It has become an article of faith on the right that the huge number of immigrants flooding our borders is a direct result of Joe Biden refusing to enforce the law. What's more, he's doing it deliberately. His reasons for this act of obvious political suicide vary depending on who you listen to, and mostly range from the absurd (more Democratic voters a decade or two from now!) to the merely implausible (he's soft-hearted).
Reasons aside, though, I've finally gotten curious enough about this to wonder just which immigration laws Biden is supposed to be flouting. I've found a few.
Exhibit A is the "Mayorkas memo," which outlines immigration enforcement priorities. It focuses on felons and other lawbreakers, but one of the targeted groups is those who "are apprehended in the United States after unlawfully entering after November 1, 2020." That may let longstanding residents off the hook, but it pretty obviously includes everyone currently crossing the border. So that can't be the cause of the border surge.
Another popular theory is that Biden has slowed down deportations and other removals. But the evidence here is pretty thin:
Conventional removals:
- Gradually fell under Barack Obama.
- Ticked up and then ticked back down under Donald Trump.
- Ticked down and then back up under Biden.
Removals in 2022 under Biden were only slightly lower than the beginning and ending of Trump's presidency.
But if you include those removed under Title 42, the emergency pandemic authority begun by Trump, Biden has the most aggressive removal numbers of any recent president. To the dismay of his supporters, he initially insisted on keeping it in place—hardly the act of a president who actively wants to flood the border with illegal immigrants. In 2022 he tried to end it, but it was kept in place by the courts until May of this year, when it was finally lifted because the pandemic emergency was over. Nonetheless, Title 42 was in place during all of 2021 and 2022, and encounters at the border were high that entire time and haven't changed much since it was halted.
What else? There's Biden's parole program, of course, which has admitted about 200,000 immigrants this year. However, immigrants are only admitted if they have a sponsoring family, and whatever else you think about this, it relieves pressure on the border.
There's also detention. Critics point to the fact that Biden allows most illegal immigrants to stay in the country until they're seen by a court, rather than detaining them. This is called catch-and-release. But for all his big talk, along with his performative separation of families, detentions were never very high even under Trump:
Detentions ticked up under Trump and then ticked down. The detention level under Biden is lower than the historical average, but not by an awful lot. The truth is that we've always had limited detention capacity, and that limits the number of immigrants who can be held.
As a caveat, I admit these figures are sometimes tricky. It's possible I'm missing something. But I don't think so. If you squint hard, you can make a case that Biden's border policy has been slightly more lenient than Trump's, but only by a smidgen. It's nowhere near different enough to explain the huge number of people crossing the border.
The explanation rather obviously lies elsewhere: the enormous growth in border crossers who are claiming asylum. Like it or not, this triggers legal accountability that just doesn't exist for ordinary illegal immigrants. By law, asylum claims have to be adjudicated, and our enormous backlog of cases guarantees that lots of asylum seekers will be allowed free for years until their cases are heard. There are fixes for this—mainly stricter rules and more judges—but in the meantime lots of people are streaming to the border because they know about asylum and there's not a lot anyone can do about it.
Beyond that, I'd suggest Republicans look to their own masters: the corporate interests who want more immigrants, both legal and illegal. They probably have more influence on this than the ACLU and every bleeding-heart lefty combined.
the masters don't just want cheap labor, they also want trump to beat biden with the immigrant stick
it's a two-fer
Indeed. They know once Trump gets in, they'll be writing the executive orders and legislation--and probably, SCOTUS decisions.
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I think the right's issue is that Biden is not trying to enact cruel policies or use demonizing rhetoric against immigrants
Yes. MAGATs believe cruelty shows strength. This is all part of the “Biden is weak” belief. Trump is “strong” because he uses demonizing rhetoric and backs it up with cruelty. And the more vicious the cruelty the better they like it.
"..There are fixes for this—mainly stricter rules and more judges—but in the meantime lots of people are streaming to the border because they know about asylum and there's not a lot anyone can do about it."
It would be easy to do something about it. Just get rid of the right to asylum.
The USA is already something of a rogue nation among the countries of the first world. Withdrawing from the Convention on Refugees would make that worse.
"...To the dismay of his supporters, he initially insisted on keeping it in place—hardly the act of a president who actively wants to flood the border with illegal immigrants. ..."
Maybe he doesn't want to flood the country with illegal immigrants but he isn't willing to do anything to stop it. Which comes to the same thing.
The number of "encounters" CBP reports set new records for the first two years of Biden's administration. In other words, border enforcement set new record highs twice in the first two years of Biden's administration. That is FAR from "isn't willing to do anything to stop it".
Gradually? They went from not quite a million in 2009 to not quite 400 thousand in 2016. One would really need to see back another 8 or more years to tell if that was simply part of a larger trend, but a drop of ~60% in just those 8 years seems other than "gradual." That's not quite 11% per year using a compound annual "growth" calculator.
Obama did put in place policies to nip immigration at the source, i.e. more aid to Central America, though I don't have the numbers to see if lower levels of deportation corresponded to lower levels of "encounters".
At the same time, he or his advisors likely understood what not having Title 42 active would mean - judging from the charts, it would have meant another million-odd people not removed each year. Those would have been some fascinating first year counter-optics.
The problem with title 42 is that it people are not processed, just sent back across the border, so they can try again without risking being barred from entry. Indeed, Trump broke the process to adjudicate asylum claims, so we're left with a ton of immigrants on our doorstep, i.e. not deported back to their home country, and all eligible to claim asylum because none of their claims were previously evaluated. Biden keeping title 42 in place makes sense since he had to rebuild the immigration system.
This is an example of a favorite kind of right-wing lie. The ones responsible for cranking it into the Mighty Wurlitzer know everything you've laid out here. They also know that asylum laws (and maybe treaty obligations too), and in particular the catastrophic shortage of immigration-law judges, tie Biden's (and Mayorkas's) hands. That alone goes a long way toward explaining why they refuse to address either immigration as a whole, or asylum, or the shortage of judges.
IOW, they're engineering Biden into a corner, denying him tools he'd need to deal with the problem (giving them an excuse to call it a "crisis") that they then blame him for.
It's almost perfectly analogous to their complete refusal to consider so much as a single red cent in finding taxes where the money is or on funding for the IRS while they're running around wailing and moaning about how budget deficits will surely be the end of the Republic.
I just wish the D comms machine wasn't so rickety about pounding MAGA and orthodox republicans (if they still exist) loudly and consistently about this.
Most asylum claims are clearly frivolous.
Nothing stops Biden from proposing a law to Congress to create an expedited process to remove people making such claims.
The simple fact is that any Democratic claim of being strong on immigration becomes laughable in the face of sanctuary cities and such.
What is your basis for stating that most asylum claims are frivolous?
And every attempt to improve the immigration system, including those proposed by Republicans, has been shot down by Republicans in congress. Why do you suppose that is?
Amnesties for various categories of illegal immigrants is not "improving the immigration systems".
The vast majority of asylum cases are frivolous because they come from people fleeing countries that do not routinely imprison or kill government opponents. Unless you are seeking asylum from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Syria, Iran, Russia, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, Yemen, Gaza, West Bank, or a handful of countries in Africa your case is prima facie frivolous with a slight possibility that you can prove your situation is a special case.
Nothing is stopping any Republican in the House or Senate from proposing such a law and passing it either.
The reason they haven't is because they want the contention. They don't want a smoothly running border.
I don’t profess to know the exact number and in fact I may well be way off, and I hope someone can come up with actual numbers, but it is my understanding that in 2023, 1,000,000 of the asylum seekers were from Cuba and Venezuela and yet we haven’t heard anything from the Cuban Republican senators. Does Rubio believe we should not hear asylum clams from people fleeing communism? Asylum claims will not be significantly reduced unless we do.
The data i see says that the number of "encounters" CBP reports set new records for the first two years of Biden's administration. In other words, border enforcement set new record highs twice in the first two years of Biden's administration.
People want in because the countries they come from are incredibly corrupt and violent. So why isn't there an effort to change the situation in those places? Doesn't have to be 20th Century military adventures. How about pressure on elites akin to what we're doing to Russia? Are El Salvador, Myanmar, or Haiti exempt from being reformed for some reason?
Historically, reform is extremely difficult to do and verges on colonialism. The sad fact is that humans are greedy bastards and even when the "good guys" roll in they end up corrupt from being bribed by the locals. We'd have to do full on military occupations to create order and that never goes well with the locals who've suffered greatly under previous military occupations.
US voters are not big on these types of adventures, either. So, you've got an unpopular occupation both here and there. The depth of corruption is not to be taken lightly, nor is the unwillingness of local populations to change their farming and other cultural habits.
So, here we sit with 50% of our voter pool not interested in military occupations to fix broken states OR in welcoming the people from those broken states into our own because we just flat out don't want them.
When Donald Trump takes the Presidency again next year, this will be why. And it will continue to happen across the globe as other first world countries decide to close their doors to refugees from failed states.
The GOP will always run against the Democratic opponents of their imaginations, which is a strategic weakness for them when elections roll around. Immigration is a very salient issue, especially in the border states, and if they can sell a version of Biden that is "soft on immigration" they will do their best to do so. But Biden's foreign policy overall is a lot stronger than Trump's ever was, and is much more assertive in its use of military and diplomatic pressure.
I think the GOP will continue to paint Biden to be many things he's not, and I think that in many key states, they will fail. They certainly won't be able to paint Trump as sane on abortion rights, given that he appointed the anti-Roe SCOTUS we're stuck with now. And that's an albatross for them that's even bigger than immigration is for Biden. I predict that young women in the suburbs will be determinative in the 2024 elections.
Employers want migrant labor. That is why the 'anti-migrant' states bus and fly them to the destinations where the demand for migrant labor is greatest. Biden wants what the employers want - a labor force that can be threatened with deportation when they complain about wages and working conditions.
It is NUTS to say that if you get here then you can stay if you have a reasonable case for asylum. And I am being generous to our current policy.
We can find millions, maybe BILLIONS, of people in the world who have a better claim for asylum than most people crossing the border. 2 million people from Gaza, much of Sudan, a large part of Ethiopia, etc.
Just because some people in Central America can get here easier doesn't mean their needs are superior to claims of people who can't easily get here.
I know I the few people reading this stopped at the first paragraph but the immigration policy of the Democrats doesn't work.
Maybe more importantly, the immigration policy will cost votes in November. It significantly increases the chances that Trump will win.
We need to change it NOW!!!
Remember the Gang of Eight proposal by equal numbers of Democrats & Republicans? It passed the senate 68-32. Then Speaker Boehner refused to bring it up for a vote. Because if they were forced to vote on it, enough Republicans would have voted for it that it would have passed and been signed by President Obama.
Why didn't the Republicans want that to happen? Why do they refuse to do anything to improve the system?
To the bad guys, the good guys always look like the bad guys.