Stupid Party

When it comes to immigration reform, Congressional members of the GOP has allowed ideological differences to get in the way of common sense, good governance, and doing what's right. The GOP, like its counterpart in the Democratic Party, are wed to ideological memes that are outdated and counterproductive.

Because the economy is booming, jobs are plentiful, and public satisfaction with the future is polling at historically high levels, the only wedge issue that the Dems have is immigration. It also appears that they will do nothing to compromise on the issue, allowing, for example, DACA to remain unresolved even though the GOP floated the idea of a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million people.

But the Dems do stuff like that—all the time. They act like petulant children. But none of that excuses the stupidity that we're now seeing on the GOP side. An immigration reform package could still be offered by the GOP, yet "conservatives" wrongly insist that there be no "asylum." That ridiculous position rejects the reality of our current border situation, suggests that the children of illegal immigrants remain in political and legal limbo forever, and implies that millions can be deported (They. Can. Not.)

So Congressional GOP members fight with one another instead of seizing a unique opportunity to fix a decades old problem. Imagine for a moment if the GOP passed a reasonable bill that included a fix for the 'family separation issue, a DACA fix, a number of modifications to broader immigration issues (e.g., merit based entry, reducing the size and scope of lottery entries), improved vetting of all legal immigrants, and yes, new funding for increased border security (a.k.a. the "wall").

If a bill that covered those issues passed the House (and it could), it would be interesting to watch the Democrat response. Would the party that tells us repeated that they care so, so much about immigration reject the bill in the Senate. If they did, the hypocrisy would be breathtaking. If they didn't, the Trump administration would have done more than the past six presidents in addressing the immigration issue.

The GOP has a historic opportunity and they're blowing it. They're not called the stupid party for nothing.

UPDATE:
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As the GOP continues with its own stupidity on the immigration issue, the Dems sit comfortably, recognizing that a tacit open borders policy will benefit them politically over the long term. Rich Lowry breaks it down when his discussed the impact of the 20-year old Flores consent decree that demands that children be released from custody after 20 days and therefore implicitly required that illegal immigrants be released from custody (but generally not deported) if families are to stay together. He writes:

What is true is that the law makes it impossible to hold Central American parents and children together for any length of time. The children have to be released, and if you are going to keep them together with their parents, the parents have to be released, too. This is the forcing mechanism for waving Central American migrants into the country — more than a quarter of a million children and members of a family group over the past two and a half years — and Trump is right that Democrats have no interest in changing it.

When Republicans this week proposed fixes to remove these perversities in the law and to expedite the asylum process and provide for more detention space, Chuck Schumer had no interest. He thought he could back down Trump unilaterally from the family separations — correctly, as it turned out — and Democrats have no interest in making it easier for Trump to remove anyone from the country.

It’s easy to lose sight of the radicalism of this position. It’s understandable to oppose deporting an illegal immigrant who has been here for, say, 10 years. But these migrants are illegal immigrants who, in some cases, literally showed up yesterday.

The question they pose isn’t whether we are going to let illegal immigrants who are already here stay but whether we are constantly going to welcome more, in a perpetual, rolling amnesty. It is, in short, whether we have a border or whether a certain class of migrants can — for no good reason — present themselves to the authorities and expect to be admitted into the country.

Some of these migrants will claim asylum, but these claims are mostly bogus. There’s no doubt that they are desperate, and desperate to get into the United States. But they aren’t persecuted back home, even if they fear gangs or a violent boyfriend.

The merits don’t matter under the current system, though. If an asylum-seeker passes a credible fear interview — almost all do — and comes into the United States pending adjudication of his case, it’s unlikely that he’ll ever be seen again. And why not? Who wouldn’t take advantage of that opportunity?

Breaking one of the six rules of outrage, it might be worth asking Democratic leaders the following questions:
Are you in favor of open borders? If not, why do you support a loophole (Flores) that allows illegal immigrants be released into the country? And if you want to fix that loophole, how would you do so, specifically? Why do you generally oppose stronger border control measures? If you're in favir of border enforcement, how, specifically, would you accomplish it? Since you have great compassion for children and illegal immigrant families, why is it that you are in favor of policies that encourage those same families to take dangerous journies over thousands of miles, putting young children at risk all the way? How, specifically, would you address child trafficking that occurs daily at our border?

And on ... and on.