Max Boot tries to defend President Biden's border policy in the Washington Post today. Here's a long excerpt:
This is not Trump redux. The previous president carried out inhumane policies such as separating children from their parents, in part, because he wanted to deter more arrivals — but also because, as Adam Serwer of the Atlantic has argued, “the cruelty is the point.” Being beastly to helpless migrants helped to burnish Donald Trump’s brand with his rabidly nativist base.
Biden, by contrast, expressed horror at the way the Border Patrol treated the Haitians. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating what happened. If abuses occurred, they were contrary to the president’s intent — not in compliance with it as under Trump. That’s a big difference.
Biden is being excoriated for returning some of the migrants back to Haiti, which can’t cope with them. But, while 2,000 people have been sent to Haiti, 12,400 people from the Del Rio camp will be able to request asylum status — which usually means they can stay in the United States while their cases are adjudicated. You would never know from all the criticism that far more migrants are being allowed to remain here than are being sent home.
Biden hasn’t yet ended Trump’s pandemic policy of automatically expelling many of the migrants apprehended along the southern border — a senior administration official tells me that was on the verge of happening before the delta variant of the coronavirus hit in July — but he has considerably relaxed it. In July 2020, 92 percent of migrant encounters resulted in expulsion; by July 2021, it was down to 47 percent. Biden has already ended other inhumane Trump policies such as the “Muslim ban” and family separations. Biden just announced that the refugee cap in the next fiscal year will be eight times higher than the one Trump announced in October 2020. Biden has also reduced “inland” deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents far below the level not only under Trump but also under President Barack Obama.
In short, Biden is doing a lot more to make immigration policy humane than progressives who sloganeer about abolishing ICE have ever done. But he gets no credit.
Over the past few years immigration has become much like abortion: there's almost no middle ground. On one side you have the Trumpies and their wall, settling for nothing less than bringing illegal immigration down to zero. On the progressive side, the 2020 primary debates made it clear that most of the candidates favored policies so loose that they were effectively advocating open borders.
But it's worth noting that Biden was very explicitly opposed to the loose border policies that most Democratic candidates favored. He made that very clear. His immigration policies are far more humane than Trump's, but he's still committed to protecting the border.
I doubt that an investigation will show that CBP officers did anything wrong in their treatment of Haitian immigrants. It made a big impact thanks to a single picture that gave a seriously mistaken impression, but video suggests there was nothing very unusual about the situation. Mounted patrol officers are common; there were no whips; there was no roundup; and the general tenor of the operation was fairly low key. You might still object to it, of course, but it doesn't appear to have been intentionally cruel or harsh.
There's no great solution to our current border problem, which has been caused by immigrants seeking asylum. Conservatives are unhappy about large numbers of immigrants being allowed to stay, but the law provides little choice about that. Liberals, by contrast, are unhappy that asylum seekers are being held at all. The only real answer is to speed up the asylum process, and that requires a huge increase in the judicial infrastructure that governs the border. That's the work of years, not months.
I don't have any brilliant solutions to offer. I don't think anyone does. Until and unless Congress and the president do something about the entire asylum process, this is going to remain a mess.
There's a massive effort among wingnuts and popular media tropes that require inherent conflict to turn Biden into the next Jimmy Carter.
The administration isn't helping itself by pussyfooting around about prosecuting Republicans and seditionists.
Bullies respond to force and only force.
Very correct. Bullies see it all as force vs force. They whine and complain about being held accountable, yet, that is all they recognize.
The old trope about all bullies are cowards is a lot closer to the literal mark than a lot of people otherwise realize; bear in mind that their use of ruthless and way-beyond-defensible application of force in ways that would otherwise be called 'creative' is because they are terrified of losing. Ten-to-one odds (which is actually 91 -- not 90 -- percent) for a win still isn't big enough for them.
Of course, they also make very, very sure whenever possible that they face no consequences when they lose, the flip side of the coin.
Bullies are cowards?
Explains Michael Tracey & Matt Bruenig justifying their MAGAT tendencies by touting, then hiding behind, their adult-onset autism.
Also, to borrow from Allen "The Answer" Iverson, "... If Tulsite Michael or Right-Authoritarian-claiming-Bernie-support Matt approach me with MAGAT tendencies, they be lying where the f*ggots in Mike & Matt's National-Conservative utopia will be".
Once you've resorted to force, you've lost the argument.
Their point is, they only lose the argument when they stop making it.
Agreed, like trying to reason with a toddler.
Ridiculous statement.
How so?
Unless you subscribe to the Starship Troopers Political Philosophy.
I am sure someone will help me out, but although I thought I was paying attention, I missed the "open borders" part of the Democratic platform of any candidate. I have also missed when any Dem controlled house of congress ever proposed such a thing.
I do, however, like many things, remember that accusing Dems of favoring open borders became a thing.
Always disturbing when a Republican made up talking point ends up evolving into something close to reality.
With Democrats, there is an awful lot of simply not caring about border security. In fact, caring makes you suspect of being a racist. Trump made this thinking much worse. Trump was good at poisoning all difficult discussions.
To Biden's credit, he is funding R&D on a high-tech virtual border, something that we should have been spending far more on for decades now. But a more secure border is not wanted by many Democrats. The Nation ran an article titled, "Why Biden’s ‘Virtual’ Border Could Be Worse Than Trump’s Wall". I read the article trying to find a good reason why that's true, but I didn't find one. Something about scary technology. I guess more guys on horseback is preferred.
Actually, the best example of a de facto open borders position in a Democratic debate came in 2016, when Hillary Clinton took the position that nobody who crossed the border should be deported unless they committed some other crime.
If that isn't completely open borders, it's within shouting distance of it, because it basically means any person who gets across the border and then doesn't violate a law can stay here indefinitely. And if we enacted that as policy, we'd have even bigger flows of undocumented people across the border than we already do now.
But I don't remember anyone in 2020 going as far as Hillary did. The normal Democratic move is to gesture in favor of some form of undefined "border security" and then pivot to all the people we need to amnesty. And while that can be critiqued by those who want more immigration restrictions, it's different from saying anyone who crosses can stay.
Kevin's take is reasonable but "there's almost no middle ground" is not true as regards public opinion. Polls are somewhat changeable and contradictory, but clearly most people want some immigration but do not want open borders; they want a path to citizenship for most of those already here and non-expulsion of dreamers; they do not want the deliberately cruel Trump policies. Those who do want effectively open borders - that is who object to essentially any enforcement of borders - get played up by the non-rightist media, while the rightist media follow the Trumpian line of racist xenophobia.
How could Biden's efforts to follow a reasonable course get on the front pages (or in the lead videos)? The media lead with sensational things, and this means any conflict at the border. Immigrants getting treated reasonably get no attention from the media.
Thing is, older people, especially older conservative people, don't have much of an attention span. That's why they did so poorly in school, back in the day. And why they watch MSM 'news', alas.
Cruel, oh please. Millions of immigrants came over during the Trump era without a blip. Your cherry picking.
There's no middle ground in Democratic politics, not public opinion.
of course "immigrants getting treated reasonably" gets no attention. that's what's supposed to happen. how about "commuter makes it to work on time?" or "dentist successfully fills cavity?" "house didn't burn down. film at 11."
The polling seems to support 'legalization' of the current DACA subset: I remain hopeful there will be a political solution on DACA.
However, the broader challenge is around future flows of immigrants. The broad left position is a robust increase in legal immigration. In contrast, the right seems to want a very restrictive, high enforcement immigration policy. Without some agreement, or 60 Senate votes, on future flows, there are significant limits to any legislative solution.
You mean liberal/progressive, not "left". At least know who you are talking about. Bringing in scabs does not help the workers.
Trump's policy was about flooding the U.S. with illegal immigrants. Pure and simple. It basically was a policy don't find, don't care. It also unlike the Obama administration basically had business and missionaries go into foreign countries and did nothing to stop them trafficking in bodies. Basically pleading with them to bring scabs.
Amazing people still don't get this.
"Expulsion" meant rerelease into Mexico aka don't get caught next time. Now comes deportations under new rules. Child separations were always overblown and only made up 1% of total border hoppers.
The ignorant morons need to realize Trump broke his promise. Basically he promised he would do what Obama was doing, yet on a grander scale, Obama himself showed off at the end of his 2nd term. The actual illegal immigrant labor supply dropped.
I'm a broken record, but immigration will be an albatross around Democrats' necks until they adopt a clear policy on the issue which they can explain to voters. As things stand, Republicans can accuse them of wanting open borders and there is no convincing way to prove them wrong.
and like a broken record, different part of the party have different beliefs. That is the problem.
Alas, policy by sound bite is typically bad policy.
How about,
'first do no harm'.
Kevin Drum is wrong. I just did some research on the 2020 election and nobody supported “effective” open borders, it is just a flat out lie. The positions of all the candidates including Biden was muddled, from expanding the Dreamers (Harris) to granting a pathway to citizenship to those here (Sanders). Sanders position was the loosest because he had the most ground to makeup due to his anti-immigration views of the past. In other words, politicians being politicians. But everyone supported and supports a secure border. The main issue is what to do with the folks here but that is a far cry from saying what Drum said. Usually I expect this site to be more accurate, jeesh.
Absolutely correct raoul.
The Democratic position on this, as with virtually every issue is based in reality. And living in SoCal the reality is obvious - there are millions of undocumented people working as part of the economy, and it would be much better to get them documented than it would be to arrest all of them (patently ridiculous) or detain and deport all of them (just as ridiculous).
No one I have ever met, and I meet alot of liberals, has ever, every advocated for less border security -- many people think we can do much better there.
Kevin likes to weigh in on how these days, the odd crank gets way too much publicity. Well, frankly, the border is the same thing.
20,000 Haitians who somehow all managed to get together under one bridge after secretly getting through Mexico is a problem --- FOR THOSE POOR HAITIANS!
Its not a problem for a country of 300 plus million with the resources we have. Its not a problem to detain them. Its not a problem to send them back. It would not be a problem to accept them as refugees. Pick one, or all three.
And the fact that all these people are doing anything to get here is not even a political problem, WTF do Repubs want this to be like the old East Germany, with people dying to get out of the country?
IIRC the border is only about half the problem; a large proportion of the undocumented arrived on student or tourist visas and failed to return to their home countries.
Welcome to *America-First* World, where our rhetoric is global but our solutions are insular.
Rather than invest in other countries to stabilize and boost democracies, we've invested in corporations who take advantage of those countries and drive them towards autocracies. Yay us. We're the ones driving anti-democratic values around the world. But hey, shareholder value, amirite?
Kevin is referring to the debate when the whole pack was asked “do you support open borders?” All raised their hands with exception of Biden. I though they were all nuts.
Nope, the question wasn't if they support open borders, the question was if they'd support decriminalizing immigration offenses, making them a civil offense (which is the way most of the civilized world handles them). That's very different from saying open borders.
Kevin himself has pointed out in an earlier life that immigration enforcement is at the job site. And it involve seriously punishing employers of undocumented workers.
Republicans favor "border security" because it does not work, it is highly visible to their voters and they still can get their illegal cheap labor.
So Republicans go after drug users because they're using drugs ... but won't go after employers who using illegal labor. That sounds about right.
Yes.
I don't know. Maybe if there had never lived a single black slave in the US these pictures of white men on horses harassing black people would be acceptable. As it is: No Way!
What "Open Borders" policies Kevin? Whenever a Republican complains about the "liberal" media they should be pointed to these kind of comments from supposedly liberal talking heads like Kevin. I insist, over the past few years Kevin has slowly turned into a Republican lite, with such great hits like:
-Suggesting liberals be more tolerant to some racism and racists (because surely that will convince the bigots to not vote Republican)
-Saying the US COVID response under Trump was outstanding
-Saying Trump was really no authoritarian and people exaggerated their concerns about him
-Downplaying concerns of people of color regarding police abuse
-Regularly complaining about "cancel culture"
-Just this past weekend downplaying the use of horses to chase and intimidate immigrants in a situation where the use of horses was not really needed
-And now equating policies trying to fix immigration issues in a humane way as open borders.
Open borders means letting people come and go as they please without any sort of process to follow and without penalties of any kind (since there are no rules to break in the first place), and nothing the Democrats have proposed comes within a mile of that.
Only racists give a shit about the border. I could not care any less, it’s impossible.
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