Sorry saga of immigration reform

As reported out by the House Budget Committee, the most recent Build Back Better reconciliation bill had an instructive immigration provision.

Most of those currently in the country illegally could receive temporary legal status and a work permit for a fiveyear period. The paroles would be renewable for another five-year period, but not beyond that.

What is instructive is the reaction. Just a couple of months ago, Democrats and immigration activists would have been united in fierce opposition to the proposal. For them, anything that didn’t provide permanent legal status and a path to citizenship was beneath contemplation and discussion.

Today, however, headed into debate and possible amendment on the floor, that is the Democratic proposal. And immigration activists are divided about it. Some are still pressing for permanent legal status and a path to citizenship. But many are supporting the proposal as an interim step that at least removes the threat of deportation and lifts barriers to full participation in the formal economy.

Now, there was a time when this proposal – temporary legal status without a path to citizenship – could have been the basis of a broad bipartisan immigration deal. The lack of a path to citizenship takes away one of the largely unstated political fears of Republicans, that legalization leads to millions of additional Democratic voters. If coupled with the mandatory use of E-Verify in the workplace and some border security measures, there were times when that might have made its way through Congress and into law.

On immigration reform, both sides seem never to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

This dates back to the 2007 deal negotiated principally between Arizona U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl and Sen. Ted Kennedy.

At the time, I described that deal as Democrats winning the past and Republicans winning the future.

There was an amnesty for those then in the country illegally, instant permanent legal status and a path to citizenship, albeit a fairly lengthy one.

However, future immigration was to be made far less family related and much more skill related, focused more on the needs of the economy.

There would have been mandatory use of an enhanced E-Verify system and a significant beefing up of border security, including extensive physical barriers.

It was Republicans who largely scuttled Kennedy-Kyl. Fourteen years later, U.S. immigration law remains primarily focused on family unification, not economic needs. There is no mandatory requirement for the use of E-Verify in the workplace, enhanced or otherwise. The border remains unsecure. Illegal immigrants remain in the country in roughly the same numbers.

Over the years, the left has refused to accept the legal status for illegal immigrants that the politics of the moment might accept.

At one point, there was bipartisan support for permanent legal status and a path to citizenship for “Dreamers,” those brought to this country illegally as children. Not good enough, many immigration activists argued. Can’t leave their parents behind.

So, instead of legislation, “Dreamers” got DACA, an administrative policy that provides temporary legal status and not a path to citizenship. And DACA is on rocky legal grounds, likely to be struck down once it gets to the U.S. Supreme Court.

There have been times when some Republicans were open to permanent legal status for long-term illegal immigrants that didn’t include a path to citizenship. When that opening existed, the left was uniform in dismissing it as a nonstarter. A path to citizenship or nothing.

Nothing is what resulted. And now Democrats are proposing temporary, not permanent, legal status with an expiration date and no path to citizenship.

I don’t know whether there remain any grounds for bipartisan action on immigration. The Republican line against any form of amnesty has hardened over time.

Nonetheless, the recent history of futile immigration reform efforts should teach a lesson to both parties.

Democrats should be prepared to accept whatever legal status can obtain sufficient political support at any given moment. It is unfair to the illegal immigrants living in limbo to continue to hold them hostage to what politicians and activists think would be fairer and more just.

And if Republicans want a secure border and orderly immigration, not just the political issue of the absence of such, they need to revive Kyl’s emphasis on the future rather than the past.