Borders and immigration: Congressional candidates agree change is needed, but they’re split on specifics

For decades, few issues in national politics have been as hotly debated as the federal government’s handling of immigration, particularly crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border.

This is particularly true this election cycle, animated by the rhetoric between presidential candidates Donald Trump, whose hard-line measures on the border were derided by Democrats as draconian, and President Joe Biden, under whose administration illegal border crossings have broken records. At a debate Thursday, Trump said Biden “could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office,” for, among other reasons, “all the deaths caused at the border.”

The Border Patrol reported just under 250,000 encounters at the Mexican border in December, breaking the previous monthly record of 222,000 set in December 2022.

Most Republican candidates running to represent Eastern Washington in Congress have made border security one of, if not the defining issue of their campaigns, and both Spokane County Treasurer Michael Baumgartner and Spokane City Councilman Jonathan Bingle have made trips to border states as part of their campaigns.

There is some widespread agreement among all 11 candidates running for the seat, with all but one, diplomat Carmela Conroy, clearly stating that they believe illegal immigration is a serious concern facing the U.S., though Bobbi Bennett-Wolcott, a registered nurse and clinical assistant professor as WSU, and small business consultant Ann Marie Danimus maintained that the issue was overblown by partisan politics.

Conroy argued the country’s immigration system was in need of serious reform, but said she didn’t think it was feasible to track down those who cross the border illegally, nor was it necessary to “sweep up people who stay out of trouble.”

There was significant overlap across party lines with calls to hire more border security agents to police the southern border. Some Republicans, like Bingle and Flynn, joined Democrats in arguing for more judges to process cases of people at the border, though Bingle also argued that asylum claims should be curtailed.

But more significant differences emerge elsewhere in candidate’s proposals for addressing the border.

Every Republican candidate except farmer and author Rick Valentine Flynn advocated for building out a wall or physical barriers along the border, which no Democrat called for. Both OB-GYN Bernadine Bank and Bennett-Wolcott explicitly said a barrier would be ineffective.

Political and religious talk show radio host Rene Holaday said she would go further, arguing that the border should be immediately and fully closed to migrants while the federal government commenced the mass deportation of anyone who entered the country illegally in the past four years. She claimed that upwards of 30 million people have come over the southern border in recent years, more than double the total number of people living in the U.S. illegally according to mainstream estimates, calling it a “mass invasion.”

Holaday didn’t stop at the southern border, either.

Until her proposed mass deportations of recent arrivals are completed, she argued that any and all immigration through legal pathways should be halted.

While no other candidate took nearly the hard-line stance of Holaday, all agreed that some reforms were needed with the country’s pathways for legal immigration.

Ferry County Commissioner Brian Dansel said it was too easy to immigrate to the United States, pointing to policies in Canada requiring a potential migrant to provide proof of income.

“If you look towards Canada … they have sane policies requiring you to prove you can pay your own way,” Dansel said. “I never hear anyone calling Canadian immigration policies racist.”

It is true that many paths to permanent residency in Canada require means-testing, though a number of U.S. immigration policies do as well, such as family reunification immigrant visas.

Foreign-born residents make up nearly one-quarter of the Canadian population, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Conroy argued in favor of doing away with the diversity visa program, effectively a lottery for one of a limited number of visas, favoring instead a more merit-based immigration system. Baumgartner also argued in favor of encouraging highly skilled or educated workers to the United States, pointing to South African-born Elon Musk as an example.

Bingle, despite wanting a crackdown on border crossings including asylum cases, took the opposite view, arguing that legal immigration into the U.S. should be expanded and alluding to the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

“No, give us your tired, give us your hungry, give us your poor – those are the people who will appreciate this country and will fight for it,” he said.

Most candidates across party lines argued in favor of migrant worker visas, particularly H-2A temporary agricultural worker visas, which bring in much of the labor used on farms throughout the district.

Border Act of 2024

Candidates mostly split along party lines when asked whether they would have voted in favor of a border security bill unveiled by Senate negotiators in February. Democratic candidates universally said they would have voted in favor of the bill, while every Republican except for Flynn and state Rep. Jacquelin Maycumber said they would have voted it down.

The bill had a very short-lived aura of bipartisanship when it was initially released earlier this year, having been negotiated by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. It would have invested billions for border security, including over $1.5 billion to hire more personnel for Customs and Border Protection as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, over $1.6 billion for increased migrant detention capacity and another $2.2 billion for expenses including fentanyl detection and enforcement.

The bill was originally tied into a $118 billion spending package that included aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, but quickly grew mired by partisan opposition, with conservatives calling it an attempt by Democrats and the Biden administration to avoid being punished at the ballot box for their perceived lack of action on the border. It was reintroduced as a standalone bill in May, but failed on a procedural vote in the Senate with almost all Republicans voting in opposition and most Democrats voting in support.

Even negotiators Lankford and Sinema voted against the bill.

Every Democratic candidate running to represent Eastern Washington in Congress said they would have supported the bill, with several arguing it was a reasonable compromise and a significant step forward.

All Republicans except Flynn and Maycumber said it was fatally flawed and would not have voted for it.

Flynn said the bill was the “best proposal in decades” to lessen illegal immigration, while Maycumber said she would have voted for it and believed it would have allowed the country to refocus more of its attention on preventing crime within America’s borders.

Dansel said the bill was filled with “half-measures,” while Baumgartner also criticized it as insufficient to secure the border.

While Kootenai County Deputy Prosecutor Matthew Welde highlighted the Border Patrol union’s endorsement of the bill, Baumgartner claimed he had heard personally from border agents who believed it would be ineffectual.

Holaday and Bingle specifically criticized provisions in the bill regarding border closures, but both, particularly Holaday, appeared to have misread this portion of the text.

Holaday said the bill allowed illegal border crossings of up to “5,000 a day” and that it was meant to “fool people” while it “legitimized the border invasion.” The bill does not “allow” illegal border crossings – the 5,000 a day figure appears to be a reference to a portion of the bill mandating that the border be closed after an average of 5,000 border “encounters,” including both those arrested crossing the border illegally and those who legally claim asylum at a port of entry, over seven days.

That threshold is currently met most weeks, according to data from Customs and Border Protection, and the bill’s original authors intended it to be able to take effect without further increases in border crossings.

“If the number of migrants attempting to cross the border – including migrants using the CBP One app at Ports of Entry – continues at its current high pace, the border WILL be shut down,” Sinema’s office wrote in a February fact sheet.

Bingle said it was inexcusable that authority to close the border wouldn’t be activated until there were at least 4,000 illegal immigrants on the southern border for seven consecutive days. The bill would have granted the secretary of Homeland Security the discretionary authority to close the border after a weekly average of 4,000 encounters a day. This threshold, again, includes legal asylum-seekers.

The councilman also argued that the president and secretary of the Department of Homeland Security would have too much discretion to suspend a border closure. While the authority would have been limited, it is true that those executives would have had some discretion to reopen the border under the bill.