Republicans have been obsessed with the topic of President Joe Biden not yet visiting the southern border during his presidency. See, unless he physically goes there and gets in the Rio Grande shrubbery like some nature episode, it’s not anything he really cares about despite his endorsement of numerous immigration bills, and introducing a proposal of his own.
But it’s not like Republicans’ visits to the border are anything serious, I need to add. They are theater, and seven-time House speaker loser (and counting, probably!) Kevin McCarthy has in particular been a fan of these kinds of stunts and anti-immigrant demonizing when he needs some attention off himself. But stunts is all they have. That’s it. Well, Republicans are getting their wish following news that the president intends to go to the border next week. In addition to the border visit news, the president in a speech today also addressed new policy at the border.
RELATED STORY: Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy went to the border to lie
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Under new changes announced by the Biden administration today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it’s “establishing new parole processes for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans, modeled on the successful processes for Venezuelans and Ukrainians, which combine safe, orderly, and lawful pathways to the United States, including authorization to work, with significant consequences for those who fail to use those pathways.”
DHS is pointing to a plan announced in October that allows some Venezuelan asylum-seekers to seek safety here through U.S. sponsors (like a relative) after applying from their home country. But other Venezuelans who arrive by land and without a U.S. sponsor waiting will be expelled to Mexico under an expansion of the anti-asylum Title 42 policy. Under the proposed changes, the U.S. will allow 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans to ask for protections at the southern border per month. The 30,001st person and beyond will presumably be expelled to Mexico under the Title 42 order, which Republicans blocked from ending last month after running to the conservative justices of the Supreme Court.
During his speech, Biden cautioned migrants who are considering trekking to the U.S. to seek asylum that unless they apply first with a U.S. sponsor in their corner, they will be turned back. "’Do not just show up at the border,’ Biden says to migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela,” tweeted immigration reporter Hamed Aleaziz. "’Stay where you are and apply legally from there,’ he adds. “Migrants must get someone in the US to tell the government they will financially support them for 2 yrs to enter the US.”
While some immediate reactions were approving of the Biden administration’s expansion of the parole program, others also noted the president is expanding debunked policy (Title 42) that he’s said he’s disliked. “Today's announcement had a lot of bad things in it ... but also one pretty major good thing, the creation of a parole program that could lead to 360,000 parole grants a year for nationals of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti—a real ‘alternate pathway" like we've asked for,’” American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said. But he noted “the requirement of a US-based sponsor will keep this parole program out of reach for many of the most vulnerable people.”
Over at the White House, the president faced questions from political reporters parroting GOP talking points about not visiting the border. The president had the right response, and called out those very Republicans for playing politics with this complex issue. "Republicans haven't been serious about this at all,” Biden responded. “C'mon.”
Fact check: True. One report last month that we covered here at Daily Kos said that no House Republican—no one!— had at that time expressed any interest in heading the committee tasked with border issues. Usually lawmakers are clamoring for top committee assignments, but not this one. That’s because they might actually be held accountable for something. That’s because they might have to do some actual work that doesn’t consist of nature hour along the Rio Grande. In fact, wannabe House Speaker McCarthy has promised that no humane legislation will cross his desk.
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive Director of America’s Voice, said “it is about time that his administration leans in on expanding alternative legal pathways so that walking to and across Mexico is not seen as the only option to reach safety in the U.S. But the rest of what we know of this new policy announcement gets it wrong—slamming the door to more asylum seekers while cracking open a few windows isn’t the answer or an appropriate balance.” Most reactions I received as of publishing time were overwhelmingly critical.
”We cannot say this enough; Asylum is a legal and human right,” The Young Center tweeted. “Cherry-picking people from specific countries undermines the rule of law that guarantees people, regardless of country, race, ethnicity or language, the right to seek protection through a fundamentally fair proceeding.” The pro-child group called the proposal “discriminatory and dangerous,” and said the president “should instead keep his promise to ‘reassert America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees.’”
“This administration continues on a dangerous path to replicate some of the worst aspects of the Trump administration’s assaults on the right to asylum,” National Immigrant Justice Center executive director Mary Meg McCarthy said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “The narrow pathways announced today cannot replace reopening ports of entry for processing all asylum seekers. The Biden administration must decide to be on the right side of history, one that upholds our decades of domestic and international law protecting the right to asylum. We urge them to change course immediately. “
Yes, Republicans are getting their wish that the president visit the border and have succeeded in keeping the faulty Title 42 order in place. (The policy has actually increased the number of apprehensions at the border, despite this all-too-common, very false belief pushed by Republicans and media that the border will fall apart without it.) But even these drastic measures at the border won’t get Republican any closer to shutting up about an issue they refuse to effectively address even as they’ve won control of the U.S. House. Nor will it adequately begin to address the fundamental inhumanity of our immigration system.
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