IMMIGRATIONAn Immigration Debate Worth Having
The best immigration policy is one that helps developing countries hold on to their best.
For anyone who has been paying attention, the role of immigration in the just concluded presidential election (it ranked behind only the economy as the reason cited by voters for their choice of candidate) could not have come as a surprise. Across the Western world, concerns about high levels of immigration and the perceived failure of the establishment to address nagging public disquiet about its ostensible effects on social integration and infrastructure have sown mistrust between the electorate and the political elite. The success of the nationwide referendum to withdraw the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) in January 2020 (also known as Brexit) was due in large part to popular anxiety over immigration, particularly EU migration to the UK. So also the spike in the popularity of “hard-right” parties in places like Austria, Germany, France, Finland, Italy, and Hungary, where such parties have progressively claimed a larger share of the vote than pundits had thought possible.
The current stalemate in the United States sums up the misjudged reaction to this rising tide.
Take, for instance, the Democratic Party, whose immigration policy, at least for a large portion of the Biden presidency, has been to effectively open the southern border to all comers, causing a political and security crisis that it could have avoided had it left intact its predecessor’s 2018 Migrant Protection Protocols, or the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Since President Joe Biden and his advisors could not have failed to anticipate the likely aftermath of overturning “Remain in Mexico,” one is left to conclude that the president bowed to pressure from the ultra-progressive wing of the party which appears to favor open borders. At any rate, the move was unpopular among Americans who felt that the administration was giving preferential treatment to migrants who had crossed the border illegally over ordinary citizens. At the same time, it triggered resentment in immigrant communities where those who migrated legally and had run the bureaucratic gauntlet as the price of full citizenship understandably saw the Biden administration’s policy as essentially unfair.
By contrast, not only is the incoming Republican administration set to increase security at the border, it appears determined to end “two Biden administration programs that have allowed more than 1.3 million immigrants to enter the United States legally” as well as mobilize U.S. agencies to deport hundreds of thousands of others. If President-elect
