>If you don't believe they're doing it for votes
I don't believe they're going to get votes:
https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/democratic-dominanc...
>I see politicians not outright saying this is the goal, but they cheer it on, because they anticipate the demographic changes actually changing voter demographics.
This started happening recently as a way to get attention. Before the engagement algorithms, you mostly if not only heard about it from that elitist faction of the Democrats that doesn't want to bother engaging with the noncollegiates.
>I've been asked why American politicians keep encouraging people to come up to the US.
Joe Biden was literally on TV saying "Don't come here". "Encouraging" is misleading language at best.
>Maybe they aren't actively encouraging immigration, but the people that I met and my relatives in Mexico seemed to think so.
Mexicans aren't huge fans of US immigration policy. Net migration to the US from Mexico is very small and sometimes negative; immigrants come from Central America through Mexico to the US. Mexicans blame the US for the difficulties they have with those people, and may be inclined to exaggerate our influence over the situation.
>why
Ultimately, it comes down to the political chess game that is American two-partyism. Democrats' immigration policy appeals to two subsets of their voter base, which, most importantly, are willing to change their behavior because of Democrats' policy position. The uncomfortable reality of the American political system is that it tends to screw over people who are loyal to a party. But immigration liberalization appeals to two "swing" caucuses:
- technocracy-inclined Democrats who like growth-promoting economic policy tend to support immigration and are willing to vote Republican if they perceive the Democrats as too welfarist, and
- globalist radlibs and a few Trotskyists who view nation-states and borders as inherently immoral and might not vote at all unless they get immigration loosening.
There's also the recent problem where Donald Trump froze aid to Central America that was meant to disincentivize migration by making staying put more attractive:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/09/17/7612661...
In this case the aid was too small to be a real problem for the federal budget, so it seems easier to interpret it as one of Trump's spiteful maneuvers (see also: telling Georgia Republicans not to vote in the Senate runoff). Democrats have been reluctant to criticize this obvious foible head-on because it would annoy the aforementioned swing caucuses -- in fact, Biden tried to talk about Obama's success in curbing illegal immigration but was harangued for doing so in the Democratic debates.
In short, the duopoly sucks, support the Alaskan election reform.