Member-only story
Why Are Republicans Having So Much Trouble Passing An Immigration Bill?
And What’s In All These Proposed Bills We Keep Hearing About Anyway?
One of our most devoted readers sent us an email last week, pointing out that when all the various proposed immigration bills are discussed in the media, there’s next to no detail given about what’s in each one, what the problems/objections are, and why the only voice we hear is Trump’s. And that’s true: they generally get labeled with some shorthand characterization, and no more detail is given: “Hard-line”, “Compromise”, “Bipartisan”. We think a lot of the reason mainstream media doesn’t explain further or drill down is that every one of these bills has such a slim chance of passing, it’s not really worth the time. But it’s also not completely uninteresting, so we’re going to try to tackle it today.
First, there are a couple of issues that lay over everything:
- Trump is a moving target. The President says he will support any legislation from House Republicans these days, but then he hints he won’t, or that he’s going to look at what they may produce and “make changes”. Remember also Trump at one time had cut a deal with Democratic leadership: DACA in exchange for full funding of his wall. He then started adding stuff. The most concretely Trump has laid it out was during the State of the Union Address in January, when he said in order for him to sign immigration legislation it would have to include “four pillars”: a DACA fix, and end to the green card lottery, and end to so-called “chain migration” (or family members being sponsored by family members who are already here), and of course “the wall”. But since then, that list has grown to at least include a fix to family separation at the border, and possibly radical changes to rules for seeking asylum.
- The Koch Brothers are a big and under-reported factor. Because while they support Trump on some things — for instance those huge corporate tax cuts — on immigration they do not. While we disagree with the Kochs’ on many things, unlike Trump they do have a coherent and consistent guiding philosophy, which in this case at least happens to dovetail with common sense. Unemployment in the U.S. is historically low. In order for the economy to keep growing, businesses need to…
