Comprehensive Immigration Policy Needed

In 2013 President Obama’s Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Reform Bill passed the US Senate by a 68-32 margin. The bill provided a conservative pathway to citizenship that would take 13 years for most undocumented immigrants. It also included almost $50 billion for border security enforcement, an E-Verify mandatory employment system, and a “renewable work visa for low-skilled workers, with annual quotas that depend on market demand.”  (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2014/6/30/18080446/immigration-reform-congress-2014-house-john-boehner-obama). House Republican leadership tried to get the bill passed; due to the opposition of the prevailing conservative wing of the GOP, it was never brought to the floor. With its failure, the political climate over immigration policy took on an increased polarized cast. 

 Given his accusation of Mexicans bringing drugs and crime to the U.S., as well as being rapists, the polarization intensified once Trump became president. In fact, throughout his presidency, Trump’s immigration policy was purely retrograde, separating parents from their children, locking the children of undocumented parents in cages, reducing the number of refugees allowed to enter the US to a trickle, and claiming to build some mythical wall to keep the outsider out.  The Trump administration offered no operating framework for addressing the enduring challenges that have drawn millions of people to the U.S. from around the world throughout this nation’s history.

Mired in an ideological hostility to the plight of those seeking refugee status in the U.S., the Trump administration turned the unwanted immigrant into an object of contempt and fear through a rhetoric of demonization and dehumanization.  Stimulated by Trump’s claim that caravans of refugees were invading the U.S., the 2019 killer of 23 Latino persons at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, referred to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” as justification for his actions. (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/el-paso-walmart-shooting-5-years-invasion-rhetoric-rcna164784).

 In 2021, President Biden proposed an ambitious immigration initiative with the U.S. Citizenship Act that built and expanded upon Obama’s 2013 bill, which consisted of an eventual pathway to citizenship for up to 11 million undocumented residents as well as border security provisions. A key feature included addressing root causes of migration in Guatemala, El Salvadore, and Honduras in allowing up to four billion dollars to help “reduce the endemic corruption, violence, and poverty that causes people to flee their home countries.” In a supportive political climate, the U.S. Citizenship Act could have gone some way in dealing with this complex issue in a reasonably systemic manner; given the Congress he had to work with, the legislation died with the closing of the 117th Congress.

 No doubt, the proliferation of the number of refugees who crossed the U.S.-Mexican border caught the Biden administration off guard. Instead of working with Democrats to offer solutions, the GOP went on the attack. Republican governors of Texas and Florida exploited the issue, enacting stunts of sending migrants to Democratic-run cities for the express purpose of “owning the libs” and evoking a crisis in the hard-pressed urban areas of the nation. Meanwhile, Trump, presenting himself as the defender of the “real Americans” of the heartland, evoked some of the vilest anti-immigrant impulses that has ever been uttered in this nation.  

 Trump’s nihilism was evinced in his demand that Republicans vote against the recent bipartisan immigration bill that included some of the toughest asylum and border laws ever enacted in recent times. These provisions were insisted upon by Republicans as the price for supporting financial aid for Ukraine and Israel. Whether the bill would have been approved into law remained to have been seen.  Once Trump stated his disapproval on the cynical grounds that it would take immigration from him as a campaign issue, even those Republicans who supported the bill later voted against it. Meanwhile, in falsely accusing Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio of the most despicable acts, Trump enacted a level of anti-immigration rhetoric that is not only dehumanizing, but categorically false and racist, to its core, as well as evil in the most fundamental sense, as violating the Law and Spirit of the One who judges rightly.

 In her recent speech on immigration, V.P. Harris provided an immigration plan that balances border security and refugee quotas while allowing for legal pathways for citizenship “for longtime immigrants,” including those who are undocumented “who are deeply rooted in the United States,” including Dreamers. Rejecting what she views as the “false choice between securing our border or creating a system...that is safe, orderly and humane,” her recognition that “we can and must do both,” is based on a political philosophy that has viewed immigration as a positive good for this nation’s history, one that requires a thoughtful balance between shorter- and longer-term factors (https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2024/09/28/harris-arizona-immigration-asylum-enforcement).

 Any comprehensive proposal would require an American hemisphere approach in addressing deep rooted social, political, and economic problems in Latin America and a redirection of U.S. foreign policy that provides support for such an orientation. The extent to which Harris would be able to move in such a direction would be an outcome of the actual political power at her disposal in 2025.  Regardless, without a comprehensive approach to immigration reform, policy directives in this arena can only flounder.