West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (D) gave an interview to Fox last week covering a range of topics, including illegal immigration and amnesty.
Regarding the inclusion of amnesty in the reconciliation bill, Manchin said
I'm not going to vote to overrule the Parliamentarian, and I've always said that...I'm not going to do that, and they [the other Senators] all know that.
The Senate Parliamentarian has already rejected amnesty in the reconciliation bill.
Manchin continues:
If the people who are here working are allowed to continue to work and help our economy, and help their family and help all of us benefit from it, I [support it].
For us to be even talking about immigration without border security is ludicrous. I've told them, the average person turns on the TV and sees what's going on on the border. And that basically scares the bejesus out of an awful lot of people. If they [the migrants] think they can come and get all the benefits that the citizens of America are entitled to, they're going to continue to come. So, no, I don't think so.
Border security in 2013, the bill that we did, we tried to have a pathway to citizenship to take care of our Dreamers -- which I have a lot of compassion for. I would love to do something for people, even if they came wrong... Pay your fine, get in line. You won't be jumping the line, but nobody becomes a citizen until the border is declared secure.
I have basically two reactions to this:
First, I continue to be astounded by the lack of sophistication of immigration advocates -- the NILC, fwd.us, the SPLC and the Immigration Hub -- in understanding the politics of amnesty. Did they really think that Joe Manchin would cave or the Senate Parliamentarian would let amnesty slip into the reconciliation package? Did they not understand that open borders and amnesty are two diametrically opposed objectives, that signing on to the former would doom the latter? Did no one think to do some basic due diligence and talk to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema before endorsing the flood at the southwest border? I struggle to understand how such DC insiders could be so naïve or unprepared.
Second, border security is problematic. I sense that the political right has become disillusioned with the prospects for successful border enforcement, in part because we have argued that a black market cannot be resolved with an enforcement-based approach. (I will have a separate note on this.) That means that the left has nothing to trade for amnesty. If the right believes that Democrats will be unwilling to enforce the border -- as is the case now -- or unable to enforce the border for whatever reason, then conservatives really have no incentive to vote for amnesty beyond human decency. Given that the Biden administration has now weaponized migrant flows, this compassion for the long-term undocumented may be a long time in coming. Once again, the lack of sophistication in understanding the politics of amnesty is just astounding.
If the left has any hopes of getting a material amnesty passed this decade, they had better start taking a hard look at a market-based approach. That is the only one which will close the southwest border to to illegal immigration while at the same time not only offering, but requiring, legal status for long-term undocumented residents.