Joseph Sabino Mistick: Becoming American more difficult than ever
Share this post:
Chaos on our southern border and the failure of our immigration policies are leading the news again. The crisis is getting worse with the end of Title 42, the pandemic-era immigration provision that enabled the government to quickly turn people away at the border. It is a human disaster on both sides.
Desperate families escaping crime, war and sheer poverty have been suffering and starving in the broiling sun, waiting for a chance to enter the United States. And American towns without the capacity to care for the families that manage to cross the border will continue to be crushed by new arrivals.
Always ready to seize any chance to bash the Biden administration for immigration policy failures, some politicians don’t seem especially eager to see the problem solved. They sense a weak spot, a political winner even if it is a loser for all the people who are being hurt.
And, as much as President Joe Biden wants comprehensive immigration reform, he is unlikely to find the consensus for any solution very soon. If Biden had his way, a fair and just immigration system would have been in place 16 years ago.
Democratic Sen. Biden, along with Republican President George W. Bush and a group of senators from both parties, supported the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. The bill never got a chance to be voted on, its opponents blocking it procedurally.
Bush always supported sensible immigration policy, saying, “At its core, immigration is a sign of a confident and successful nation. Immigrants’ talent and hard work and love of freedom have helped us become the leader of the world.”
The White House release for Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address detailed the bill’s provisions. Among the highlights was a plan for more border patrol agents and improved technology and infrastructure. Law enforcement was in line for more tools and funding to identify and expel criminals who are here illegally.
The needs of our economy were addressed by creating a temporary workers program to help employers hire legal workers and relieve the pressure they feel to hire illegal undocumented workers. It would have been a “fair way to match willing employers with willing foreign workers to fill jobs that Americans have not taken.”
And the bill provided a map for bringing the millions of immigrants already in the country illegally out of the shadows. “People who have worked hard, supported their families, avoided crime, led responsible lives and become a part of American life” deserve that opportunity.
Since then, all other attempts to create a fair immigration law have failed. Worse, those who desperately want to become Americans have been demonized and used to promote the political fortunes of despots. How quickly have some Americans forgotten that we all have come here from someplace else.
When immigration reform failed in 2007, Sen. Edward Kennedy said many of the senators who killed the bill “voted their fears, not their hopes.” With pinpoint accuracy, Kennedy predicted that without a new immigration law, “The situation is going to get worse and worse and worse.”
The George W. Bush Institute is still promoting immigration reform. As it says on its website, “More than ever, America needs the brightest, most talented and hardest-working people the world has to offer. The objective of immigration policy should be to affirm America as the land of opportunity.”