National Review, November 2, 2023
In response to criticism that they are paying for the defense of other countries’ borders while our own is a shambles, congressional Republicans have insisted that immigration enforcement remains a priority. The White House request for more aid to Ukraine and Israel offers the opportunity to prove it. In a positive sign, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is reportedly pushing for “major concessions” on the border in exchange for the White House aid package. In my opinion, those concessions should take the form of H.R. 2, the impressive border security bill that the House passed earlier this year and that McConnell himself has co-sponsored in the Senate.
Rather than just throw more money at the Department of Homeland Security, H.R. 2 gets to the heart of the illegal-immigration problem in two important ways. First, it would weaken the “jobs magnet” by mandating E-Verify, an online tool that employers can use to determine whether their employees are legally authorized to work in the U.S. While businesses that employ illegal immigrants aren’t too bothered by resource-based reforms, such as recruiting more Border Patrol agents, they are strongly opposed to an E-Verify mandate — which says a lot about which policy actually works.
Second, H.R. 2 would restrict the administration’s ability to grant temporary entry without a visa, as few such “temporary” migrants will ever be required to go home. (In fact, they are likely to be included in future amnesty proposals.) The bill would clarify that migrants without visas can be paroled into the country only in exceptional cases — not in virtually any circumstance, which is the administration’s tendentious reading of the current statute. It would also require that applicants for asylum be detained or returned to Mexico while their cases are adjudicated. Asylum rules themselves would be tightened to focus on migrants facing genuine persecution, not merely generalized fear of crime.
I have described H.R. 2 in some detail for an important reason: Effective border enforcement is less about resources and more about structural changes to the law. Congressional Republicans and voters who care about controlling the border must not be taken in by any “concessions” that merely amount to more funding for DHS. Remember, the Biden administration is currently facilitating illegal immigration by inventing parole programs and waving through dubious asylum seekers. Expanding the Border Patrol alone will not solve this problem; only changes to the law can.
Additional money by itself also will do little to weaken the jobs magnet or the abuse of our asylum system. Indeed, it could make the problem worse by helping the administration more efficiently process and release inadmissible migrants, which is the type of “border security” money the White House really wants. House Republicans should attach the important structural reforms of H.R. 2 to any Ukraine bill, and Senate Republicans should insist on it as well.