Pierre M. Atlas: Congress has dodged doing its job on immigration

Debates over immigration policy are as old as the United States itself.

Throughout American history, Congress played the central role in defining and redefining who can come to the United States, who can or cannot remain, and how immigrants can become American citizens.

Today, we are witnessing the use of extreme and sometimes deadly force wielded by masked and seemingly unrestrained federal agents in American cities, tasked with filling arbitrary and unrealistic deportation quotas set by the executive branch. The majority of Americans support the Trump administration’s policies at the border that have vastly reduced unauthorized crossings. But a majority also opposes its often-draconian policies in the country’s interior.

The Trump administration has been able to take such drastic actions largely because Congress has abdicated its traditional — and constitutional — role in designing and overseeing immigration policy.

The last major, comprehensive immigration acts passed by Congress were in 1986 and 1990, during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

The Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Act granted amnesty to about 3 million immigrants who were in the country without legal documentation, established employer sanctions for hiring such workers and created the W-9 form for work authorization. The 1990 Immigration Act created temporary protected status for asylum seekers, prioritized employment-based immigration by creating the H1-B skilled visa, enhanced family reunification and removed homosexuality as a “health-based exclusion” for immigration. Both bills had strong bipartisan support.

Laws are designed to address problems, but sometimes they create unanticipated problems of their own. That’s why Congress needs to revise legislation from time to time. For example, some elements of the 1990 immigration law were modified or tightened in 1996 in a bill signed by President Clinton.

In recent years, however, it seems Congress has prioritized partisan point-scoring over working together to pass effective legislation.

The Biden administration’s immigration policy, which sought to undo controversial policies from the first Trump administration, created its own problems, including a massive influx of unauthorized migrants. The Democratic-led Senate proposed a stop-gap immigration bill in May 2024, but it was ill-timed. It came too late in the administration’s term, and it was an election year. Once it became clear the bill would have enough Republican votes to pass, candidate Trump demanded Republicans withdraw their support so immigration would remain front and center for the presidential campaign. It worked: Immigration was a key issue that returned Trump to the White House.

The most recent attempt at truly comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform was back in 2013, with Senate Bill 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, which passed the Senate with a whopping majority of 68-32. Its Republican co-sponsors included Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and John McCain. It was supported by both the immigrants’ rights community and the business sector.

President Obama was ready to sign it, but when it was sent to the House of Representatives, Republican Speaker John Boehner refused to allow a vote, making the bill dead on arrival.

What was in SB 744?

As demanded by Senate Republicans, the bill placed border security and workplace enforcement first, with enhanced funding. It addressed all categories of immigration, legal and illegal, as well as the process for becoming a citizen. Unauthorized immigrants meeting specific criteria and paying fines had a pathway to citizenship that would take about 13 years.

Would all the provisions of SB 744 be politically viable today? Perhaps not. But one way to begin a serious discussion on immigration reform would be for Congress to dust off this bill and give it a second look.•

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Atlas, a political scientist, is a senior lecturer at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Indianapolis. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Indiana University. Send comments to [email protected].

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