Abstract
The Brookings-Duke Roundtable Report obtained a difficult consensus on a wide range of mostly liberal immigration reform proposals. However, its devotion to comprehensive reform is ultimately ill-considered. Comprehensive immigration reform is not necessary except as a stratagem to make some form of substantial amnesty palatable to a majority in Congress. Such a tactic is unlikely to be successful in any case in the current political climate. Moreover, it is not desirable empirically or normatively. Empirically, any comprehensive reform that has hopes of passing will contain incoherent and contradictory components. Normatively, it is objectionable because comprehensive reform, especially of the sort endorsed by the Roundtable, will be vastly expansive. A majority of Americans are opposed to such a policy dynamic. Liberal immigration reform will be achieved at the cost of overriding public preferences. For this reason the proposed Standing Commission, a deliberate attempt to push immigration policy development out of the public arena and enhance the prospects of liberal reforms, is a bad idea.
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Notes
Extend country quotas to Western hemisphere (1976), Refugee Act (1980), IRCA (1986), Immigration Act (1990), and Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Reform Responsibility Act (1996).
The National Origins Quota Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the 1965 Amendments to the INA.
Migration Policy Institute, Independent Task Force on Immigration and America’s Future: The Roadmap, Washington, D.C.: 2005; Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Immigration Policy, Independent Task Force Report No. 63, New York: 2009.
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Freeman, G.P. Can Comprehensive Immigration Reform Be Both Liberal and Democratic?. Soc 47, 102–106 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-009-9297-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-009-9297-3