Republicans should be willing to make a deal on immigration

Reagan’s attitude was different. As I noted in my biography of the Gipper, his leadership skills drew from his time as the lead negotiator for movie actors in their dealings with powerful studio heads. He often said that he went into those bargaining sessions knowing he couldn’t get everything he wanted, but he could get a lot if he was willing to strike a deal. He also understood he could go back in future sessions for more.

The immigration deal currently on the table would certainly give conservatives some significant provisions, though it is still far too early to say whether either side would have enough votes to pass it. The deal would reportedly extend the Trump administration’s Title 42 program, which allowed border officials to expel certain categories of migrants who cross the border illegally to prevent the spread of covid-19. It would create new processing centers for those who are admitted into the country and provide more resources to quickly adjudicate asylum claims and remove those whose claims are denied. And it would include a significant increase in funding for border enforcement, as much as $25 billion.

There’s always a catch in compromises, and for conservatives that’s the progressives’ main ask: a pathway to citizenship for the “dreamers.” These people include those who were brought to the United States when they were children and are now living here illegally. Their plight garners sympathy from many Americans, including some who generally oppose illegal immigration, because they had no say in coming here. They are thus stuck between a country they know but where they have no legal status and one where they can legally reside in but do not consider their home.

The proposed deal has elements each side wants and deplores. But that’s a feature, not a bug, of deals. Compromise involves discovering the most important elements of an issue to each side and then ensuring they both secure significant wins on those fronts. That’s true whether the setting is a negotiation between spouses or between warring nations.

Conservatives should ask themselves what they really want in immigration policy and how much they are willing to give to get some of it. There’s no denying that the country is facing a crisis on the southern border. Overworked Border Patrol officers are encountering more than 200,000 people a month. More than 1.1 million of these individuals were admitted into the country last year as their asylum cases are adjudicated, and trends suggest that number will be much larger this year unless something is done. With President Biden in the White House and Democrats in control of the Senate, there is no chance purists can enact their preferred solutions any time soon.

This doesn’t mean conservatives should take the deal. It might be that the provisions on offer aren’t enough to solve the crisis. And the price — the potential addition of about 2 million dreamers as citizens — might be too high for many on the right. But they should look at the negotiations in those terms rather than the “all or nothing” approach too many advocate.

Taking this deal now would not preclude pushing for a better deal after the 2024 elections. For all the caterwauling over the midterms, Republicans did win the national popular vote for the House. And even if their 2024 nominee does no better than the party did this year, Republicans won either a contested statewide race, the House vote or both in enough states to secure the White House. Plus, Democrats will need to defend seven seats in the Senate in 2024 that Donald Trump carried at least once, meaning the GOP could be in position two years from now to improve any deal they make.

But even that best-case scenario, Republicans would still need some Democratic buy-in because of the filibuster in the Senate. Hard-liners should factor that into their calculations and ask themselves whether making a deal today would increase the chances of cooperation tomorrow.

Cutting deals likely doesn’t satisfy anyone’s romantic notions of politics. Nevertheless, it is a necessary fact of politics, and conservatives should channel their inner Reagan as they decide how to approach healing our long-standing divide on immigration.