Border patrol agents don't really ever "turn people away" at the border.

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.

They're not loopholes.

I'll rephrase again. Change the law such that a claim of asylum can only be made at a US port of entry. One "compromise" to make with the Open Borders sect (and yes, there is one) is to exclude Mexicans and Cubans from that. Meaning, since Guatemala does not share a border with the US if a Guatemalan or a Venezuelan wants asylum they have to go to a designated port of entry. A Mexican or a Cuban needing asylum could keep doing what they're doing.

I don't happen to support that compromise; I merely offer it up for completeness.

For the last 40 years, the "grand bargain" efforts have always been trading enhanced border security and increased internal enforcement for paths to citizenship for some portion of the internal population and potential increases in legal migration.

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. Only now that the situation has gotten so untenable for them politically and only because blue cities are now getting the barest fraction of what border towns have been subjected to for decades are they pretending to care. 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.

I grew up in Missouri. Show me. The democrats get to show me they're serious about fixing the problem. At no point in my adult life have I seen anything other than gamesmanship from them.

What immigration hawks have longed for is a proposal that gives them so much, and Democrats so little, that it's a clear loss for Democrats.**

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.