Congressional Republicans are treading into dangerous immigration territory where there are many ways to fail. Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley’s proposal is a good one, offering a path to genuine reform. If they stray from that path Republicans could easily blunder into one of several pitfalls.
The first would be to expand the bill. The euphemism, “comprehensive immigration reform,” sounded like a good idea to lots of policymakers and commentators in the Bush and Obama years. But it should now be anathema, for it amounts to an undemocratic Washington trick for which there is scant support outside the small circle of Republican, Democratic, and big-business elites.
Republicans need to tailor immigration reform as narrowly as possible. Not everything needs to be fixed at once. There will be time to sort out other problems or improve on other policies. For now, the bill should create a fund for the wall and border security, which was President Trump’s core campaign promise; end the visa lottery, for which there is bipartisan agreement; curb chain migration, which is the biggest hole in our legal immigration system; and provide permanent relief for young immigrants who were brought in illegally as minors, the so-called “Dreamers.”
A second pitfall is to do nothing. It is important to pass a good bill now that Democrats feel great pressure to act. If they really are as concerned about Dreamers as they claim, they will take the deal the Grassley bill offers, particularly because it doesn’t violate any of their principles. Preserving chain migration or the visa lottery aren’t deeply held Democratic principles.
A third pitfall would be to listen too solicitously to the business lobby. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota carried water for industry with his bipartisan bill, which would preserve chain migration and so do nothing to improve the composition of the immigrant workforce, which currently depresses blue-collar wages.
Businesses sensibly want a plentiful workforce. In these days of low unemployment, reducing the workforce by cutting legal immigration would cause economic harm. That’s why we’ve always criticized efforts by some immigration hawks, such as Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, to slash immigration altogether, both legal and illegal.
But preserving the current flow of mainly low-skilled migrants benefits some employers while hurting workers, especially recent immigrants. The economy will do fine if we bring in fewer fast-food cooks and more engineers.
The politics, lobbying, and policy here are complex. We hope Republicans keep it simple and get it done quickly.
