Republicans Against Border Enforcement

The United States has had a porous border with Mexico for decades, and the situation has worsened in the past few years, with more than 10,000 people entering the U.S. on some days. Many then remain for years, even without a visa or citizenship. Mayors, governors, and immigration experts — as well as voters — have long urged Congress to fix the problem.

This week, a bipartisan group of senators released a plan for doing so. And for anybody who has grown cynical about Washington, the plan offered reasons for both surprise and further cynicism.

The surprising part is that productive bipartisanship seems to be alive, even on an issue as divisive as immigration. A wide range of experts say that the Senate plan — negotiated by James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican; Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat; and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent — would strengthen border security and reduce illegal immigration.

The measure has the support of business lobbying groups as well as the organization representing the mayors of every U.S. city with a population above 30,000. The labor union for border-patrol agents, which endorsed Donald Trump in 2020, supports the plan. So do the editorial boards of The Washington Post, which leans left, and The Wall Street Journal, which is deeply conservative.

“This doesn’t fix everything,” Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, told me, “but it goes a long way to creating an institutional structure that makes sense.”

What, then, is the cause for further cynicism about Washington partisanship? Despite the bill’s bipartisan roots and all the praise it’s received, its chances of passage look slim.