The Senate immigration compromise crumbled away just days after its birth. Many conservatives said it doesn’t go far enough to stem border chaos, while leftists complained that it focused too heavily on enforcement.
But what’s the alternative?
The bill was certainly an improvement on the status quo. It raised the bar for proving asylum claims. It worked to stem the “catch and release” policies that the Biden administration has imposed. It would have reformed the “humanitarian parole” loophole that the White House has exploited. All of these changes were progress — if modest — and should have helped make it less attractive for migrants to flood the border zone.
“This is absolutely better than what we currently have,” Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents front-line workers, told ABC News.
The deal would also have opened the door for additional aid to Israel in its fight for survival.
Yet the proposal met fierce resistance from the right. “They’ve rigged the bill,” wrote David Harsanyi of The Federalist, “making it so malleable that (President Joe) Biden can basically interpret and implement its provisions in any fashion he chooses.”
In addition, House Speaker Mike Johnson all but said that he wouldn’t bring the legislation to a vote even if it eked through in the Senate. Donald Trump, meanwhile, made clear that he prefers inertia because he hopes to exploit the issue in the upcoming election. But that is not responsible leadership. It’s not a good look for Republicans to cry “crisis” at the border for the past three years and then undermine a compromise in a politically motivated effort to flog the issue into November.
In fact, early news of an agreement hardly took the controversy off the table for Mr. Biden. His polling numbers on immigration are abysmal, and the nation finds itself at this point solely because of his unconscionable pandering to progressive open-borders advocates.
Mr. Biden had plenty of chances to attack the problem on his own, yet refused. That’s all fair game for Republicans. And if, as Mr. Harsanyi feared, the administration slow-played the reforms, that, too, could have had electoral repercussions.
Conservative critics may have some points, but Republicans don’t control the Senate or the White House. They don’t have the congressional votes to unilaterally impose policy changes at the border. The reality of divided government demands compromise and incremental progress. The goal for the GOP must be to vastly improve its recent electoral track record so it can then build on that progress.
Scuttling a deal doesn’t help the party in that regard.
— Tribune News Service
