A modest immigration reform proposal

My spirit of compromise was crushed by the Biden-Harris-Mayorkas administration, whose open border disaster radicalized me. I’ve turned hard against any policy that emits even a faint whiff of amnesty. The Democrats’ already-tenuous credibility on a fair-minded, enforcement-first deal was mortally wounded by the arrival of at least ten million illegal immigrants under their party’s most recent presidency. Their lie that nothing more could be done about the problem by the executive branch, which Team Trump leveled in a matter of weeks, did not go unnoticed.  

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Finally, their hysterical opposition to the lawful immigration enforcement President Donald Trump campaigned and won on — relevant agencies upholding the actual laws that have been enacted by our government — is the ultimate tell. Democrats don’t merely raise concerns over specific excesses or possible violations, they go to bat for illegal immigrant felons, both rhetorically and as a matter of policy, demonize agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, and egg on militia-style goons and agitators to interfere with enforcement operations.

During the most recent open Democratic presidential primary, nearly every candidate on the debate stage raised their hand in favor of decriminalizing illegal border crossings, and for forcing American taxpayers to fund healthcare for migrants unlawfully present in our country. Of course, the Biden administration threw the floodgates open for four years, with their fellow partisans now loudly fighting attempts to turn back the tide under existing American laws. In short, trust has not simply been eroded on this issue. It’s been obliterated. For that reason, I am now heavily inclined to run away screaming from any “comprehensive” package to “fix” the problem. Rebuilding trust will take a long time, and Democrats currently seem intent on fraying it further.

That being said, let’s engage in a thought experiment. If Democrats can be taken at their word that they genuinely want meaningful bipartisan solutions, what would a fair, balanced compromise conceivably look like? Let me take a stab at it.

I suspect neither party’s base would accept the following plan, but I also have a suspicion that one party would thunderously reject it out of hand. I’m nevertheless curious about what moderate and independent-minded Americans would make of the following proposal. Let’s begin with the components that many conservatives would loathe, or at least view with extreme skepticism, and call them the Republican concessions:

1. Many illegal immigrants with no additional criminal history (beyond the crime of illegal entry) would become eligible for a path to legal status, but never citizenship. They could, over a period of years, earn the ability to stay in the country by paying fines and taxes without the threat of deportation. They would not “graduate” into voting citizens. This new status could be rescinded after a felony conviction or more than one misdemeanor conviction.
   
2. ICE officers would undergo more extensive, in-depth training, and all immigration enforcement officers would be required to wear body cameras.
   
3. Street operations by ICE would be scaled back dramatically across the country, limited exclusively to specific, targeted actions against individually-identified criminal illegal immigrants, or those evading final deportation orders after exhausting their due process.
   
4. President Barack Obama’s abuse of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals would be codified into law via a DREAM Act for eligible illegal immigrants who were brought into the United States as young children through no fault of their own.
   
5. America’s annual cap on confirmed, thoroughly vetted refugees and asylum-seekers would be modestly increased.

Many who lean right, especially border hawks, would be a strong “hell no” on most or all of this. I get it. I’m there, too, for reasons explained above. Still, I suspect sizable majorities of Americans would favor all of those bullet points. But they would also back the following concessions Democrats would have to make in this hypothetical deal:

1. Sanctuary policies would become illegal nationwide. States and municipalities could not refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Indeed, they would be required to cooperate with it, particularly by allowing ICE access to prisons, jails, and police stations. Federal detainers would be honored as a matter of course, with illegal immigrants in custody handed over in an orderly fashion, within these controlled environments, as opposed to riskier pursuits and raids in neighborhoods and communities. A recent Harvard-Harris poll found two-thirds of Americans in favor of this proposition. A Survey USA poll of voters in blue Minnesota also showed majority support for it by double digits.
   
2. Permanently codify Trump’s successful border security policies, beyond what was achieved in the Once Big Beautiful Bill Act, so a future Democratic administration could not simply reverse a slew of orders and reinstitute Biden-era chaos and lawlessness. According to Pew Research, Trump’s actions pushed encounters at the Southern border, which doesn’t include “got-aways,” from more than 2.2 million under Biden in 2022 to less than 240,000 in all of 2025. That’s roughly a 90% drop, and known got-aways have been virtually eliminated altogether. We know what works. Make it ironclad law. Americans strongly support this level of security.
   
3. Pass the SAVE Act. Read this one-page summary of the bill. It is a common-sense voter ID provision that ensures only verified U.S. citizens may register to vote and cast ballots in our elections. CNN’s data guru, Harry Enten, recently reviewed public opinion polling that shows more than 80% of Americans favor voter ID requirements, with approval spanning every racial and political group. He said the numbers clearly show that such verification measures are not controversial among American voters. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) assailed the legislation as “Jim Crow” voter suppression, a familiar smear that Democrats also dishonestly employed against Georgia’s voter integrity law. The SAVE Act would “require states to obtain documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and identity in person when registering an individual to vote in a Federal election,” while carving out accommodations for American citizens who may lack identification to help them prove their eligibility. It also “requires states to establish a program to remove non-citizens from their existing voter rolls and gives states no-cost access to Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration databases to do so.” Those are the two primary provisions. If Republicans are going to agree to legalize millions of illegal immigrants under this pact, with assurances that this group cannot attain citizenship or vote, providing a verification backstop on that front is sensible, popular, and essential to gaining trust buy-in for the “amnesty” proposed above.
   
4. Limit population tabulations for congressional reapportionment, which also affects Electoral College totals, to American citizens. Only documented Americans should be counted for representation in our democracy. Non-citizens are guests here. It is a perverse incentive to count non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, in these numbers. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) recently said the quiet part out loud when she welcomed as many illegal migrants into her community as possible, stating, “we can absorb a significant number of these migrants…I need more people in my district, just for redistricting purposes.” End that mentality. Our representative democracy is for Americans only.
   
5. Enhance federal criminal penalties for assaulting or interfering with the official duties of immigration enforcement officers. Today’s left-wing mobs cannot be normalized or allowed to operate with impunity. We are a nation of laws, and the enforcers of those laws must be protected. Throw the book at the agitators while maintaining robust constitutional freedoms for legitimate, peaceful protests.

That’s it. Five “gives” on each side, totaling ten ideas that, especially when taken together, would likely attract supermajority support from the American people — particularly the “normies” who decide elections. Public opinion surveys consistently show that U.S. voters demand border security, support many deportations, especially of criminal aliens and those already ordered removed, respect law enforcement officers, and overwhelmingly favor identity verification measures in the context of our elections. They also have qualms about some of the street operations ICE has been forced to take because of extremely unpopular sanctuary policies, and harbor sympathy for non-criminal illegal immigrants, such as DREAMers in particular.

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I believe this general framework, perhaps in a more rational environment, would be a solid basis for the serious, bipartisan solution many politicians claim to desire. I also believe, maybe naively, that the “Democratic concessions” list is powerful enough to largely assuage entirely understandable doubts and concerns Republicans would have about their own proposed concessions, especially on amnesty allowances. Lastly, I believe that at least a majority of these totally reasonable, broadly popular suggestions on concessions from the Left would be angrily greeted as nonstarters by congressional Democrats. As noted previously, the highest-ranking Senate Democrat has already ludicrously declared that simple, consensus voter identification safeguards amount to modern-day racial segregation.  

Re-read the ten bullet points above. Imagine they were honed and refined into solid legislative language. Imagine how quickly Democrats would reject most or all of the floated concessions on their end. Then ask yourself why. That answer, or my conclusion, at least underscores why I’ve grown to reflexively oppose any “comprehensive reforms” that today’s Democratic Party might agree to.