This summer, congressional Republicans will have one last opportunity to pass sensible immigration reform based on the principle that America is a land of opportunity for those who work hard and play by the rules. For 15 years, they have insisted that they would tackle immigration reform once the southern border had been secured. That milestone has been achieved.
Rather than legislate, our do-nothing Congress has watched the administration pursue interior immigration enforcement in a manner that has turned a political strength into a midterm election liability. If congressional Republicans do not change course, then come November, many will be unemployed, the rest will be out of power, and the country will continue to suffer the consequences of congressional inaction – incoherent immigration policy by Executive (dis)Order.
Republicans could move a coherent reform package with four key pillars very quickly. Many of the necessary provisions have been drafted in prior failed bills and have been gathering dust ever since.
First, we need an asylum system that quickly identifies and protects legitimate asylum seekers while preventing economic migrants from using it as a guest-worker program. Our current statutory system does neither. The president’s asylum ban ignores our commitment to asylees and may not survive Supreme Court review. It will not survive the next Democratic administration. Republicans would be wise to reform the asylum system while they can.
Second, the H2-A (agricultural) and H2-B (lower-skilled) visas should be much easier to obtain and renew. The cap on the H2-B visa should be raised substantially or eliminated altogether (like the H2-A). These legal avenues, rather than illegal border crossings, should become the preferred pathways for most economic migrants. If they were, we would not see ICE at farms, food processing facilities, construction sites, and 7-11 and Home Depot parking lots. Instead, we would see workers who passed a security screening paying taxes and contributing to their communities. We would also see the Border Patrol stopping traffickers and terrorists instead of catching and releasing economic migrants.
Third, “Dreamers” deserve green cards. Voters overwhelmingly favor this reform. By leaving Dreamers in legal limbo, we are effectively punishing them for the acts of their parents, an outcome that should be anathema to all Americans. Solving just this problem would dramatically improve Republicans’ reelection chances.
Voters also support providing a pathway to legalization for non-Dreamers who have been working in the U.S., paying their taxes, and staying out of legal trouble. To preempt the “amnesty” objection that many Republicans in safe seats would raise to this reform, these undocumented migrants should be given a new legal status – a “yellow card” that would allow them to live and work in the U.S. indefinitely. But this status would not create eligibility for as many public benefits as a green card, nor would it provide a pathway to citizenship. This would be the “penalty” for entering the country unlawfully rather than waiting in line like green card recipients. Taken together, these two pathways to legal status would bring millions of undocumented migrants out of the shadows, grow our economy and federal revenues, and calm our communities.
Fourth, Congress should create and fund a new grant program to support state and local efforts to integrate lawful immigrants, asylees, and refugees. The disbursement of these funds, along with grant funds for state prisons and local jails, counter-trafficking (narcotics and human), and gang enforcement should be conditioned on the absence of sanctuary policies that prevent state and local personnel from cooperating with federal efforts to remove criminal aliens. This combination of incentives – grant funding and legal status for millions of previously undocumented migrants – would be a much better approach to eliminating unpopular sanctuary policies than Secretary Mullin’s recent threat to suspend international travel at airports located in sanctuary cities.
Taken together, these four reforms would finally move the country forward and restore public trust in Congress. For House Republicans heading into the midterms, such a package would have the added advantage of being very popular in national polls.
Democrats in the Senate could nonetheless try to block these reforms. When deciding whether to do so, they would be wise to acknowledge their own credibility and branding problems. Despite controlling Congress and the White House under Obama and Biden, Democrats did not pass any immigration reforms. Worse, they remained silent when Biden opened the borders and abused his parole authority, resulting in the greatest influx of undocumented migrants since we established our current immigration system in 1965. It would be quite a gamble to vote against these reforms based on a promise to do even more if Democrats win the 2028 presidential election.
Republicans should force the Senate to vote on these sensible and popular reforms before Labor Day. If they do not seize this chance, they will trade leading the land of opportunity for exile in the land of the lost.
