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Does Conservative Opposition To Immgration Reform Make Sense?

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Chait and Yglesias note something interesting about the conservative opposition that is almost certain to kill immigration reform. Almost none of the arguments focusing on border security compare the bill to the status quo; instead, the comparison is to some implausible baseline in which the border is entirely “secure.”

We can instantly recognize this form of argument, of course, from attacks on the ACA from the left. Arguments against it almost always involved baselines that were (in the context of deciding whether the bill was worth passing) completely irrelevant. Indeed, in my experience very rare attempts to try to make the case that the status quo ante was preferable to the ACA (despite the major expansion of Medicaid, expansion of parental insurance coverage, many benefits to women, ban on coverage denials for pre-existing conditions, etc. etc.) just end up re-stating the heighten-the-contradictions fallacy — i.e. the ACA was bad because it “entrenched” a private health insurance industry that was, in fact, doing perfectly well before the ACA. The idea that absent the ACA it would be possible to get Congress to pass legislation eliminating the private health insurance industry is dreaming in technicolor. These arguments were the left-wing equivalent of the arguments made by austerity cranks; essentially, we were supposed to inflict major short-term pain on some of the most vulnerable people in society based on speculative hypothetical future benefits that do not in fact exist.

From a conservative perspective, then, is opposition to immigration reform as irrational as left-wing opposition to the ACA? Not necessarily. The problem with using a baseline other than the status quo to evaluate the ACA is that the alternative to the ACA, not only at the time but for the foreseeable future, is “nothing.” Killing the ACA would have meant nothing for a long time, and then a more timorous reform proposal the next time a Democratic president had large supermajorities and decides to stake her future on health care reform although it was political death for the last two Democrats to try it. To oppose the ACA on this basis is senseless and grotesquely immoral. Immigration reform, however, which has substantial support across the political spectrum including from powerful business interests, is a very different animal than health care reform. If conservative opponents are really holding out for a completely “secured” border, than this is comparable to opposing the ACA until the president can cause to the health care insurance industry to whither away through the sheer force of the BULLY PULPIT. If, on the other hand, conservative opposition is based on the premise that they should wait and see what happens in the 2014 midterms because they might be able to get (from their perspective) a better deal from a Republican Senate…that’s not necessarily irrational.

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