Policy Brief 1: Immigration

An anti-partisan policy resolution to one of the most explosive issues in politics

Photo by Juan Mayobre on Unsplash

The universal, anti-partisan template for resolving policy issues was established in a previous article.

• Presume that people are good.

• Unflinchingly establish premises related to the issue

• Identify the stakeholders and their concerns.

• Seek solutions not victories

And, in pursuing solutions, policymakers should be guided by the following strategies:

• Eliminate flashpoints for conflict

• Make recognition of the fundamental rights of stakeholders the starting point for making policy

• Validate the cares of stakeholders

[The AWDHEO policy briefs series is a supplement to the We’ve Got Issues podcast, which will be hosted on Gnosi. The first installment, which is currently in production, will examine the immigration topic. Podcast episodes will also be posted on AWDHEO.]

Historical context:

More than 100 million people immigrated to the U.S. between 1783 and 2018, which covers almost the country’s entire lifespan. More than 20% of these immigrations can be considered “illegal” (nearly 22 million), according to the Cato Institute, although the nature of the arrivals has changed throughout American history.

Immigrants came to the U.S. from all over the world, but, from the birth of the country until 1965, the majority came from Europe. The regions oscillated. Until the late-19th century, they primarily came from northern and western Europe. Then, until World War I, southern and eastern Europe became the largest source, whereupon it shifted back to western Europe again.

Illegal immigration didn’t exist until the late-19th century. Immigrants weren’t exactly welcomed by the existing population and were frequently mistreated. But, before the late-1800s, there weren’t laws on the books preventing people from coming to the U.S.

In fact, the federal government actually sought to encourage it during this period. The Immigration Act of 1864, signed by Abraham Lincoln, created a federal Commissioner of Immigration whose job was to increase immigration.

However, in the 1870s, the U.S. began to pass exclusionary laws. The earliest prohibitions targeted the Chinese, whose influence some Americans had begun to fear.    

Immigration policy: 1875 to the present

Page Act (1875): restricted immigration of prostitutes (Chinese women were stereotyped as, and often presumed to be, prostitutes), along with contract laborers and convicts 

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): banned Chinese immigration for 10 years; deported Chinese individuals who arrived after 1880; required Chinese workers in the U.S. to obtain certification from the Chinese government  

Immigration Act of 1882: required newcomers to the U.S. to pay a $.50 “head tax”; banned immigration by convicted criminals and the disabled 

Scott Act (1888): prohibited reentry to the U.S. by Chinese residents who left the country

Immigration Act of 1891: banned immigration by polygamists and people with contagious diseases

Geary Act of (1892): forced Chinese people in the U.S. to carry a residency permit.

Immigration Act of 1903: banned anarchists, pimps, epileptics and poor people

Immigration Act of 1907; banned the mentally ill and the mentally challenged

Immigration Act of 1917: banned most Asians and the illiterate

Immigration Act of 1924: also called the Johson-Reed immigration Act, it took the restrictive turn in U.S. immigration policy to a new threshold. Designed to preserve America’s northern and western European-descended majority, the law established quotas for America’s annual intake of immigrants from different nations. Immigrants from each country were limited to 2% of the total number of individuals from that country who were in the U.S. in 1890. The 2% provision expired in 1927, but quotas remained and were supplemented by a total, annual immigration hard cap of 150,000.  

Immigration and Nationality Act (1965): also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, it replaced quotas with a system that allotted an equal number of visas to every country, the first time countries in the American hemisphere were subject to numerical immigration limits. 

Hart-Cellar changed the composition of American immigration. After it was implemented, Latin America and Asia became the largest senders of immigrants to the U.S.

But, by capping entries from countries in the Americas, Hart-Cellar also legislated into existence an illegal immigration issue on the southern border. Prior to 1965, migrants of Latin American and particularly Mexican origin routinely entered the U.S. for work through initiatives like the Bracero Program, a Mexican guest worker program that was established in 1942. The extension of quotas to the American hemisphere and Hart-Cellar’s elimination of the Bracero Program made thousands of these entrances illegal after 1965, even though, previously, they were routine occurrences.  

Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986): granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who had been U.S. residents since at least Jan. 1, 1982.; criminalized the hiring of illegals 

Immigration Act of 1990: substantially raised total U.S. legal immigration limits and per country limits 

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996): shortened deportation process; beefed up border security; prohibited legal reentries by illegal U.S. residents who left the country. 

Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996): restricted the social services benefits and legal protections that were available to illegal immigrants; expanded the list of crimes that could trigger immigrants’ automatic deportation

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Despite the tighter controls, the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. surged during the 1990s and most of the 2000s, peaking at about 12 million in 2007, during the administration of George W. Bush. Before becoming president, Bush was governor of Texas, a border state, and was seen as being welcoming toward immigrants. In 2006, Bush attempted to pass the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, which would have legalized the status of many illegals, increased legal immigration, expanded existing guest worker provisions and strengthened border security. The bill, however, died in Congress.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (2012): (DACA) gave undocumented minors work permits and deportation exemptions; was an attempt by President Obama to use an executive order to codify the unpassed Development, Relief, and Education Act for Minors (the DREAM Act), which would have given undocumented minors temporary-turning-to-permanent-legal-status

Immigrant Accountability Executive Action (2014): granted work permits to undocumented parents of US citizens and children covered by DACA; this action was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2016 

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During his term, President Trump took aggressive action to try to limit both illegal and legal immigration. After taking office in Jan. 2017, he suspended DACA and halted the issuance of visas to multiple countries with Muslim populations, as well as other countries that his administration deemed to be threats to national security. Trump also drastically cut the number of refugees that the U.S. accepted annually. By 2018, U.S. refugee intake had dropped to around 22,500, about 25% of the total in Obama’s last year in office.

But, Trump’s most severe immigration moves came after the emergence of Covid. In 2020, from April to September, the U.S. issued only around 29,000 green cards, less than 10% of the total that were distributed during the same period in 2016. 

President Biden took office promising to undo the restrictive policies of his predecessor and kept his word, taking a record 535 immigration-related actions through the first three years of his presidency. As a result, legal immigration bounced back to equal or exceed pre-Covid totals. Refugee admissions also soared to their highest levels in decades.

However, Biden’s welcoming disposition was met with a rush on the southern border. More than 6.3 million unauthorized migrants tried to enter the U.S. from 2021 - 2023, and 2.4 million got in. Most of these were apprehended and processed for removal, though, once immigration court proceedings start, defendants are able to file for asylum.

Yet, despite the divergent approaches of Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden, America’s illegal immigration population has remained relatively stable since its peak in 2007, During most of the Obama and Biden administrations, it held steady around 11 million (although a controversial, 2018 Yale study estimates that the real number is actually close to double that total). Trump’s hardline positions led to a slight reduction in that figure, but it never dropped below 10 million. 

Political context

In the U.S., the immigration debate plays out the way just about every issue debate does in partisan politics: with opposing sides attributing malicious intent to each other. In a nutshell, the anti-undocumented faction accuses its opponents of letting terrorists, criminals and job-thieves into the country, while the pro-undocumented faction calls its counterpart reactionary and racist.

Little more than 15 years ago, categorizing America’s immigration factions as either “anti-undocumented” or “pro-undocumented” would have been far too binary. However, after George W. Bush, the right moved further to the right on immigration, while the left went further to the left, such that these classifications are no longer overly reductive. Thus, as applied to immigration policy, “conservative” can be considered synonymous with “anti-undocumented.” Other ideological factions can be seen as “pro-undocumented,” although the extent of the support and the conditions attached to it, varies between centrists and progressives.   

The following are examples of some policies that have general support within each bloc: 

Conservative: approaching immigration reform on a piecemeal rather than comprehensive basis; sealing the border by finishing construction of the border wall in its entirety and supplementing it with enhanced security measures; carrying out mass deportations; redirecting large portions of federal law enforcement and armed forces resources to immigration enforcement; beefing up immigration enforcement agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement; increasing penalties for illegal entries to the U.S. and visa overstays; cutting federal funding to sanctuary cities; prioritizing merit-based immigration; permitting limited guest worker programs  

Centrist: increasing legal immigration; continuing construction of border wall in geographically sensible areas; tightening asylum rules; issuing green cards to working undocumenteds who have been in the U.S. for several years; establishing short-term/seasonal guest worker programs; making citizenship available to foreign students who earn degrees in high-demand fields from U.S. universities; providing federal grants to communities that are trying to accommodate a surge of legal immigrants 

Progressive: making citizenship for undocumented immigrants available without condition; expanding DACA protections; expanding refugee and asylum protections; providing resettlement assistance for refugees and people seeking asylum; relaxing visa regulations; shifting the focus of U.S. immigration policy from enforcement to “management.”

Presumption of mutual goodness

Of course, in a rational political system, the “anti-undocumented” would at least acknowledge that the “pro-documented” are moved by the desire to be compassionate to fellow human beings. Similarly, supporters of the undocumented would accept that opposition to the undocumented is genuinely driven by people’s concerns about economic and physical security.

Premises

• Undocumenteds are often fleeing oppressive and life-threatening circumstances in their homelands 

• Some undocumenteds claim to be fleeing oppressive and life-threatening circumstances but are only seeking better economic opportunities 

• Even if immigrants are just seeking better economic opportunities, it’s still a justifiable cause

• Some undocumenteds experience oppressive and life-threatening circumstances during their migration 

• Countries with weak border security are more likely to be infiltrated by drugs, gangs and terrorists 

• Some immigrants actually are involved with drugs, gangs or terrorists 

• It’s reasonable to expect undocumenteds to strictly follow the law in their new country, given the fact that they already broke the law when they entered

• Multiple industries depend upon undocumented workers 

• Undocumented workers compete with native-born citizens for some jobs, which can depress overall wages 

• Influxes of immigrants put increased stress on municipal services in their new communities 

• Many western countries need influxes of immigrants to compensate for reduced population growth 

• Removing millions of people from their places of residency and forcing them to go back to their countries of origin would be very expensive and a vast logistical undertaking

Stakeholders

• Undocumented immigrants 

• Families and friends of immigrants and other members of their U.S.-based support systems 

• Other residents who live in the towns, school districts and communities where undocumenteds migrate 

• Social and emergency services in these places 

• Businesses that hire undocumented workers

• Taxpayers

Stakeholder concerns

• Undocumented immigrants: opportunity/refuge

• Immigrants’ domestic support networks: reunion with family and friends

• Other residents of immigrants’ magnet communities: safe neighborhoods, secure jobs, quality schools 

• Employers: filled-out workforces, including certain positions that may otherwise remain vacant

• Town service providers: additional burden on emergency and social services agencies 

• Taxpayers: obligation to finance massive immigration-related initiatives

Solutions-oriented strategies

Elimination of flashpoints

Seal the 7,500 miles of insufficiently guarded international borders to the north and south and more than 12,000 miles of inadequately protected coastline to the east and west.

Recognize the fundamental rights of stakeholders

• People in a free country should have the right to secure borders

• Everyone within a free country’s borders has certain rights, regardless of citizenship

Validate the cares of stakeholders

• Extend humanitarian treatment to undocumenteds

• Prioritize job, school and neighborhood security in magnet communities for immigrants

Resolution

The undocumenteds issue is ultimately a question of how we can safeguard the welfare of both migrants and the native residents of the communities where they settle, plus help local industries fill vital components of their workforce, while also helping public services handle extra strain and minimizing new risk to native residents’ jobs, schools and neighborhoods. Taxpayers must also be considered because they will be affected by whatever response we make.

Policy Recommendation

1.  Amnesty/mandatory of declaration of residency for all undocumenteds currently residing within U.S. borders 

2.  Lockdown of America’s borders

3.  Immediately and vastly increase border protection to prevent last-minute border runs after the proposal is announced

Each of the cited stakeholder concerns are legitimate, but the overarching factors in this case are the imperative to secure the country’s borders and the mammoth cost of a nationwide deportation effort. Taken together, these considerations stipulate that the most pragmatic approach to ending “illegal immigration” would be to legalize the status of “illegal immigrants” and then sew up our borders as never before. 

Call it the Noah’s Ark immigration policy, or compare it to a medieval city raising its drawbridges. But, at some stage, we have to have an “if you’re in, you’re in” mentality with regards to U.S. residency—and then bar the gates. Undocumenteds who are already inside at the moment of lockdown would be able to stay, if for no other reason than that it’s the lowest cost option.

Immigrants would obviously have the option not to stay and should be given a 90-day window to make that determination. Newly legal, American residents should also be given six months to apply for the admission/legalization of family members who aren’t in the country, a provision whose eligibility should be restricted, except in rare circumstances, to immediate family members.

But, having been awarded legal status, undocumented immigrants should then be required to register their residency as a first step toward assimilating into American society and, eventually, becoming citizens. Newly legalized individuals should be given 90 days to come out from the proverbial shadows. Those who don’t complete the registration requirement would become true “illegals” and would be subject to expedited deportation.

Lastly, if this proposal or one similar to it were to pick up traction, it would likely cause a major crush of people trying to get into the U.S. before the borders are locked down. Accordingly, it would be wise to substantially increase our border defenses so that this doesn’t happen—hence the part of the plan involving putting many more boots-on-the ground along the borders. Personnel could be deployed from the National Guard, the Coast Guard or the armed forces. With military-grade surveillance and increased troops, we should be able to stop any last-ditch border rushes. 

* Portions of this post have been adapted from my upcoming book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down (2024).

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