Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Jeb Bush is a former two-term governor of Florida and currently serves as president of Jeb Bush and Associates, a consulting firm that serves a wide array of businesses. Governor Bush is chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, whose purpose is to promote meaningful K-12 reform in the United States. In addition, he is co-chairman of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and is active in many civic and charitable causes. He resides in Miami with Columba, his wife of thirty-eight years.

Clint Bolick is vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix and is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. One of the nation’s leading constitutional litigators, Bolick has won numerous landmark legal victories in state and federal courts from coast to coast. Bolick has been profiled twice in The New York Times and writes extensively for The Wall Street Journal and other publications. 

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Immigration Wars

1

A PROPOSAL FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM

WE WRITE THIS BOOK TO add our voices to the call for systemic immigration reform. First and foremost, we want to draw attention to the urgency of the need for such reform. Americans often view the immigration debate in one-dimensional terms: either immigration as a matter of social justice, or immigration (especially illegal immigration) as a scourge. That contributes to the intense divisiveness surrounding immigration as an issue, which at times makes it a “third rail” in American politics. Politicians on both sides of the partisan divide duck for cover rather than confront an issue whose resolution is vital to our nation’s future.

The issue is indeed urgent. Immigration is a major driver of the American economy, an answer to tremendous demographic challenges, and a remedy for an inadequate K–12 educational system. At the same time, immigration that takes place outside the bounds of law weakens our institutions and threatens legal immigration. We believe that our nation’s immigration policy is a disaster, but one that can be successfully fixed through a combination of political leadership, bipartisan consensus, and—as with most of the difficult issues facing our nation—recourse to basic American values.

When immigration policy is working right, it is like a hydroelectric dam: a sturdy wall whose valves allow torrents of water to pour through, creating massive amounts of dynamic energy. The reservoir that supplies the power is full and constantly replenishing. The valves can be adjusted against the wall of water on the outside, easing the pressure or holding it back as necessary, but always allowing ample flow to meet the nation’s energy needs.

But today the dam is decrepit and crudely cemented over, with constant leaks that have to be patched. Its flow has been altered so many times that the dam’s structure has lost all integrity. Its valves are clogged, its spigot is broken, its energy generation is sporadic and unreliable. Water comes over the dam and through its cracks, and every effort to stanch the flow creates new fissures. Worst of all, the reservoir behind the dam—on which the nation’s energy supply depends—is drying up, and because the dam provides inadequate outlets for what remains, others are diverting it to competing uses.

The prognosis is all too clear: we need to replace the dam.

On that proposition, that we need to fundamentally repair our current immigration policy, a majority of Americans and their elected officials in both parties seem to agree. And yet, comprehensive immigration reform stalls repeatedly. It stalled in 2007 and 2008 even when President George W. Bush and congressional leadership from both parties made a major effort to enact bipartisan immigration reform. It never got off the ground following the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, despite Democratic majorities in both congressional chambers and the fact that Obama had promised to enact comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office.

Even though immigration reform is one of the few major issues on which the potential for bipartisan consensus clearly exists, that consensus is constantly undermined, obviously by strident opposition at the extremes of both parties but also by a lack of political courage. All too often, elected officials who possess ample political capital to make comprehensive immigration reform a reality wither instead, in the face of hostile opposition from extreme elements of their respective partisan bases. That is the case even though those who stand on principle on immigration issues rarely suffer significant political consequences for doing so. The combination of ideological rancor, demagoguery, and political cowardice is lethal, with the result that we remain saddled with an immigration regime that nearly everyone agrees is profoundly dysfunctional.

Both sides are responsible for the impasse.

On the left, some push for open borders as a matter of justice. They excuse those who came here illegally and decry efforts to enforce the rule of law. Labor unions, which for much of the past century were the most vehement opponents of immigration, now sometimes pay lip service to immigration reform but still look out for their own parochial interests first and foremost. Although some Democrats have worked across the aisle to find bipartisan consensus on immigration reform, others wield immigration as a political wedge issue, preferring polarization to solutions. In his first term, as noted above, President Obama broke his campaign promise to enact immigration reform during his first year—which he easily could have accomplished given commanding Democratic majorities in Congress—and did nothing until the erosion of Hispanic support threatened his reelection chances.

On the right, immigration opponents see hordes of illegal immigrants taking jobs away from Americans who desperately need them and consuming social services whose costs are borne by overburdened taxpayers. They see immigrants, both legal and illegal, refusing to shed their culture or to adopt American customs and speak English. They believe that illegal immigrants contribute heavily to crime, and they agonize over the inexplicable inability of the American government to secure our borders. They see immigrants voting in large numbers for Democrats who constantly expand the scope and cost of the welfare state. And they are profoundly skeptical, given past broken promises, that any grand compromise on immigration will ever result in stopping the flow of illegal immigrants.

As a result, they insist that the borders must be secured before any other immigration reforms are considered. They oppose anything characterized as “comprehensive” immigration reform and denounce as “amnesty” any proposal that falls short of the deportation of all illegal immigrants.

It may very well be impossible to satisfy the extremes on each end of the ideological spectrum. But there is a broad middle ground on immigration that commands the support of a large majority of Americans. Moreover, after the 2012 elections, there seems to be more resolve than at any time in many decades to reach bipartisan accord on immigration reform.

We write this book in the hope that we as a nation will not let this moment pass.

We believe comprehensive reform should be constructed upon two core, essential values: first, that immigration is essential to our nation, and second, that immigration policy must be governed by the rule of law.

Those who expound only one of those values to the exclusion of the other do violence to both, because the two values are inseparable. We believe that our nation’s immigration policy must always trace back to those two primary values, not just as a matter of rhetoric but as a matter of reality.

Because the proposals we sketch below reflect those core values, we believe that a majority of Americans will support them. Public opinion surveys show that about two-thirds of Americans support a process by which illegal immigrants can obtain lawful status so long as they learn to speak English, pass background checks, and pay restitution.1 A large majority (63 percent) say that immigrants cost too much in terms of social services, but 79 percent say they take low-paying jobs that Americans don’t want. Majorities of two-thirds or more support strong employer sanctions for...