The Blame Game Solves Nothing
The immigration standoff continues to smolder, with acceptable solutions beyond reach and more deadlines looming.
As expiration nears for the so-called Title 42 rules that have used covid as a tool in border management, we saw a House hearing last week erupt in shouting and name-calling rather than solutions, a Republican proposal to virtually ban asylum, and non-legislative moves by the Biden administration moving to use temporary rules to substantially expand the numbers of arrivals from Ukraine and other targeted countries.
There are no talks, no apparent attempts at coordination to say nothing of collaboration, and increased restlessness reported on the Mexican side of the border. We’ve watched a recent horrible fire kill 39 people waiting in an immigration detention and processing center in Ciudad Juárez, we’ve heard of worsening conditions on both sides of the border, and there is a protest among Central Americans drawing thousands in southern Mexico.
Rather that spurring legislators to getting around a table, this entire situation is being shunted to the presidential campaign agenda as a fund-raising and blame-the-other-guy issue. Both Donald Trump, who has shown he will do anything to harshly limit legal and illegal immigration, and Joe Biden, who finds himself hauled into court every time he tries to bring any kind of border order, seem to be welcoming the chance to proclaim rather than address comprehensive solutions with people who seriously oppose their ideas.
In the meantime, we’re seeing U.S. cities struggling to house sudden spurts of arriving asylum applicants and the lines of applicants about to bust wide open with the end of the Title 42 provisions. Along the way, we’re still unable to reconnect lost children separated at the border with their families, and a slew of reports about how minors with false papers are being put to work in U.S. factories with either the ignorance or inability of federal officials to do much about enforcing child labor laws.
It was a mess before, and, if possible, it is getting worse.
A Whole Lot of Yelling
After all the yelling in a congressional hearing – including an unexpected slap to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from her own Republican chair for shouting “Liar” to the hearing witness, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, we are exactly nowhere closer to any federal commitment to address immigration issues.
Not only are calls for impeaching Mayorkas as a stand-in for Joe Biden futile, but they would also not change the myriad, conflicting, and impenetrable problems that describe our day-to-day issues at the border. If anything, the announcement by the Justice Department, working with Mexican authorities, to indict members of a huge Mexican cartel for smuggling fentanyl as well as people just seems to be inflaming Republican and Democratic opponents of Biden immigration strategies.
As an overstatement, in its attempt to be more humane than the previous Trump overlords, the Biden group has basically amped arrests and deportations, renegotiated migrant stays in Mexico and home countries, but has failed to put a dent in the ever-growing build-up of those fleeing bad conditions from seeking to enter the United States by whatever means presents itself. Republican governors, even those in non-border states, see political advantage in piling on, and sending busloads or planeloads of migrants to Democratic-led cities like New York and Chicago – as if this is some kind of solution.
Where we last left overall policy, the courts have set a May deadline for expiration of the Title 42 provisions to use covid as a legal excuse to halt many crossings, and the Biden group has promised to enact another asylum ban and its reliance on a malfunctioning app to slow border crossings to an “acceptably” low rate. As The Nation reports, “Like Trump, Biden is leaving people stranded and unsure of when, or whether, they’ll be able to cross the border and apply for asylum.”
Scattershot Approach
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a critic of Biden on immigration, has provided a list of recommended actions to address illegal migration at the southern border in a more humane way. House Republicans put forth an immigration package which proposes some of the harshest restrictions on migration through the southern border, virtually ending the right to asylum for anyone not crossing through legal ports of entry. Biden has said he would expand health care coverage for nearly 600,000 immigrants who were brought to the country as children and are covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
It’s all piecemeal, scattered, and political.
The most interesting Biden moves have been what The New York Times describes as a “back door” to allow hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into the country, significantly expanding the use of humanitarian parole programs for people escaping war and political turmoil around the world. Over the last year, the expansion to people fleeing Ukraine, Haiti, and Latin America, offer immigrants the opportunity to fly to the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they have a private sponsor to take responsibility for them.
The Times said that in using “temporary protected status” orders, 300,000 Ukrainians came to the United States under various programs — a number greater than all the people from around the world admitted through the official U.S. refugee program in the last five years. By the end of the year, about 360,000 Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians are expected join in through a similar private sponsorship initiative — more than were issued immigrant visas from these countries in the last 15 years combined, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center..
Trump had moved to terminate this program.
Of course, that is drawing legal challenges from various Republican attorneys general, and we once again could face legal decisions that differ from the truth on the ground and endless spinning of government wheels as migrants try to restart their lives.
The issue is whether any president can take this kind of action without Congress, even a Congress that refuses to take up the questions.
As The Times tells it, the new parole programs are temporary — most expire after two years, unless they are renewed, but they already are changing immigrant arrivals. Migrants who were admitted to the country after flooding the border from many of the same conflict-ridden countries last year have not been allowed to work for at least six months after opening an asylum case. As a result, many have wound up in shelters in cities like New York, which has struggled to accommodate them. This program requires a financial sponsor in the United States, and it offers immediate work permits.
The goal was to meet labor demands from business while discouraging hundreds of thousands of more migrants, who now can apply in a more orderly sequence. It had a temporary effect of declining migrant crossings from those countries, though overall crossings remain at historic highs.
What little remains certain here problems abound, there is no one to take full responsibility and that domestic partisan politics rules the day.
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