Rarely in our time do good politics and good policies intersect–what is good for the country is often bad for one of the parties and this is how most good ideas in Washington die. With talks of new immigration reform legislation, however, Congress has an opportunity to work on a bipartisan basis for the benefit of both Republicans and Democrats, and more importantly, the people they represent.
This past November, Republicans got a shellacking as 70% of Hispanic and Asian voters favored President Obama. Naturally, Republicans went into a tailspin trying to assess what exactly went wrong the answer to this problem isn’t hard to find.
The party platform has been undeniably hostile toward immigrants and no amount of tokenism like nominating Marco Rubio or any other minority for high office is going to sway this bloc of voters toward the Republican tent. This strategy undermines the intelligence of the voters who are being courted and such an attempt to appeal to immigrant voters could very well backfire.
If the Republican Party champions immigration reform, it could be the first step in a rebranding that they desperately need and claim to want. This would require not only a consensus of Republicans in Congress, especially in the House, to vote for a bill, but also to co-sponsor and be instrumental in crafting it. So far, this has been the case.
For Democrats, achieving substantive immigration reform would be a necessary step in proving to the country as a whole that they can deliver on the agenda they have been elected to enact. After failing to pass immigration reform in the 110th Congress and again during Obama’s first term, this is a credibility test for the Democratic Party.
It is difficult to say what exactly what the end result would look like, but reform will rely primarily upon changes in border security, employer enforcement, and providing a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants.
There will be many who are hesitant to grant a perceived amnesty to illegal immigrants already in the country, but Obama has already proven himself tough on the issue, as his administration has deported a record number of illegal immigrants each year he has been in office. In 2012 alone, there were over 400,000 deportations–55% of which were convicted criminals.
Reaching a deal will undoubtedly require compromise and much debate, but it would not be naïve to think that comprehensive reform will be reached even in a divided Congress.
This reform is geared toward allowing those who want to contribute to society by joining the military, getting an education or opening a business to do so and an overwhelming majority of polls show that Americans support such reform.
Perhaps the biggest misconception about immigration in the U.S. is that it is a Hispanic issue. Simply put, this is far from the truth, especially as Asian immigrants now outnumber Hispanic immigrants.
Far from being an issue about Hispanic or Asian voters, this is something that affects all Americans. Sensible immigration policy has been a large part of the reason America’s success as it has produced the world’s largest economy and welcomed the world’s best entrepreneurs generation after generation. We have a history with welcoming people to our country and allowing them to innovate and start businesses and this is as true now as ever.
In an age of globalization and international competition as well high unemployment and deficits, fixing the broken immigration system is more important now than ever.
For some time, Washington has played a zero-sum game with itself, which has been seen repeatedly with the debt-ceiling fiasco in 2011 and the fiscal cliff nonsense during the new year. But there is an opportunity for a win-win-win solution between Republicans, Democrats and the best interest of the country that cannot be wasted.
This is an opportunity to change the dysfunction in Washington that Americans so desperately want and to implement forward-looking legislation that the country undoubtedly needs. Congress does have a habit of making the sensible become absurd and diverting its attention from important issues toward the trivial. This is the best opportunity for Congress to act based upon consensus and toward the betterment of the country’s interests–let’s hope they don’t screw it up.
Ross Fogg is a College junior from Fayetteville, Ga.
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