Time for Trump and Congress to reset immigration policy

OPINION:

If our politics were not irreparably broken, President Trump’s efforts to secure the border and deport illegal immigrants would be the opening act of a bipartisan, generational agreement on how best to deal with immigration.

At the moment, about 50 million people in the United States were born elsewhere. That’s about 15% of the population, about the same percentage as there was in 1924, when Congress passed and the president signed into law the Immigration Act of 1924. That law essentially stopped immigration into the United States from most of the planet and provided for very strict quotas from most European nations.

Then, Congress was concerned that the nation was not able to properly assimilate the surge of immigrants and address the suppression of wages created and accelerated by the presence of those immigrants. Any of that sound familiar? Keep in mind, 100 years ago, assimilation was occurring in a nation at the height of its confidence in its own manifest destiny.

Our current capacity to assimilate immigrants has been retarded and complicated by elements of our society that see the United States as a defective nation with a corrosive and destructive history. How much greater is the necessity for us to pause and reset immigration and emphasize assimilation into the United States than it was in 1924?

Moreover, as the sponsors of the 1924 law understood clearly, the very best social and economic policy for workers and families is a tight labor market. It cannot be accidental that purchasing power had impressive gains in the 40 years after the enactment of the 1924 law. It is also probably not accidental that purchasing power started to tail off only after the percentage of foreign-born people in the United States increased (from less than 5% in 1970) in the wake of the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. That law, which abolished the national origin quota system, has led us, intentionally or otherwise, into our current situation.

The good news is that Mr. Trump and Congress now have an opportunity to reset immigration policy in a way that will not disrupt essential industries (construction, agriculture) that have become dependent on immigration (both legal and illegal).

This is a moment for a grand bargain: The Democrats should acknowledge that the system is broken and support a pause in immigration, legal and otherwise. Such a pause would allow us to assimilate the foreign-born population already here. Although there would be exceptions for the truly gifted, such a pause would improve economic opportunities for Americans, and that’s a goal the president and Congress should share.

Mr. Trump should postpone deportations of illegal immigrants who have no other criminal activity on their records and who have been consistently employed.

The Democrats would get some of what they want: a cessation of deportations. Sen. Bernard Sanders gets an economic policy that makes sense for working families. Mr. Trump would get some of what he wants: an end to the lawlessness and piracy of the current immigration system. Most importantly, voters would get what they seem to want: an economy that is not unduly disrupted, a chance for growth in purchasing power and, more importantly, a path forward on immigration. The nation would get what it needs: a pause, a chance to catch its collective breath with respect to the assimilation of the foreign-born, and a much-needed reassertion of the importance of law and order.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.