Listen To Story Above

Voters supported Donald Trump due to the Democratic leadership’s poor handling of immigration during Biden’s term, according to FWD.us’s chief lobbyist.

“The Democratic Party leadership has been absent on immigration reform since President Biden took office,” Andrea Flores, the Vice President of Immigration Policy & Campaigns at FWD.us, told the Define American Interview show. “You saw, really in this last year, in the absence of real leadership from Democratic leadership on the future of immigration reform, a huge shift to the right” by voters, she complained on December 6.

“When people saw problems at the border, problems in cities, they were going to go to the party that was providing solutions,” she said, adding:

“This election was about rebuking the fact that Biden governed on this issue very poorly, and people did not like what they saw, and they were not hearing a coherent policy or messaging answer on what was coming next.”

Ironically, FWD.us investors significantly influenced the administration’s open border stance through their ally, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban-born progressive who previously served under Obama before joining Biden’s administration.

The investors benefited substantially from Mayorkas’s policies, which allowed approximately 9 million additional workers, consumers, and renters into the country. This influx resulted in reduced wages and increased housing costs for many Americans, while limiting career prospects for U.S. graduates.

FWD.us, established in 2013 by Mark Zuckerberg and other West Coast investors, initially backed the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill and later worked to block Trump’s reform attempts, including changes to the H-1B program.

According to The New Yorker, White House officials now acknowledge immigration’s role in their electoral defeat. “It’s becoming evident that [White House staffers] believe immigration was one of the main factors in the electoral defeat,” a senior congressional staffer told the magazine. “They don’t want to take actions [after the election] that would double down on what they believe is a failed political strategy,” the staffer added.

Flores, exemplifying the complex dynamics within Democratic Party politics, advocates for both investor interests and immigrant rights. She states: “I’m an American citizen and the daughter of an undocumented immigrant, a granddaughter of the undocumented immigrant, and I feel like it is part of my job as an American to fight for the [resident illegal] immigrants…”

She told the Define American host: “The U.S. has the largest undocumented population in the entire world. That’s a crazy fact that I don’t think a lot of people realize. And the reason that population has grown is because lawmakers have done nothing in my lifetime to solve that problem, right? And I call it a problem, because we have people living and working — like yourself — who have been a part of this country and contribute immensely, and we’ve offered no legal way for you to benefit from the security of not being fearful [about] deportation.”

Looking ahead to Trump’s return, Flores emphasized the importance of highlighting immigration reform’s benefits, describing Biden’s approach as “a complete narrative disaster to the public.”