The president’s new policy is a tacit admission that the policies he followed for his first 3½ years in office, and until recently treated as a success, have badly misfired. His new executive action specifies that the border will temporarily shut down whenever the average number of migrants coming between ports of entry hits 2,500 a day for a week. To be considered for asylum, migrants would have to volunteer or show signs that they fear persecution, not just agree when asked if they do.
There are, however, several caveats. Those who use the government’s app to apply for asylum won’t count toward the 2,500. Unaccompanied minors will be excluded from the shutdown. The policy will also face court challenges that could delay or prevent its taking effect.
In a news briefing, a senior administration official said that while new laws would still be helpful, the new policies would be enough to reduce migration: “Especially if they know that they are going to be removed quickly and not be able to remain in the United States for many years through their immigration court process, they’re going to be much less likely to pay the thousands of dollars that it’s required to the smuggling networks that more or less control access to the routes leading up to our border.”
But there is room for doubt. Won’t those same networks spread the word that unaccompanied minors can still make it through and that it’s important for adults to claim a fear of persecution? Republicans are saying this is an underwhelming response to overwhelming numbers of migrants: too little too late, an election-year stunt.
Biden is drawing flak from progressives, too, with Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) saying the president has “undermined American values and abandoned our nation’s obligations” to refugees. A few Democrats went so far as to liken Biden’s new policies to Trump’s. In that same briefing, a Biden aide tried to differentiate the two administrations: “They demonized immigrants, instituted mass raids, separated families at the border, and put kids in cages.”
In that comment, and in the new policy, you can see a glimpse of a path that Biden did not take upon entering office. He could have abandoned the worst aspects of Trump’s record — especially the routine separation of children from parents — while keeping other elements. That would have entailed maintaining the cooperative arrangements with countries to our south to stem the flow of migrants, and building on efforts to deter employers from hiring illegal immigrants.
Instead, Biden indulged a Democratic backlash to Trump that swept away everything his administration had done on immigration. A flurry of executive actions early in his term rescinded Trump policies. This wholesale change pleased the activist groups that play the most vocal role in setting the Democrats’ immigration agenda, and conformed with the leftward drift of the party’s voters on the issue.
But it meant losing control of the border. Two months into Biden’s presidency, Alan Bersin, who oversaw the Border Patrol for Barack Obama, was already worrying that Biden was sending “mixed messages” and that for many migrants “the border is open.”
Deteriorating conditions made legislative action more urgent: Biden is right to say it’s still needed, and right to say also that the legislation congressional Republicans discarded earlier this year included many useful reforms. But his own policies simultaneously made such action less politically feasible. The nonenforcement of existing laws reduced the credibility of any proposed new ones. By expanding the gap between immigration law and immigration practice, it also placed the sides of the debate further apart. What counted as a tightening of our actual policies looked to hawkish Republicans like a loosening of statutory requirements.
Add in Trump’s opposition to a deal, more or less openly to improve his chances of winning the presidential election, and congressional deadlock was inevitable. Biden’s early lurch left on immigration is one reason Trump might win. When asked during this campaign whether he would return to separating families, the former president said that it would deter illegal immigration — “If a family hears they’re going to be separated, they love their family, they don’t come” — and refused to rule it out.
If we careen from one disastrous immigration policy to another, Biden won’t be wholly responsible. But his folly will have played its part.
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