Donald Trump’s mother came from Tong (population 500), a remote Scottish village that had once been Viking territory. Her grandfather came from Kallstadt (1,200 inhabitants), a Bavarian town from which the Heinz family arose. Joe Biden’s ancestors came from Ireland and England. In the United States everyone is from somewhere else; even the Native Americans, even though they have been there much longer than anyone else. The country’s appeal is such that 160 million adults around the world say they are willing to move to it if given the opportunity. That’s many more millions than most Americans are willing to let in.
That imbalance is at the heart of the issue that could cost President Biden his re-election. In 2016, Trump resorted to “border chaos” all the way to the Republican nomination and then to the presidency. At the time, he campaigned as if record numbers of immigrants were crossing the border illegally. That wasn’t true. then, but it is now.
In November alone, there were almost 250,000 attempts to cross the country’s southern border. Most new arrivals will have applied for asylum and then been released into the United States while they wait years for their claims to be resolved. Since Biden became president, more than 3.1 million people have been admitted. It is a figure greater than the population of Chicago. At least another 1.7 million have entered undetected or have overstayed their visas. Republican governors have paid for immigrants to go to places governed by Democrats, shifting problems from the southern border to the north. That experience helps explain why voters trust Republicans to handle border security by a 30-point margin. It is the party’s greatest advantage on any issue.
It’s not all Biden’s fault. When the U.S. labor market is tight, the incentive for people to go illegally increases. That is why the numbers also rose under Trump until Covid-19 arrived and solved the problem. When travel became possible again in 2021, pent-up demand resulted in large numbers of people crossing the southern border. More than half of those who do so come from Central American countries south of Mexico and the northern part of South America. Venezuelans make up the bulk of that group. However, there are tens of thousands of people now arriving by plane to America from Russia (43,000 in the year until September 2023), India (42,000) and China (24,000) and trying to enter the United States. It is often impossible to return them. China does not agree to receive its nationals if the applications are rejected.
In any case, some of the blame does fall squarely on Biden. Trump’s speech on Mexico with claims that the country was sending rapists and his cruel deterrent of separating children from parents, as well as the plan to build a border wall, radicalized some Democratic policymakers on immigration. They perceived that public opinion was on their side. Indeed, voters rebelled against Trumpist politics, and while Trump was in office, support for immigration reached a new high. When the new Democratic government took power, his impulse was to do the opposite of Trump. Work on the border wall stopped. Democrats abandoned the Remain in Mexico program, which required asylum seekers to stay south of the border until authorities decided on their applications. Unsurprisingly, illegal immigration skyrocketed.
Following the 2022 midterm elections, Biden has been quietly adopting some of Trump’s policies. He has agreed to fill holes in the wall. With few exceptions, asylum applications from applicants who attempt to cross undetected are automatically rejected. It is mandatory to submit an online application in advance. The fact is that Americans are not aware of these efforts; in part, because Biden is reluctant to draw attention to such measures, lest his own camp turn against him.
The president’s margin to do one thing while saying another is running out. The House of Representatives has linked a strict immigration bill to funding the Ukraine war. The government opposes it, because supporting Ukraine makes economic and strategic sense for the United States, regardless of national immigration policy. This is a mistake. Instead, in a system where both parties use the influence at their disposal, Biden should see it as an opportunity.
Some Republican requests on immigration are sensible. Most visa-free migrants who enter through the southern border do not do so by crawling through the desert. They find a Border Patrol agent and file an asylum request. Next, they must pass what is called a “credible fear” interview. Republicans want to raise the threshold for what is considered credible fear. It is a reasonable goal. Under Biden’s rules, fear of gang violence counts as a reason to allow entry. Compare the case of Spain, which rejects this test despite having a socialist prime minister.
Once this first test has been passed, immigrants are usually released pending a court date that will not occur until years later, because the immigration courts are overcrowded. The average wait for a hearing exceeds four years. Appeals can increase the delay. Democrats would like to have money to hire more clerks to process applications and more judges to speed up the backlog of cases. That’s reasonable too.
There should be an agreement there. However, each party is suspicious of the other’s motives. Republicans say they won’t give more money to a government they don’t trust to enforce immigration laws. Instead, they are trying to remove the secretary of Homeland Security. Democrats look at the Republican demands (such as that families arriving in the country can be detained indefinitely) and conclude that the negotiations are set up to fail and, therefore, are actually a weapon against Biden. Most likely, both parties will prioritize the campaign over the pact.
That should worry Biden. Our reporting from the Mexican side of the border suggests that if people believe that Trump is going to win, many more will try to cross into the United States before his inauguration. Insecure borders weaken support for legal immigration and boost restrictionist parties. Immigration could put Trump back in the White House; there, he would be able to pull the United States out of the 1951 refugee convention and thereby cause its collapse. Biden should accept the Republicans’ bet, roll up his sleeves and get to work fixing the border issue. It would be the right thing to do. And it would also favor his prospects.
© 2024 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved
Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix