I am writing a series of articles on open borders. Monday’s article will include more philosophical arguments against them. This article is more pragmatic and specific. I look at just one nation, and one political party’s response to it. Stay tuned for more.
Illegal immigration is a specter stalking the whole Western world. Nowhere is this problem more acute than it is here, where Joe Biden’s policies have brought an unprecedented 7.2 million people illegally across the border since 2021. This is killing the Democrats politically: a Gallup poll in February found that Americans now rate immigration as the top issue facing the country for the first time since 2019, following a Harvard-Harris poll in January which found that 35 percent of respondents picked it as their chief concern. In their March poll, 28% of voters volunteered it as their top issue without prompting. By comparison, the second most volunteered issue was “the government” (19%) and “the economy” (14%). That any issue could be twice as salient as the entire economy is bracing. Expect that figure to rise as the numbers flooding across the southern border grow in anticipation of a possible second Trump administration.
In this context, 2024 has so far delivered a pleasant surprise to anybody concerned about the unfolding invasion. Although just four months old, it has already shown a Republican Party willing to take illegal migration more seriously than at any point in living memory. Amid abject failure by Western conservatives in places like the UK, Italy, and Germany on this issue, the GOP’s example shines brightly. Europeans, take note.
Republicans, now with brains!
Let’s start with the Senate border bill that failed in February. The Democrats’ plan was to work with establishment Republicans to concoct a weak immigration deal shaped mostly by their own priorities. They would pretend that it would solve the border crisis, and either have the GOP co-own the immigration disaster (if it passed) or have their media allies claim that it would have solved the issue had “MAGA Republicans” not rejected it. Standard DC playbook.
But America has moved on from the days of the Gang of Eight, when the likes of John McCain attempted to push through another mass amnesty. Despite the support of the mouthpieces of wealth, the Chamber of Commerce and the Wall Street Journal, conservatives in the House and Senate scuttled the legislation, which was declared “dead on arrival” by the House Speaker. It even failed its procedural vote in the Senate on February 7th.
Three things stand out about this affair. One is the GOP’s hardball negotiating tactic. Republicans conditioned military funding for Ukraine and Israel on Democratic agreement to their demands. This was a marked change: the GOP has never previously regarded America’s border security as taking precedence over foreign conflicts. Ours was always the second or third most important border. As recently as 2019, when Trump took money from the Pentagon’s budget to build a wall, many congressional Republicans were enraged. Now, even wily old Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham stuck by the decision to trade Ukraine funding for border security.
The second encouraging aspect of the drama in the Senate was that, having been presented with a nearly 400 page bill (with no hearings and only a few days to read it), only four Republican Senators voted in its favor. This was for good reason. The bill defeatedly conceded that 1.8 million illegal aliens could come to the United States annually before triggering the “emergency shutdown” that was supposed to be its core feature. Even that could only have been used a certain number of days per year—and would have expired altogether in a few short years. It also increased legal immigration and provided more funds for the NGOs facilitating illegal immigration.
One final point bears mentioning: No one even tried to pass another amnesty. Given the best opening to do so since 2013, Republicans uniformly rejected it. They knew their voters would be appalled. Maybe they even finally learned from the 1986 amnesty that turned California blue. Self-interest is a powerful motivator for politicians. If this means amnesty is finally dead among Republicans, and with it the immense incentive for lawbreaking that amnesties provide, that is excellent news.
Republicans, now with spines!
It might be objected that abstaining from making things worse is an undemanding standard. But that is where the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas by the House comes in. He is only the second cabinet secretary in US history to suffer this indignity. Democrat claims that Republicans were trying to impeach Mayorkas over a mere policy dispute, not “high crimes and misdemeanors,” were wide of the mark. He is in violation of the letter of the law by systematically undermining the deterrent provided by Section 235(b)(1)(B)(ii) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (which requires that all who enter illegally be detained until their case is adjudicated). He is also abusing the “public interest parole” provision to admit hundreds of thousands of economic migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, despite clear evidence that it was intended by Congress only to grant small numbers of foreigners temporary admission to the United States for extraordinary reasons.
The legal case for his impeachment was therefore very strong. But was there any point to the House effort when a two-thirds majority in the 100-member Senate is needed to remove him from his job, an impossibility given Democratic control there? In short, yes. There is an election in November, and forcing Democratic Senators to cast votes in his defense will help concentrate blame where it belongs: with Biden. It will also serve to remind voters that the President already has the legal powers required to stabilize the border (powers successfully exercised by Trump just three years ago). While the effort to convict him finally failed in the Senate yesterday, that was never the point.
Republicans, now with muscle!
The Mayorkas Affair helps shapes public opinion ahead of the election, but it doesn’t do anything to secure the border right now. That’s where Texas is taking the lead. The Lone Star state has been at the forefront of fighting the administration’s open border policies, suing immediately to halt its deportation freeze and then forcing the entire country to look the problem in the eye by busing tens of thousands of migrants to sanctuary cities. Don’t mess with Texas.
Texas’ gutsiest move has been to enforce immigration law on its own. In December it passed laws to criminalize illegal entry from a foreign country and to fund more border barriers. This is after planting razor wire last summer at Eagle Pass, a main route for Biden’s invasion. The Department of Justice sued to remove it and SCOTUS ruled 5-4 for the federal government in late January. Despite the order, Governor Greg Abbott has kept the wire up. Biden, he said in a letter, has broken the constitutional compact between the US and the states by refusing to defend them from invasion. So far 25 other Republican governors have publicly lined up to support him, and the ball is now in Biden’s court.
Unfortunately for him, the SCOTUS ruling permits but does not require the Feds to remove the border wire. So, he could either send federal troops to remove the barriers and abet the illegal invasion – an optics disaster for him in an election year – or he could do nothing, in which case he will give red states permission to take matters into their own hands. Idaho Republicans have already followed Texas’s lead by passing a bill to create a crime of illegal entry into their state as well.
Texas started arresting illegals in March and the Supreme Court temporarily sided with the Lone Star State on March 19th by allowing this to continue while appeals by the federal government take place, setting up another court battle with the administration in its weakest area. Abbott has thus forced a showdown which leaves Biden between a rock and a hard place.
Whatever happens with this fight, Republicans in 2024 have already thwarted a border bill that would have tied the hands of a future Trump presidency. They have killed amnesty, reinforced that illegal immigration is an invasion, and shown up the federal government by doing its own job. The party is far from perfect on the issue – their plans for legal immigration lack clarity, and it took them over a year after retaking the House to focus on illegal immigration – but this is a formidable start to an election year campaign. They already had public opinion, the law, and the national interest on their side; now they seem to have finally found the moral will too. The open borders hydra may yet have to face a Hercules.