History confirms Republicans rejected a once-in-a-lifetime immigration opportunity

…

If the goal was to entice undeserving applicants, you couldn’t design a worse combination of policy and resources. In comparison, the bipartisan proposal is designed to deny more cases at the initial stage and get final decisions on all cases in a matter of months.

For immigration hardliners, the moment of leverage had finally arrived: More enforcement without amnesty. However, instead of seizing this likely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, House Republicans and former President Trump argued that the bill was not the hardliner wish list they preferred and successfully convinced most Senate Republicans to block the bill.

This one-sided deal that favors Republican enforcement policy is unlikely to ever reappear. There has never been another moment this century when Democrats agreed to enforcement legislation without meaningful legalization provisions. Nor have they ever agreed to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to anywhere near the level needed to locate and deport millions of individuals already in the country illegally.

LEDZeppelin,

Republicans would NEVER want to fix immigration and secure the border. They want those issues to get as messy as possible so that they can run election on those issues.

Same for healthcare - anyone even cares or can remember “repeal and replace Obamacare” anymore?

5C5C5C,

This is exactly what I thought about abortion rights but they really went and plowed ahead on that.

Now they’ve shifted the culture wars over to trans rights and whatever other kinds of bigotry they can muster up. There’s really no bottom to the depths of horribleness that they’re willing to plumb.

BlemboTheThird,

important distinction that it wasn’t the legislature that repealed abortion rights. it was a couple of true believers, unconcerned about reelection, that the party cheated the system to get them onto the supreme court. if they’d known their nominees were lying about their stances on roe, i doubt they’d have been confirmed.

TheDoozer,

And the abortion rights thing bit them in the ass, because it galvanized a lot of voters.

I think that dog catching the car moment hit home, and they won’t let it happen again.

Habahnow,

Part of the problem was it was unexpected, and it shows. If Republicans could have decided, they definitely wouldn’t have had it passed for the reasons that you have indicated.

SlopppyEngineer,

And a secure border means higher cost for farmers who employ a lot of immigrant labor. They don’t want to hurt farmers who mostly vote republican. The end result is always demanding to close the border but never really doing this.

roguetrick,

That honestly doesn't matter. You can't fix it by their metrics as long as minorities exist. They don't NEED it to be an actual problem. The fact that currently the federal government is in actuality failing to handle refugees is just a bonus.

Twattymctwatterson,
@Twattymctwatterson@lemmy.world avatar

Unfortunately, this has never been about immigration and Republicans don’t give a shit about immigration. All they care about is reelecting the rapist.

LarmyOfLone,

Luckily because afaik that immigration bill was pretty horrible.

Draedron,

So messed up that both parties are against immigrants and im favour of deportations.

Machinist3359,

Well thank goodness for that! This was a disgraceful and unforced but of cruelty from the Democrats. Wish this country had more than one party.

MonsiuerPatEBrown,

There are, I believe, at least three US cities that are offering $10,000.00 to move to them.

Seems like we US Americans are experiencing mass cognitive dissonance when we bribe people to migrate and then imprison the ones actually doing so.

Honestly that seems kinda rat-fucky.

ghostface,

Or that could be more cruel depending on the town. Its drying up for a reason. However I do agree there are plenty of other places than NYC hotels to house and revive town that are dying due to population loss

lolcatnip,

Sounds like you heard some right wing disinformation. No fucking way are people being paid to come here illegally.

Curiousfur,

Typically the offers are to relocate and remote work so that high earners can spend their money in low cost of living areas. The cruel irony is that they are desperate for workers and spending while at the same time the govt is cracking down on immigration, which is people looking to work and contribute to the economy.

perviouslyiner,

Fascinating - internal migration though?

ascendwv.com/terms-conditions-eligibility-require…

roscoe,

But if we fixed it where would we get all our slaves undocumented workers?

DarkGamer,
DarkGamer avatar

They don't care about the issues, they care about power. Immigration only really mattered to Republicans because immigrants make a convenient scapegoat for them.

CyberSeeker,

And, specifically, Trump thinks he can get the same deal passed while he is in office. In other words, what is important to Trump now is denying Biden a bipartisan “victory” that he thinks he will be able to achieve, instead.

CobblerScholar,

Typical behavior, I don’t know why it’s even news that Republicans shoot themselves in the foot to give them a reason to scream. They are the child that just realized they could break things to get attention and they should be treated the same way.

TropicalDingdong,

They really shouldn’t have been given the oppurtunity.

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

To be fair, the Dems in Congress and at the state level really wanted a border bill too. Border encounters are 50% higher than the previous all time highs in 80’s and early 00’s. Cities and states just can’t handle 2.4 million folks at that border.

Problem is, the GOP believed their own disinformation and didn’t realize that the Dems actually wanted this too. When the bill looked like it would easily pass, and make democrats happy, they freaked out.

PeckerBrown,

Who’s so stupid that they fucked up a wet dream, GOP?

That’s right - YOU are, you adult-diaper-eating, baby-fucking, shit-for-brains, Pumpkin-Tits-worshiping traitors!

thatKamGuy,

Disclaimers; I’m not American, and would be considered pretty left-leaning by their standards… but:

A nation should get to decide who can enter and stay (either by visa, or by agreement - eg. Schengen); this entire ‘illegal immigration’ issue has been intentionally perpetrated by both sides for political gain, at the cost of the lives and well-beings of those affected.

Razor-wire fences, and sanctuary cities are both terrible policies, that show the total callousness of the American political system.

Ultimately, with strict border policy enforcement - those that currently profit the most from undocumented labour will be the ones to suffer, and would likely push for increased/streamlined legal migration of desired labour, with the added benefit of increased wages for local residents.

Australia experienced something similar in our agricultural sector during the COVID lockdowns, where the limited labour-force became a highly sought after commodity, given that the dodgier farms were no longer able to exploit backpackers for slave wages. Companies that had previously been paying award wages (basically minimum wage - equivalent to ~$15 USD/hr) or lower, not had to offer up to 50% more during peak harvest seasons in order to not have their fields go to rot.

At the end of the day, hard-working labour made significantly more money - at a relatively low cost to the end-user.

Boddhisatva,

Both sides? What exactly have the Democrats done or supported that is equal to what the Republicans are doing (e.g. putting up the razorwire you mentioned, letting asylum seekers drown, bussing and dumping misled and unprepared asylum seekers on the streets in northern cities in the middle of winter without even letting those cities know about the crisis they are creating)? As far as I know, the Democratic party has supported asylum and pathways to citizenship.

NoIWontPickaName,

They did continue putting children in cages

aStonedSanta,

politico.com/…/bidens-movable-wall-is-criticized-…

Of course it’s not nearly as bad. But still annoying. The dumping people in sanctuary cities is wild to me. I’m curious if any of those people were illegally kidnapped and trafficked across state lines lol

dhork,

Razor-wire fences, and sanctuary cities are both terrible policies, that show the total callousness of the American political system.

The two are not at all equivalent.

Erecting barriers like razor wire are meant to dehumanizing the people who try to get across. We are literally treating them like cattle. Especially when we decide to get rid of the problem by shipping them somewhere else.

There are a bunch of different type of Santctuary City policies, but they all boil down to local law enforcement and municipal employees deliberately not asking about the immigration status of people when applying for services or seeking police protection. Which kind of makes sense, if your goal is to uphold human dignity. If someone who is living here gets their stuff stolen, should they feel afraid to go to the cops because they might be deported? What about those folks who came here as infants and had no clue they weren’t citizens? Do they need to present their papers before interacting with the local government?

We have different layers of government in this country for a reason. It is perfectly acceptable for a locality to say “It’s not our job to police immigration status, the Federal Government has enough resources to do that and we won’t do their job for them”.

One policy affirms basic humanity, while the other removes it from a class of people based on where they were born.

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