Comment For a fleeting moment this month, a deal to protect 2 million “Dreamers” and streamline our asylum system seemed possible. Two senators with a history of bipartisan compromise were haggling frankly over details. Much of the text of the bill was written. The talks were endorsed by prominent right-wing opinion leaders and even encouraged by the conservative Border Patrol union. But now the framework negotiated by Sens. Thom Tillis (RN.C.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) appears dead. Democratic leaders have privately informed many stakeholders that it won’t happen in the current Congress because of Republican opposition, according to sources familiar with the discussions. At least one GOP leader has said as much. A genuine opening to address two major national problems is slipping away. There is the absurdly unfair legal loophole suffered by dreamers who were brought here as children through no fault of their own. And there is the devilish challenge of managing the growing number of desperate people seeking refuge in the United States at a time of increasing international displacement. The framework would provide a path to citizenship for 2 million Dreamers while overhauling how immigrants seeking asylum are processed. Both will now remain intractable problems for years to come: Once Republicans control the House next year, the lower chamber will certainly never support solutions that are remotely reasonable or humane. Follow Greg Sargent’s viewsFollow What happened? Tillis and Sinema were negotiating the text of the bill, much of which had been written, by Wednesday night. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) informed Sinema and Tillis that he would not allow it to be attached to the general spending bill at the end of the year, which would kill it, one of the sources tells me . Some last-minute hiccups also arose. Some of these involved detention issues, as well as the framework’s attempt to maintain temporary restrictions that barred most immigrants from applying for asylum at all. The latter would have repeated the ban under Title 42’s Covid-19 health rule, which a court suspended, raising expectations of an increase in attempts to cross the border. The framework would have created new processing centers that would hold incoming asylum seekers – with increased legal and health services – until checks could determine whether they have a “credible fear” of persecution if they were returned home. Those passing will receive a final hearing much more quickly than under the status quo, due to heavy investment in legal processing. Those who failed would be immediately expelled. All of this is designed to discourage exactly what Republicans are talking about: immigrants seeking asylum in hopes of disappearing at home and not showing up for hearings. The framework would effectively continue Title 42’s ban on most asylum applications for at least a year, until the new system is up and running. But there was disagreement over whether immigrants entering the country between ports of entry should receive much more draconian treatment, such as longer detention or immediate deportation, than under the current framework, the sources said. Furthermore, how open-ended the Title 42-style ban should be remains unresolved. For Democrats, this uncertainty raises the risk that the ban could continue indefinitely, or at least for many years, which would largely shut down our asylum system and renege on international and human rights commitments. What is deeply disappointing at this time is that the fundamental principles underlying the reform were real and workable. Many Republicans recognize the absurdity of banishing Dreamers — who are culturally American and often know little about their countries of origin — into legal shadows where they are restricted from contributing to our country to their full potential. And on asylum, these reforms represented a good-faith attempt to find a solution that both sides could accept. It seeks to discourage the kind of abuses of the system that Republicans constantly decry as a “crisis” and a betrayal of the rule of law, while staying true to our core commitment to providing a fair hearing to all who seek asylum here. For some Republicans, particularly in the age of Donald Trump, the only real “solution” to these problems is to reduce the number of immigrants admitted to as low a number as possible, regardless of the human rights consequences. Therefore, by default they will not support such a compromise. Others probably see little political motivation in this. Our infrastructure is going to come under greater strain once Title 42 is repealed, and helping to solve the problem will yield less political payoff for Republicans than keeping the “border crisis” issue against President Biden and the Democrats in 2024. On the Democratic side, few opposed this compromise because it would somehow harden enforcement in inhumane ways. They were right to raise this objection. However, the compromise offered a real opportunity to make life more humane for over 2 million people. It could have demonstrated that the government can manage asylum effectively while remaining true to our core values, potentially opening up political space to widen channels for more legal immigration later on. But once again, it proved extremely difficult to find room for compromise on this issue. Even when a real window of opportunity opened, pundits who supposedly care about these issues joined the conversation and we all wasted way too much attention on some right-wing troll named Elon Musk. Now the moment is gone.
