deployments. Businesses are starting to close because people don’t leave their houses anymore. I think for every state, they will start to feel the impact at a different time, which sometimes makes it hard for a national argument.I grew up in a border community where people were coming from Mexico just to shop as part of our, you know, daily economy. And those numbers are starting to be impacted as well.It’s about changing the policy tools and telling a story with those changes, because that is what Trump is so good at doing. Every policy he pursues tells a story to Americans about why they should either be afraid of immigrants or why they may benefit from what he’s doing. And on the Democratic side, there’s none of that. It’s just “this is a human rights issue and it’s right to do and therefore support it.”—Andrea Flores What would a better pro-immigration argument sound like, that’s comprehensive in, say, 2026, or moving ahead? Not just the moral argument alone, not just the Chamber of Commerce argument alone, but integrating all these things together, connecting immigration reform to families’ lives?I think it’s being honest with exactly how immigration impacts the lives of American citizens. And that’s going to be a switch for the immigrant rights movement, right? Where I’ve worked in it for a long time, and our audience is generally immigrants who are impacted by the very broken system, or it’s been an audience in Washington, right? Because it’s a federal issue, you have to change it on the federal level. You can’t really go to a state and fix immigration and fix the visa system. It has to be a game in Congress.But a way that you could start to change that is being really honest and saying, all right, so Congress just passed a big bipartisan housing bill. It’s going to be signed into law. It’s supposed to build a certain amount of housing in the next few years. It won’t be able to, right? Because it has no provision to make sure that the immigrant workers who would normally build those houses will be here.So I think we have to be…we don’t have to talk about it in the same way. I always think about [for example] a path to citizenship. You mentioned polling. That always polls really well with Americans. But where we get stuck is, we often say, “well, we want to pass something that legalizes 11 million people.” And then people get really lost, right?Why don’t we say “we have a caregiver visa, why can’t undocumented workers who are already caregiving qualify for that instead?” That’s a path to citizenship, potentially.It’s about changing the policy tools and telling a story with those changes, because that is what Trump is so good at doing. Every policy he pursues tells a story to Americans about why they should either be afraid of immigrants or why they may benefit from what he’s doing. And on the Democratic side, there’s none of that. It’s just “this is a human rights issue and it’s right to do and therefore support it.” You’re never going to build a coalition.Alright, last question. So building off of this point about Trump. The Trump enforcement politics are built around fear, spectacle, deterrence. I think that’s maybe even giving too much credit. I’m not sure they’re as organized to even deserve the word deterrent, honestly. But do you think that these kind of general tactics are still effective, even in the last few months? We obviously saw what happened in Minneapolis. Just yesterday a sitting senator, Andy Kim, got tear gassed outside of an ICE facility. Do you think this is still politically effective? Is immigration going to be a Teflon issue for Trump, even as the economy and everything just goes into the toilet? Or is it starting to create a backlash, especially kind of when voters see all this, when people see on their televisions and screens now. What’s it going to kind of take to move this issue into a more positive space moving forward?I think it’s going to take Democrats offering an alternative vision. So let’s take Minneapolis, right? That was the most extreme [anti-immigration] deployment I’ve ever seen. That was something we’ve never seen before, but everything that comes after that looks like a de-escalation because that was so extreme.Or take birthright citizenship, right? That was a fringe view that had been in the legal community treated as completely absurd, right?And yet it’s at the Supreme Court. Trump probably will lose that case. But then that same week, he’ll probably win a case to terminate legal status for like 1.3 million people who have temporary protected status. So they kind of pair really big spectacle moves with things that are actually going to have even a bigger impact many times.So yeah, stay at the overreach moments like a US senator should not be tear gassed when he’s just doing his oversight duty. But you need, to your point, candidates who can talk about that in real time and say, this is what mass deportation is. This is why it’s extreme. This is why it’s not good for the country, and here’s what we’ll do instead.There’s so many other issues competing for Americans time, right? I think cost of living, the war, and for Trump, I always point out immigration is still the strongest of his low issues, right? His approval rating may be going down, but he’s still seen as having some advantage on it. And you can tell he feels that way based on the announcements and how they use it to distract.Andrea Flores is the author of the Securing America’s Promise Substack. She’s widely read and cited across the board on this issue. Andrea, thanks so much for giving me a little bit of your time today. And let’s stay in touch and revisit this soon.Yes, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Of course. Take care. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joshcowen.substack.com/subscribe