Sen. Tillis betrays his supporters on immigration
OPINION:
Sen. Thom Tillis is a Republican, but you wouldn’t know it based on his recent behavior. North Carolina’s senior senator spent much of December trying to help Democrats pass a massive amnesty for illegal aliens in exchange for token border security measures.
Fortunately, the effort failed, but Mr. Tillis has promised to try again this year.
His scheme is a slap in the face both to his voters — who overwhelmingly oppose amnesty — as well as workers of all political persuasions. It’s these workers who would suffer the sorry consequences of a lopsided deal that achieve major Democratic priorities without controlling the border or protecting wages of American workers.
Mr. Tillis’ proposal would provide a path to citizenship for 2 million “Dreamers” — immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. In exchange, Republicans would receive more than $25 billion in border funding, including pay raises for agents and money to extend the already broken asylum process. And it’d effectively continue Title 42, a series of restrictions that allow law enforcement to quickly deport certain limited border crossers but should expire in May with the public health emergencies, for one more year.
More money alone will not fix the border crisis because most of the funding will be used merely to speed up fundamentally broken processes rather than truly to reform them. For instance, consider the proposal’s approach to asylum. It would hire more personnel to process asylum applications faster and fund temporary detention centers to hold migrants as they await adjudication.
But it does nothing to raise the “credible fear” standard, which is the pathetically low bar that migrants must clear to initiate an asylum claim. Right now, migrants hoping to find jobs in the United States can cross the border illegally and then, if caught, profess to be fleeing gang or sexual violence in their home country. In many cases, they’re coached by left-wing nonprofits on exactly what to say.
So long as they mouth the correct words, law enforcement is obligated to ensure they get their day in court, even though in fiscal 2021, only 14% of migrants whose asylum cases originated with credible fear claims were eventually found to qualify for asylum. Mr. Tillis’ deal would not prevent these swarms of economic migrants from fraudulently claiming asylum. It would merely shorten the time they’d wait for court hearings.
Worse, when the majority ultimately lose their cases, there’s little guarantee they would return to their home countries. The Biden administration has repeatedly shirked its duty to enforce immigration law. There is no reason to imagine that would change just because Mr. Tillis secures extra funding for detentions and deportations. The problem right now isn’t a lack of financial resources; it’s a lack of will to enforce immigration laws.
Republican voters oppose granting amnesty to Dreamers by a 63-31 margin, according to Rasmussen polling conducted after the midterms. By offering any amnesty to illegal aliens, Mr. Tillis’ deal would make the border crisis worse, not better, by encouraging more people to come here illegally in the expectation of future amnesty.
That is exactly what has happened repeatedly. President Ronald Reagan agreed to a one-time amnesty for roughly 3 million illegal aliens living in the United States at the time in exchange for increased border security measures. But after he left office, policymakers reneged on their border security provisions, and the illegal alien population ballooned to over 11 million today.
That subsequent influx has driven down wages for hardworking Americans. Harvard University economist George Borjas estimated in 2013 that illegal immigration reduces American wages by up to $118 billion a year. Working-class Americans have suffered wage stagnation for decades in large part because of unfair competition for jobs through mass legal and illegal immigration.
American families and children have been injured by the failure to control our borders. We should not have to urge our own senator to protect the well-being of our own fellow citizens, who are also his constituents.
Mr. Tillis’ amnesty package is bad politics, and bad policy. North Carolinians and all Americans can only hope he comes to his senses before these destructive policies are enacted.
• Laura Gutman is a native North Carolinian and pediatrician.
