even the Washington Post is getting a bit antsy with Biden's immigration efforts https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/08/president-biden-needs-coherent-strategy-border/ Opinion: President Biden needs a coherent strategy for the border Opinion by the Editorial Board Yesterday at 8:00 a.m. EDT In its apparent desperation to fashion an immigration strategy that will impose order on increasingly out-of-control migration, the Biden administration has unleashed a torrent of words and goals untethered to specific policies and timetables. To date, on immigration, officials have effectively reversed and rolled back some of the Trump administration’s most pernicious policies, but without a clear road map to address the immediate crisis — a decades-high surge in illegal border-crossing — or the long-term challenge driving migration: dysfunction, disorder and decay in Central America. Vice President Harris, tasked by the president with devising an immigration blueprint, has laid out a perfectly sensible long-term strategy to address factors driving illegal migration, buttressed by five “pillars,” or specific problem areas in Central America requiring Washington’s focus. They include the region’s anemic economy; pervasive corruption and weak democratic and justice structures; attacks on human and labor rights as well as the media; mayhem and extortion by criminal gangs and trafficking networks; and sexual and domestic violence. That’s fine as far as it goes. It’s also a list that anyone with a passing knowledge of the region could have compiled. What is mostly missing from the sweeping rhetoric and broad-strokes analysis is an actual plan for action. Ms. Harris and administration officials have also described short-term steps designed to get a handle on deterring the current tsunami of migrants and asylum seekers at the border. But the convoluted messaging — telling migrants not to seek entry to the United States while at the same time relaxing or scrapping an array of measures that would actually dissuade them, and providing relief to migrants on both sides of the border — has been a failure. That failure is measurable, and it is politically toxic. As of mid-July, a staggering 1.1 million unauthorized border crossers had been apprehended so far in the current fiscal year, which began last Oct. 1. Nearly 190,000 migrants, a record monthly total high, were taken into custody by border officers in June alone, when the early summer’s heat often deters many from making the trek. At the current pace, officials project that apprehensions will reach 1.5 million by the end of the fiscal year, the most in more than two decades. Alarmed by the numbers, the administration infuriated immigration advocates by announcing it would retain a Trump-era public health measure, originally justified on grounds of the pandemic, that blocks migrant families from seeking asylum at the southern border. Yet that measure, known as Title 42, has proved increasingly ineffective as a deterrent. Even while knowing they may be expelled without an asylum hearing, migrants often attempt to cross the border again and again. For the most part, the administration’s impulses are humane. However, they have driven a policy whose incoherence has yielded pressure at the border that may cost the Democrats control of one or both houses of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. So far, there is nothing in the administration’s short- or long-term strategizing that is likely to shift that dynamic.
Require E-Verify and slap business owners with Jail time if they knowingly hire undocumented employees. Meanwhile give undocumented employees who are here working and are not high risk a path to citizenship. The right will likely vote against sensible policies because they don’t actually want to fix immigration, they just want to campaign off it.
I agree Biden needs a better immigration plan but neither Trump or Obama had a good immigration plan and I doubt Biden will be able to come up with one. Like so many other issues there is no both no consensus on it and views are highly entrenched on the issue.
Besides... the republicans really don't want a immigration plan, because they will lose their familiar boogeyman to blame every social ill that their failed policies otherwise cause (eg health care costs, unemployment, and now COVID-19).
They don't. This isn't the party of Reagan anymore that recognized that simply keeping people out wasn't a solution but that our culture and economy needed a lot of new people to keep it vibrant. GW Bush also believed that too. Both understood that there was a demand for more immigration and a ready supply and sought ways to work with that reality. The current party is a Nativist party who sees things as a zero sum game. Who believes that immigration comes at the expense of "real" Americans..
I agree. One adjustment I would make, and it is a difficult one is to simplify the current immigration process first. It is important. That way the illegal immigrants wouldn't be cutting the line on their way to citizenship. Make it simpler for legal immigrants here and wading through the red tape and mess currently required. It also takes away some of the ammo critics of the idea would have.
"U.S. Encounters An 'Unprecedented' Number Of Migrants. DHS Says 'It's Complicated' ": https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027...d-number-of-migrants-dhs-says-its-complicated excerpt: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says immigration authorities are encountering an "unprecedented number of migrants" at the southern border. Authorities encountered migrants more than 212,000 times in July, according to official numbers released Thursday — including nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children, surpassing the monthly record set in March. In a visit to Brownsville, Texas, Mayorkas acknowledged the problem that large numbers of migrants are creating for local communities. "The situation at the border is one of the toughest challenges we face," he said at a press conference. "It is complicated, changing and involves vulnerable people at a time of a global pandemic." Mayorkas said that a rising number of migrants are testing positive for COVID-19. But he pushed back on claims that migrants are driving the dramatic rise in cases across the south. "The rate of positivity is at or lower than the rates in our local border communities," Mayorkas said. "We are building new capacity to address the situation, and we are doing so as rapidly as possible. The extent of the challenge should not be overstated. But nor should our ability to meet it." more at the link
Throwing business owners in jail is generally a political non-starter. Neither party since Reagan is blind to the fact that employers paying illegals is the reason why illegal immigration is still happening. Instead, I'd push for a clawback through fines with said clawback going into training/upskilling illegals into potentially valued citizens of our society. Make the fines really hard to lose against in court and tie it with laws against tax fraud. It essentially evens or increases the costs of hiring illegals over "natives" when business owners take the risk of hiring illegals under the table. From a realistic perspective amnesty is always in play, whether it'd be 1, 5, or 20 years our population growth is cratering fast without immigration, so walls are generally counterintuitive... Even if they're put up, doors will be added afterwards upskilling/integrating destitute "bad" immigrants is generally the government's responsibility Because no one likes welfare programs, let's go back to the root cause of illegal immigration and make them pay for their externalities.
Even here in MN the lack of employees filling jobs, especially in the service industry, is very noticeable and if this continues will be a drag on our economy. At this point we need MORE immigration not less.
https://reason.com/2021/09/16/how-immigration-clampdowns-create-border-crises/ How Immigration Clampdowns Create 'Border Crises' by Brian Doherty 9.16.2021 5:02 PM The Biden administration is on target to approach a historical fiscal-year record for apprehending migrants on the U.S./Mexico border. We are likely to have seen 1.64 million such apprehensions by this month's end of fiscal 2021, even as opponents absurdly accuse the president of pursuing "open borders" policies. Keep that in mind as you see scenes of a border crossing point being overwhelmed today by would-be migrants. Such moment are not happening despite the clampdown, but because of it. As the New York Post reports, the "number of migrants waiting under a bridge in Texas has doubled overnight and now tops 8,000 people….Drone footage shot by Fox News shows the sea of migrants, the majority from Haiti, under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas, and sources tell the network the situation is 'out of control' and that Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed." Big crowds at the border set off media storms frequentlythese days, generally for a national Fox audience that will never have their life impacted by migrants being allowed to live and work unimpeded on the same continental landmass. The Biden administration has been enforcing Title 42 returns of migrants to Mexico, whether they are Mexican or not. (This is done in the name of public health, which is seen as allowing for immediate expulsion no matter what U.S. asylum law dictates.) Though sometimes it's luck of which border agent you end up dealing with that defines whether you are permitted to go to friends in Florida or forced back to Mexico. There is a simpler, better way that would avoid these disconcertingly large crowds awaiting the rough justice of U.S. border policies. Those huge crowds in those drone videos are only there because it isn't conveniently legal for would-be migrants to buy a bus or plane ticket and go anywhere in the U.S. that they want to. They could do this either with their own funds or with money from charitable groups that currently spend their resources dealing with the awful aftermath of crossings at illegal entrance points, or with the legal troubles that arise from trying to do so at legal entrance points. The migrants could thus rendezvous with friends or family, or with other groups that want to help them assimilate. Or they could just start looking for the work that they came here to do in the first place. All without gathering in one place and looking scary to people who will likely never meet them or be harmed by them in any way. For those who can't make the laissez-faire step toward just letting human beings roam unmonitored through these United States, there's the option of instant work visas with a requirement to show up for a later asylum hearing. Or we could—as Joe Biden is mostly doing, like Donald Trump before him—double down on a system of feckless jawboning to keep people from trying to better their lives, of family breakup and child detention, of policies that force people to stay in America when they might rather return to their families elsewhere, and of pointless deaths and misery at the border. Most would-be migrants simply cannot navigate the near-impossible maze of U.S. immigration law via the legal "front door." But entering America could be as simple as buying a bus ticket or driving a car, with no massed crowds necessary. Pointlessly punitive policies that harm innocents and likely cost trillions in lost national wealth create the very situations that make people think we need more of those policies.
How's that boycott I proposed for people like you going? It hasn't started has it? You purchase a product or used a service provided by an illegal today? Who built your home? YOU are the problem. If only you could see that. Tsk tsk tsk.
How many will be admitted. Hopefully a lot will. There seems to be a real labor shortage. Maybe more immigration will help with that.
