The Cartoon Versions

I’ve been sitting on this post by Matt Yglesias for a while. In the post Matt chides President Trump for not trying to get an immigration bill passed:

American immigration law is complicated, and almost every provision of this vast corpus reflects some political compromise reached long ago, often under different circumstances. I think it’s fair to say that almost none of it is optimal.

Lenin said of the bureaucracy, “better fewer, but better.” When it comes to immigration, I don’t see it that way. We should try to be more selective, but we should also want more immigrants to come to the United States than ever. So while I agree that many of the current visa programs aren’t ideal, unlike Stephen Miller or Elon Musk, I don’t have my hair on fire about it.

What’s crazy, though, is that for how much conservatives rant and rave about immigration, the Trump administration isn’t even seeking legislative changes to American immigration law.

Now I’m going to go into what may seem to be a long diversion but isn’t because I think that Matt has the wrong end of the stick.

I’ve been pretty clear here about what I think that immigration policy should be. In short

• We should accept more genuine asylees than we do. An asylum-seeker is already defined in statute. It isn’t just someone from a poor, violent country or someone who wants a job.
• We should have a temporary workers program. Many of those who come here do so primarily to work. They have only marginal interest in becoming Americans.
• We should have some sort of DACA program to normalize the status of those brought here as children who’ve never lived anywhere else.
• Beyond that the law should be enforced. It should be enforce vigorously but not harshly. Admittedly, that’s a difficult line to tread.

Note that those preferences can only achieved by a) changing the law and b) enforcing the results. The opinion polls from both Gallup and Pew Research suggest that lots of Americans think pretty much the same way that I do. However, there’s certainly a spectrum of opinion.

At the extremes are two caricatures, “cartoon versions” of the parties’ positions. Those cartoon versions are:

• Republicans want no immigration.
• Democrats want open borders.

Neither description accurately characterizes most Republican or Democratic voters but each party’s rhetoric often caters to those extremes. Most people are somewhere between those poles.

The challenge that we’re facing is that both Democrats and Republicans are catering to their most extreme wings—the cartoon versions.

But this is the first point I’m trying to make. A president can move substantially toward a restrictionist immigration policy simply by enforcing existing law more aggressively. Democrats can only achieve the cartoon version of their views by not enforcing the law. Those may seem to be symmetrical strategies but they’re not. Enforcing the law strictly is the president’s job. Not enforcing the law is dereliction of duty.

My second point is this and I think it’s where I deviate most from Matt’s view. The executive branch should first faithfully enforce existing law. Once that’s happening those who want different law bear the burden of persuading Congress to enact it. If President Trump can achieve the cartoon version of policy above just by enforcing existing law, why should he change the law? Changing immigration law is Congress’s responsibility. If Democrats want a more permissive system, they should persuade Congress. If Republicans want a more restrictive system than existing law provides, they should also persuade Congress.