Bipartisan border bill would help the economy, bring migrants into the workforce

Vice President Kamala Harris’s best defense against charges that she is weak on immigration has been that she supported the bipartisan border security bill, whereas former President Donald Trump opposed it and instructed his Republican colleagues in Congress to vote against it.

After all, the bill would have provided much of what immigration hawks have been clamoring for — funding for more Border Patrol agents, a more restrictive asylum process and executive branch authority to close the border temporarily in times of emergency. 

Trump’s opposition to the bill handed Harris the chance to present herself as stronger than the former president when it comes to a law enforcement approach to the border. But she should go even further in spelling out for the American public some of the lesser-known provisions in the legislation and how she would use those buried sections to build out a coherent immigration policy.

Most of the talk about the failed bill has centered on its provisions to directly address management of the border. What’s gone largely unnoticed are the provisions that would cautiously bring more documented immigrants into the workforce. With the unemployment rate hovering near historic lows for multiple years now and a million more job openings than unemployed workers, there is strong evidence that the country needs to expand its labor force. 

With an eye toward supporting a supply of more workers but not a flood, the bipartisan bill offers the first increases in legal immigration since 1990. The legislation would add 18,000 employment-based visas each year for five years — a 13 percent increase over current caps. The bill would also permit spouses and children of highly skilled workers, as well as people who come to the U.S. on a fiancé visa, to seek work. 

Under the bill, asylum applicants would continue to have access to work visas, but that access would be limited to those whose claims are found to be strong enough to justify letting them stay in the country and continue the adjudication process under new, stricter standards.

In the wake of Congress’s initial failure to pass the bill this spring, some of these stricter asylum standards were put in place anyway by executive order. The new standards come in addition to more restrictive asylum rules the Biden administration had put in place with an earlier January 2023 executive order. Both executive actions have likely contributed to a drop in illegal border crossings over the last six months, as well as an increased number of deportations. (In fact, the Biden administration has now deported more immigrants than the Trump administration.)

Gradually opening possibilities for more authorized immigrant workers to fill holes in the labor market ultimately serves American citizens. These gaps are evident to those with firsthand knowledge of the need for more retail and restaurant workers in their communities, or the need for more services in their own lives, like child care and home nursing. 

The visa provisions in the bipartisan bill could help shift the country’s immigration discourse away from anxiety about a linkage between crime and immigration — there’s abundant data showing that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than citizens — and toward a better understanding that foreign workers are necessary for a healthy U.S. economy. Well-conceived worker visa programs mean essential jobs are filled. With more authorized workers on payrolls, the tax base improves for many localities. 

There’s a straightforward reason these visa provisions are included in a bipartisan bill whose headline concern is border security: More avenues for legal immigration can alleviate some of the migratory pressure that leads to recurrent chaos at our Southern border.

Expanding legal immigration as a tool to help establish order at the border is not a new idea. Multiple commissioners of Customs and Border Protection, appointed by presidents of both presidents, have made the point. Such an approach clearly has broad appeal, since it’s featured in the legislation, which Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) — one of the most conservative members of Congress — helped write, and which the National Border Patrol Council has endorsed. 

These bipartisan precedents for a workforce-minded immigration policy and the visa provisions in the proposed bipartisan bill together create a singular opportunity for Harris. They empower her to present the nation with a dynamic border management policy focused on the rule of law, marrying strong law enforcement at the border with carefully expanded legal immigration.

This is a winning pairing because it helps ordinary Americans see immigration not as a threat to their way of life, but as a tool to improve their lives through healthy local economies and communities that can provide the full range of needed services.

DW Gibson is the author of “14 Miles: Building the Border Wall” and research director at Ideaspace.