Biden’s ‘Bold’ Immigration Plan

J oe Biden is, supposedly, the president from the “moderate lane” of the Democratic Party here to unite the country after four years of that nutty orange guy. Yet on the very day he was inaugurated, he proposed a set of immigration reforms that activists have called “bold,” including broad amnesty for illegal immigrants.

The package, outlined in a fact sheet ahead of draft legislation being sent to Congress, has little prayer of passing in anything like its current form. So long as the filibuster remains intact, the bill would need the support of ten Republican senators, or one-fifth of the caucus, assuming no Democrats defected. (Marco Rubio, a Republican member of the 2013 “Gang of Eight,” has already rejected the bill’s amnesty.) The proposal is partly an opening bid, partly a harsh repudiation of Trump’s immigration stance, and completely out of step with any honest intention to unify the nation.

I’ve written numerous times in this space about the difficulty of bipartisan immigration reform, but the main obstacles to Republican support are as follows. First, regarding illegal immigration, conservatives want to know the problem has been solved for the future before they agree to amnesty for those already here. (Reagan’s 1986 amnesty, which was coupled with enforcement measures that never panned out, is a big reason for this.) And second, regarding legal immigration, conservatives generally want to focus more on skills and less on family connections when deciding whom to allow into the country, while leaving the overall level of immigration steady or even reducing it. As I often note, leaving the level as-is is the median response in public-opinion polls, so the Right is on firm political ground opposing increases.

Biden’s plan flunks on both counts.

One big part of controlling illegal immigration must be to police the border. But Biden has already promised not to build any more of Trump’s big, beautiful, woefully incomplete wall — even though border fencing is a simple and effective way to keep people from crossing a border without authorization. Instead he wants to try other technologies, asking the Department of Homeland Security to figure out the particulars. There’s nothing wrong with expanding and experimenting with these approaches, of course, but this is not a great trade for amnesty. There’s simply too big a risk that it won’t work or won’t even really be tried. As it happens, Biden’s pick to head DHS has already come under fire for being too soft on immigration; in fact, he was the architect of the illegal “deferred-action” program for Dreamers who came to the country illegally as minors (which Biden is also preserving).

The other key aspect of controlling illegal immigration is interior enforcement: Many illegal immigrants come legally but overstay their visas, meaning they can’t be stopped at the border, and many employers are happy to hire illegal workers. Conservatives have long wanted to require employers to use a computer program called “E-Verify” to make sure every hire is here legally, but there’s no sign of this from Biden.

The amnesty side of his proposal is nowhere near this weak. It would be available to millions of illegal immigrants who were in the country before January 1, so long as they passed a background check and paid taxes. Over eight years they could progress from a temporary legal status to green cards and citizenship; Dreamers, as well as some other categories such as agricultural workers, would have a faster route.

Meanwhile, new migrant caravans keep pushing their way through Central America, and Biden promises he’ll gradually work to abandon the Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy, under which those seeking asylum must wait on the Mexican side of the border, rather than coming into the country and possibly disappearing into the interior. A rush on the border would obviously be bad news for a legalization bill, which is one reason the amnesty won’t apply to those who come this year. Biden’s other big hope is that foreign aid to Central America will address the “root causes” of the migration crisis. Insofar as it spurs economic development, though, it could actually have the opposite effect, because, up to a point, people become more likely to migrate as they earn more money and thus can more easily afford to move.

Then there are the changes to legal immigration: more, more, more. He’d clear application backlogs, “recapture” any visas that go unused each year, relax or eliminate certain annual caps, improve “access to green cards for workers in lower-wage sectors,” and add 25,000 more “diversity” visas. He’d make smaller changes for specific groups as well, such as by letting Central American relatives of U.S. citizens come to the country sooner than they can currently. It will take experts some time to figure out what impact the bill would have on the overall level of immigration, but the direction of the change is clear enough.

In short, Biden proposes to legalize illegal immigrants while offering only vague promises of enforcement in return, and to expand legal immigration in numerous ways as well. The plan is a left-wing fantasy, not a moderate reform that conservatives should take seriously.