Lori Falce: Bipartisan action shouldn't be a Washington fairy tale

Once upon a time, in a country that seems all but forgotten, people identified important issues and did what needed to be done to accomplish change.

It is amazing how much political history resembles fairy tales.

This week, I spent quite a bit of time doing research on refugees, immigrants, undocumented individuals and migrants in response to letters. (Side note: those terms are not synonyms — more like overlapping definitions. A legal refugee might have lots of documents. A migrant may be a temporary agricultural worker in the U.S. with a lawful visa. Distinctions matter.)

One point I was chasing down was “pocket money” handed out to “illegals.” The writer attributed it to President Joe Biden and said it hadn’t happened under Donald Trump’s administration.

I located the Refugee Cash Assistance Program. It does provide help for authorized refugees who do not qualify for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families because of lack of citizenship. The amount varies by state, as does the length of time it is provided. The money was not apocryphal, although who and how much might be a bit mythologized.

What I found more interesting were the roots of the program.

It came from the Refugee Act of 1980. It was introduced in March 1979, when the U.S. was receiving large numbers of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia in the wake of the war. It passed in March 1980, just shy of a year later.

In 11 months and two weeks, government did its job. The bill got co-sponsors from both parties as well as from populous states like New York and New Jersey and more rural ones like Oregon and West Virginia. It had prominent leaders like George McGovern and upstarts like Biden, then just starting his second term as a Delaware senator.

It passed the Senate in less than six months. It didn’t pass along party lines or crawl across the finish line by peeling off a vote or two from the minority herd. It passed unanimously. Of the 85 senators of both parties in the chamber that day, every one of them recognized that reforming the way refugees came into the country was important.

In the House of Representatives, a similar bill had been under consideration. It had gone through committee but was set aside in favor of the Senate bill by a vote of 328-47. People of both parties voted their conscience and belief. Fifteen Democrats voted against it; 108 Republicans supported it, and 32 opposed.

It wasn’t perfect. No one had a crystal ball to see how things would turn out or a magic wand to smooth out problems. But it was a bill that addressed a problem, proposed a way to make things better, engaged in debate and where nothing was wrapped up in gamesmanship to stop the resolution.

It was proposed. The work was done. It was voted upon and, on March 17, 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed it into law.

It remains the act that provides definitions of refugee and persecution and which bridges American and international law.

Reading accounts of what Congress did 45 years ago should be as dry as breadcrumbs, but following these crumbs took me to a gingerbread house Capitol where the unimaginable happened.

Bipartisanship has become a meaningless phrase. It means nothing because nothing is accomplished anymore. The parties can have as much trouble working within their own caucuses as with each other. Any real attempt at reaching across the aisle is met with swift retribution, as the Republicans unlucky enough to be speaker of the House can attest.

But once, a long time ago, it was possible for a bill to have a happily ever after in Washington. Maybe someday that will happen again.