John Feehery: Yes, Republicans can work with Biden to fix immigration

In 2002, political commentator Ruy Teixeira made a dramatic assertion. In his book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” he boldly predicted that Democrats were going to permanently run the country because the influx of Hispanic immigrants would overwhelm the predominately white Republican Party.  

Teixeira’s book caused panic in conservative circles, hardening anti-immigrant sentiment in the party and making it next to impossible for Republicans to pass comprehensive immigration reform despite it being one of President George W. Bush’s top priorities.  

But Democrats would drop white working-class voters as they fully embraced a people of color coalition. This shift eventually led them down the path of open borders.  

By 2022, Teixeira had revised his thinking, telling liberals that their open-border positioning had caused a backlash and that their people of color coalition no longer provided a sure-fire path to permanent majority status. 

These days, the politics of immigration are truly muddled.   

Republicans have aggressively tried to build in-roads with conservative Hispanic and African American voters, while Democrats are starting to lament how they can’t win without the white working class.  

The Biden administration’s inability to secure the border has made things immeasurably worse. Because former President Donald Trump wanted to build a wall, Joe Biden, of course, had to oppose it. Biden seemed to send the message to people in South America and Central America that America would be far more accepting of them than what many on the left considered those racist Trump people.   

Republican governors in border states have taken to sending many illegal immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities in the Northeast and Midwest, which has exacerbated crime and strained budgets in those blue states. As we saw in Chicago over the weekend, the influx of illegal immigrants has created massive tension with the city’s Black residents, who are furious that resources that should be going to them are being diverted to the new arrivals. 

There is another less sexy crisis, though, that could be solved with a rational immigration policy. America’s business community can’t find enough workers. This is true across all sectors, but especially true with farm workers and tough, backbreaking work that Americans don’t seem to want to do anymore.   

All of this points to a potential grand compromise on immigration that has long escaped lawmakers who for the last two decades have been consumed more by politics than by effective policy prescriptions.   

When the House of Representatives passed last week an immigration reform bill, it was an important first step in solving the massive problems with our current system. An opening bid that promised to rebuild Trump’s wall, impose a national e-verify system to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get jobs, tighten asylum standards and end the Biden administration’s catch-and-release program won’t pass the Senate as currently constructed. But it could re-spark negotiations in the upper chamber, and that could eventually lead to a compromise. 

What is in it for Republicans to work with Joe Biden to fix a broken immigration system?  

A fixed immigration system could show the true value of a Republican Congress.  

Securing the border, stopping the flood of dangerous drugs, creating more rational policies for America’s business sector, getting more workers for critical industries, combating crime in our big cities and small towns. These would be serious wins that House Republicans could take to their constituents.   

If Republicans can find a way to make that happen, they will do themselves immense good in the eyes of the public. The politics of immigration reform has played itself out. Now is the time to just fix the damn problem.  

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).