Editorial from the Dallas Morning News
Just before leaving office in January 2009, President George W. Bush told an interviewer, “I happen to believe a system that is so broken that humans become contraband is a system that really needs to be re-examined.”
Sadly, the only thing predictable about immigration policy today is that it’ll lead to more hyper partisan warfare. Among the casualties will be everyday Americans who depend on a stable immigration system, as well as those seeking asylum from violence and poverty in their native lands. And that’s to say nothing of the damage done to agencies and institutions and our national reputation.
There is a cost to slamming the door on many forms of legal immigration, including turning away asylum-seekers at the border, slashing the number of refugees accepted into the country annually, as well as the number of H-1B visas for skilled workers. And that cost has been to our standing in the world as a nation founded by immigrants on the principle of individual rights that still welcomes those legally seeking refuge in this country.
All of which brings us to President Biden’s early steps toward immigration reform.
In addition to his executive orders halting further construction on the border wall, revoking the travel ban on majority Muslim nations, and preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Biden offered his own comprehensive immigration reform bill, the U.S. Citizens Act of 2021, on his first day in office.
He wants a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and the nearly 700,000 “Dreamers” in DACA; modernized border security, labor protections, immigration courts, and the entire asylum-seeking process through investments in new personnel and technology.
Biden wants to provide $4 billion in financial assistance over four years to Central American countries to better facilitate legal migration and address the underlying causes of migration “conditioned on their ability to reduce the endemic corruption, violence, and poverty that causes people to flee their home countries.”
We retain hope that our elected officials in Washington can see immigration not as a purely partisan issue, but as an issue crucial to the security and economic well-being of our state and country, an issue requiring compromise, congeniality and comprehensive reform, and, for the good of the country, living up to our national motto: E pluribus unum —”Out of many, one.”
