The Laken Riley Act passed 84-9 in the Senate and 251-170 in the House.

What problems will the Laken Riley Act help fix?

The acute issues at the US-Mexico border are:

1. Insufficient government capacity to process asylum applications and other requests to enter the country;
2. Limited housing, school capacity, and medical services for migrants.

The first issue could be addressed by adding staff to process applications;  the second by helping would-be Americans settle in areas where there is adequate housing supply, school capacity, etc. The latter is a real issue. Even if money were no object, there are material limits on the goods and services that can be provided to people seeking them.  There are finite number of homes, schools, doctors and nurses, etc. and additional ones can’t be created immediately on demand.  Infrastructure takes time to build.  It takes time for people to learn the skills that make them capable professionals.  Exceed the capacity of the system and it breaks down.  With that in mind, fewer people might seek to immigrate if the quality of life in their home country was more favorable, e.g., better economic and educational opportunities, less authoritarian government and/or social environment, lower crime. Towards that end, foreign aid to the countries that people are leaving might be helpful.

The Laken Riley Act addresses none of these things. One thing it will do however is deprive some people of due process based on their immigration status. Nothing good will come of that. Overall, it is a cynical, hateful piece of legislation. I thanked my Senators and Congressman for voting No.  (The motivation for this post were the Yes votes from craven Senate Democrats.)

Our community welcomes new neighbors and most of us are fine with some change, but communities have a finite capacity for growth before growth becomes disruptive.  Most of us are also quite willing to provide resources to other communities when they’re trying to lift themselves up, but our resources are finite.  Acknowledging preferences and limitations doesn’t prevent us from doing good.  We have goodwill and the capacity to help people who fear for their and their families’ well-being in their home community.  Let’s figure out how best to help them and get about doing so.

References:

• Text of the bill
• Time, What’s in the Laken Riley Act?
• Nicole Narea, America’s misunderstood border crisis, in 8 charts
• RAND Corporation, The Crisis at the Border: A Primer for Confused Americans

Either people specify what they mean when they say “elite” or the term is just meaningless pejorative. Both parties are dominated by elites in any conventional sense of what that means!  The question is: Why are right-wing elites more palatable to voters than liberal ones?

-Jamelle Bouie

My guess is that if you asked voters analogous questions a generation ago, there wouldn’t have been much, if any, correlation but this is the world we live in now.