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.
How we got here
After over 30 years of inaction, House Speaker Mike Johnson and the far right now insist that U.S. borders must be “fixed” and migrants severely restricted before the United States meets its security commitments to Ukraine and Israel.
It’s a cynical bet on America’s short attention span during a season when devout Christians like him will be retelling the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus — himself an immigrant and refugee.
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 and most ambitious immigration reform plan presented in Congress in nearly 30 years.
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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, bipartisan plan failed. 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 “b-------.”
“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…” McCain said.
Sen. John McCain (AFP Photo/Chip Somodevilla)
Ten years later, nothing has changed, Republican political attacks remain a cynical surrogate for meaningful 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 plan failed, including from 2017 to 2019 under build-the-wall Trump, Republicans have bypassed opportunities to fix the nation’s immigration system, 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 ticker tape. Meanwhile, President Joe 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 traversing the border and boost 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.
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Sweeping decades of Republican opportunities and inaction under the rug, Johnson, a devout Christian, has declared that a draconian immigration policy 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. birth rates, coupled with accelerating retirements, is becoming an American labor crisis that can only be fixed with increased immigrant workers.
Labor-intensive industries in the United States, such as farming, healthcare, food service and hospitality, need immigrant labor to stay in business. Last week, the U.S. 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 be filled by migrants desperate to work.
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Farmers, in particular, need migrants who work in sweltering heat, picking and packing produce, working with livestock and handling dairy operations.
In November 2022, the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association begged Congress to expand legal immigration to broaden 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 guest workers, 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,” where everyone and anyone is free to come to the United States to do as they please.
Most Americans understand that migrant labor is crucial to a growing number of domestic industries. Across party lines, over 62 percent 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 added to supply chain problems, hurt struggling producers and farmers, exacerbated inflation and widened production gaps.
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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 that includes clear rules on which skills are needed and which people can come in, while providing enhanced enforcement, sustainable asylum standards, fast-tracked deportation procedures, increased border staff and temporary shelters so border states aren’t stuck with the bill. Also essential: a real path to citizenship for worthy migrants based on evolving labor, social and housing needs. These factors are ignored every time a Sen. Lindsey Graham or Speaker Mike Johnson decides 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 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.
´Tis the season for hard-line Republicans to search their hearts, use their brains and get serious about fixing a problem they’ve exploited for decades.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25-year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Follow her on Substack.
