No. of Recommendations: 7
Then I'll rephrase: Hire Border Patrol agents and allow them to detain and turn people away at the border. Arrest if they're caught with guns or drugs.
That's what would be on the table. Border Patrol agents. The people who detain/arrest the folks who cross the border. They don't have the power to "turn people away" once they're in the country.
Change the law such that a claim of asylum can only be made at a US port of entry.
You could make that change, of course. But that's not a "loophole" type of change. It means that people who are legitimately and actually fleeing persecution from their home countries - people who are absolutely qualified to seek asylum in the U.S. - will be refused asylum and sent back home if they don't come into the country at a specific place. We will refuse asylum to people who deserve asylum, under the values and standards (and international treaty obligations).
What "enhanced border security" has been traded for? The democrats have fought - successfully - literally any effort to step up enforcement or compliance. For 40 years now.
And the GOP has fought - successfully - literally any effort to provide for a pathway for citizenship for migrants that even they acknowledge should be allowed to do so. Like the DREAMERS. Also for 40 years now.
This is what compromise involves. The reason that the GOP hasn't been able to advance its hardline immigration vision is the same reason that the Democrats haven't been able to advance their humanitarian immigration vision. You can't reach a deal unless you reach a deal.
Of course, neither of the above is true in absolutes. Obama was derided as the "Deporter in Chief" by his base, and various GOP Presidents have offered special status for limited numbers of folks (Bush 41 established the first TPS programs, Bush 43 offered special status to Iraqi refugees who helped us, etc.). But generally, the fundamental truth of a stalemate is that neither side is compromising. Not just the Democrats.
For those of us who have followed the issue for those same decades their statements of We're gonna work with the Republicans this time, we swear ring really hollow.
As do the statements of the GOP that "We're gonna work with the Democrats this time, we swear!". Yet every effort to reform the immigration system has failed, usually on the shoals of a protest by conservative talk radio (in the days of Rush) or conservative cable news (in the days of O'Reilly).
You may want to consider that immigration hawks have effectively gotten 0% of what they've asked for going back to the 1980's. I for one am completely unwilling to allow the democrats to frame the border as anything other than a national security issue at this point.
And immigration advocates have effectively gotten 0% of what they've asked for since the Reagan compromise as well. There's a very good reason why nearly two decades later, the DREAMERS are still waiting. Even though they're the "low hanging fruit" of immigration reform for advocates - people brought here against their will as children, sometimes even babies, who have no moral culpability and have never known any other country.
You're perfectly within your rights to be "unwilling" to frame the border in anyway other than your own perspective. But that doesn't change the reality that this is the best opportunity in 40 years for hardliners to get a hawkish immigration proposal through Congress - because this is the first time in 40 years that the Democratic coalition is willing to trade restrictivist immigration proposals for something outside of immigration. There are certainly strategic reasons the GOP might pass that up, but they have nothing to do with moving immigration laws closer to what they claim to want.
