Why Immigration Reform Needs to Happen Now

A common lament in our age of partisan intransigence is that issues of national import are left unaddressed because of the fickle political winds prevailing on the Potomac. Amid the aftermath of the government shutdown and the uproar over HealthCare.gov, however, progress appears possible on an issue that appeared dead: immigration reform. With establishment Republicans and their traditional allies behind the bill passed by the Senate in June with a bipartisan majority of 68-32 and President Obama calling on the House to act, our dysfunctional political system has managed to encourage some optimism. Yet despite the strong economic and moral arguments in favor of immigration reform, opposition from the ever-disruptive Tea Party and—more disturbingly—grassroots organizations with unsavory ties to a leader whose views have been described as white supremacist is threatening to empower a vocal minority and endanger a course of action clearly in the national interest.

The moral imperative for reform is clear. With over 11 million undocumented immigrants providing crucial labor to the American economy, particularly in agriculture, our society’s pursuit of a policy of family-disrupting deportations simply to enforce widely ignored, ill-thought-through laws is unconscionable. The status quo of immigration enforcement too often involves arresting the working parents of U.S. citizens and holding them for extended periods in horridly run private detention facilities before permanently separating them from their families. The Applied Research Center has found that almost 15,000 children are currently at risk of having their parents deported within five years; meanwhile, investigations by media organizations like the New York Times and PBS’s Frontline have found that solitary confinement and abusive treatment are both far too common in the prisons used to house those suspected of living in the country illegally. In short, enforcement measures disrupt life for an already marginalized group for little discernible gain. While the proposed immigration reform is not perfect in improving enforcement, it is certainly an improvement from the status quo.

Buttressing this moral case for reform is the economic one. As noted, immigrants are crucial to the agricultural industry, and the evidence from states that both rely on agriculture and have passed harsh immigration laws is clear. As economist Benjamin Powell noted, the year Georgia’s legislation came into effect, “farmers were about 40 percent short of the number of workers they needed to harvest [their] crop,” resulting in $140 million lost. These numbers effectively undermine two common and related arguments in favor of immigration crackdowns: that immigrants occupy jobs that Americans would otherwise hold and that they simply take from social programs without providing any economic boost. Immigrants are in fact doing work that is otherwise undone and in doing so providing a crucial economic service.

These practical and moral implications of the status quo have created a consensus in favor of immigration reform. The bill that the Senate passed in June is quite moderate, including a 13-year pathway to citizenship, tens of billions allocated to border security, and a reduction in the deficit, and has the support of business groups, who recently launched a major lobbying offensive in its favor, and establishment Republicans like Senator John McCain. Evangelical Christians have also been supportive of efforts to make the immigration system more humane, while on the libertarian front, Harvard Professor Jeffrey A. Miron has given the Senate bill his blessing, despite serious reservations over its enforcement measures.

Two forces, then, are working to hold up reform. Tea Party figures like Ted Cruz have marshaled typical arguments against reform, including criticism of its already stringent border security measures and repetition of the idea that amnesty would incentivize a new flood of undocumented migration—as if demand for labor weren’t incentive enough. Fortunately, stringent anti-reform sentiment is relatively small in the House—only 30 lawmakers are sure to vote no on any proposal.

More troubling, however, is the equally small but well organized group of grassroots organizations that spearheaded resistance to reform this summer. As Molly Ball noted in The Atlantic noted in August, these organizations—the largest of which are NumbersUSA, the Center for Immigration Studies, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform—are all tied to John Tanton, a figure who has been appropriately described as a white supremacist with a knack for making his causes mainstream. NumbersUSA, the biggest group, have been diligent in denying any racist motives, and the organization counts members of Congress among their supporters. But the type of rhetoric that gets bandied about by Tanton-tied groups at their rallies is revealing; at one, a Tea Party figure praised Americans’ “great DNA” and “breeding.”

The influence of NumbersUSA and its more extreme relatives is clearly just one facet of the opposition to immigration reform, but it accentuates the inanity of the debate as a whole. On one side is a compelling case uniting diverse interests around a moderate bill that significantly improves the U.S. immigration system. On the other is a small group of lawmakers deriving their entire external support from groups whose origins and rhetoric should give their supporters serious misgivings. Given the immense gains to be had from immigration reform, we’re in trouble if we cannot overcome the current level of opposition and pass meaningful legislation.

Nelson L. Barrette ’17 is a Crimson editorial comper in Thayer Hall.