Many months later, the House GOP border bill is mired in Republican infighting. Swing district lawmakers have balked at its harsh handling of those seeking asylum. It turns out that basing real-world policy on the lurid fantasy universe depicted in MAGA-pleasing ads produces results so absurd and extreme that Republicans beholden to less MAGA-fied voters can’t stomach it.
Democrats should be capitalizing on this GOP disarray, by doing more to push their own immigration reform agenda. Unfortunately, they are at risk of squandering this moment, and part of the blame falls on President Biden.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and GOP leaders had planned to pass their border bill in January, but that idea got shelved when objections from moderate Republicans caught them off guard. The sticking point is that the GOP bill would functionally end asylum seeking entirely. Republicans are now negotiating to soften this language, because as Politico reports, those objecting fear the bill’s treatment of asylum seekers will “alienate voters back home.”
All this is a major rebuke to the MAGA worldview. As president, Donald Trump treated migrants as little more than a scourge to be handled with maximal harshness. The most MAGA-faithful GOP candidates in 2022 embraced this notion. Many lost, but Republicans have still vowed that a GOP House must “secure the border” with zero compromises on “amnesty,” meaning no moves to allow more migrants to live and work here.
Yet moderate Republicans are insisting on more humane treatment of migrants. Some of them, such as Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.), have declared the border-only bill a non-starter, calling for allowing more migrants to work here legally. Republicans may well pass something in the end, but they are asking moderates to cast a difficult vote for a bill knowing it will never become law.
Democrats could increase pressure on GOP moderates by getting behind a comprehensive alternative in a more concerted way. In rough outlines, this approach would combine a large increase in money to speed processing of asylum seekers at the border, combined with expedited processes for removing those who don’t qualify. That would potentially give Republicans what they say they want: reducing incentives for migrants to apply for asylum solely to disappear into the interior while awaiting hearings.
This approach would also include new channels for migrants to work legally, which those moderate Republicans — such as Mace — also say they want. And it would include legalization for groups such as the “dreamers” brought here as children, farmworkers and others, another thing some moderate Republicans can countenance.
“Democrats should seize the opportunity to clearly lay out a real plan,” Kerri Talbot of the Immigration Hub told me.
Some Democrats get this. Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.) just proposed a package along these lines. He also calls on Biden to implement an idea I’ve suggested: using parole authority to admit more migrant workers, matched to states that need them. Even some GOP governors are declaring that need.
Meanwhile, the pro-immigration group FWD.us has released a blueprint combining these ideas into a broader agenda. The principle here is that opening up more legal pathways is the way to reduce pressure on the border while also honoring pro-immigrant values and international commitments.
But this push is being hindered by the Biden administration’s approach to the border. With a spike in migration expected once a covid-19 limit on asylum seeking lifts in May, Biden seems to have decided that only severe limits on applications at the border can manage logistical problems there — and, worse, mitigate his political problem as well.
To his credit, Biden has expanded pathways for 30,000 migrants per month to apply from abroad for protection. But he has combined this with limits on who can apply at the border that are quite draconian.
The Biden vision seeks to encourage migrants to stop making the trek to the border and apply from afar instead. That’s an understandable goal. But in practice, Biden’s disincentives to make the trek renege on fundamental human rights commitments to those seeking refuge here.
Biden’s basic posture makes it harder for Democrats to loudly stand for the idea that the border can be managed without a dramatic reneging on these core commitments. The tragedy of the situation is that we know what this would look like, and it could get bipartisan support.
Such a package, of course, could never pass the House. But this leads to the ultimate point: A large faction of Republicans will never support reforms that make the asylum system actually work and allow more migrants to work here in a sane and orderly way. That’s because they don’t want more immigrants in the United States; they want fewer.
Republicans are struggling to build a real agenda around that goal, because it’s fundamentally unworkable and, as even some Republicans recognize, it’s bad for the country. Presenting the Democratic alternative now would split the GOP coalition and send a clearer message on what the Democratic Party stands for than the muddled message Biden has sent thus far.
