Border crisis calls for thoughtful deliberation, not performative stunts

Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024 | 2 a.m.

The immigration situation on America’s southern border is a matter of grave national and human concern. There is genuine suffering on all sides. Our border states, in particular, are struggling, as too are the refugees flocking to America. As a nation we must find a path to sensible and sustainable immigration reform.

Any crisis, and especially this crisis, demands sober people operating with wisdom, a genuine desire to solve a problem even if it means reaching across the aisle, and the capacity to consider complex issues from multiple viewpoints.

Unfortunately, last week a flock of Republican members of Congress descended on the U.S.-Mexico border with all of the deep thought of magpies screeching in the wind. Serious issues require serious people; what the Republican study group offered was anything but that.

From a podium in Eagle Pass, Texas, House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered prepared remarks that included plenty of scripted attacks on President Joe Biden but little in the way of substantive policy proposals or new ideas gained from the experience of being on the border.

This makes sense strategically. Despite years of complaining about the southern border, the GOP has no incentive to actually solve the problem and deprive itself of one of its most compelling campaign boogeymen.

Unfortunately for Johnson, he wasn’t the only elected official to visit the border last week.

While the House GOP delegation staged events to deliver stale partisan attacks, Nevada Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto spoke directly with law enforcement personnel and nonprofit organizations working to keep the border safe.

Afterwards, Rosen had a simple message: “Congress needs to stop playing political games and take real action to address the unprecedented surge of migrant crossings at our southern border. … We need to deliver the resources and technology ​required to​ improve security at the border, stop the illegal flow of fentanyl into our country and fix our broken immigration system and asylum process. Both parties must come together on this, and I’m committed to helping pass bipartisan legislation to solve these problems.”

We agree.

Working with advocacy organizations such as the ACLU, as well as the federal judiciary, Biden reversed the most abhorrent aspects of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. We’re tempering our admiration for the president, as it’s seemed at times as though the administration was dragging its feet. Nevertheless, Biden did successfully end the monstrous separation of children from their parents, fortified the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and expanded access for people in need of temporary humanitarian protection.

All of this is an improvement over the barbarity of the Trump years, but partisan gamesmanship and stonewalling by do-nothing House Republicans have stymied efforts to address the larger crisis on the border. Nor has there been progress on the uncertainty of would-be Americans living without documentation here in the United States.

Also, there has been very little progress in working with Mexico and Latin American governments to find cooperative solutions to the root problems driving the flood of immigrants: economic crisis, organized crime violence, etc. There are meaningful steps the Biden administration can take in such matters of foreign policy that don’t necessarily require congressional approval. We urge the administration to ramp up efforts to make progress resolving these root problems. By the time people arrive at our border, governments across our hemisphere, including ours, have already failed.

In the near term, lawmakers must find a way to unite and give business the tools to accurately track immigration status and provide a pathway to citizenship for those already living, working and paying taxes in the U.S.

While tackling the root problems in our neighboring countries, we must also create a functional and streamlined process for quickly assessing asylum claims while keeping families together and protecting them from traffickers and other forms of abuse.

Finally, politicians must stop using innocent people as political bargaining chips just because they are fleeing a hemispheric crisis and are now caught in America’s broken immigration system.

We need more brave, clear-eyed leaders to follow the lead of Nevada’s senators and take up this problem holistically and with a genuine desire for a long-term, humane solution.