So, what is a sensible center-right or sensible center-left approach to immigration?
Let us begin by asking for a significant concession by the center-left. The United States simply cannot admit everyone who wants to come here. There are just too many. I have heard the estimate that if we lifted all barriers on immigration from Haiti, some 70-90% of the population would come here. There are going to have to be restrictions on immigration, and that is all there is to it.
So how do we go about it? I like Kevin Drum's idea -- mandate E-Verify, to require employers to check employees' immigration status. Don't abolish ICE, but end workplace and other deportation raids. Limit its role to auditing employers and imposing fines if they don't use E-Verify. Illegal immigration will stop if the jobs aren't here.
A few caveats here. One is, there will have to be a lot of tweaking of work visa rules as we find out where immigrants are and aren't needed. We need to make work visa rules flexible enough to allow necessary tweaking. I don't think that will prove to be too controversial, since most Americans, anti-immigration activists included, do not want the jobs in question.
Another is, this will have to be accompanied with some sort of amnesty. Just as liberals are going to have to concede that the US can't accommodate everyone who wants to come here, conservatives are going to have to concede that we aren't going to get rid of 11 million people living here without authorization, some of them for decades. So fierce an immigration critic as Mickey Kaus has conceded that making 11 million people suddenly unemployable could be disruptive, and that he would not really want to find out what the consequences would be. In order to make such a proposal palatable to conservatives, we would have to agree to an amnesty would not include a pathway to citizenship (a huge hot button issue on the right) or allow eligibility for any sort of government benefits (another huge hot button issue). If Republicans could throw in other badges of inferiority, we should concede them, provided the amnesty includes protection from deportation and freedom to work (together with all necessary auxiliaries to work -- freedom to open a bank account, to buy or rent a residence, to get a driver's license, to send remittances home, etc).
Finally, and probably most seriously, contrary to Drum, the most controversial immigrants these days are not ones looking for work, but asylum seekers, fleeing violence in their home countries. Here is my understanding of the law. Asylum seekers are not the same as refugees. Refugees are people who have applied for admission in third countries (i.e., not the country they are fleeing and not the US), and have been vetted and cleared for admission. Admission of refugees is an orderly process. There is some controversy, but it is manageable. By contrast, asylum seekers are people who enter the US directly and apply for admission. Asylum seekers who turn themselves in and apply for asylum are entering the country legally but without pre-authorization, a category very hard for conservatives to process. Asylum seekers can be either detained or paroled. Pre-Trump, parole was the norm unless there was some sort of security risk. Trump made detention universal. So far as I can tell, Biden has not changes that.
Both refugees and asylum seekers must prove a credible fear of persecution of returned to their country. Credible fear of persecution means being singled out in some way. A country that is generically violent or in the middle of a civil war is merely dangerous and does not show a credible fear of persecution. However, people illegally or unauthorized present in the US can be given temporary protected status is their country is in the midst of violence or a natural disaster. New migrants cannot apply for the status. Refugees who are denied admission stay in refugee camps. Asylum seekers who are denied applications are deported to the dangerous situation they fled.
The least controversial proposal for asylum seekers is to increase the number of immigration judges so that their claims can be processed faster. Everyone across the spectrum will probably agree to that. Another proposal is to prioritize recent arrivals. The theory here is that speed and certainty are the strongest deterrents -- if claims for asylum are denied quickly, people are most likely to stop making ones that are not strong.
But in the end, that is going to mean either flooding our country with uncontrolled migration or deporting people to life-threatening conditions. What can we do about that? And like it or not, I think Trump's remain in Mexico program is probably what we should build from. The difference is that instead of dumping people in the streets of Mexico, with no food or shelter, and at the mercy of marauding gangs, we should spend resources making remaining in Mexico to wait safe. And safe would mean not just from marauding gangs, but from hunger, exposure, and disease.
To which outraged liberals would say, I am proposing to build refugee camps on our border. And I can only answer, I don't like this option, but I think it is the least bad option we have. It avoids the chaos on the border that is driving support for Trump and Republicans. It allows more freedom and autonomy that being detained in the US. And if an application for asylum is denied, we will not have to deport the applicant to the dangerous situation he/she was fleeing. We can return the applicant to the refugee camp, just as we do with refugees not along our border. The applicant can then decide whether to stay or go home. It will not be a great choice, but it is better than deporting people to a life-threatening situation.* And, of course, I believe we should work to improve conditions in countries that asylum seekers are fleeing, but that will take time, and we need to have options right here and now.
I can also see Republicans freaking out. This will mean spending money on non-citizens, international cooperation, and maybe even involving the United Nations in the Western Hemisphere. All of these are huge hot-button issues to right wingers. Nonetheless, they are all also somewhat distant and abstract. Uncontrolled flooding across the border, by contrast, is immediate and concrete. I am guessing that if the alternative is uncontrolled migration, most right wingers will learn to swallow and accept spending and international cooperative to feed and shelter waiting applicants.
So, I am proposing a package of bipartisan reforms. E-Verify to cut off jobs in exchange for an end to deportation raids and a limited amnesty that does not allow citizenship or government benefits. Making asylum seekers remain in Mexico in exchange for spending money to make remaining in Mexico difficult but endurable. So even if the parties were miraculously agree to such an arrangement, is that an end to the immigration issue? Didn't I say that differences between the parties would remain?
To which I answer, certainly differences will remain. Democrats will want to admit more refugees and Republicans fewer. Democrats will want work visas to allow permanent residency and eventual citizenship and Republicans will want guest workers only. Republicans will want to change our immigration system to a skill-based one, while Democrats will want to maintain our existing system of family-based admissions. Disputes will continue, as is normal in a democracy.
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*And not to make too fine a point, accommodations should be sufficient to keep people safe from marauders, hunger, cold, and disease, but not so appealing as to entice people to stay unless they are in real danger back home.
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