In my opinion, the Democrat party is underestimating the importance of the southern border of the United States and the influx of immigrants into the country. At first, what the governor of Texas (Greg Abbot) was doing with sending immigrants to sanctuary cities like New York was perceived as a political stunt, something which was not supposed to be taken seriously, but the governor has managed to prove his point on immigration and making the State of New York to feel the pressure of having thousands of new people to take care of there. It won't make New York to be one a red State not it could certainly make the American public opinion to flip against Biden inaction on the issue. I have seen reports about the authorities of those cities to feel abandoned by the federal government, since they do not have enough funding by their own to take care of that quantity of immigrants, many coming from Venezuela, by the way.
When most of immigrants were on Texas, Arizona and California, it was difficult for the people of New York to image the dramatic situation Republicans usually talked about on Television and on social media, now that New York is slowly but steadily becoming a "border city" some new yorkers will start to feel what people from Texas have felt for a long time and pay more attention to what both sides of the political spectrum have to say in this matter, whether the Republican solution makes more sense than the Democrat will depend on the political leaning of each one of those open to solutions. Democrats need to be careful on the issue, otherwise, it will become a strong point to rally for Trump, regardless he opposed to fix the problem before or not. Maga does not care about that fact.
If facts don't matter--which for a lot of Trump's voters, they don't--then what Democrats do or don't do at the border won't matter.
I think the New York special election showed that Democrats have made a lot of headway among independents with respect to immigration because of the Republicans blocking their own legislation. Democrats, wisely, gave away the farm in that bill, and Republicans turned them down because Trump told them to. And Biden said he wanted to shut down the border (which is political fluff, but fine), but the Republicans are stopping him.
What this tells
independents is that Democrats want to solve the problem and Republicans just want to play political games and follow Trump's orders no matter how daft. (The more the election can be about Trump himself, the more it helps Democrats, I suspect).
And by the way, New York has been a "border city" for a very long time :-). I think they know a thing or two about immigrants there.
I really think Republicans stepped in it (or fell into a trap if you will) with their veto of the bi-partisan border deal. Trump may have thought he was being really clever, but instead he just gave Democrats an opening to turn immigration in their favor.
I could be Trump simply acting on his instincts, to be honest. He may have not thought much about the consequences of asking for their Republicans companions to reject the immigration law, he simply thought that, since the border is pretty much one of his main campaign topics, he cannot allow the problem to be solved before his presidency, assuming he wins.
Though, it is obvious New York has been a city of immigrants, almost the beginning, the phenomenon we are seeing nowadays is different from what we have seen before in terms of volume of people and the funding available for them.
The situation is already being used by pro Republican media, pointing out how schools and hotels are being used to house immigrants and how they are given thousands of dollars in gift cards, so they can get food and other necessities. That would certainly feel many people in the United States (who are struggling) uncomfortable, specially with the whole homelessness problem going on in big cities of the country, like those in the state of California.