Immigration Reform – No Way Out

 

Almost everyone admits that our immigration policies, as particularly evidenced by the roiling consternation at our southern border, are and have been a mess for a long time. As a rising tide of xenophobia has gripped many Americans, a result of a combination of the 9/11/01 attacks, endless wars, the decimation of climate change pushing impoverished peoples to seek salvation through migration, there appears to be an immoveable bloc in Congress hell-bent on stopping any statutory immigration reform. 

Georgetown Law, in a library article entitled A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States – summarizes the last serious federal statutory reform of our immigration policies (which began in the Reagan era): “In 1986 Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control  Act (IRCA), which attempted to address illegal immigration through amnesty programs for illegal immigrants, as well as criminalizing the hiring of illegal aliens as workers and instituting the I-9 form for all employees.  Four years after the passage of IRCA, Congress passed a new act - the Immigration Act of 1990, also known as IMMACT.  IMMACT negated the immigration caps based on hemisphere and instituted a total number cap of 675,000 persons, with 480,000 spots designated for family members of United States citizens; 140,000 designated for employment-based immigrants, and 55,000 for ‘diversity’ immigrants.  IMMACT also provided an 18 month period of protected status for immigrants from El Salvador. In addition, IMMACT transferred authority for naturalizations from the United States Courts to the United States Attorney's office.  It expanded the number and type of deportable actions and increased border protection.” Immigration reform went violently downhill from there.

Despite numerous subsequent efforts from presidents on both sides of the aisle to institute comprehensive congressional immigration reform, the ultra-conservative bloc of the Republican Party (and since the Trump era reconfiguration of the entire GOP congressional delegation, virtually the entire Republican Party) have put the kibosh on any efforts to reform that immigration code. Donald Trump, by executive order and reallocation of resources in other legislation to finance his abortive attempt to build a 2000-mile new wall between Mexico and the United States, effectively slammed the door on any bill that would open some form of legitimacy for immigrants seeking asylum or even technically qualified immigration into the United States.   He pulled the rug out from Dreamers with a stroke of his executive order pen.

As noted above, the 9/11/01 attack changed attitudes of many Americans on immigration. In 2002, border and immigration control was placed with the Department of Homeland Security. Even the most basic immigration injustice – the status of young children brought illegally into the United States by their parents, people who have never known any country except the United States (“Dreamers”) – limped along on inconsistent executive orders without a genuine solution to legitimize their status. “The DREAM Act, originally introduced in 2001, was an attempt to provide a means by which persons who do not have a legal status, but who were brought to the United States as minors, could apply for legal permanent status, leading to naturalization.  Despite multiple efforts throughout the first decade of the 21st century the Act was not passed.” Georgetown.

A Democratic majority in the House and Senate hoped to avoid the almost certain rejection by a GOP Senate filibuster of even a modest proposal toward immigration reform – with particular focus on legitimizing the Dreamers – by the Dems’ tying that effort into the budgetary reconciliation vote, which was not subject to that filibuster rule. Alas, the Senate parliamentarian ruled against the procedural legitimacy of that effort. “Democrats can’t use their $3.5 trillion package bolstering social and climate programs for their plan to give millions of immigrants a chance to become citizens, the Senate’s parliamentarian said, a crushing blow to what was the party’s clearest pathway in years to attaining that long-sought goal.

“The decision by Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate’s nonpartisan interpreter of its often enigmatic rules, is a damaging and disheartening setback for President Joe Biden, congressional Democrats and their allies in the pro-immigration and progressive communities. Though they said they’d offer her fresh alternatives, MacDonough’s stance badly wounds their hopes of unilaterally enacting — over Republican opposition — changes letting several categories of immigrants gain permanent residence and possibly citizenship.” Associated Press, September 20th.

With effective cartel-driven civil wars in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, a pandemic decimation of economic opportunity, the mounting damage from climate change related events and the harsh policies against immigrants piling up on our southern border, the border area was now swarming with economic refugees and asylum seekers. And while the Biden administration has raised immigration quotas for such desperate peoples, the vast assemblage of those seeking to immigrate to the United States was exploding. His administration was accused of continuing harsh treatment of border detainees.

The latest mass confusion, focused under a sun-protecting bridge (sheltering from 100-degree heat) in the border town of Del Rio, Texas brought almost 15 thousand Haitians (mostly those already living in Central and South America) to the border seeking admission. Another wave, some estimated at 20 thousand additional Haitians sitting in Colombia, threatened to join the fray and move north. The lack of medical care and food at the border made matters desperate.

The Biden administration moved thousands of Haitians to more open DHS facilities, with deportation to Haiti – a nation roiling in political chaos from a presidential assassination, a devastating earthquake and continuous battering by sequential hurricanes – as it stated goal (bona fide asylum seekers were permitted to press their case within the U.S.). Border Patrol agents, on horseback, were photographed pushing Haitians back across the border at the Rio Grande. Some uniformed officers, seemingly using their reins as whips, were recorded hurling unacceptable taunts – like “go back to your shit country” – to the terrified masses, many of whom were probably COVID positive. That Haitians only speak French or a Creole patois was lost on these officers. The world was watching as testimony on Capitol Hill addressed the gravity of the situation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the end, the Republican bloc against immigration reform in Congress can only make a very bad situation that much worse.