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Immigration reform has vexed Congress like few other issues. The last major substantive changes to immigration policy came nearly four decades ago, under Ronald Reagan in 1986. But the dynamics are falling into place as they rarely have for a significant deal focused on border security.
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The big questions are increasingly whether President Biden feels he can sell a package to his base, and whether Republicans might be willing to take Biden’s version of “yes” for an answer.
Those increasingly conducive dynamics:
Border apprehensions are near record highs. An increasing number of Democratic governors and mayors are pushing for the Biden administration and Congress to crack down on the border, pointing to influxes in their areas. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) added her voice this weekend, saying her state is “at a breaking point.” She added: “We need the federal government to step up, do its job, and bring security and order to our border.” Biden has now agreed to Republicans’ demand to link the issue to funding for Ukraine and Israel, which a sizable majority of Congress appears to support and views as necessary. While Biden has painted border security as a concession to Republicans, he has plenty of political reason to support some kind of crackdown as well, with the influx on the border representing one of his most significant 2024 liabilities. Perhaps most crucial, Democrats have moved away from their long-standing insistence that border security must be accompanied by things like a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the United States, or protections for those illegally brought into the country as children, known as “dreamers.” These have proved to be the major stumbling blocks for the political right in recent efforts at so-called comprehensive immigration reform.
None of this means that a deal is imminent, and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical there will be one.
Among them? Time is running short before Congress is due to break for the holidays. The GOP-controlled House appears prepared to drive a harder bargain than Senate Republicans. Pro-immigrant groups and lawmakers will fight hard against changes that could make it easier to expel migrants and more difficult to claim asylum or gain humanitarian parole.
Biden and Congress are mulling big changes on immigration. What are they and what could they mean?
And there’s a reason such efforts have fallen apart in the past, even when they appeared to have political momentum (such as when Republicans briefly got religion on comprehensive reform after losing in 2012): The devil is in the details.
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But at the very least, Republicans and Democrats increasingly appear to be in some agreement regarding the problem at hand. And the linking of the issue to Ukraine and Israel funding — particularly with Ukraine in need of aid soon — would seem to agitate for getting something done.
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For Biden, the issue is whether Republicans might agree to something he feels he can sell to his base. But he would seem to have both more impetus to give Republicans some of what they want and more latitude to try to sell it to his side.
Polls show that the Democratic base, too, is increasingly concerned about the border and asking for more to secure it. In a recent poll, three-quarters of Democrats described the situation at the border as either an “emergency” or a “major problem.” That’s double the number in 2019. Recent polls show that Democrats want more border funding by nearly 2 to 1. (Overall support is north of 70 percent.)
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If this were simply about sending more money to the border, it’s pretty clear where things would land. Of course, that’s not the ballgame; Republicans also want significant changes to things like the asylum process, which they argue is being abused and is a root cause of the migrant influx. That could be a red line for Democrats, who view the process as a necessary path for people fleeing arduous circumstances in their home countries.
“We are deeply concerned that the president would consider advancing Trump-era immigration policies that Democrats fought so hard against … in exchange for aid to our allies that Republicans already support,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) said in a statement Monday.
They added: “It is unconscionable that the president would consider going back on his word to enact what amounts to a ban on asylum.”
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You could understand if Republicans feel emboldened to hold out for major concessions at this particular moment. The debate has already shifted substantially in their direction, and they’ll view this as their opportunity to get long-sought big-ticket items in a debate that rarely produces results. Some of them will also surely worry about getting too little and giving Biden a bipartisan “win” on an issue that looks like such a problem for his 2024 bid.
But now that Biden has chosen to go down this path, we get one of the most serious test cases of whether Congress can ever come up with solutions on the issue.
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