The US immigration system is broken and both parties need to start fixing it
The arguably worst House of Representatives in over a century is now allowing desperately needed military support for Ukraine to be held hostage over immigration policy. Enough Republicans support Russian President Vladimir Putin and are rooting for Moscow to overrun Kyiv that the party has been able to essentially unite around this cynical ploy.
Such shenanigans are common in law-making. And it could provide Democrats, especially US President Joe Biden, who is vulnerable to immigration-centred attacks from his opponent, former president Donald Trump, to buttress his defences.
Some of what the Republicans are asking for is unduly harsh, but it reflects the widespread anti-immigration sentiment of many of their voters. Nonetheless, Democrats shouldn’t assume their own voters are all that different.
Many white Republicans may be more concerned about racial and cultural issues, imagining, as Mr Trump recently claimed in shocking echoes of Nazi propaganda, that migrants from Latin America, Asia and Africa are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and later writing online that “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation.”
Yet, from an economic perspective, many African Americans and Latinos also take a dim view of immigration. There is a widespread perception that immigration is a drain on the economy and migrants, a burden on society. Large influxes of unskilled labour can drag down low-end wages, but that impact is limited and lasts a few years. But even communities that don’t feel particularly threatened on ethnic or cultural grounds can fear that job prospects and wages might be negatively affected. That’s not irrational. It’s exaggerated, particularly since the US is at virtually full employment.
Employers tend to be sympathetic to immigration, sometimes raising suspicions in the working class, especially among unions. Yet, unions remain core to the Democratic coalition, and Mr Trump spurned the opening he had in 2016 to rearrange the political landscape by bringing organised labour into a populist coalition, and instead remained almost invariably favourable to the wealthy and large corporations. A second term for Mr Biden would demonstrate the size of this missed opportunity.
Another common misconception about immigration that helps to spur widespread opposition is the confusion between “illegal” migration, in which migrants sneak or are spirited across the border, and asylum-seekers. Few Americans understand that by law and treaty obligations, the US is at least theoretically required to provide an orderly, reasonable asylum process for migrants who apply for asylum. This is a preferred tactic by numerous migrants, many of whom are undoubtedly prompted mainly by economic considerations. Current policies seek to keep most of them out of the country anyway, and Republicans want to make that much tougher.
The two very different groups are almost invariably lumped together under the repulsive rubric of “illegal aliens.” Prying apart this distinction, however, could be an important part of a real compromise.
Democrats ought to have no difficulty voting for increased border security and law enforcement measures, such as hiring more border protection officers, to stop truly unlawful entry. Republicans ought to have no difficulty voting for large increases in the numbers of judges and magistrates who can hear, and administrators who can process asylum cases so that they do not drag on.
Republicans are pressing to tighten a wide range of restrictions against asylum-seeking. But it would be much more reasonable, effective and consistent with international law and traditional US values to put more emphasis on creating a rational, rapid and efficient asylum process on the one hand while cracking down on people trying to sneak into the country, by tightening border security. The two could even go hand in hand.
Another urgently needed change is a thorough upending of the bizarre current system. It essentially prohibits the numerous asylum-seekers – with almost 800,000 wouldbe migrants currently in the immigration courts’ backlog – from being granted temporary status while they await their hearings. That means that asylum-seekers awaiting due process of law are actually barred from working, at least lawfully, and supporting themselves, so are turned into a genuine burden on the state and society.
They are lawfully in the country, waiting for the asylum due process, which is their legal right, yet they are prohibited from earning a living while enduring what is now typically many years of waiting. Average wait times now typically exceed 1,500 days and are often much longer, for even the first hearing. Although, contrary to another popular misapprehension, the overwhelming majority do turn up for their hearings rather than skipping the process and simply blending into society.
Democrats are right to insist on a naturalisation process for the at least 2 million “dreamers,” undocumented migrants who were brought to the US as young children and have lived useful, productive, and blameless lives, yet who are subject to potential deportation at any moment, who live in the shadows, at the margins of the only society they have ever known. There is absolutely nothing to be gained for anyone, by marginalising or excluding, let alone deporting, such people, especially to countries they have never visited and cultures with which they are entirely unfamiliar.
Republicans who are sophisticated enough to raise the issue are right to press for a shift in US immigration policy, away from the current one centred on family reunification and, therefore, migration largely through familial relations, to a system that, like the Canadian model, emphasises a preference for education and potential earning power. This is more rational, and would be more popular, than the present system, which is an anachronism from the 1960s.
It’s obvious why Republicans are hammering away at immigration, although there’s no defending their willingness to hold aid to Ukraine hostage to a passion they recently developed because of agitation by Mr Trump and his fans.
But no matter how galling that is, the confrontation gives Mr Biden and the Democrats an opportunity to do something that they can take to the American people next year to counter Republican claims that the Democrats don’t care about “the crisis at the border”. That’s hyperbole, but the US immigration system is badly broken and it behooves both parties to start fixing it.
A misconception that spurs opposition is the confusion between ‘illegal’ migration and asylum-seekers