Hi’.
Over a decade of US politics taught me, a Swiss foreigner, not to get bogged down in petty details. This is the case again as I read the comments of this NYT editorial. As a reminder, since fall 2023 the majority of the US has decided to “close the border”; this, for the left, means tackling illegal immigration and, for the right, means ending legal immigration but that nuance hardly matters because, since early December 2023, border policies have been guided solely by rightwing views.
That is to say, in early 2023 the House of Representatives passed HR.2 (congress.gov), which has become the Republicans’ demands in the ongoing negotiations; and Democrats have agreed to those demands: walls, asylum restrictions, parole, etc. Let me stress that part for a second: two months of negotiations have only consisted of Democrats agreeing to Republican demands while making none of their own. And once negotiations were nearly finished, Trump threw a tantrum (NYT) and Republicans decided to oppose “closing the border” while running electorally on “closing the border”.
They’ve been trying to spin their way out of it ever since.
And the latest spin I found was that Joe Biden has the executive authority to fix everything anyway so a deal is not needed.
Now, your first reflex when reading this should be the same as mine: check what executive authority a President actually has; check what executive orders Biden already took on the border, and their effectiveness; check what executive orders Trump took on the border, and their effectiveness. And yes, I wasted time looking it up, if briefly and superficially: Trump completely failed with illegal immigration: his flurry of theatrics let a surge happen in 2019 and only Covid put an end to it. His famed “remain in Mexico” program, or MPP (Migrant Protection Policy), was barely running throughout 2019 and pretty much doing nothing for illegal crossings. Joe Biden tried with orders of his own and seems to have failed likewise, and with a constant leitmotiv all throughout: a lack of resources to enforce anything. And we could discuss the hows and whys and dates and dynamics and look at the fine prints endlessly but that is the opposite of my point.
My point is that all of that is irrelevant.
For however entertaining and remotely educative this little info’ hunt may be, it is missing the context entirely: one, to blame Biden for the current situation; two, to blame Biden for the current inaction. On the situation, there is a clear popular shift against immigrants in fall 2023, with a majority demanding new policies; in short, everyone including Biden has agreed to give up on the approach of the past three years so yeah, blame away; what little opposition you would get would be academic in nature.
As for the current inaction? As said, there is a deal in Congress, with broad bipartisan support, based on HR.2 to meet that majority’s will. It could be voted, signed and enacted by the end of next week. There is not a single Democratic demand in that deal and yet, faced with this one-sided result Trump and his supporters want to do nothing for a full year, all the while stressing how urgent the border crisis is.
To talk about Presidential authority and executive orders is to imply that Republicans will obstruct and oppose any border bill. To assume Republicans will pass a border bill renders any need for an executive order moot.
And that is my point.
It’s only around 2019 I think that I learned to stop looking at the details and to instead look at the “frame”, the context, the larger point. The larger point is that a majority wants Republican-style policies on the border and a border deal will provide that; MAGA wants to kill that deal and everything else is noise. There is a risk in such an approach: it is an extremist feature to ignore “everything else”. But it’s not noise because it’s inconvenient, it’s noise because it always loops back to how the border deal does what the majority (including of Republicans) wants, so there is no point in talking about anything else within that context.
If you want to “close the border”, the border deal does that; if you think it’s urgent, Republicans can have it done within a week. Your only question should be why Republicans are not doing it.