business at the southern border.
The border should be focused on allowing the free flow of goods and lawful migrants to pass. And then it should be focused on security.
Attempting to manage asylum and other immigration tasks at the border is a recipe for disaster. It's entirely unfair to border communities on both sides. It funds the cartels. It's an unmitigated disaster that Trump cannot fix unless we get serious about changing our laws.
We should manage immigration the way most countries do, at embassy's and consulates. If you show up to our border looking for safe harbor without the proper credential: tough luck.
We must stop the incentive to make dangerous journeys to our border. It's straining Mexico. It's destroying habitats in Colombia.
At this point, there isn't enough trust for comprehensive immigration reform. We must focus on security and stemming the tide to build trust and calm the environment before we can regenerate conversations about more comprehensive reform.
I used to be a big comp reform guy. Academically, it makes so much sense. However in practice there are too many political roadblocks and we simply don't have the stomach for it. We need to start hitting some singles and doubles and stop swinging for the fences.
incremental.
He talked about the repeated failure of comprehensive bills and the fact this bill is primarily focused on asylum and tries to improve that issue. I think this quote matches your thought. I have linked the whole piece below but it may be paywalled.
The actual large concession that Murphy made in negotiating this deal, though, isn’t about the substance of immigration policy — it’s about the groups’ desire for comprehensiveness. This is a non-comprehensive immigration proposal designed to address a discrete set of problems rather than using those problems as leverage to address other problems. And from Lankford’s side, the concession is to actually try and address the problem rather than just whine and complain about Joe Biden. Which is to say that to the limited extent you can set the politics aside, this is a good bill that would have improved the asylum process.
We have 6000 miles of border (not counting the border between Canada and Alaska).
I realize that Russia, China and Brazil have longer borders but folks aren't trying to get in there.
The problem is not unsolveable. But it's a bit more complicated than the "get to the embassy" solution.
I don't know how exactly the US can do that, but having Mexico be a better filter would go a long way to "fixing" this issue.
I still wonder if it wasn't a mistake just annexing the entire thing when the US took Texas and California from them.
1. WHat is suggested - "Under Mr Biden’s rules, a fear of gang violence counts as a ground for being let in. Contrast that with Spain, which rejects this test even though it has a socialist prime minister." https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/01/25/how-the-border-could-cost-biden-the-election January 25 2024. I don't know what impact modifying asylum justifications would have but I imagine that eliminating this one would be powerful.
2. What is stated -
> We have a duty under law to admit asylum seekers. That said, if a law says you have to shoot every 2 year old born on February 19, 2022 in the head you probably should welch on the deal. Why? Doing so is manifestly unreasonable. Likewise, admitting millions of 'migrants' outside the legal immigration process while blaming this duty is manifestly unreasonable.
> Accordingly, we ought to simply close the border, partner with Mexico with monetary support for processing in Mexico. Embassy's outside our border can handle these claims and triage.
> related - I have not dove into this question, but it is relevant: what are Mexicos duties under the same asylum rules and why are non-Mexicans able to claim asylum with us rather than Mexico?
> It ought to be axiomatic that we have let in many people who have no bona fide claim to be here. Likewise, we have admitted, either via asylum claims or failure to police our border, a non-neglible population of bad people. THey may be around the margins, but their presence undermines the effort to admit the deserving because reasonable Americans can read the news and see migrants who attacked an NYC released without bail... grinning and flipping the bird to reporters. This is the "blue state" "blue city" stuff that has to stop if we want a groundswell of Americans to form and support handling this issue. https://nypost.com/2024/02/04/opinion/cop-beating-migrants-are-released-no-bail-after-attack-letters/
I am not unsympathetic. The 18th district police headquarters is .5 miles from my home. For 7 months it was so densely populated with Migrants that you could not enter the police station or walk on the sidewalk outside. We took action and brought food, clothes, and whatever we could to the migrants. I tried to assist by hiring anyone who could legally work and found no one could. WHen school started these parents were walking their kids all over our neighborhood to schools. These are good people, and they risked everything to be here.
Why are we admitting them half measure? Under Reagan we passed the IRCA. Once an individual's application for legalization under IRCA was approved, they were granted temporary resident status. This status allowed them to work legally in the United States. After a certain period in temporary status, individuals could then apply to adjust their status to that of lawful permanent residents (green card holders), which inherently included the ability to work.
It makes no sense that we are not just admitting migrants but then foreclosing their ability to legally work and then complaining about their drain on public resources.
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-migrants-migrant-shelter-police-department-texas-governor/13903742/
"In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which, among other things, created a six-month waiting period before asylum seekers could legally receive a work permit."
It was thought that this would deter people from seeking Asylum.
I'm sympathetic to her overall view. Basically every time we tighten the system you get a brief decrease in migration, then the migrants look around and decide that's not worse than their home conditions.
No discernible political agenda, just a heartfelt reporting of the facts surrounding an incredibly complex problem.