Reagan signed legislation after a bipartisan debate in Congress. Biden simply pretends there’s no border.
By Jason L. Riley | The Wall Street Journal | SEP. 12, 2023 | Photo by Suzanne Cordeiro
It was 37 years ago that President Reagan signed a controversial immigration bill that included an amnesty provision for the nation’s three million illegal aliens.
To call the legislation, officially known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act, a heavy lift would be a understatement. At the time Reagan was in the second year of his second term. Democrats controlled the House while Republicans enjoyed a narrow majority in the Senate. Multiple efforts to advance the bill had gone nowhere over the previous five years, yet the administration persisted.
Finally, in October 1986, the House approved the legislation by a vote of 238-173, with 77 Republicans supporting the measure and 90 opposed. A few days later a bipartisan majority in the Senate that included 29 Republican votes followed suit. Neither side got everything it wanted. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, a conservative Republican, voted “no,” as did Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, a staunch liberal. Yet the process was open and transparent. The voting public’s representatives in Congress ultimately made the call and took responsibility for the outcome. How quaint.
This history is worth rehashing to contrast it with the current administration’s efforts to alter border policies with no input from Congress or deference to the legislative process. Four months ago, the White House implemented new procedures that it said would reduce the number of illegal crossings, but apparently no one informed the migrants. The Journal reported that more than 130,000 foreign nationals were apprehended at the southern border in July, one-third more than in June. Illegal entries rose by another 33% in August.
Also last month, a record 91,000 migrants crossed the border together as families. And more children are now crossing the border alone—an average of 377 a day in August, compared with 270 in July. But the Biden administration continues to insist that all of this is no big deal. “As with every year, the U.S. is seeing ebbs and flows of migrants arriving, fueled by seasonal trends and the efforts of smugglers to use disinformation to prey on vulnerable migrants,” a Homeland Security official recently told the New York Times.
For the most part, these migrants aren’t sneaking into the country. They simply walk across the border and surrender. Reversing a Trump-era policy, the Biden administration has instructed border officials no longer to detain migrant families. Instead, those who claim a “credible fear” of persecution back home are released into the country to await a court proceeding that is years away due to the large backlog of cases.
On “Face the Nation” last year, Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson cited the “credible fear” standard as a root cause of the current migrant mess. He said the bar for initiating an asylum claim is “relatively low—something like 70% of migrants qualify.” Most asylum claims wind up being rejected, but the process takes years to adjudicate, and the applicant gets to live in the U.S. in the interim.
“The migrants know this,” Mr. Johnson said. He’d like to see claims processed faster but maintained that a re-evaluation “of the credible-fear standard itself” is no less important. “I know my friends on the left won’t be too happy to hear that,” Mr. Johnson said.
After initially applauding the migrant influx, Democratic mayors of sanctuary cites are crying uncle. Still, they remain reluctant to place the blame where it belongs. At the direction of the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents have been turned into pencil pushers and millions of unvetted migrants have entered the country illegally.
The White House knows that an overwhelming majority of the people coming aren’t fleeing persecution but are economic migrants gaming our asylum laws. They know that there will be no serious effort to deport people whose claims are denied, just as there will be no serious effort to deport the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already living here. The administration isn’t calling this an amnesty, but it walks like one and talks like one.
The lesson from 1986 is that an amnesty won’t reduce illegal immigration if it isn’t paired with policies that offer additional ways for migrant workers to enter the U.S. lawfully. The Bracero guest-worker program, set up in the 1940s for Mexican farmworkers, significantly reduced illicit crossings, suggesting that migrants prefer to come legally.
Mr. Biden wants to fix the southern border by effectively erasing it for the purposes of migration and making it impossible for someone to enter unlawfully. That prospect thrills progressive Democrats but could cost the party politically insofar as it plays into a broader GOP accusation that Democrats are soft on lawbreakers. MAGA Republicans aren’t the only voters who care about law and order. It was losing congressional races last year in deep-blue states such as California and New York that cost Democrats control of the House.
