National
Review Online
Monday,
December 12, 2022
‘The two
most frightening words in Washington are ‘bipartisan consensus,’” P. J.
O’Rourke once quipped. “Bipartisan consensus is like when
my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help.” These words are
worth keeping in mind regarding last week’s statement from the Alliance for a New
Immigration Consensus, “praising the bipartisan effort” of Senators Thom Tillis
(R., N.C.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D. I., Ariz.) to craft a last-minute
immigration deal in the final weeks of the 117th Congress.
First of
all, there’s the question of why Republicans would want a deal in a lame-duck
session. While the GOP cavalry did not arrive in the numbers many had hoped for
last month, the party did retake the House. Congressional Republicans will be
running the lower chamber in less than a month; it makes no sense to negotiate
now, when they have less power and leverage, rather than later.
Then,
there’s the substance of what Tillis and Sinema are talking about. Their
proposal would pair a pathway to citizenship for so-called Dreamers — the more than 2
million young
illegal arrivals who have, since 2012, been shielded from deportation under the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — with beefed-up funding
for border security, swifter removal of illegal aliens who don’t qualify for
asylum, and a year-long extension of Title 42’s Covid-era immigration enforcement
measures.
Put
aside for the moment that a rational government shouldn’t need to rely on a CDC
edict and the falsehood that the coronavirus is still a major public-health
emergency to exclude illegal migrants from its borders.
Of
course, history says that deals like Tillis-Sinema — trading some form of
amnesty for the promise of more enforcement and border security — don’t work as
advertised. The Reagan-era Immigration Reform and Control Act, for example,
“conferred amnesty upon some 3 million illegals in exchange for promises of
stepped-up enforcement at the border and in the back office,” as we wrote in 2012. The amnesty side of that equation
went off without a hitch, while the enhanced enforcement never arrived.
More
fundamentally, there’s no reason to believe that additional funding and
authorities would make any difference to the Biden administration, which is
ignoring the law now to allow a historic flow of illegal immigrants into the
country. Yes, we need more resources at the border, and Congress should address
the morass that has been created by the perverse effects of past legislation
and court settlements, but that’s not fundamentally the issue at the moment. If
Tillis and Sinema could promise an end to Biden administration lawlessness —
driven by its apparent belief that any bogus asylum-seeker should be permitted
into the country and never deported — their handiwork might be worth
considering; since they can’t, it deserves to be ripped up and thrown away
forthwith.
If
Congress wanted to get serious about enforcement, it would adopt the new proposal from the House Republicans in
the Texas delegation, led by border hawk Chip Roy. The framework advocates the
completion of the wall and associated infrastructure at the border, which is
fine as far as it goes. More important are its proposals to reinstitute a
robust Remain in Mexico policy, fix the legal morass mentioned above, reform
our broken, self-defeating asylum system, and revive enforcement in the
interior.
If the
measure were adopted (and honored by the executive branch), it would end the
crisis at the border. House Republicans should pass it next year to show they
have an alternative to the status quo, even if it will go nowhere as long as an
administration is in office that actively opposes immigration enforcement.
Whatever
Tillis and Sinema or any other would-be grand bargainers promise, there’s no
possible solution to that prior to January 2025.
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