We need leadership on immigration. Will Joni Ernst or other Iowans meet the moment?

The number of people seeking to enter the United States, especially from the south, has never been higher. America needs new border policies and more resources.

Republicans are not wrong about that. But they belie their cries of national crisis if they're unwilling to work with Democrats to craft solutions.

Step one is leadership in Washington, D.C., to work out new policies and appropriations. News reports indicate some senators from both parties, including Iowa’s Joni Ernst, have been demonstrating such leadership. Many other elected officials and candidates for office are actively thwarting solutions. But with Congress’ narrow margins, individual House Republicans possess leverage. Any single member of the Iowa delegation, looking out for our state’s well-being, could help make the difference between an untenable status quo and real improvement.

The practical consequences of hundreds of thousands of people crossing the border each month are many and momentous. Demands for housing and other services have spiked throughout the country. More granularly, a Denver hospital says migrants not paying for visits meant the unpaid care that doctors provide rose by $10 million in a year. A New York high school was shut down for a day so that migrants had a place to sleep during a storm. President Joe Biden has been slow to treat the crisis with urgency, raising the stakes for what happens next.

What’s happening in Congress

House Republicans passed an impractical Secure the Border Act last spring. Their negotiating position is that only that bill can fix anything. But analysts have correctly criticized its myopic focus on physical barriers, and the White House said it “does nothing to address the root causes of migration, reduces humanitarian protections, and restricts lawful pathways, which are critical alternatives to unlawful entry.” Further, Democrats control the Senate and the presidency, and Speaker Mike Johnson’s Republican House majority has shrunk to as small as a couple of votes in recent weeks, putting his party in no position to draw lines in the sand if members want to get anything done.

It appears, though, that getting nothing done is exactly what Johnson, former President Donald Trump and others want. They’ve pilloried an imaginary bipartisan Senate immigration bill (imaginary because senators are still negotiating its details) and indicated that they’re satisfied to wait indefinitely on both border policy and aid for Ukraine. Instead, the House is concentrating on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, an action that will not change conditions at the border. Trump says he wants negative headlines about suffering tied to immigration to last until the presidential election in November. It’s the very worst of politics: cynicism that cares not about suffering but only about who gets blamed for it.

News reports about the Senate negotiations suggest a proposal that includes authority to more swiftly reject people's entry into the country but is also more thoughtful about such vital pieces of the puzzle as expedited asylum proceedings. More reports were trickling out Saturday. Johnson and other Republicans have delivered unserious responses to those reports, such as suggesting that there should be “zero illegal crossings” in a day.

Secure-the-border obsession ignores labor shortages

Those ideas, and plans like Trump’s for mass-scale deportations if he becomes president again, build from the false premise that the United States is unequivocally worse off for having migrants move here. The hard-line Republican policies represent a logistical and humanitarian nightmare whose best-case outcome is that the country is left with a breathtaking labor shortage.

That last part isn’t Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blathering. Take it from a member of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ Cabinet, Iowa Finance Authority and Economic Development Authority director Debi Durham: “What we have to do is attract people,” she said at a Business Record event last month. “By the year 2030 we'll have our first county in Iowa that the minority will be the majority population. I am in communities of all sizes two to three days a week, and I will guarantee you I do not see diversity around decision-making tables in those communities. So that's got to change.”

The country needs better management of the flow of people seeking opportunity that’s not available in their home countries. It doesn’t need to pretend it can completely stop that flow.

Amid the din, a reasonable voice can stand out

Iowa’s most senior elected officials, unfortunately, are mostly participating in that fantasy. Reynolds was scheduled to be in Texas today with other Republican governors who have declared that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is right to challenge the federal government’s border agents in response to an “invasion” of his state. Attorney General Brenna Bird was the lead author on a letter to Biden and Mayorkas that, to be fair, included more substance before concluding, “Until you reverse the policies that tell people they will be rewarded for their attempts to violate American immigration law, your Administration engenders the very human misery it purports to oppose.” In Congress, all four Iowa representatives supported the Secure the Border Act, and Sen. Chuck Grassley seems content to post on X, “PAST TIME 2ENFORCE OUR NATIONS LAWS.”

That leaves Ernst. The Hill reported Jan. 25, citing senators it did not name, that Ernst “asked colleagues who have endorsed Trump to intercede with the Republican presidential front-runner and ask that he hold off on criticizing the emerging deal.” Asked for an update after another week of developments, Ernst released a statement through her office: “It’s clear we have a border crisis that is only getting worse. While President Biden refuses to address it, the Senate is working to reverse his failed policies.”

It doesn’t take much to stand out as a more reasonable voice on this topic. This approach from Ernst meets at least that standard. If senators do produce a bipartisan bill, Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn and Randy Feenstra all have the capability, given their party’s narrow majority, to change the landscape by publicly standing up for better conditions for migrants and the communities that welcome them, and for new workers and families for Iowa.

Reynolds sent state troopers and soldiers to Texas last year, purportedly to help defend the border. If there's a next trip, perhaps they could serve our state better by bringing some new Iowans home with them.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register editorial board

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register's editorial board: Carol Hunter, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa delegation must work with Democrats on border solutions