The End of the Immigration Reform DreamDemocrats used to talk about overhauling the country’s immigration system. Now, all they can promise is to end Trump’s abuses.
Over the past couple of decades, Democratic presidential candidates have made a habit of promising comprehensive immigration reform to woo the Latino electorate. Barack Obama vowed to pursue an expansive change of the American immigration system within the first 100 days of his administration. He then had a brief political opening to push for reform but chose to spend his considerable capital—and his majority in Congress—on health care, much to the chagrin of immigrant rights groups.
Eight years later, despite the obvious resistance of an increasingly intransigent Republican Party in Congress, Hillary Clinton pledged to push for full-fledged immigration reform within her first three months in office. It’s impossible to know whether Clinton would have kept her promise, but her plan would almost certainly have ended in disappointment. In recent years, Congress has repeatedly failed to reach a bipartisan agreement on the issue. For immigration advocates, the prospect of comprehensive reform—or a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently in the United States—now seems almost impossible.
Most of the Democratic candidates currently seeking the party’s nomination agree. Priorities have shifted. Democratic politicians seem united by the urgent need to overturn Donald Trump’s punitive enforcement policies through executive action. Gone are the promises of an ambitious legislative overhaul of the country’s immigration procedures.
Last Tuesday, Sen. Cory Booker became the third Democratic candidate to unveil a plan on immigration. Booker’s priority would be to “virtually eliminate immigration detention” in its current form. When I interviewed him in Los Angeles a couple of days later, he told me he that, as president, he would not wait for a legislative debate and would focus on changes via executive action to address what he calls the Trump administration’s “moral vandalism.” “Trump used the power of the office so I will use the power of the office on Day 1,” he told me. This approach seems to acknowledge the severity of the current gridlock. Comprehensive reform, he told me, “is very difficult now with the problem we have in Congress.” Booker’s strategy also reveals the caution with which most Democratic candidates have chosen to tackle the issue, if at all.
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