So much for unity.

On January 15th, the Los Angeles Times reported that the incoming Biden administration

plans to send a groundbreaking legislative package to Congress to address the long-elusive goal of immigration reform, including what’s certain to be a controversial centerpiece: a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants who are in the country without legal status, according to immigrant rights activists in communication with the Biden-Harris transition team.

This is as expected. I have written on any number of occasions that an incoming Democratic administration might be expected to propose and successfully pass not only legislation resolving the DACA issue, but also a larger amnesty. The Republicans' bungling of the Georgia Senate elections makes it that much easier.

The matter of DACA is straight-forward. Those in the program are Americans in all but name. The issue should have been addressed during the Trump administration. It will be resolved now.

More interesting is the case of long-term undocumented residents. Beyond those in the DACA program, perhaps five million illegal immigrants have resided in the US for at least fifteen years. The case for normalizing the status of these 'common law' residents is sound, even from the conservative perspective. If we are not going to deport them -- and we are not in any great numbers -- then they should be given status to better maintain order in society, even absent humanitarian considerations.

But 11 million is a big number, likely requiring cross-aisle cooperation. What sort of incentive is being dangled to conservatives for their support?

As it turns out, nothing.

Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center and its Immigrant Justice Fund, told the LA Times that the Biden administration would offer no additional enforcement measures to Republicans. “This notion concerning immigration enforcement and giving Republicans everything they kept asking for … was flawed from the beginning,” she said. Lorella Praeli, an immigrant and longtime activist in contact with the Biden team, added in the same article that the proposed legislation “will not seek to trade immigration relief for enforcement, and that’s huge.”

If the proposed immigration legislation is intended to promote unity and heal the country, one can hardly wonder what a divisive initiative would look like. The Biden proposal is in-your-face and all about payback. After the crude and dehumanizing treatment of illegal immigrants by the Trump administration, this is hardly surprising. But it is not constructive. President Biden will brand himself with the US electorate in the next ten days, establishing in the public's mind whether he really intends unity or whether he was just selling a bait-and-switch line. Unity may be an anachronistic notion a week from today.

This would be a pity, because the immigration initiative -- as well as many others -- can be couched in conservative, as well as progressive, terms.

Illegal immigration to the US from Mexico is an unintended (but easily foreseen) by-product of the Hart-Celler Nationality and Immigration Act of 1965. The act catalyzed a black market in migrant labor with a corresponding incentive for illegal immigrants to settle permanently in the US. This legislative framework needs to be replaced with modern legislation which acknowledges market forces at the border and provides a sound and sustainable means for allowing labor to flow back and forth in ways which meet conservative criteria. Specifically, such a program must acknowledge and collect from migrants the market value of the right to work in the US. This is the only way to effectively close the unsecured southwest border to illegal immigration: by monetizing the value of illegal entry and allowing background-checked migrants to pay that amount to the US government in return for on-demand entry to work.

But this is not enough. As a corollary to this approach, the domestic black market for migrant labor must be drained. That is, if legal migrants pay an entry fee but can work off the books easily in the US, then they will have an incentive to 'go dark' and join the existing US black market in migrant labor. Therefore, currently undocumented workers must be either legalized or deported. As I have written, undocumented immigrants who do not otherwise commit crimes already have amnesty in all but name. We are not going to deport them. Therefore, closing the southwest border to illegal immigration requires normalizing the status of undocumented workers already here. This is not a gift, a concession or woolly niceness, but rather a necessary requirement for unwinding 55 years of bad public policy. Providing legal status to 11 million undocumented residents is an integral part of creating functional migrant worker policy — even for conservatives.

By contrast, couching the matter in terms of being humane and kind, as Biden's activists have, is divisive and counter-productive. By framing the issue as us-versus-them -- nice Democrats versus mean Republicans -- the Biden administration is setting up immigration legislation as a win-or-lose test of strength based on party loyalties, rather than as a necessary modernization of law to meet requirements across the ideological spectrum.

This in turn guarantees that 11 million people will not receive legal status. At least some Republican Senators are likely to sign up for DACA legislation, and perhaps a few will vote for allowing long-time undocumented residents to receive legal status of some sort. Notwithstanding, a blanket amnesty appears highly implausible. Not even the Democrats are likely to offer such largess.

More likely, any amnesty will cover between two and six million people. That is what activists like Hincapié and Praeli are advocating as a practical matter: an important but ultimately incomplete win. By implication, however, 5-8 million undocumented residents will remain just that. And not for a year or two, but given the difficulty with which the US Congress births immigration legislation, for a generation or more. By framing the issue in partisan terms, the Biden administration's acolytes are guaranteeing that the suffering of millions of undocumented residents will persist for decades to come. Worse than that, the horrors of illegal crossing into the US will remain, as will exploitation of migrants by US employers. And many Americans will resent, indeed hate, those granted -- and granting -- amnesty and continue to look down upon Mexicans and Central Americans as, to use Trump's words, "bringing drugs, crime and rapists" to the US. If the black market is allowed to persist, these notions will thrive, and they will have some basis in reality, for black markets around the world inevitably bring crime in other forms.

Nor does it solve matters which will be on President Biden's desk early Thursday morning. ABC News reports that a migrant caravan 7500 strong is heading through Guatemala towards the Mexican, and ultimately US, border. Sooner or later, they will force the president's hand. Is the border now open to all comers? Or will President Biden resort to some part of the Trump playbook to keep the migrants out? Well-meaning activists will do nothing but make these crowds larger and more frequent.

On the other hand, the prospect of a market-based solution would disband this group in short order. These migrants are pushing forward because they need work and there is no legal means for them to enter the US for jobs open and waiting for them. Provide a legal means of entry -- at a market price -- and the need for caravans disappears because Central Americans can work in the US whenever they like. Rather than using volume constraints, which the soldiers in the picture literally embody, the US would be using the price constraints which create order, peace and stability in markets across the globe.

President Biden has called for unity and national healing. I take him at his word and believe this reflects his intentions. Nevertheless, the default setting in Congress -- and perhaps throughout the electorate -- is narrow-minded partisanship. If we are to successfully navigate contentious issues like illegal immigration, the Biden administration will require wider vision, one which considers not only the liberal, but also the conservative, perspective. In illegal immigration, as with a number of other policy topics, both liberals and conservatives need a law which serves the range of ideological interests better than the incumbent solution. This in turn requires greater sophistication in economic and stakeholder analysis, strategy, structuring and communication. Activists have their role, but passing comprehensive immigration reform will require more than that.