It’s often said — particularly by pundits who eschew so-called identity politics that focus on themes of justice, democracy, equality, and the like — that elections are driven by kitchen table issues. It’s the economy, right, stupid?
Well, here’s an economic reality to ponder: As we head into summer, many businesses in New England and beyond face the crushing reality of an ongoing labor shortage.
According to the US Chamber of Commerce, there are 4 million more job openings across the country than available workers to fill them. One major driving factor, according to the business group, is America’s broken immigration system.
It’s not just affecting your favorite haunts in Cambridge, or seaside inns and recreational businesses in shore towns on the Cape and Islands. The labor shortage is hitting manufacturing facilities, the health care sector, and even high tech industries.
As an election year issue, the measure announced by President Biden on Tuesday to ease the path to legal residency, work permits, and citizenship for as many as 500,000 undocumented spouses of Americans who have been in the country for a decade or more lands directly on kitchen tables across America. The executive order not only makes moral sense — it eliminates the current requirement that such residents return to their home countries first to apply, and risk extended or permanent separation from their American families in the process — it’s also good business. The faster these folks can get legally employed, pay taxes, alleviate the labor shortage, and help further boost the economy, the better.
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Biden’s move follows another executive order earlier this year to restrict eligibility for asylum seekers. Since that measure went into effect, the number of daily crossings at the southern border dropped from 4,300 in April to 2,100 as of Monday, according to the US Customs and Border Protection Services.
Biden noted that the newest measure for American spouses applies only to immigrants who already have the legal right to seek the protections. But “it doesn’t tear families apart, while still requiring every eligible applicant to fulfill their requirements under the law,” Biden said.
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Win-win, right? Don’t tell that to Republicans, such as former president Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller, who called the measure “unconstitutional amnesty” and vowed legal challenges to stop it from being enforced. Similar challenges against other executive orders, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for Dreamers, have kept applicants in a legal limbo for years as courts wrangle over the authority of the White House to change immigration policy without legislation.
It’s true that our nation’s immigration laws and policies fall squarely within the purview of Congress. Everything from the Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause to longstanding Supreme Court precedent makes clear that lawmakers in Washington have plenary power over immigration — meaning they make the rules about whether foreign nationals can enter and remain in the country, when, and how.
But here’s the reality: It shouldn’t be up to the president to, once again, use the lever of executive action to implement common-sense policy changes that help Americans. Congress has had every opportunity to pass laws that would do that and much, much more — from securing the border to boosting our national security, easing red tape for legal residents, and overhauling the asylum system.
And in an election year, when polls consistently show strong and broadening bipartisan support for immigration reform, passing such measures should have been a no-brainer. There was even hope for a breakthrough in January, when a bipartisan group of senators floated an immigration reform bill that had, at least for a time, the blessing of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.
Until it didn’t. Trump made clear that he would rather use the issue of immigration as a fearmongering tool to help claw his way back to power than to actually help Americans.
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And Republicans, including McConnell, blindly followed their leader.
Will the challenges against this measure be as effective as past legal attacks? It’s unclear. But what we do know is if Republicans spent as much time, money, and energy on actually crafting and passing effective immigration reform legislation as they’ve spent on legal challenges of executive orders, perhaps they wouldn’t have had to resort to such cynical political pandering. Perhaps they would have a better record to run on, since polls consistently show immigration as a top issue for voters who will head to the polls in November. And maybe the economy would work that much better for all of us.
But don’t expect that to sway those who say “economic anxiety” keeps them in Trump’s corner. That anxiety is less a reflection of dollars and cents and more of a visceral — and very much identity-driven — sense of who should get a full shot at the American dream and who shouldn’t. That’s what Trump is counting on.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at kimberly.atkinsstohr@globe.com. Follow her @KimberlyEAtkins.
