Democrats and Republicans vie for control of immigration narrative in rival hearings.
On-screen, a clip from the movie “Sound of Freedom” shows Department of Homeland Security special agent Tim Ballard, played by Jim Caviezel, rescuing a scared little boy from a trafficker at the border.
As the scene ends, the real Tim Ballard pipes up: “This scene depicts a moment from my real life I’ll never forget.”
Mr. Ballard was testifying before the Republican-controlled House’s Homeland Security Committee. He was one of four witnesses who appeared at a hearing on what the committee described as “the devastating human costs of the Biden-Mayorkas border crisis.”
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Others who spoke included Mayra Cantu, the wife of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, and Sandy Snodgrass, the mother of a young Alaskan—Robert Bruce Snodgrass—who died of fentanyl poisoning.
“Alaska’s being targeted by the drug cartels,” she testified. Ms. Snodgrass recommended that the cartels and their partners be designated terrorist organizations.
Elsewhere in the nation’s capital, the Democrat-controlled Senate’s budget committee was holding a very different hearing on immigration.
Its title, “Unlocking America’s Potential: How Immigration Fuels Economic Growth and Our Competitive Advantage,” cast the immigration debate in a different light.
“Research has shown that an influx of migrants and refugees leads to firm-level onshoring of investment,” said Britta Glennon, an assistant professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, in her testimony before that committee.
“When we restrict immigration, we lose, and other countries gain instead,” Ms. Glennon said.
In another House hearing, this one titled “The Impact of Biden’s Open Border on the American Workforce,” the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota spoke about some of the economic costs of the open border, particularly for those Americans who compete against low-wage illegal entrants.
“While having access to illegal immigrant workers may be desirable from the point of view of business owners, there is evidence that illegal immigration reduces the wages and employment of working-class Americans,” Mr. Camarota stated in his written testimony.
After returning from recess earlier this month, lawmakers have wasted little time driving competing narratives on an ongoing border crisis that has seen illegal immigrants pour across the southwest border and into sanctuary cities across the country.
The three hearings, scheduled for the same, or roughly the same time on Sept. 13, underscored the significance of the border, and immigration more generally, as the 2024 election approaches.
They also reaffirmed how deep the partisan divide on the issue runs, at least in today’s Washington.
Where many Republicans may see a crisis, many Democrats may still see an opportunity.
Public Opinion and Immigration Realpolitik
Not so very long ago, the two major parties were more united on immigration—for better or for worse.
The Security Fence Act of 2006, which helped fund hundreds of miles of border fencing, passed the Senate 80–19. Future President Barack Obama, then the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, was among its supporters.
A generation before that, the 1990 Immigration Act, which expanded legal immigration and created the “temporary protected status” category, among other moves, passed that same chamber 81–17.
With the exception of the late Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and a few others, all Senate Republicans voted for the bill.
So did most Senate Democrats, though not Tennessee’s Al Gore.
Although the bill met with more Republican opposition in the House, it passed there too.
A Republican president, George H.W. Bush, then signed it into law.
In recent years, the immigration issue has become more polarized along partisan lines.
Opinion polling could offer some insights into why.
According to Gallup’s numbers, opposition to more immigration has broadly trended down since the mid-1990s. Support for additional numbers generally rose over roughly the same period.
The Center for Immigration Studies’ 2022 analysis projected the percentage could have hit 14.9 percent by now, higher than at any point in the nation’s history.
Immigrants who can vote tend to favor Democrats over Republicans.
Asian and Hispanic Americans, who make up the overwhelming majority of recent immigrants, also break Democratic.
Thus, for Democrats, more immigration may be the formula for electoral success.
In just the past few years, however, Americans have sharply pivoted in the direction of wanting less immigration, per Gallup’s figures—and Republicans have made gains among at least some Hispanic voters, including in the 2020 presidential election.
The latest influx of migrants into major American cities far from the southern border, busload after teeming busload, may be making its mark on American politics too.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said earlier this month that events now unfolding “will destroy New York City.”
Odd Bedfellows
Opposition to immigration, or at least illegal immigration, is currently associated with Republicans.
Yet, some libertarian and conservative think tanks that are aligned with the GOP on many, if not most issues can be counted on to advocate more immigration, including of low-skilled workers.
“A thriving economy will need people of all types. Immigration isn’t the singular answer, but it helps,” said David J. Bier of the Cato Institute in the Senate hearing.
In the House hearing on the open border and the workforce, Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum, which describes itself as center-Right, pointed out that employers may find some of the dynamics created by illegal immigration advantageous.
“The lower pay for illegal workers can permit firms to produce more, sell more, and create more jobs,” he stated in written testimony.
“More generally, nobody should favor illegal immigration,” he stated in that same testimony, while also outlining what he presented as the benefits of making high-skilled illegal immigrants legal.
On the other hand, at least one unexpected figure backstopped some common conservative co-complaints about the economic impact of the U.S. immigration system.
Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University in Washington whose CV states that he served on Democrat House staff, described how Big Tech firms have used guest worker programs to replace Americans in the information technology sector.
“The firm ships as many jobs overseas as possible, but a sizable share of the work cannot be offshored because cert
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