To hear Sen. Joe Manchin, pro-immigrant advocates are getting way too excited over the prospect of a deal in the lame duck Congress that would allow for the legalization of two million “Dreamers,” immigrants brought illegally into the country as minors by their parents. “I don’t see any movement there,” he told a forum on the benefits of immigration hosted by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. “They think it’s weak on border security.”
Manchin’s take has constrained American policy for decades: Any attempt to ease the path for immigrants to come to the United States – whether Dreamers, workers, or asylum seekers – must be traded against a hefty investment in an impenetrable wall at the border. Otherwise, the American people won’t buy the deal. As he put it: “Unless we secure the border we are not going to be able to go forward because the political divide is so great.”
And yet, as popular as this hypothetical trade-off is on Capitol Hill, whether it can survive an encounter with the real world is less clear.
