Binyamin Appelbaum
Editorial board member
No one has ever campaigned on a platform calling for the United States to maintain a permanent underclass of illegal workers. America’s immigration mess isn’t the expression of a coherent ideology. We are stuck in this unpalatable reality because no one has mustered sufficient support for mass deportation or for legalization.
President Trump presented his election as an end to the stalemate — a mandate for deportation.
But he is learning the hard way that he is also subject to the competing forces that have long prevented any significant change in the status quo.
