Biden Is Campaigning on Immigration

The need to neutralize Donald Trump’s rhetoric has led Democrats to harden the rules for U.S. asylum.

The Biden administration has issued an executive order to “close” the U.S. southern border to migrants seeking asylum. The U.S. administration’s idea is to discourage migrants from crossing into the country at a distance from the ports of entry and to institute greater restrictions at the ports. The main change is to deny asylum to anyone who crosses irregularly, in spite of the fact that every person within U.S. borders has certain constitutional rights. When average daily detentions exceed 2,500 for one week, the U.S. will suspend the asylum system until the numbers decrease.

Joe Biden became president after Donald Trump spent four years destroying the delicate balance in the immigration system on the U.S. southern border. Trump’s two most important measures were Title 42, under which it was possible to expel immigrants on the spot because of the pandemic, and requiring migrants to remain in Mexico while they submitted asylum petitions, which created huge bottlenecks at Mexican border cities. Biden has retained both of these restrictions despite protest from human rights groups and from the more progressive wing of his party. In practice, applying for asylum on the U.S. southern border was already very difficult.

The need to dramatically impact immigration follows months during which it has become a key issue for the average voter and is inseparable from the election campaign this year. Biden is feeling the pressure from big Democratic cities which say they are overwhelmed by illegal immigration. In addition, Biden needs to neutralize his rival’s xenophobic rhetoric in the lead-up to the November election. For the moment, he has succeeded in holding congressional Republicans responsible for sinking a package of measures meant to strengthen border security that they themselves negotiated. Trump already tested the White House authority to act by executive order, and several of Trump’s decrees ended up bogged down in the courts. The incumbent president seems to know he will have the same difficulties.

Biden’s policies are far removed from the deliberate cruelty of Trump’s policies, which separated mothers from their children in an attempt to terrorize immigrants into complying with his orders. The Democratic administration has avoided the xenophobic message linking immigration and criminality. But it still is a step in the opposite direction of what has been promoted by the most open wing of the party and, above all, by those voters, mostly Latinos more sensitive to immigration due to their own experience or that of family members. Biden’s shift is linked to a worldwide tendency in wealthy countries where the central forces are incapable of articulating a discourse of their own about a pragmatic and humane approach to immigration that defuses fears stirred up by the extreme right.