In exchange for approving more aid to Ukraine, congressional Republicans want Democrats to agree to dramatically limit the options migrants have to claim asylum from the United States and to ramp up detention and deportation of migrants.
President Biden is seriously considering it.
For the past several weeks, congressional negotiators have been trying to come to an agreement linking these issues, along with aid to Israel. Biden said last week he was “willing to make significant compromises” to “fix the broken border system.”
But when it comes to immigration, those compromises would be mainly coming from one side. The longtime reason for congressional gridlock on immigration is that Democrats traditionally insist tougher border measures be paired with an agreement to legalize the status for unauthorized immigrants already living here. Democrats now know they can’t get that from today’s GOP, but they may agree to restrictionist measures anyway.
Why the change?
In part, it’s to get the Ukraine aid, a top priority for Biden and the foreign policy establishment. ”The fate of the world — the fate of Ukraine and Israel — hangs in the balance,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), urging a deal. (Politico’s Ryan Lizza characterized this as immigration reformers’ longtime priorities being “traded away and replaced with Biden’s foreign aid priorities.”)
But it’s also because more and more Democrats have grown uncomfortable with the border and asylum situation in the Biden years, which have featured a dramatic surge in border crossings and asylum requests.
Conservatives have long argued that far too many people are coming in far too chaotically, and some Democrats — blue-city mayors, blue-state governors, and swing staters eyeing reelection — have started to agree. They view it as both a substantive mess and a political liability, and they are weary of holding out for a legalization deal that seems vanishingly unlikely to happen anytime…
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