With President Joe Biden’s proposed immigration reforms facing scrutiny from both sides of the aisle, the authors of three papers on the topic from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy have insight into how the past can inform future policy.
Previous attempts at immigration reform are the best predictor of the success of the proposed U.S. Citizenship Act, according to Daniel Tichenor, Knight Chair of Political Science at the University of Oregon. His paper for the Baker Institute, "The Quest for Elusive Reform: Undocumented Immigrants in a Polarized Nation," details the past three decades of immigration policy. He argues that while the Biden administration has vast policymaking experience, its "capacity to translate that knowledge into tangible policy change — great or small — hinges upon structural opportunities and barriers that are difficult to predict."
"For generations, immigration has been a potent cross-cutting issue in U.S. politics that fuels contentious public debate over rival interests and ideals and regularly produces legislative stalemate," Tichenor wrote. "Significant crises, as the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Great Recession illustrate, can also upend policymakers’ best-laid plans. Another recurrent pattern is that Congress traditionally has only been able to overcome gridlock on immigration reform through the formation of 'strange bedfellow' coalitions that bring together normally competing groups and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle."
A brief by Anna Ferri, a Baker Institute consultant, examines how resurrecting the proposed Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program can address what modern immigration needs.
"A DAPA program would benefit not only 3.4 million unauthorized migrants but millions of children," she wrote. "An estimated 5.1 million children are currently living with at least one undocumented parent in the U.S., according to the Migration Policy Institute’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Of those children, an estimated 4.1 million are U.S. citizens (79%) and another 2% are lawful permanent residents. The majority of the undocumented parents (77%) have 10 years of continuous residency in the U.S., some marking over 20 years."
According to Ferri, stringent border enforcement and "zero-tolerance" policies have unintentionally encouraged migrants to settle permanently in the U.S. instead of risking crossing the border multiple times.
"These undocumented parents are set apart from their peers for one reason — their children are U.S. citizens and permanent residents," she wrote. "Detention, mass deportation and family separation would not only be costly, but would have a direct impact on family unity and well-being, including for their U.S. citizen children. Children separated from a parent through forced deportation, for example, suffer poor brain development and socioemotional outcomes, low educational performance and behavioral challenges."
Houston immigration attorney Elizabeth Mendoza examines the current state of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) — the country’s immigration court system — and provides recommendations on modernizing it in "A New Opportunity to Build a 21st-Century Immigration Court System."
"The last four years saw numerous policy and regulatory changes to the EOIR that fundamentally changed the focus of the immigration court system into what could be considered a 'deportation machine,'" she wrote.
"The onslaught of policy changes to the EOIR and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) immigration agencies in the last four years has created challenges that may take years to repair, but the tools to do so exist if we have the political will to use them. The people who appear before the EOIR deserve a well-functioning court system," Mendoza wrote.
The papers were commissioned by the Baker Institute’s Center for the United States and Mexico and supported by a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.