Editorial: Don’t surrender on immigration: Aid Ukraine without undermining welcoming newcomers

In trying to win support from recalcitrant Republicans to reform a badly broken immigration system, the Biden administration has reportedly indicated it’d be open to indefinite authorities to expel asylum seekers and a huge expansion of our already largely unaccountable detention system.

This restrictionist approach will probably be framed as a compromise, as a breath of fresh air in a hyper-polarized environment. Yet it is worth pointing out that much of what’s on the table would have been considered an ultra-extreme position a decade ago, so heavy-handed that it would have been well outside the mainstream GOP, relegated to the radical fringes.

These fringes included Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, often a lonesome voice for diehard anti-immigrant ideas at a time when conservative colleagues like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham were negotiating for a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. Sessions was known to have long and spirited discussions around shutting down immigration with his then-communications director, a young Republican agitator named Stephen Miller.

Years later, Sessions would be attorney general and Miller one of the most powerful people in the Trump White House, tasked with turning these years of discussions into policy. Miller was more or less directly responsible for that administration’s most egregious infamies, including the family separation policy. Much of what he drew up, including the Title 42 expulsion policy, is a direct predecessor to what’s now being considered.

At the time, these policies were rightly and roundly condemned by Democrats, not to mention civil libertarians, human rights groups and others. It’s dismaying to see the Biden administration now sign off on the same. Everyone agrees that we need a shift in approach to immigration, but this isn’t the way to do it.

It’s all the more embarrassing that this is all being considered as a trade for aid to Ukraine, an ally at current, dire risk of being subsumed into the imperialist ambitions of Vladimir Putin. People around the world are inspired by the tenacity of the Ukrainian population as it’s fought, for nearly two years now, to fend off the annexation effort of the despot’s armies. Admirable as their resolve is, ultimate victory is far from assured, and successes so far have been largely predicated on significant international support, including weapons and financial assistance.

Some try to tarnish globe-trotting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as some kind of narcissist basking in the limelight, but it’s clear that the fatigue-clad wartime leader would rather be at home with his troops, where he’s remained based despite pleadings from other leaders to decamp to safer locales. The reason that Zelenskyy went to Washington last week, the reason he keeps coming back and showing up at international conferences and summits is because he knows that the continued support from the world community and the United States in particular is instrumental to the war effort.

Congressional Republicans know this, and they are aware of the implications of denying Ukraine aid to score some domestic political points and implement their extreme immigration agenda. Even as the Senate works to reach a deal, the House GOP seems uninterested, because ultimately they don’t care much about the long-term implications of a Ukrainian loss. All that matters is pleasing the base.

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