Why the GOP has spent two decades killing immigration compromises

The senators who spent four months negotiating a bipartisan compromise on border policy and security aid probably didn’t see the political freight train coming. Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who took the lead in the talks on behalf of his party, predicted last month that the bill could garner up to 70 votes in the chamber, but within hours of unveiling the legislation, it was obvious that far-right opposition was simply too great.

On Monday, the day after the text of the bill reached the public, GOP officials lined up to condemn the package in no uncertain terms. By most measures, the odds that the legislation would fail were roughly 99%.

A day later, they reached 100%. NBC News reported:

Around the same time, Sen. Chris Murphy, who took the Democratic lead in negotiating the compromise, was asked if there was still any hope for the bill. “No,” the Connecticut senator replied.

To be sure, there will probably still be a procedural vote on the legislation, which would require 60 votes to advance. Literally no one involved in the process believes it will get anywhere close to that total. On the contrary, it will struggle to get close to 50 votes.

We’ll learn soon after what policymakers intend to do next, but as the dust settles on this dramatic failure, the problem is not just that Republicans have killed a bipartisan compromise they said they wanted. Making matters worse is the fact that Republicans have killed a bipartisan compromise they said they wanted again.

McCain-Kennedy: After the 2004 elections, a bipartisan pair of longtime senators — Republican John McCain and Democrat Ted Kennedy — began work on a bipartisan immigration compromise. A version of their bill passed the Senate with strong Democratic support in 2006, before being rejected by House Republicans.

Gang of Eight: After the 2012 elections, an octet of senators — four Democrats and four Republicans — began work on another bipartisan immigration compromise. A version of their bill passed the Senate with strong Democratic support in 2013, before being rejected by House Republicans.

Trump Era: In 2018 and 2019, a variety of bipartisan compromises on immigration policy took shape on Capitol Hill, including one crafted by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin. The measures received strong Democratic support, before being rejected by Donald Trump and his White House team.

Lankford/Murphy/Sinema: As part of a radical hostage strategy, Republicans told Democrats to embrace a bipartisan compromise on immigration and border policy or the GOP would make it easier for Russia to take part of Eastern Europe by force. The resulting deal received strong Democratic support, before being rejected by Republicans in both chambers.

This last one is easily the most ridiculous. The first three of these four efforts had something important in common: Democrats agreed to tougher border security, while Republicans agreed to provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrant families already in the United States. But in this year’s effort, Democrats abandoned their own priority, giving the GOP effectively all of what it wanted in exchange for no real concessions.

Republicans killed it anyway.

It’s long been tempting to explain the GOP’s opposition by pointing to the party’s contempt for concessions: Republicans likely rejected the other compromise offers, the theory goes, because they were only prepared to accept what they wanted — and nothing else. A pathway to citizenship was so offensive to so many GOP members, it necessarily doomed the initiatives.

But this year altered the landscape in dramatic ways: Republicans didn’t have to go along with a pathway to citizenship or anything the party could credibly characterize as “amnesty.” All they had to do was say yes when Democrats agreed to meet their demands.

The fact that Republicans balked anyway leaves us with an uncomfortable but increasingly unavoidable conclusion: GOP officials keep killing meaningful solutions because they don’t want to solve the problem. Instead, they want to keep exploiting the problem for electoral gain.

The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, which tends to be closely aligned with GOP politics, asked this week, “Do Republicans want to better secure the U.S. border, or do they want to keep what has become an open sore festering for another year as an election issue?”

Does anyone seriously doubt the obvious answer to that question?