What Is the Progressive Vision for Immigration?

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When it comes to climate policy, there’s the Green New Deal. On health care, we have Medicare for All. For workers, we want union-friendly policy and a higher minimum wage. But what’s the progressive North Star on immigration policy? 

It’s not obvious. From one direction, you have the idea that used to be pushed by politicians like Bernie Sanders over the years: that immigration needs to be restricted for the benefit of domestic workers. That used to be the AFL-CIO’s position, though it’s not anymore. From the other direction, you have those who argue borders are largely a relic of a bad idea – nationalism – and that human flourishing requires the freedom to migrate to be universal, or nearly so. This week’s podcast is an interview with John Washington, the author of the provocative new book “The Case for Open Borders.” It’ll make you think, at least. 

On the show “Counter Points” today, we interviewed Squad-adjacent Rep. Greg Casar of Texas on the unfolding debacle that is this week’s congressional debate over immigration policy. After the Senate attempted to trade border policy for money for Ukraine and Israel, Donald Trump turned on the deal immediately and congressional Republicans killed it without so much as a vote. 

I put the question to Casar of what the progressive vision truly is when it comes to immigration policy, and he acknowledged there isn’t one but took a stab at articulating it. 

The gist: 

• Create a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented in order to end a two-tier society.
• Expand legal pathways to citizenship in order to end the chaos at the border and drain power from cartels.
• End sanctions and other American policies that destabilize foreign countries, which produce an exodus of migrants to our border. 
• Expand work visas so that if somebody wants to come to the U.S. to do farm or construction labor, for instance, they don’t have to come here permanently and bring their families, which they often would prefer not to do but are forced to do so by our restrictionist policy. 
• Surge resources to the asylum system so there are enough judges and attorneys to reasonably manage it.

Hard to capture all that in a slogan. And it’s also by no means a progressive consensus.  

We also talked with Casar about tomorrow’s election in Pakistan. Even as the State Department has largely shrugged off reports of flagrant abuse of the electoral process, members of Congress from both parties have been increasingly raising their voices, from both the top Republican and top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to the intel-linked Democrat Abigail Spanberger, to Squad-y members like Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Casar. 

I have a new story up at The Intercept on eight of the most flagrant violations. You have to read it to believe it. 

Casar said that he has spoken directly to the State Department about his concerns regarding American hypocrisy when it comes to Pakistani democracy and has also warned the Pakistan ambassador that existing law could be used to cut aid to Pakistan given its human rights abuses.