Stark choices face Congress on immigration, Social Security

Apparently, House Speaker Mike Johnson has told senators that their bipartisan border security bill is DOA when it reaches the House, though the Senate bill is not quite finished yet.

Johnson told them that the border crisis is not going to be solved until Donald Trump, or another Republican is in the White House. That’s a very interesting attempt at leverage. However, the border situation needs to have been addressed yesterday.

There are two fundamental differences between the parties that bear on this situation — how they think about immigration and how they think about Social Security. It is hard to see where the middle ground lies. It would seem someone is going to have to prevail.

The situation at the southern border has changed dramatically. It is no longer the single, male Mexican looking for work, many of whom had some family somewhere in the U.S. Now the immigrants at the border come from many different places — particularly countries where oppression is significant such as Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and even China. And now whole families are arriving at the border.

As the Migration Policy Institute has detailed in a new report, the Biden administration has responded with a host of policies that create incentives for a more orderly process and disincentives to try to curb the flow of immigrants including a mobile app to make appointments to make asylum claims, tougher enforcement and quicker removals, and it has started to build a regional network of Safe Mobility Offices, which, it is hoped, will make immigration claims more orderly.

In the proposal that included aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, the administration asked for $14 billion to increase the capacity at the border to handle this new influx of intending immigrants and start to reduce the backlog of immigration cases that can linger for years.

Here is the first fundamental difference. Republicans — particularly House Republicans — want to change the definition of asylum and restrict the use of humanitarian parole by the president to reduce the number of immigrants entering the U.S. Democrats want a more orderly process but are willing to admit more immigrants than Republicans.

So, what does that have to do with Social Security? We are an aging society. The Baby Boom generation is making increasing claims on federal entitlements, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The trust funds that support them are quickly running dry.

While Donald Trump has said these will not be touched in his administration, Republicans have made it clear that they will oppose tax increases to shore up the system. Their solution appears to be raising the retirement age further and rosy (a.k.a. unrealistic) economic forecasts.

However, the main problem is that the ratio of people paying into the system versus those drawing from the system is falling. We need more workers to support the system.

Indeed, given the fact that the U.S. birth rate continues to hover in the 1.6 to 1.7 range — well below the 2.1 level of replacement — the only way to increase the number of workers and the population is via immigration. To increase the population 1% annually, the U.S. would have to admit about four million temporary workers or new immigrants each year.

These temporary workers and immigrants don’t all have to come from the impoverished masses at the southern border. We could also increase the number of visas for tech workers, engineers, etc., that our employers crave. The absence of these workers is holding back our economy.

Fewer immigrants or a more orderly process? More people contributing to Social Security or higher retirement ages and, perhaps, reduced benefits? The current debate presents some very stark choices.

• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.