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Just before leaving office in January 2009, President George W. Bush told an interviewer that if he had one thing to do over, in retrospect, he should have pushed immigration reform right after the 04 election and not Social Security reform. Why? Because, he said, I happen to believe a system that is so broken that humans become contraband is a system that really needs to be re-examined.

We agree, and wish his efforts in 2007 to pass a bipartisan immigration reform bill had come to fruition. In 2012, under the Obama administration, the last time there was a serious push for comprehensive reforms, Bush reminded lawmakers that Not only do immigrants help build our economy, they invigorate our soul. America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time.

After passing the Senate with bipartisan support in 2013, those reforms died on the vine in the Republican-controlled House the following year.

We offer this brief history lesson because it was precisely those failures that led to the rise of Donald Trumps draconian zero-tolerance immigration policies that reached their nadir in June 2018 when, under a court order, the Trump administration revealed that 2,700 children had been separated from their migrant parents at the border and sent to mass detention centers or foster care a practice former first lady Laura Bush rightly called cruel and immoral and this newspaper called counter to who we are as a people.

On June 20, 2018, as public outcry grew, Trump signed an executive order to keep families together at the border, but his policy that criminally prosecuted all adults illegally crossing the border continued, and the number of children who were taken from their families hundreds still not reunited is now estimated to be more than 5,000.

And thats just one example of the hundreds of changes by the Trump administration to immigration policy, all of which were enacted through executive order, memoranda or regulatory rule change.

As our Dianne Solis and Alfredo Corchado reported shortly after Joe Bidens electoral victory, Reconstruction of the immigration system for a nation whose origin story is all about immigration will be a difficult process. Among the barriers: Republicans who wont support legislation and Republican leaders who know how to go to court. Not every change or reversal can be done by a stroke of the pen. Some will require going through a long regulatory process. The effort will be Herculean: The Trump administration made more than 400 changes to the immigration system.

That report proved prescient this past week when the Biden administrations 100-day pause on certain deportations got hung up in court.

What should be clear is that court battles are a poor substitute for comprehensive immigration reform. After all, the proper role of courts is to enforce the law as it stands, and this is really a fight over what the law should be. Whats needed is for the Congress and the president to hammer out reforms.

Doing so would prevent new administrations from immediately undoing the policies of their predecessors through executive orders and rule changes that are then challenged in court, thus creating more chaos in what should be an area clearly governed by the rule of law in a predictable and consistent legal framework.

Sadly, the only thing predictable about immigration policy today is that itll lead to more hyper-partisan warfare. Among the casualties will be every day Americans who depend on a stable immigration system, as well as those seeking asylum from violence and poverty in their native lands. And thats to say nothing of the damage done to agencies and institutions and our national reputation.

There is a cost to slamming the door on many forms of legal immigration, including turning away asylum-seekers at the border, slashing the number of refugees accepted into the country annually as well as the number of H-1B visas for skilled workers. And that cost has been to our standing in the world as a nation founded by immigrants on the principle of individual rights that still welcomes those legally seeking refuge in this country.

All of which brings us to President Bidens early steps toward immigration reform. In addition to his executive orders halting further construction on the border wall, revoking the travel ban on majority Muslim nations, and preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Biden offered his own comprehensive immigration reform bill, the U.S. Citizens Act of 2021, on his first day in office.

In the weeks and months ahead, well be weighing in on the specifics of the plan, which includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and the nearly 700,000 Dreamers in DACA; modernizing border security, labor protections, immigration courts, and the entire asylum-seeking process through investments in new personnel and technology; and, finally, by providing $4 billion in financial assistance over four years to Central American countries to better facilitate legal migration and address the underlying causes of migration conditioned on their ability to reduce the endemic corruption, violence, and poverty that causes people to flee their home countries.

As Texans, we understand better than most folks the need for secure borders and consistent immigration policies. But we also understand what former President Bush said in 2019, that amid all the complications of policy we should never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength.

We retain hope that our elected officials in Washington can see immigration not as a purely partisan issue, but as an issue crucial to the security and economic well-being of our state and country, an issue requiring compromise, congeniality and comprehensive reform, and, for the good of the country, living up to our national motto: E pluribus unumOut of many, one.

Read more from the original source:
Why the stakes are far too high to kick comprehensive immigration reform down the road again - The Dallas Morning News