Business Community Abandons Migrants: A History

ProPublica’s Eli Hager has a week-old report that explores the shifting role of the U.S. business lobby in immigration reform, focusing on its retreat from pro-immigration advocacy since the Trump administration.

• Key Context: Historically, major U.S. corporations and industry groups were strong supporters of comprehensive immigration reform, seeing it as a means to secure a reliable labor force, from high-skilled tech workers to seasonal farm laborers. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, this alignment between business and immigrant advocacy groups proved influential, leading to notable reform efforts, including the legalization measures under President Reagan and expansions of visa programs.

Donald Trump’s political career has changed everything about the relationship between corporate America and migrants. Beginning with his presidency in 2016, the business community recalibrated its priorities, placing more emphasis on securing tax cuts and deregulation and avoiding political entanglements with a polarizing issue.

By not actively opposing Trump’s restrictive immigration policies, businesses effectively sidelined their own interest in a steady migrant labor supply, particularly in low-wage sectors. The shift left immigration reform advocates without a powerful ally and fractured what had been a rare bipartisan coalition.

Today, with a labor shortage impacting many industries, some business groups have started re-engaging on immigration, pushing for targeted reforms, like temporary worker visas. But the landscape has changed significantly: the debate is now highly polarized, and there is a lack of unified support within Congress.

Pro-immigration efforts that once had business backing have become harder to sustain without bipartisan or corporate influence, making comprehensive reform unlikely in the near term. In the absence of business advocacy, immigrants and labor advocates are left to fight an uphill battle for reform against a largely gridlocked and divisive political system. This change reflects broader shifts in corporate political strategies and priorities, as many companies now avoid contentious social issues, including immigration, to preserve their public image and avoid backlash.

The current void of business support in immigration reform highlights the difficulties of advancing legislation in a landscape dominated by increasingly rigid ideological divides, leaving industries that rely heavily on migrant labor—such as agriculture, hospitality, and tech—scrambling to address their workforce needs within the confines of an outdated and restrictive immigration system. The article underscores the complexity of re-establishing a business-labor-advocacy coalition in a transformed political era, where corporate reluctance and political polarization threaten meaningful progress.

Anyway, the article by ProPublica is definitely worth a close read. Regardless of the outcome of this week’s election, the success or failure of migrant relief policies in the new term will hinge, in large part, on whether corporate America actually steps up and fights for their own workforce needs. Click below to read more from ProPublica on the immigration beat —