President Joe Biden will make a mistake if he issues another executive order blocking asylum seekers in hopes of improving his electoral standing. This order is unlikely to be legal or effective. Instead, the Biden administration should focus on policies that have made a difference by expanding legal tools. Individuals and families who are legally admitted will not enter the country illegally.
“The White House is considering using a provision of federal immigration law repeatedly used by former President Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border,” the Associated Press reported. Reported. The effort shows how pressure for an upcoming rematch with Donald Trump could affect U.S. immigration policy.
The president could declare that individuals crossing the southwest border are ineligible to apply for asylum. Given President Donald Trump’s experience trying a similar approach through regulation, courts will likely block it.
In November 2018, U.S. District Court Judge John S. Tiger of San Francisco issued a nationwide order prohibiting the Trump administration from interfering with asylum claims by individuals who entered the country along the southwest border. “Regardless of the scope of the president’s authority, the president cannot rewrite immigration law to impose conditions expressly prohibited by Congress,” Judge Tigar declared. In February 2020, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also ruled that Trump’s asylum rules were illegal.
Republican lawmakers are pressuring the Biden administration to reinstate President Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, which requires asylum seekers to live in Mexico, often in dangerous conditions, until their cases are heard. The United States cannot implement its policies without Mexico’s approval, and the Mexican government has said it opposes allowing asylum seekers to remain in its country for months. There is also no evidence that this policy has reduced illegal immigration.
The Trump administration began retaining Mexico in January 2019. “Border Patrol Vigilance Along the Southwest Border” [a proxy for illegal entry] It increased by 162% between December 2018 and May 2019, according to an analysis by the National Foundation for Policy Studies (NFAP). For six consecutive months, Border Patrol insecurity at the border was higher than it was before the policy began.
By contrast, providing legal routes quickly reduced illegal immigration. “After the Biden administration implements the Humanitarian Parole Program, Border Patrol encounter rates for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans combined will increase between December 2022 (the month before the parole program begins) and November 2023.” There was a 92% decrease in the number of Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans, while 18% increased for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans, according to the NFAP report.
Biden officials limited the parole program to 30,000 people per month from each country. Individuals must have a sponsor, fly into the United States, and obtain employment authorization.
After a court rejected an attempt to halt the program, the Biden administration should feel confident moving forward with expanding humanitarian parole, and there are two ways to do so. First, the regime could raise the monthly cap of 30,000 Venezuelans, but the Venezuelan government’s economic and human rights policies have created more refugees than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Second, the administration could expand the humanitarian parole program to more countries. If the parole program included the six countries with the highest Border Patrol encounters in recent months, and if illegal immigration decreased as in other countries eligible for humanitarian parole, illegal immigration at the southwest border would decline. will decrease to a low level.
America needs workers. A recent study by economist Madeline Zavodny finds that the slowdown in the foreign-born working-age population that began in 2017 under President Donald Trump’s immigration policies (and was exacerbated by COVID-19) will continue to grow by 2022. It concludes that it is likely to significantly reduce the real GDP growth rate in 2020. Improving living standards requires growth, or economic growth.
Zavodny, an economics professor at the University of North Florida, said real U.S. GDP growth in 2022 is estimated to be up to 1.3 percentage points lower. In other words, the growth rate was only 1.9 percent, but could have been as high as in 2022. If “the foreign-born working-age population continues to grow at the same rate as in the first half of the 2010s,” it would be 3.2%.
Congress should create temporary work visas for year-round work in fields such as hospitality and construction to complement current seasonal visas, which primarily cover jobs in agriculture and summer resorts.
The loudest voice in the room usually doesn’t have the best solution. When it comes to immigration policy, those crying out for more enforcement action, even if such policies are ineffective. The Biden administration should focus on policies that have been effective, such as expanding humane parole programs and other legal tools.
Stuart Anderson is executive director of the National Policy Foundation, a nonpartisan policy research organization. From 2001 until 2003, he served as Deputy Secretary for Policy and Planning and Advisor to the Secretary at the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
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