The House GOP's 2015 Immigration Strategy

It is important to note that the emerging House GOP immigration strategy is deeply consistent with their approach from the 113th Congress.   In both 2013 and 2014, in what was their only substantive response to the bi-partisan Senate immigration bill,  the House GOP passed laws overriding the use of prosecutorial discretion mandated in the  “Morton Memos.”   Prosecutorial discretion has been the basis of a series of sweeping improvements in the immigration system advanced by the Obama Administration since 2010, including DACA in 2012 and the 2014 Executive Actions (DAPA). 

The objective of this GOP strategy is remove the ability of DHS to prioritize (and de-prioritize) the deportation of those apprehended by the immigration justice system.    In their view removing this common every day law enforcement practice from a massive law enforcement system, as Greg Sargent reports in this recent piece, would allow DHS to re-establish the threat of imminent deportation over the entire undocumented population (which began to be removed through the 2010 Morton strategy).   The only reason to do that is if the longer term objective was to block all efforts at legalization and force the remaining 11m to leave through “self-deportation.”    The only reason to fight common sense provisions to prioritize the deportation of felons over law-abiding, tax-paying moms is if you believe that the fear of imminent deportation is an essential tool of immigration policy – and the only reason it would be would if the goal was not eventual legalization but removal/self-deportation.  Focusing so much energy on deportation prioritization only makes sense if you believe there will be millions to deport.  

All Republicans supporting this initiative need to be asked directly about their vision for the 11m already here.  By supporting this legislation, it is clear their goal is for them to leave, not stay.   Early media appearances by GOP supporters of this bill have seen Republicans being less than honest about the longer term goal, evading the question by suggesting that border security needs to come first and not answering the question.   Journalists should not let them off the hook for the decision of go/stay is the most important question in the immigration debate today and folks should be clear about where they stand on this.

On a related note, the current GOP arguments about the border itself are a bit ridiculous.   In recent years, due to greater cooperation with Mexico, additional resources on the border, and the deterrent effect the post-Morton strategy of far greater pursuit of illegal entrants/border crossers has brought, the net flow of undocumented immigrations into the US has gone from 400,000 a year under Bush to zero under Obama; and crime along the US side of the border itself has plummeted.   The government has made significant strides in border security in recent years, in part due to the Morton prioritization of border crossers/illegal entrants for deportation.   Unraveling Morton would actually be a setback for border security not an advance.  

The success of the President’s border strategy can not only be measured in the very real gains we’ve seen in security, but in during this period of progress in security we have also seen an explosion of trade and tourism across our southern border.   US-Mexico trade will clock in over $600b in goods and services in 2014, almost DOUBLE what it was in the first year of the Obama Administration.  Mexico is now the US’s second largest market for our exports.   That we have both dramatically increased border security while overseeing a huge increase in legal tourism and trade with Mexico will go down as one of the more significant policy successes of the Obama era.