2024 Rundown: Border Lies

Republicans are doing everything they can to not solve the border and lying about it.

The bipartisan Senate border bill was voted down in the Senate today. This was a genuine bipartisan effort and the bill is more conservative than progressive. While the bill does include aid to Ukraine and aid to Israel, it is the immigration aspects that are receiving all of the focus, and receiving all of the false rhetoric.

The reason for its demise is purely political as Republicans want to campaign on the issues at the border as much as they can while attempting to find ways to blame it on Democrats. This is creating a lot of disinformation about current Presidential powers, the border issues themselves, and what was in that bipartisan bill.

President Biden can fix the border all by himself using Executive Orders

No, he can’t. Neither could Trump.

Donald Trump attempted to shutdown the southern border late in 2018 due to a rising amount of migrant encounters. His action was taken to court and blocked. This was because the President doesn’t have the authority to close a border simply because they want to keep people out. There needs to be a specific emergency or threat such as the Covid Emergency which is why the border was able to be shutdown with Title 42, or it requires a hostile group such as barring entry to citizens of Iran.

After Title 42 expired and Congress still hadn’t passed any immigration legislation, President Biden attempted to enact the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule which would have severely limited asylum requests, and all but stopped them entirely between ports of entry. This too was taken to court because the President doesn’t have the power to do that.

Such changes require laws from Congress, which is what the new border bill was attempting to change. It set a threshold of migrant encounters which would trigger a shutdown of the border that would essentially stop asylum requests between ports of entry and limit them at ports of entry.

Here is a link to the court case that blocked Trump’s use of INA § 212(f) to shutdown the southern border due to mass migration:
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/02/28/18-17274.pdf

And here is a link to Biden’s measure being blocked by the court.

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/federal-judge-blocks-biden-administration-asylum-policy

and a link to the ongoing appeals process of that ruling:

https://immigrantjustice.org/court_cases/east-bay-sanctuary-covenant-v-biden

Our Border Is Open

No, it isn’t.

The reason we discuss encounters is because when a migrant reaches US soil they’re either turned around by Border Patrol or apprehended. That is the exact opposite of an open border. Upon being apprehended migrants can take an initial asylum screening, if they pass that then they have the option to request asylum and get a hearing. Anyone who doesn’t pass the screening is deported. 

No matter how many times Republicans say it, the US border is not open and we don’t simply let “illegals” into the country. Those who are awaiting an asylum hearing are here legally.

The Bipartisan Border Bill Weakens Asylum Criteria

No, it makes asylum harder to get.

The bill enacts a stricter initial screening process which will reduce the number of migrants who can request asylum. The bill also hires more asylum officers and immigration judges in order to reduce the years-long backlog for hearings down to months. The majority of migrants don’t end up qualifying for asylum. This would have both reduced the number of migrants in the US already and would have reduced the time that new migrants spend in the country before either being deported or granted asylum.

The New Bill Codifies Catch and Release

Catch and Release isn’t one thing, it is a collection of laws and regulations. It was done under Trump, under Obama, under Bush, and under Biden because it is how the system works.

When a low-risk migrant is awaiting their asylum hearing, they are released into the US. They can also apply for a work permit (something the new bill would have streamlined). This means that instead of your taxes going to house, feed, and care for these migrants, they are able to work in order to care for themselves and contribute to the US economy.

Besides being a demeaning term to use on human beings, the term Catch and Release is meant as propaganda to make immigration seem scarier.

The New Bill Brings 5,000 Migrants Into The US Each Day

Not at all true.

First an encounter is just that, when a migrant is encountered. Some are turned away on the spot, others are apprehended. When a migrant is apprehended they are given an asylum screening as mentioned above. If they don’t meet the requirements, they’re deported.

The border bill gives authority to shutdown the border when the average daily encounters over a week reaches 4,000. At an average of 5,000, or a single day of 8,500, it enacts a mandatory shutdown. The bill at no point tries to make 5,000 migrants try to cross the border each day.

A border shutdown means that asylum requests between ports of entry are essentially blocked. There are extreme cases that are still allowed. Requests at ports of entry are also limited. The shutdown remains in effect until the number of encounters drops below an average of 3,750 for a period of time.

The Border Bill Shouldn’t Have Aid For Ukraine

Republicans actually demanded that any further aid to Ukraine came with funding for the US border and measures to fix immigration. 

This wasn’t a trick by Democrats, and again this was a bipartisan bill. There is also aid to Israel which is an important measure for Republicans.

The fact is that Republicans seemed to think that Democrats wouldn’t combine Ukraine aid with immigration so it would give them a way to say that Democrats didn’t want to fix the border, or didn’t truly want aid to Ukraine. They made those very points many times.

Now that a bill exists in a way that Republicans asked for and that has more Conservative measures for immigration and almost no Progressive measures, Republicans are making new excuses for not solving the border issues.

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The modern Republican party has shown that they believe in politics over people and party over country. They refuse to solve problems, even the ones their voters believe to be the biggest issues facing our nation. Instead they fearmonger about migrants, calling them criminals and terrorists, they fearmonger about the border calling it an invasion and a national security threat, but when the time comes to do something about it, they move the goalposts and make new excuses.

Republicans don’t want to fix the immigration issue. They want to campaign on it. But now they own the crisis.