This was always the unspoken convention between the business elites and the guys that railed against immigration and abortion. You can keep talking about it as long as you don’t actually do anything about it. At some point the true believers just took over and thought they should pull the trigger on all those things.
It doesn’t help that Democrats have no idea how to talk about this issue either. Banning H1B visas and forcing companies to sponsor for a full green card would probably be pretty popular with every constituency of the Democratic party (unions, liberals, recent immigrants, …).
This was always the unspoken convention between the business elites and the guys that railed against immigration and abortion. You can keep talking about it as long as you don’t actually do anything about it. At some point the true believers just took over and thought they should pull the trigger on all those things.
It doesn’t help that Democrats have no idea how to talk about this issue either. Banning H1B visas and forcing companies to sponsor for a full green card would probably be pretty popular with every constituency of the Democratic party (unions, liberals, recent immigrants, …).