The clever politics of Republicans’ anti-immigrant pitch

It wasn’t groundbreaking that the speakers who took to the Republican National Convention stage Tuesday spent much of the night railing against President Joe Biden’s border and immigration policies. Biden was enabling a “border bloodbath,” crowd signs read, as congressional leaders accused Biden of enabling a border “invasion.”

Nor was it new to see them use provocative, inflammatory, or extremist rhetoric to talk about immigrants and the Democratic incumbents. “Every day Americans are dying,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz thundered, “murdered, assaulted, and raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.”

What wasclear is how the Republican Party of 2024 has fine-tuned its anti-immigration message for the American electorate of 2024: focusing on drugs, human trafficking, crime, and public disorder, and distinguishing between “illegal” immigrants who threaten the fabric of America and the right kind of migrant.