Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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Better late than never.
More than two years into an otherwise highly accomplished first term, President Joe Biden finally acted on the crisis on the U.S. southern border. Biden is scheduled to visit El Paso, Texas, today in his first trip to the border since taking office. His visit is accompanied by a series of recent regulatory policy announcements designed to finally address — at least to some extent — the U.S. immigration crisis.
Biden’s long-awaited regulatory proposals build upon the success of his Uniting for Ukraine and Process for Venezuelans programs introduced last year. Both programs created legal pathways and temporary legal status for refugees fleeing humanitarian crises in those respective countries. The measures also created swift consequences for those who failed to utilize the legal pathways available.
Biden’s latest announcement will expand those programs to refugees from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua, allowing up to 30,000 migrants per month to enter and remain in the U.S. legally for up to two years. Conversely, Biden promised to crack down on those who enter the country illegally.
“Do not just show up at the border. Stay where you are and apply legally from there,” Biden said, addressing potential migrants from those nations. Biden added that effective today, anyone entering the country without engaging in the new legal process will be ineligible for its benefits.
Under Biden’s proposal, migrants who wish to come to the United States must have been turned away by another country or have pre-existing ties to the U.S. They must apply from their home countries before traveling to the U.S. and cross the border at an authorized port of entry. Migrants who enter the country illegally risk having any outstanding applications automatically denied, immediate removal from the U.S. and a prohibition on reentry for up to five years.
Mexico has agreed to accept up to 30,000 returns per month across the southern border utilizing expanded use of Title 42 expulsion authority created by the Trump administration and expedited removal under the decades old Title 8.
Biden acknowledged that the regulatory proposals are limited and “aren’t going to fix our entire immigration system.” He called on Republicans who “haven’t been serious about this at all,” to work with him on long-term solutions.
“As long as America is the land of freedom and opportunity, people are going to try to come here,” Biden said in prepared remarks. “We can’t stop people from making the journey, but we can require them to come here in an orderly way.”
Despite a historic array of legislative victories during his first two years in office — including everything from infrastructure to global warming to same-sex marriage — the humanitarian and political crisis on the southern border has been a constant black eye for the Biden administration.
While the tales spun by GOP extremists of armies of violent criminals crossing the border daily are racist lies, it is beyond refute that the southern border is rife with victims of crime and abuse. The result is that migrants, many of whom are unaccompanied children, are suffering due to the United States’ inability to efficiently and effectively process legitimate applications for asylum and refugee status. This leads some to enter the U.S. illegally rather than risk death in Mexico.
Early in his first term, Biden tried to act by introducing the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. The legislation proposed increasing funding and resources for border patrol and immigration officers to crack down on criminal organizations operating at the border, creating new procedural protections for vulnerable populations and offering broad protections and a path to citizenship for DACA recipients and Dreamers. But the bill received universal opposition from Republicans and was not the sweeping overhaul of the immigration system some progressives wanted. It stalled in the House subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship.
Since then, Biden has done little to address the crisis on the border. He used his executive authority over the Department of Homeland Security to improve some conditions for migrants in U.S. custody but has not successfully stemmed the influx of undocumented immigrants entering the country or created effective pathways for legal immigration. Instead, he left almost all substantive policies of the Trump administration in place.
We spent years criticizing Trump’s border policies and we continue to take issue with them today. They are morally bankrupt and hurt migrants and Americans alike.
Fixing the system will require Biden and legislative Democrats to develop a coherent set of policy proposals to overhaul the U.S. immigration system, which the president admits he cannot accomplish through executive action alone. However, with proper enforcement of his new regulatory policies, Biden can effectively create a new streamlined path for sponsored migrants to enter the country legally and dissuade those considering entering the country illegally.
A divided Congress will now have to vote to provide funding for these proposals, and the GOP must be a cooperative participant in trying to solve the problem rather than using rhetoric on the issue simply to win elections. Enough with the extremist pearl clutching by Republicans, it’s time to roll up the sleeves and solve this together.
Nearly a half-dozen Republican members of the House specifically mentioned the crisis of fentanyl being smuggled across the southern border during their chaotic fight for the speaker’s gavel last week. If those members are truly concerned about the threat that fentanyl poses to our communities, they’ll unite with Democrats and act quickly to ensure our border patrol has the funding and resources it needs.
The time has arrived for serious people to cooperatively face this challenge and put aside craven political machinations in favor of doing something constructive both for the American people and for the desperate refugees. It will make our communities safer, create a fairer path for refugees, asylum seekers and others escaping humanitarian crises to enter the country legally, and take a step forward in fixing our long-broken immigration system.
