Republican politicians have been hollering about the “crisis” at the southern border since Joe Biden took office. But the last thing Republicans want is a deal that might secure the border before the presidential election in November.
As Republican governors in Texas and Florida have engaged in trafficking immigrants by sending buses and planeloads of asylum seekers to cities in the north with no advance notice, those cities have struggled to manage the migrants, who are not legally allowed to work until their immigration status is determined.
House Republicans voted against funding for more Border Patrol agents and additional personnel at ports of entry in 2022, and have talked about defunding the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans are threatening to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over policy differences.
In the Senate, negotiators are working on a bipartisan deal to address the issues, which would restrict asylum and humanitarian parole system. But House Republicans say they will only accept a border deal that resembles the hardline immigration bill that passed the House in 2023 – known as HR 2 – even though Senate Democrats and the White House strongly oppose that plan, as a non-starter.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) gave away the game in early January when he told CNN he would not vote for a bill to solve problems at the border because it could help President Biden’s approval ratings. “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating.”
When Senate Republicans in January indicated they were close to a deal with Senate Democrats, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) reportedly told the House Republicans in a conference call that the border can’t be secured without a Republican in the White House, and later said he would “absolutely not” accept the Senate deal.
Johnson may be following orders from Donald Trump, who is urging his congressional allies to hold the line. As he wrote on his platform, “Truth Social,” Jan. 17, “I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, Country!”
This is a pattern that goes back to 2013, when the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill that would have prioritized border security but would have set up path to legal status and eventual citizenship for the estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. House Republicans would not allow the bill to be debated in the House.
When President Barack Obama asked Republicans to propose their own immigration bill, Republicans refused. But they still insisted that Obama do something about illegal immigration. So when Obama used his executive authority to restrict immigration, Republicans called Obama a tyrant.
In 2016, Trump killed prospects for immigration reform by casting immigrants as threats to the nation, Andrea Flores, immigration policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations, noted in a column in the New York Times Jan. 15. “As president, [Trump] restricted the number of immigrants coming to the United States, separated families, and dismantled our immigration courts, hampering the ability to process asylum seekers at the border. And yet in 2019, under his watch, there was a 90% increase in migrant apprehensions along the southern border compared to the year before.”
The proposed deal in the Senate would simultaneously restrict and expand executive authority, Flores noted in the Times. “For starters, Mr. Biden could lose key powers that presidents have used for decades to regulate immigration in times of crisis. Worse, if Mr. Trump is re-elected, he will have new tools at his disposal that he could use to terrorize immigrants and make the chaos at the border even more acute,” Flores wrote.
Trump has promised to place immigrants in detention camps and conduct mass deportations, and he has adopted Nazi rhetoric in accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”
(Ironically, Trump’s mother was an immigrant from Scotland.)
“I agree with lawmakers that the status quo is unsustainable and that reforms are needed,” Flores noted. “But this deal will not alleviate Mr. Biden’s border challenges unless Congress builds legal migration pathways that weaken cartels who have profited the most from new asylum restrictions.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis alienated many Florida businesses, including farmers who rely on immigrant labor, when he signed into law a bill in 2023 that criminalizes the transport of undocumented people into Florida, penalizes businesses that employ immigrants, requires hospitals to ask about immigration status on intake forms, invalidates out of state driver’s licenses or other forms of government ID issued to undocumented people, and prevents local governments from issuing identification cards to undocumented people. That has caused many immigrants to flee the state.
Now Republicans are trying to backpedal their xenophobia. “This bill is 100 percent supposed to scare you,” said state Rep. Richard Roth (R), who voted for the bill but appeared at an event in Hialeah, Fla., in January 2023 to play down the threats to businesses. “I’m a farmer, and the farmers are mad as hell. We are losing employees. They’re already starting to move to Georgia and other states.” But he urged business owners to tell “your people” that it’s “more of a political bill than it is policy. It does give more police state powers going forward to deal with immigration, but still this is mainly a political bill.”
In Texas, Republicans hope to win over Latinos who have tended to vote Democratic, but a new law Gov. Greg Abbott (R) pushed through the Legislature last year criminalizes undocumented immigrants in Texas, which will give a new generation of Tejanos the experience of being stopped by local and state police for driving while Brown, or speaking their mother’s or grandmother’s language in a public place. And they’d better have a state-issued ID.
The US Supreme Court had to scale down Abbott’s ambitions to dominate the border, as the court on Jan. 22 in a 5-4 vote ordered Texas to allow federal border agents access to the state’s border with Mexico, where Texas officials have deployed miles of concertina wire and National Guard troops prevented Border Patrol officers from attempting to rescue migrants struggling in the river at Eagle Pass Jan. 12. Three migrants drowned.
Since 2021, Abbott’s Operation Lone Star initiative has challenged federal authority on the border. Abbott has deployed state troopers across the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border; ordered state police to arrest migrants who are suspected of trespassing; installed 70,000 rolls of concertina wire along the Rio Grande; and spent $1.5 billion to build a dozen miles of border walls.
The US needs immigrants, who play a big part in harvesting and processing our food supply, along with other jobs awaiting. We need an orderly process of examining applicants at ports of entry, giving migrants a fair, timely hearing in immigration courts, and identifying bad actors and deporting them. Get it done, Congress. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2024
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