2023-05-11 21:09:01
There are still 18 months until the US presidential election, but in the options of Joe Biden to renew his mandate then, this Friday will be a defining moment. The always high political pressure for the immigration enters a peak. And one more complicated and potentially chaotic situation that the recent years at the border threaten not only with a humanitarian crisis, but to become one political bomb that can explode to Biden.
One minute before the day begins, your Administration will have put an end to the health emergency due to covid and, with that, to the use of the controversial Title 42. This is a rule that began to apply Donald Trump and maintained Biden for which, with the excuse of the pandemic, migrants intercepted at the border have been expelled expeditiously. Although the Biden administration has prepared measures for the transition, ha hardened his message and the legal elements of punishment for illegal crossings and, not without controversy, has restricted access to asylum, moments of tension and uncertainty are experienced in the face of the possibility of a sharp increase in the arrival of desperate human beings or decided to enter from Mexico to the north.
In fact, these arrivals have been happening for days, and each day beats the mark of the previous one. It is feared that the tide exceed the capacities of the authorities and of the country, especially in the border communities, but also in large cities where many of the migrants are arriving. And few things could be worse politically for Biden than the chaos that he himself has anticipated possible “for a while”, or the spread ofimages and news that reflect it.
According to the polls, only one in four Americans approve of his management of immigration. And it faces not only a criticism, denunciation and fierce opposition and interested of the Republicans, but also to a personal dilemma and a political duel that pulls from two opposite ends of the Democratic rope in the matter of immigration.
evolution
In the 2020 campaign, Biden, a Catholic man of Irish roots who had won by a coalition of voters that included young progressives, promised to apply a immigration policy that broke with cruel elements of that of his predecessor, Donald Trump, that in 2016 he had won for his part promising an iron hand. On the first day in the White House he put on the table a proposal for reform immigration laws and create a legal pathway for the 11 million undocumented people in the US.
It was the Biden who promised to make the federal agency ICE responsible for the inhumane treatment in prisons and detention centers, end family separation and border restrictions, stop the construction of the wall that Trump relaunched and make permanent the regularization program for the so-called Dreamers. It was also the Biden he was talking about restore the “moral” prestige of the USA and its “historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers”.
The growing number of migrants arriving through the southern border, the divisions within your team, the courts and the paralysis of Congress, in addition to political calculations, led him to move away from the promises. And now he has made a turn in his policy in which many see Trumpist echoes with which he aims to contain not only the massive arrival of migrants, but also the claims of both the grassroots and the more moderate and conservative Democratic politicians, especially in areas borders that will be key in 2024, like Arizona.
Satisfying everyone is mission impossible. And immigration is, as the former director of the CIA and now adviser to the Department of National Security, Leon Panetta, told The Washington Post, “one of those explosive issues where you will be blamed no matter what you do.”
Republicans
Blaming is undoubtedly what the Republicans are doing, even when with their measures Biden has tightened some of the requirements to enter the US or the penalties for doing so illegally. And these days, the messages accusing him of applying an “open borders” policy are returning, but also those sending a xenophobic message, as Trump did on CNN on Wednesday.
Related news
The conservatives have also managed to coincide with this key moment the vote in the Lower House of the “Secure the border” bill, an initiative in which they restart the construction of the wall, place more and better-paid border agents and reform the asylum system to end the current model, in which a migrant seeking asylum stays in the country for years while the bogged down judicial system processes his claim.
They did not even have an internal consensus due to differences between the ultra-radical and the conservative wing. But in recent days, and aware that the law has virtually no options in the Senate, they have joined. Because it was important for them to throw the symbolic gesture on this explosive day for Biden.
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