Both Liberals and Conservatives Need to be Pushed on Immigration Reform

March 12, 2020

Guest blogger: Joseph Kramer, Masters in Migration Studies Program, University of San Francisco:

As with any government, the ship is steered by political factions each with their own ideas of how the country should be run. These beliefs are categorized on a spectrum. In the United States in particular you have your liberals and your conservatives. While there are other identities where we could further parse up the spectrum, for the sake of brevity and clarity we will discuss America’s political duality.

For the sake of this column, I want to focus on one thing in particular and that is the idea of conservatism and liberalism within the immigration enforcement discussion. More specifically, I want to discuss the role of I.C.E. and the Department of Homeland Security. Conservatives in the U.S. often talk about being fiscally conservative and about being conservative with governmental powers. Often they champion themselves states’ rights advocates and more recently there is even a more isolationist ideal of how the United States should focus on itself in an increasingly global world. On the face of it, this reality is ironic but as many of us know there is a sinister underlying motive that such ironies to persist.

On the other side we have liberals that champion themselves as politicians for the people. They speak of progress and being more accepting or lenient in terms of immigration controls. But really what has put many of them in the liberal category is their relative silence on the issue. They do not come out as hardliners and therefore are given the benefit of the doubt through their label of democrat. But as many of us know President Obama had the highest deportation numbers of any president in history giving him the moniker “deporter-in-chief”. This represents a major problem when we discuss legislation and immigration policy in the United States.

The estimated annual budget of Immigration Customs and Enforcement is (I.C.E.) is $6 billion. The Department of Homeland Security has a budget of nearly $48 billion. Now, when we look at this we might be tempted to think, these institutions are important to our country and have a long history of doing work that we so desperately need. Upon further investigation we see that both are 21st century inventions. These arms of the Department of Justice never existed before September 11, 2001. They were developed to “fight terrorism” and keep the “homeland” safe. While this might have been a noble endeavor with unintended consequences, we cannot ignore the metamorphoses that has occurred in the years since 9/11.

The bolstering of these programs through bipartisan legislation over the past 20 years has resulted a militarization of the southern border, detention of children and the separation of families. The number of deportations has skyrocketed in both conservative and liberal administrations.

So what is to explain this increase in deportations, detentions, and separations? What is so appealing or pervasive that the practices carry over from blue administration to red? Why spend such exorbitant fees in order to continue such a system? The reality of the situation is that there is limited attention to polarization between red and blue in the immigration debate. Immigration is an issue that is spoken on but very rarely finds its way to the center of election politics.

Why focus on election politics? It is part of other political discussions so why does it matter if it makes its way onto the stage for big debates and elections. It is because the platforms that politicians run on, the issues that get them elected are the ones they are most likely to be held to by the general public but also their opponents. This accountability is responsible in a large part to the likelihood that policy will get passed down the line to legislation.

Fundamentally there are two ways to change the status quo. There is a change in law and there is a change in policy practice. Both require progressives to work in unison from two different sections of the government. Essentially, this means that lawyers and judges must do their part and that politicians must do theirs. Everything else is secondary and for too long the brunt of the effort has been on the legal side, which we all know to be a battle that not only take enormous amounts of time and energy but also the right judges in the right places. Unfortunately, for much of the past 20 years the political timing for such change has been wrong.

With the shadow of 9/11 hanging over American politics and foreign policy there has been little political will for comprehensive change the way immigration is discussed and handled in this country. Though it may be difficult, now is the time that we must push our politicians to discuss the migration issue, in an election year as potentially important as this one there is no telling what kind of progress we can make if enough noise is made between now and November. That is why now more than ever it is imperative that we vote and for those of us that cannot, make sure that the questions are raised and that voices are heard both within and outside of the polling stations.