Andrew Prokop at Vox writes today that Joe Biden's "political disaster" on immigration was due to infighting among his aides, not because Biden himself was soft on border enforcement:
All the way back in March 2021, the New York Times reported, Biden was furious about the border crisis, demanding to know whom he needed to fire to fix it.
The problem was that, for three full years, Biden’s team proved unable to fix it.
Until, in 2024, they suddenly did.
During Biden’s first three years in office, the number of arriving migrants skyrocketed.... Then, starting early in 2024, and continuing throughout the year, border arrivals plummeted. In August, border encounters had dropped to about 58,000 — 77 percent lower than the previous December’s level. By the end of the year, they’d dropped even further.
....If it was possible all along to get the border much more under control, why didn’t Biden do it years ago? If this was what Biden hoped to achieve all along, what went wrong in the administration’s decision-making that it only materialized after years of political pain?
Prokop falls victim to the common idea that policy is everything and the crisis continued until Biden finally adopted some decisive policy changes. But there's no mention of the most obvious explanation: jobs.
The usual policy explanation for the drop in border crossings is (a) increased enforcement from Mexico in early 2024 and (b) Biden's June 2024 asylum order. But this is backward.
Take a close look at the chart. Border crossings started to skyrocket under Trump as job demand skyrocketed, and this continued under Biden. In early 2022 job demand softened, and shortly thereafter border crossings began softening too—before any policy changes of any kind—and kept dropping through mid-2023. This would have continued except that Mexico suddenly loosened its border policies. When they went back to normal, border crossings returned to their previous downward trend. Then they started another plunge that went through May 2024, before Biden signed his order. June brought only a small additional increase.
Unless you believe in time machines, the immigration story is clear: the fundamental driver was jobs. Mexico interrupted that briefly and Biden later gave it a push, but that's all. When job demand was high, so was illegal immigration. When job demand dropped, illegal immigration dropped right alongside it.
None of this is to say that a more cohesive White House couldn't have done more. Perhaps they could have. But they were fighting strong headwinds—unlike Donald Trump in 2019, who had the tailwind of slowing job demand at his back.
It's the jobs, stupid. Nothing else made more than a small difference.
Kevin's position is such horseshit. You can compare the unemployment rate:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE
with the rate of migrant encounters at the border:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/09/whats-happening-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-in-7-charts/
And it is instantly clear that the relationship between unemployment and border crossing is affected by many, many intervening variables.
In 1985 you have a 7% unemployment rate and 1.6 million border encounters.
In 2017 you have a 4% unemployment rate and 300K encounters.
So what do you think people come to the USA for? Not-jobs?
I think that people come for jobs, but their willingness to come is massively influenced by their expectation of success.
If they believe that they will simply be caught and deported, they are less likely to attempt to come.
This is a situation in which optics are everything.
A good few of these folks walk hundreds if not thousands of miles to get here. I don't believe getting caught is much of a deterrent, not when success has such a huge draw.
Those thousands of miles certainly and hundreds possibly mean it is weeks, perhaps months before someone arrives at the border. So one would expect job opportunities to rise in advance of the arrival increase.
Really!?
I think hearing that others walked hundreds if not thousands of miles to get here and were promptly put on a plane and flown back would be a huge deterrent.
Depends on what you're leaving.
You don't have any way to distinguish the two potential causes over this restricted range. You have a period of low immigration and low unemployment, and then Biden is elected and job openings soar.
Fortunately, the job opening data time series starts in 2000.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTS1000JOL
And when you compare the whole job openings time series to the Pew time series, it becomes clear that there is more going on than just job openings.
The number of unauthorized residents in the US seems to have reached 10-11 million around 2005:
https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/unauthorized-immigrants/estimates-unauthorized-immigrant-population-residing
and there haven't been any huge changes since. These numbers must be very uncertain, so a million or so one way or the other probably doesn't mean much. Of course people go as well as come and the number leaving doesn't seem to be kept track of. The number of agricultural and other low-skill jobs that most of the unauthorized immigrants fill does not vary a great deal.
This makes me dubious about any huge responses to supposed job demand in the US. Migration must respond to job demand in the other countries as well, and the fact is that people tend to migrate because others are doing so - nobody wants to be left behind.
Of course the numbers don't support the allegation of massive "invasion", at least for the last 20 years.
But Kevin, nobody wants to work anymore!
Despite the immigration rhetoric states refuse to enforce simple measures like E-Verify because there wouldn't be enough illegals to support the building industry in Texas or harvesting in Florida.
Or construction in a border state that might need a LOT of construction soonly...? I can only hope that the immigration situation will be better (H1Bs for construction workers maybe?) once the fires are contained and people want to rebuild.
There is a market-clearing wage for every job.
And employers do not want to pay it.
Yeah but Snow-for-brains thinks that people just don't want to work anymore. Probably.
Either that or he left unsaid that he believes the market-clearing wage is in fact higher than is offered, and just doesn't know how to resolve the cognitive dissonance involved with wanting (or even needing) things to remain artificially cheap due to capital taking ever increasing profits while paying ever lower real wages to people it is exploiting (migrant workers in agriculture, undocumented workers in construction) rather than offering them a true slice of the pie in exchange for their labors.
"Unless you believe in time machines, the immigration story is clear: the fundamental driver was jobs."
I problem with your observation is the robust flow of folks, seeking asylum: a lawful asylum seeker, is not entering the US because of a positive American labor market. Thus, flows of asylum seekers should, in theory, be unrelated to US labor conditions.
That's specious. Whether or not a person may have legal grounds to seek asylum, other factors (like the availability of work in the target country) will be additional parts of the decision.
Say you live in a country in which you are under threat of persecution because of your race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. In universe A, if you undertake the potentially hazardous and costly trip to America to seek asylum, there is no job for you because the American economy is in shambles. In universe B, if you undertake the potentially hazardous and costly trip to America to seek asylum, there is a really great job waiting for you, because the American economy is going gangbusters. In which universe are you more likely to seek asylum?
aldoushickman - emotionally, I understand your argument but legally, I disagree.
If one has a creditable fear for their life (basically the standard for asylum) then the US economic conditions basically should not matter.
Stated differently, approximately, 85% of asylum seekers lose their case. I suspect, because many are really economic migrants.
"emotionally, I understand your argument but legally, I disagree."
I'm not making a legal argument; the case for whether or not somebody is entitled to asylum has nothing to do with whether or not the asylum-seeker has a job lined up. But whether or not they choose to seek asylum with all the upheval, difficulty, and uncertainty that entails, may well be influenced by whether or not they can get a job in America.
Moreover, the standard for granting asylum is not "creditable [sic] fear for their life," it's fear of persecution. To the extent that you are arguing that anybody seeking asylum would have to be so seeking because the alternative is certain death such that employment would be the furthest thing from their mind, you're simply wrong on immigration law.
And even then: presumably, the in-fear-for-their-life-asylum-seeker would have at least *some* choice of countries in which to seek asylum (the US isn't the only one, after all), so if nothing else the relative merits of the option asylum destinations would be expected to play a role.
aldoushickman
I am not an attorney. I believe the treaty requires the asylum seeker to go to the nearest safe country. Thus, no, "seeker would have at least *some* choice of countries in which to seek asylum "
As I said, the reason 85% of asylum cases are ultimately denied, is because most are economic migrants and not, legally asylum qualified.
Dumbest self own goal from democrats in a very long time. They listened to “activists” who convinced them it would ensure the Latinx (😂) vote. But it didn’t. The activists were wrong. And while I’ll never vote for republicans, to me this was the dumbest policy. Dumb. Bad policy and bad politics.
The deportations will be painful and awful. The wages of sin…
I agree that Democrats blew it on immigration, but mostly from a rhetorical standpoint. Remember that they tried to pass a very conservative immigration bill and were stopped by Trump.
Trump, of course, will do nothing about immigration apart from some high profile cruelties. There will probably be fewer deportations under Trump than under Biden because the rich guys who got Trump elected need those cheap and powerless undocumented workers.
How long does it take someone from Central or South America to get to the border?
"Infighting among his aides" is a fancy way of saying "a lot of people who work for Biden are, correctly, opposed to getting tough on the border and were fighting amongst themselves to try and win that policy and politics argument."
Like, this question:
Assumes that something went wrong, as opposed to "many people who Biden felt he couldn't simply ignore, fire, or bull through were opposed to harsh policy measures."
There are an awful lot of people in the Democratic coalition who are opposed to the "make it dangerous, brutal, and unpleasant to come to the US" school of border control. We're not just weirdo hippies on the internet, either, you can find us at all levels. We fight for what we believe in, and if we don't often win, we often make it hard for the xenophobe faction of the party, which does outnumber and outgun us, to do as they please.
There are ways to reduce illegal immigration without being cruel about it. Problem is, to most Republicans, the cruelty is the point.
Well, the easiest way is to simply let people come here legally.
My great-grandfather was an illiterate Sicilian criminal. He bought a steamship ticket, signed his name in a book, and walked across an open border. He worked in the mines, which gave him the black lung that killed him in his fifties, and then on the railroads.
I say lets welcome in millions more just like him. Only without the black lung.
+1
Why? Why would we want that many more immigrants? Some level of immigration is needed and healthy. But you don’t think there’s a limit? Look at the UK. Their culture is eroding. The list common baby name last year was Muhammad.
On a related note:
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/01/17/biden-didnt-cause-the-border-crisis-by-being-too-lax-on-enforcement/
There is a special place in Hell for libertarians.
So when job demand is high, why aren’t we ramping up our border protections to keep them out? Surely Kevin can’t be the only one that is aware of this correlation.
"Job demand is high" is another way of saying "labor is scarce". When labor is scarce, CBP has difficulty recruiting the people it needs to ramp up border protection.
Yeah, but concentration camps will.
From NPR;
Immigrants drive Nebraska's economy. Trump's mass deportations pledge is a threat
LINCOLN, Neb. — Every so often, Al Juhnke, executive director of the Nebraska Pork Producers Association, says he'll get a phone call from one of his farmers about how to solve Nebraska's severe labor shortage..
It goes something like this: "Al, I got a great idea. Why don't we invite any immigrants? Legal, illegal … I don't care. Invite them to Nebraska because we have lots of openings out on our farm and we need help."
Juhnke smiles wearily as he tells the story.
Nebraska is one of the top meat producers in the U.S. It also has one of the worst labor shortages in the country. For every 100 jobs, there are only 39 workers, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Last January, the state's economic chamber released a report saying Nebraska had no choice but to welcome immigrants to "address the workforce gap."
Nebraska might need immigrants, but it also voted overwhelmingly for President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened to carry out mass deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally.
Juhnke says attracting workers to Nebraska is not about wages. The average pay for a meat trimmer is close to $18 an hour — well above the state minimum of $13.50. "These are good paying jobs in the plants," he says. "People say, 'Well, just double or triple the pay [and] you'll get United States citizens to work.' No, you won't."
In the past few years, Juhnke and several dozen other Nebraska advocacy and business groups formed an alliance to demand reform of federal immigration laws and state policy. Among their requests: expanded worker visa programs, and a pathway to residency for immigrants already living in the U.S.
Juhnke says he has been around long enough to know that it has become an impossible task to talk about immigration reform with politicians.
"We go out to Washington, D.C., and they'll tell us, 'Immigration reform is the third rail of politics.' Really the last time we saw something was during the Reagan administration," he says, referring to the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which gave legal status to some 2.7 million immigrants. "That's a long time not to have immigration reform."
Juhnke expressed concern that the anti-immigration rhetoric that has been sweeping the nation will make people reconsider coming to work in the U.S.
"I'm worried we're going to lose legal immigrants, just because they're sick and tired of it," Juhnke says. "At one point, this was probably the best place in the world to come and work and start a good family life. Now they're maybe reconsidering that."
But he also believes the same voters who supported the Trump campaign know that his pledge to carry out mass deportations is just not going to happen. "There's no way it can."
Elsa R. Aranda, the state director of LULAC, the oldest Hispanic civil rights organization in the country, rejects that argument. "Tell that to the families that got separated and still haven't found their children," Aranda says, before apologizing for getting heated.
Aranda says she wants to hear more talk about protecting immigrant lives, beyond the economic benefits of immigration. "It's dehumanizing — 'Let's harness immigrant labor.' Like an animal."
At the end of the day, she says, Nebraskans have no other choice but to consider how immigrants are treated. "Yes, yes, we know people hate immigrants who are not here legally, deport them all, etc., etc. Well, what are you going to do when you don't have workers?"
The governor of Nebraska, Jim Pillen, recently assembled a taskforce to examine the state's labor shortage. "No industry is exempt from current shortages. We need to solve this problem if we are to continue growing Nebraska," Pillen said in a statement.
The taskforce included the state's health care industry, education department and various chambers of commerce.
NPR reached out to his office for comment about the state's labor shortage and how an immigration crackdown could further exacerbate the situation but did not receive a response. Like many other Republican governors, Pillen has also pledged his support for Trump's "commitment to deporting 'dangerous criminals, gang members, and terrorists' " without legal status in the U.S.
But Trump has repeatedly suggested his mass deportation plan would target a wider group of immigrants — not just those with criminal records.
And in the meatpacking towns, the rumor mill is working overtime.
You can see the city of Fremont long before you arrive.
The billowing smoke towers from the massive plants are visible on the flat horizon. Some days, you can also smell it. This is where America's meat comes from. If you buy chicken at Costco or eat Spam, it was very likely processed here.
On a recent Friday evening, the streets and bars are covered in Christmas lights and are eerily empty.
Bertha Quintero, the owner of an empty restaurant downtown, leans up against the bar and sighs. "People are scared," she says. "Especially people with families. Business is bad because people don't leave home. They go from work to their houses."
The fear is not just out in the streets, it's in the plants, too.
Ariel Magania Linares grew up here. He's an immigration lawyer. His parents are factory workers. He's offered to give us a tour of the neighborhood where he grew up, where mostly workers live.
He says it's not uncommon for people to use fake names, to protect themselves from immigration checks. A few days ago, his mother told him about something that happened with a coworker.
"She addressed her by her name in the food court. And that person turned to her and whispered, 'Don't say my real name!' "
We knock on several doors, but no one wants to speak. Eventually, one man invites us into his garage for a chat. He doesn't want his last name used because he's scared of retaliation from his employer.
Richie is from El Salvador. He's here legally, applying for asylum from political persecution in El Salvador.
He says in the weeks after the U.S. presidential election, his plant let go many undocumented workers. But now, there's just not enough people to do the job. So he's been picking up double shifts.
He's grateful for the work, but his coworkers constantly joke about being deported. "They assume their fate is sealed. They sound completely resigned," he says. In Central America, there's an expression: tragar grueso. A hard swallow. That's what Richie says he does when they joke like that. He stays quiet and makes sure he tucks his work papers into his uniform every day when he heads out to work.
NPR reached out to several meat processing plants to inquire about how they are dealing with the possibility of raids but received no response.
The sense of impending doom at the plants is magnified by constant speculation. Richie asks if it's true that the U.S. government is going to start offering $1,000 for each undocumented immigrant reported to the authorities. He plays the Tik Tok where he saw it. It's false, but he says the workers at his plant have watched it many times over.
The situation in Nebraska is far from unique: Across the U.S., there's a labor shortage, which has clashed with anti-immigrant sentiment. But the situation is especially dire here, and it might come to a head in the city of North Platte.
The population in North Platte has been declining for the last decade or so. Unlike so many other Nebraska cities, there are no meat processing factories here. For now.
This summer, a plant called Sustainable Beef is slated to open. The company declined an interview with NPR, but it said that over 800 jobs will be created.
According to the North Platte Area Chamber & Development Corp., it'll add an estimated $1.2 billion to the local economy every year.
A large sign just off the highway, reads, "The Whole World Is Understaffed. Be Kind to Those Who Showed Up."
"We understand the economic necessity of it, and we are not stupid," says Janet Evans, a parishioner at the Episcopal Church of Our Savior.
She acknowledges there's been a lot of political divisions recently, but says, "I think there's still enough in our Nebraska DNA that we do depend on each other. We come from storms, weather incidents, where you depend on your neighbors and you go dig somebody out of a snowstorm. Even if you don't really like them, you go dig them out because it's what you do. Because we're Nebraska."
Religious organizations throughout the state have stood up for the immigrant community. Nebraska's Catholic archbishops have been public in their support. The Episcopal church of North Platte has also been unequivocal in its mission to provide what it calls "radical hospitality."
"From a theological perspective," says Rev. Steve Meysing, "will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?"
The church is currently organizing a program to pair newly arrived migrant families who come to work at the plant with a host family.
As they give us a tour of the church, a black and white photo of a Japanese man, sitting in a jail cell, stands out.
Father Hiram Kano, was part of a wave of Japanese migrants who came to North Platte in the 1920's, to work in the beet fields. He was eventually taken to an internment camp during WWII. In the Episcopal faith, he is known as the Nebraska Saint.
Evans sighs. She says she's bracing for what the next four years will look like for immigrants: "I do not know. It is terrifying to me, too."
But she also believes the future looks bright for North Platte. Soon the new plant will open. More people will come.
"We will have lots of little boutiques," she says. "We'll have a diverse, lovely school system. We will have a growing number of people who are bilingual. That is what I dream of."
She knows that under Trump, the country's immigration policy is going to move in a different direction, one that prioritizes closed borders.
But her door is open.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/17/g-s1-42134/immigration-trump-mass-deportation-nebraska-economy-workers
He could have pushed a strong e-Verify mandate...
Oh yes, I know I know, it's those nasty Republicans that refuse to strengthen e-Verify.
Except that, uh, in June 2024 Mitney (rich GOP) submitted a bill to do just that.
S.4529 - Mandatory E-Verify Act of 2024
As a sequel to a bill by Vance (populist GOP) and Tom Cotton (southern GOP) in 2023 that also wanted e-verify strengthening:
S.2785 - Higher Wages for American Workers Act of 2023
Co-sponsors on these bills are all R's.
So don't tell me this is all about the REPUBLICAN's not wanting to fix e-Verify...
Kinda like every time we were told that Affirmative Action was the equivalent of Legacies, only to learn that the GOP was in fact quite fine with banning legacies....
(Of course both sides haven't yet attacked Athletic and similar [eg Music] scholarships, because those are both convenient for each side, though in different ways.)