Consultants warn DEMs not to talk about immigration. Maybe that's a sign that the policies need to change.

Publicly, not one single Democrat in Congress has opposed the reconciliation amnesty, but the media is starting to report a behind-the-scenes freak out.

"Immigration is by far the most volatile issue in the House," Politico reports:

"At least three Latino Democrats have threatened to oppose any social spending bill that doesn't include immigration policy.

"But a much larger group of moderates - including many of the caucus's most vulnerable members - have said they would tank the bill if contentious immigration provisions are included."

"Moderates are now expressing serious concerns that could threaten progress on the reconciliation package," Punchbowl adds. "They're privately griping about immigration provisions that may be added to the $1-trillion plus proposal."

Speaker Pelosi names immigration as one of three issues holding up reconciliation in the House.

Go to your action board to keep the pressure on.

Who's Afraid of Higher Wages?

The immigration framework drafted by the House for the budget reconciliation bill would short-circuit that progress. The framework includes work permits for 8 million people who are in the country illegally, creates new exemptions for annual limits on new green cards, and throws in a bonus of more than half a million permanent work permits for foreign workers. The labor impacts are a feature of the expansionist vision, not a bug.

Pamela Denise Long makes an unapologetic appeal for immigration policies that don't harm Black Americans:

"From engineering to medicine to nursing to manual labor, the United States has a history of cultivating and seeking talent from foreign countries - while surveilling, incarcerating, and traumatizing its own Black population. Over and over, legal and illegal immigration has been tied to a decrease in the wages and employment rate of Black Americans.

"This is not to suggest that we ignore our responsibilities to immigrants or to the desperate and destitute of countries around the world, especially those whom U.S. policy has negatively impacted. But it is to point out the fact that in a labor market that is increasingly inhospitable to the lower classes and has never been made to work for Black Americans, our country sometimes seems to prefer to offer its bounty to others."

In a podcast with Andrew Sullivan, John McWhorter dreams of "a society that shepherds [Black men] into getting steady and remunerative work."

"If we did that," he says, "wake up 25 years from now and the whole way we talk about race would be transformed. And so many people who are Black would be doing ok. That the notion that this is a permanently racist society would sound like something that a few crazy intellectuals like to say. That's what I would like to see."

Sullivan argues to do so, we need to rebalance the economic rewards of a college education vs. a career in "doing things that people need."

"...which would mean thinking about things that, you know, Trump even talked about: a little bit of maybe trade protectionism, what about restriction of immigration to stop this constant downward push of labor costs because you're constantly competing against people who are prepared to work for nothing, basically."

As for the argument that we need mass immigration to solve a "labor shortage"? Sullivan says:

"Here's an idea: raise the wages you are offering! Any attempt to restrain mass immigration in an economy that has been based on cheap, migrant, often illegal labor for so long will result in temporary labor shortages (although it's now mixed up with Covid-related travel restrictions and supply-chain issues). There are still large numbers of American citizens out of the workforce, and unemployed. Paying them a decent wage before you import cheap, exploitable, illegal labor used to be a priority of the old left. Not so much, it seems, anymore."

In his latest column for Havasu News, Joe Guzzardi threw in his own two cents regarding immigration when it comes to upcoming elections. He keyed in on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and her response to Living United for Change in Arizona, a group of students who followed her into a restroom and recorded her.

"Instead of ducking the agitators, Sinema could have given them a brief review of immigration law, which clearly states that unlawfully present aliens are subject to immediate removal, that deferred action isn't law but was created through presidential executive action, and that she was elected to represent all Arizonans' interests, not just the alien lobby."

Sinema is up for re-election in 2024 and focusing on immigration, an important topic in a state close to the southern border, will be an important factor for her to retain her seat.

Eleven Republican Senators, including Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, voiced their disagreement with the Biden administration's proposed plan to give migrants separated at the border during the Trump administration $450,000 per person ($1 million cap per family.)

"Rewarding illegal immigration with financial payments runs counter to our laws and would only serve to encourage more lawlessness at our border," Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and 10 other Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote, according to The Wall Street Journal. "To that end, I ask that your administration refuse to issue any settlement payments for aliens who broke our laws."

Who knew that open borders would...

Nick Miroff reports that Southwest border encounters are at an all-time high, interior enforcement is at a ten-year low, illegal presence in the United States is no longer enough to warrant removal, and new restrictions on workplace enforcement against illegal workers are going into effect.

Ross Douthat says the shift away from enforcement "creates extra incentives for [border] surges to happen under Democratic presidents."

Joseph Chamie says Democrats shouldn't be surprised:

"Irrespective of one's views about offering a pathway to U.S. citizenship to unauthorized migrants, it should be clear that doing so sends a clear message to others who may consider illegal immigration in the future. Basically, it says that it doesn't matter whether you are residing in the country legally or illegally, because eventually the government will permit you to stay and provide a pathway to citizenship."

Peggy Noonnan echoes Chamie and goes one step further:

"Does Mr. Biden right now know where the center is? The White House gives no indication of adopting policies that will ease their problems. Illegal immigration is a daily and growing crisis, but what remedies can they seize on? As a party, during the 2020 primary, the Democrats came out for functionally open borders. They're stuck unless they change."

Nolan Rappaport digs into the drop off in the number of criminal aliens taken into custody but his bottom line is this:

"Biden's interim guidelines severely impede ICE's efforts to arrest aliens who pose a threat to public safety - and the final guidelines will too."

...be so unpopular?

David Shor tells Ezra Klein that Democrats continue to be vulnerable on immigration. Obama was careful to appeal to border-minded people (and ran against amnesty McCain); Romney helped Obama by being hesitant on the issue; Trump crushed Clinton on immigration but didn't focus on the issue in his losing campaign against Biden. Klein points out that Shor isn't the first to arrive at this conclusion:

"...David Simas, the director of opinion research on Obama's 2012 campaign, recalled a focus group of non-college, undecided white women on immigration. It was a 90-minute discussion, and the Obama campaign made all its best arguments. Then they went around the table. Just hearing about the issue pushed the women toward Mitt Romney. The same process then played out in reverse with shipping jobs overseas. Even when all of Romney's best arguments were made, the issue itself pushed the women toward Obama. The lesson the Obama team took from that was simple: Don't talk about immigration."

Freddie deBoer responds to Ezra's piece on Shor and questions whether the future of the Democratic Party can be discussed in the current environment given that so many within the coalition (he specifically mentions Democrats who are "skeptical about mass immigration" are shouted down by a privileged power base that leaves no room for dissent.

David Leonhardt laments that Democrats often pick the wrong fights:

"On immigration, some Democrats have become uncomfortable talking about almost any deportations or border security; most Americans, by contrast, favor immigration enforcement..."

Sullivan is less sanguine:

"We don't like to confront this ugly reality. But the moral hazard of easing the path of migrants into the US, and showing the rightful level of compassion and care, is that it incentivizes many more to come. And indeed the Biden administration was warned by both the Mexican and Panamanian governments, and by their own experts, that ending "Remain in Mexico" would trigger a flood of new migrants, because they knew if they could just get to the other side of the border, the odds of being deported are increasingly small. Biden ended the policy anyway....

"...the immigration debate reflects an elite that simply cannot imagine why most normal citizens think that enforcing a country's borders is not an exercise in white supremacist violence, but a core function of any basic government."

Other recommended reads:

• "Our history of ambivalent and half-hearted enforcement of immigration laws - embraced and institutionalized by the Biden administration - has many costs," Krikorian says. "Among those who bear the costs are often migrants themselves."
• The resettlement program for Iraqis turned out to be a fraud-ridden mess, Paul Nachman demonstrates, how will a large-scale Afghan program be different?
• West Virginians can ill-afford an amnesty. What will Manchin do?
• The debate over water in the southwest is missing immigration. Local growth controls won't work without reducing immigration.
• Immigration arrests fell to lowest level in more than a decade during fiscal 2021.

Thank you for all that you do.