Voters Back Legal Status for Undocumented Immigrants: Why Aren’t the Dems Pushing it?

In a recently conducted YouGov survey, designed by the Center for Working Class Politics and the Labor Institute, 63% of 2024 voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin said they supported “granting legal status to all illegal immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least three years and have not been convicted of a felony.”

Supporters surprisingly included 36% of those who voted for U.S. President Donald Trump last year.

That wording was taken directly from the American National Election Studies survey (ANES) of 28,311 respondents between 1996 and 2020. In my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, I used the ANES survey to zero in on white working-class voters’ opinions across the country. The results were startling:

In 2016, only 32% supported granting legal status to undocumented (“illegal”) residents. By 2020, support had jumped to 62%.

We expected that voters of all shades and persuasions may have turned against immigrants after Trump highlighted the issue in his three campaigns, focusing attention (with the often-relentless help of Fox News) on a number of horrific but rare violent crimes apparently committed by the undocumented. He threatened the mass deportation of undocumented residents in 2016 and 2020 and then began a campaign of highly visible deportations after winning the presidency in 2024. But as the chart below shows voters in key swing states, all of which voted for Trump, still supported legalization, as of April 2025. (3,000 voters were surveyed.)

Here are the results broken down by the 2024 presidential vote in the same four states.

By party identification:

By ideology:

By class:

And by ethnicity:

The survey also shows that support for legalization is highest among younger voters: 76% of those 30 years of age and younger support legalization.

But isn’t immigration the big right-wing issue?

There is a big difference between controlling immigration at the border and criminalizing hard-working undocumented residents. You can be for secure borders and restrained immigration while also supporting legalization of the 11 million undocumented workers now living in the shadows.

Our analysis shows that a majority of voters are compassionate toward immigrants and understand that having 11 million people living and working without legal protections is not good for them or for working people in general.

Undocumented workers find it very difficult to exercise their rights. They can be forced to work for lower wages in poor conditions and have no easy recourse to complain about it without fear of being reported by their employers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Those we surveyed clearly understand that this places downward pressure on wages in many occupational categories, hurting American workers as well as immigrants.

Arguing that undocumented workers do jobs that U.S. citizens no longer want to do completely misunderstands the labor market. If wages are pushed up, instead of down, good-paying jobs would be filled both by U.S. citizens as well as legalized immigrants.

So why aren’t the Democrats on it?

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. But I suspect that the Democrats have drifted so far away from the working class that they don’t understand that legalization of undocumented workers is a working-class issue. I don’t know who does their polling, but I would bet they are not asking the kind of questions we are asking. They have long ago stopped trying to understand the needs and interests of working people.

For whatever reasons, the Democrats are letting Trump stomp all over undocumented workers. Yes, there is concern about specific immigrants who have been illegally detained and deported. Yes, there is mumbling about providing citizenship for Dreamers—those born here with undocumented parents. But there is radio silence about hard-working undocumented workers receiving legal status. This is a fight the Dems are choosing to avoid.

Trump’s weaponization of the immigration issue might have Democratic politicians on the defensive, but there might be another reason they’re choosing not to engage. The group that most wants immigrants to stay in the shadows are those who profit from low-wage labor.

There is a vast ecosystem of sub-contractors and temp agencies that supply undocumented workers for warehouse operations like Amazon’s and food-processing plants, like those of JBS and Tyson. Tens of billions of dollars in extra profits are made off the backs of these workers, few of whom have any way to exercise normal employee rights, much less fight to unionize. They can and are being exploited.

The employers who have their hooks into these undocumented workers also have their hooks into both political parties. They are not keen on uplifting their lowest-paid employees or having those who receive their political donations fighting for their rights.

The travesty of the two political parties not fighting the rights of these working people, even with strong polling supporting such a fight, is just one more reason why we need a new political entity, one that focuses on the needs and interests of all working people.

The billionaires have two parties: We need one of our own!