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Managing migration demands a different conversation, one that focuses less on the border’s impregnability and more on the mechanisms and incentives driving people toward it; one that speaks of the coordination needed with other countries on the migration path to jointly manage the flow of people across the hemisphere; one that takes account of migrants’ contribution to the nation’s prosperity.

Washington, unfortunately, is incapable of this kind of talk. The Biden administration seems out of ideas. And standing behind a standard-bearer deploying xenophobia as a selling point in a hotly contested bid for reelection, Republican calls to “secure the border” amount to little more than a political bludgeon.

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Consider the demands presented by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in a letter to President Biden last month. Johnson objects to asylum seekers being released to wait for their day in immigration court and would like to see more of them quickly expelled. He wants Mexico’s help to house and retain migrants. He wants to end the parole program offered by the Biden administration to encourage asylum seekers to apply through official channels rather than crossing the border. And, of course, he also wants the wall.

Nothing in recent U.S. history suggests this wish list can achieve the speaker’s goal of stopping large numbers of migrants from coming to the United States.

Immigrants in the 1980s were, for the most part, not seeking asylum. But millions still flocked to the United States. They were largely from Mexico, but also from Central America. Fleeing destitution and hungry for jobs, they crossed the border surreptitiously and settled in the United States as best they could — without legal authorization.

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Walls and fences have gone up since then; motion sensors and drones have been deployed to detect and pursue people crossing the border. Border Patrol staffing has increased fivefold since the early 1990s, from around 4,000 to around 20,000. Nevertheless, the number of immigrants living in the United States without authorization climbed to more than 11 million in 2018, up from 3.5 million in 1990.

Today, migrants come from further afield, including from South America, Asia and Africa. And there are more of them: Border Patrol agents ran into prospective migrants more than 2 million times in fiscal 2023, surpassing the peaks of 1986 and 2000. About 1.1 million more showed up at official ports of entry. Most hope to apply for asylum. And yet they are driven by the same goals as those who sought the United States decades before: a safe environment that provides an opportunity to survive and, hopefully, flourish.

Republicans are right that whatever the Biden administration is doing is not working. The president’s new strategy — to draw migrants toward official channels — isn’t working to stem the flow. The backlog of migrants waiting for their day in immigration court passed 3 million in November. Border agents are encountering more than 300,000 migrants each month. Encounters exceeded 3 million last........

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