Congressman David Price, chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, yesterday told Congress that comprehensive immigration reform should be the top national security priority for the next presidential administration. The harsh enforcement-only methods of the Bush administration, he said, are not working.

 

The illegal immigration problem cannot be solved by border security and law enforcement actions alone – I have yet to meet an experienced Border Patrol agent who believes that it can.  We are fooling ourselves if we believe that fences and worksite raids will do the trick.  Our illegal immigration is more about demand than about supply, so as long as our immigration policies are not responsive to the realities of our labor market, illegal immigration will drain our resources and distract attention from the apprehension of criminal and terrorist aliens crossing our borders and living among us.

 

The current Administration made some effort last year to promote comprehensive immigration reform, but it now seems to have turned 180 degrees toward an enforcement-only approach.  This might be interpreted as an attempt to appeal to the most hard-line anti-immigrant segment of the population, but some have painted it as an effort to drive home the need for immigration reform by inflicting pain on businesses and communities who depend on these workers.  If it really is some sort of perverse “tough medicine” policy, I find it doubly hard to understand, given the negative impacts on hardworking immigrants and their children, and because it has tradeoffs with other activities that could be helping to make our country safer.

 

Whatever the rationale, the next Administration must make immigration reform a higher priority and pursue it more effectively.  Such reform will strengthen our economy, reaffirm the rule of law, and enhance homeland security, allowing DHS to focus more effectively on that small percentage of illegal immigrants that has the capacity and the intent to commit crimes and do us harm.

Read Price's full speech here.