2024 Rundown: Renewed Immigration Focus
2024 Rundown: Renewed Immigration Focus
President Biden announced a new executive action yesterday that would limit asylum requests between ports of entry when the daily average of border crossings exceeds 2,500 per day, which it currently does.
During the announcement, Biden directly called out Republicans in Congress not only for refusing to take action on the border but also for obstructing the Senate bipartisan border bill.
Republicans have been saying for years that President Biden must use executive orders to solve the border. With this announcement, Republicans are now claiming it is too little too late.
On the other side of the aisle, progressive Democrats are upset because they feel the new executive order limits asylum-seeking for people who need it while doing nothing to address any of the underlying immigration issues.
All of this comes at a time when border crossings are down and continuing to reduce, other topics, such as Trump being found guilty, are pulling focus away from complicated policy issues, including immigration, and polling finds immigration is not even one of the top issues Americans are focused on.
So why did Biden not only take this step on immigration today but also announce it at a press conference?
Just six months ago, the border was the top issue for Americans. That pressure led to the bipartisan effort on a conservative border bill—the same bill that Trump told Republicans to block so that he could campaign on fixing the border.
Polling found that more people were viewing Republicans as responsible for the border issues when previously more had blamed Biden and Democrats. When the poll takers were reminded specifically about the bill, responsibility for the issue moved even further in the direction of Republicans.
The New York 3rd Congressional District special election to replace George Santos focused heavily on immigration. The Republican candidate, Mazi Pilip, attempted to paint her opponent as a proponent of amnesty. The Democratic candidate, Tom Suozzi, focused on the bipartisan border bill and the importance of legislative action. The district turned blue.
All of that led to Republicans quieting down about immigration, and Democrats seemed happy to discuss other issues. Without any major incidents happening at the border, immigration continued to fall in importance for voters.
A Pew Research poll in February of this year found immigration to be the 8th most important issue for Americans. A strong partisan divide still exists, though, with only 39% of Democrats saying immigration is a top issue compared to 76% of Republicans who said it is.
Despite immigration not being a top issue overall, Biden may have felt more pressure to act once Republicans worked to change the narrative. Instead of focusing on the border, which Republicans refused to fix, the GOP switched to highlighting crimes committed by migrants.
Overall, migrants commit crimes at a lower level than American citizens, but bringing the focus to an American killed by a migrant makes such stats less relevant in the public’s mind. When someone “shouldn’t” be here and then hurts or kills an American, outrage grows.
Republicans found success with that messaging for a while before the spotlight faded away once again. Democrats, in response, brought back the bipartisan border bill for another vote in the Senate, but that received very little media attention as it simply failed again.
So why this executive order now when the border isn’t front and center in the public mind?
The executive order has been in the works for months. Initially, Biden likely wanted to counteract the new Republican messaging by showing how Republican inaction caused these problems. But now that the media and voter focus has shifted to other issues, why hold a press conference to highlight the executive order instead of simply enacting it?
Biden has been rising in national polls while Trump has been sliding, including in critical battleground swing states. Trump has now been convicted of 34 felonies, hurting his campaign even further. Republicans haven’t been able to find many issues to campaign on, with immigration being one of their few core topics. With Republicans on the ropes and preparing for significant losses in November, eliminating one of their key campaign talking points would leave Republicans little chance to turn the election around.
Even better for Biden would be making the border a nonissue altogether. If border crossings drop closer to a historically normal level, or if there are six months of continual improvements leading up to the election, then immigration can be removed from the conversation fully, allowing Biden to steer discussions towards his accomplishments of low unemployment, high jobs, booming manufacturing, green energy investments and more.
Border crossings have already dropped 54% since their high in December of last year and are now below the highest point of the Trump administration from May of 2019. If Biden’s executive action works, the yearly total of border crossings could be reduced to around the total from 2019, which was a little over 850,000. It would be hard for Republicans to say border crossings are bad if they are similar to what it was like under Trump.
Beyond all of these reasons is the fact that despite the Republican narrative, Biden both cares about the border and has been working on it since day one in office when he introduced his immigration policy called the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. That policy didn’t end up making it through Congress. But Biden didn’t stop there.
After the COVID emergency ended, Biden enacted the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule. However, it was blocked by the courts. Never deterred, Biden has taken over 100 different actions to address the border while also pushing for faster work permits for migrants and providing qualified DACA migrants with healthcare.
Biden has made it clear throughout his presidency that he respects migrants while also respecting the importance of proper immigration procedures. He wants to improve the asylum and work permit systems to serve migrants better, and he reversed Trump's reduction in legal immigration levels. Biden has even implemented programs to provide avenues for making proper entry through ports of entry operate more smoothly.
More recently, Biden worked with Mexico to get them to increase their immigration enforcement in order to reduce the number of migrants reaching our southern border.
Politics is filled with partisan rhetoric, demonizing political opposition, and misinformation that clouds the understanding of issues, making all actions seem purely politically motivated. But in this case, looking at President Biden's history of actions, it is clear that he has always taken immigration seriously and wants to improve the situation for our country.
Just don’t expect to hear that fact during the campaign season, particularly when it is only a few months before the presidential election.
