An overwhelming majority of Americans of all political stripes want Congress to fix immigration, and yet, Congress has failed to do so for decades.
Despite fear-mongering political platitudes from the right, significant immigration and border proposals introduced in 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2013, 2021, and 2022 all failed, largely due to Republican opposition.
It seems the only thing Republicans want more than a fixed immigration system is a broken immigration system.
We’ve been here before
After over 30 years of inaction, House Speaker Mike Johnson and the far right now insist that U.S. borders must be fixed before the U.S. meets its security commitments to Ukraine and Israel. It’s a cynical bet on America’s short attention span.
Ten years ago, a “Gang of Eight” U.S. senators, four Republicans and four Democrats, crafted an ambitious and comprehensive proposal to fix our nation’s broken immigration system. It was the first comprehensive immigration reform plan presented in nearly 30 years.
The proposal provided tech/science employers with more access to urgently needed engineers and foreign graduates with advanced degrees, included a merit-based review system to award more green cards based on skills and education, and created a legalization plan for undocumented immigrants already living and working in the country. It also revamped visa rules to assist industries that rely on immigrants to fill back-breaking jobs Americans won’t take.
The highly celebrated, bi-partisan plan went nowhere. After passing the Senate by an overwhelming margin of 68 to 32, it tanked in the House, where far-right conservatives blocked it from even getting a vote.
Republicans talk the talk, won’t walk the walk
The late Sen. John McCain, the last real Republican champion of immigration reform, blamed the Gang of Eight’s House failure on the conservative Republican Freedom Caucus. McCain described the far right’s prescription to round up all the “illegals” and deport them as pure “bullsh—t.”
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“There are politicians today who would have Americans believe that illegal immigration is one of the worst scourges afflicting the country… Whatever their reasons, the cynical and the ignorant promotion of false information and unnecessary fear have the same outcome…”
Ten years later, nothing has changed, Republican political attacks remain a cynical surrogate for action, and our borders remain a mess.
Republicans jeopardize national security for political points
Despite GOP majorities in both House and Senate since the Gang of Eight failed, including from 2017-2019 under build-the-wall-Trump, Republicans have bypassed clear opportunities to fix immigration, which seems to be a crisis only when there’s a Democrat in the White House.
Fox News now churns out alarmist immigration stories on the daily. “Fresh surge,” “frightening toll of criminals,” and “massive influx” headlines run practically non-stop like a ticker tape. Meanwhile, President Biden has called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform since his first day in office.
In his latest Ukraine and Israel defense funding request, Biden sought $14 billion to increase the number of border agents, install new devices to detect fentanyl coming across the border, and increase asylum processing staff. Rejecting these common sense requests, Republicans decided to hijack NATO and national security commitments by making them contingent on hard-line border proposals they haven’t seriously pursued in over 30 years.
Sweeping decades of republican opportunities and inaction under the rug, Freedom Caucus member and House Speaker Mike Johnson has declared that immigration reform is now Republicans’ “hill to die on,” confirming that the right is willing to jeopardize long-standing military obligations to score political points from manipulated voters. Promoting #BidenBorderCrisis on social media, and falsely claiming that democrats support open borders, far right politicians approach immigration today like they approached abortion yesterday: as an opposition party whose role is to attack, not solve. They obviously don’t want the dog to catch this car either.
Effective reform requires nimble analysis, not grandstanding
Not all Republicans are so deliberately obtuse. Earlier this year, two republican governors- Spencer Cox of Utah and Eric Holcomb of Indiana- delivered an admirable essay in The Washington Post correctly citing the country’s economic dependence on immigrant labor. Describing more than 300,000 job vacancies between Utah and Indiana alone, they wrote, “In meaningful ways, every U.S. state shares a border with the rest of the world, and all of them need investment, markets and workers from abroad.” They point out that rapidly declining U.S. birthrates coupled with accelerating retirements is becoming an American labor crisis that can only be fixed with increased immigrant workers.
Labor-intensive industries in the US like farming, healthcare, food service and hospitality need immigrant labor to stay in business. Last week the US Bureau of labor statistics reported 8.7 million job openings, with the largest number of non-professional vacancies in transportation, health care, and accommodations/food service, positions that could easily be filled by migrants desperate to work.
Farmers in particular need migrants who work in sweltering heat picking and packing produce, working with livestock and handling dairy operations. Last November the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association begged Congress to enlarge legal immigration to expand their accessible labor pool. They presented their own immigration proposal, advising Congress that the $753 billion American dairy industry needs immigrants to address “an acute national labor crisis,” that “would soon worsen.”
The Cheese Makers Association offered up specifics, urging Congress to expand the agricultural guestworker visa program to include dairy manufacturing and related supply chain jobs; eliminate “touchback” provisions that require agricultural guestworkers to return to their home country periodically (both expensive and disruptive); and to provide temporary legal status to the spouses and minor children of non-seasonal agricultural guestworkers, which would make immigrant farm work more attractive, among other provisions.
Stock up on your cheese curds now, because the dairy farmers’ request to Congress also went nowhere.
Market complexities don’t fit into two-second sound bites
Despite U.S. labor demand exceeding labor supply to the tune of 9 million open jobs, no country can absorb unlimited numbers of people. And despite non-stop accusations to the contrary, no one on the credible left has ever called for open borders.
Most Americans understand that migrant labor is crucial to a growing number of domestic industries. Across party lines, over 62% of Americans think businesses should be allowed to hire as many migrant workers as they need to fill vacant jobs. Most Americans agree the immigration process takes too long, and overwhelmingly, the public supports a pathway to citizenship for people who have been here for years.
Republicans’ decades-long refusal to act has exacerbated supply chain problems, hurt struggling producers and farmers, and increased inflation and production gaps. It’s long past the hour for Congress to help border states and accommodate farmers and industry leaders desperate for workers, by developing a data-driven, market-specific immigration plan including clear rules on which skills and people can come in, enhanced enforcement, sustainable asylum standards, fast-track deportation procedures, increased border staff, temporary shelter so border states aren’t stuck with the bill, and a path to citizenship based on evolving labor, social and housing needs. These factors are ignored every time Lindsey Graham or Mike Johnson decide to grandstand on immigration.
Bright red republicans do a great disservice to farmers and industry, and to Americans who understand these complexities, by ascribing Fox News viewers’ lowest-common-denominator intellect to everyone. Their fear-mongering pro-Putin platitudes make clear that Americans concerned about immigration are far smarter, more informed and more motivated to fix the problem than they have ever been.
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