By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com, editor@news-photos-features.com
Immigration will be a key issue for the 2024 election – if the Republicans have their way – in order to deflect, drown out the war on women and reproductive health rights. And therefore, they have no interest in addressing the border crisis reasonably, and every reason to continue to exacerbate the crisis.
From his first day in office, President Joe Biden proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and worked to address the desperation that causes millions of people to uproot their lives, leave family and homes, and make the perilous, even deadly journey to the U.S. Biden is not the cause of this latest migration wave which is also being experienced in Europe and the MidEast (fueling similar anti-immigrant fascist movements). Republicans have rejected Biden’s funding requests to bolster border security, add border control agents, add immigration judges so that the claims for asylum by migrants (who are not “illegal” nor “undocumented”) can be more promptly adjudicated. The number you don’t hear: Biden has expelled 2 million who did not meet the criteria for asylum.
Of the 3.1 million who attempted to cross into the US from the southern border in 2023, 2.5 million were “encountered” by border agents, 562,000 were immediately expelled under Title 42, 185,000 were immediately deported, 180,000 voluntarily departed, 300,000 from Venezuela and Nicaragua were given humanitarian “parole”, 600,000 made it through undetected and can be considered the “undocumented”. In all, of the nearly 2 million who were processed under Title 8 in 2023, only 2700 were granted asylum or a path to permanent residency. Hardly the free-for-all “open borders” the Republicans are charging. (See New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/09/opinion/immigration-in-one-chart.html)
Republicans have repeatedly blocked additional funding for border security and have shown they have no intention of actually solving the immigration problem because the threats of invading hoards are so useful for fear mongering. It is why Trump, who found his racist tirades against Mexicans and Muslims in 2016, talks about “vermin” “poisoning the blood of our nation.” That is why Texas Governor Greg Abbott is loading up migrants in charter buses and dumping them in northern cities and suburbs in the cold in the middle of the night, without warning or coordination. It is why Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is using taxpayer money to charter airplanes to traffic migrants not from Florida but from Texas to blue states. (New York is now suing the bus charter companies that traffic humans across state lines, without any notification or coordination.)
Immigration is “complicated” but mainly politically. It seems obvious that there needs to be more funding for border agents, technology, immigration judges and social workers, better, bigger facilities to house people, but most importantly, the ability and the will to send people where they are wanted – involving coordination and planning, computerized systems (such as New York State has instituted to match migrants with jobs) – in essence, a higher tech version of what the wave of immigrants experienced in the early 20th century.
In fact, a report by the Immigration Research Initiative and the Ellis Island Initiative, found that for every 1,000 migrants who arrive on Long Island, roughly $3 million is paid in local tax revenue — with that number growing to up to $4 million within five years, Newsday reported.
As for the initial expense of providing social services, the fact is if there were better policies – such as existed during the wave of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, we would not be paying as much in social services.
Immigration has been correctly cited as the key to economic development regionally and nationally, especially as Bidenomics has produced 14 million jobs, a record string of months with unemployment under 4% (essentially, full-employment), and the fact there are 1.4 jobs for every job seeker – that is, not enough people to fill jobs.
The immigration issue impacts our region, certainly, but this is a national problem that requires Congress to act.
We know how former Congressman Tom Suozzi feels about immigration reform and that he has thoroughly studied the issue – he has advocated for reasonable, bipartisan compromise to achieve Comprehensive Immigration Reform in the past – in fact, proposed a plan in partnership with Republican Long Island Congressman Peter King in 2019 - and, now that he is engaged in a dash to the special election on February 13 (early voting from February 4-11) to replace the disgraced serial fraudster George Santos, has advanced his ideas again. (See: Viewpoint: Suozzi-King plan for immigration reform is spot on and long overdue)
It isn’t just the latest wave of desperate people trying to escape deadly circumstance, but as Suozzi correctly noted in 2019, it is legalizing the existence of the millions of so-called “undocumented” people who have been in this country for decades, and the 600,000 children who had protections under Obama’s DACA program. These people have been working, paying taxes for decades, but will not be able to receive any benefits, and live in terror, especially if Trump (or any Republican) comes back into office, of being rounded up and instantly deported.
“The national emergency is not on the border but in the nation’s capital - a failure of leadership in Washington for almost 40 years, back to 1986, since we had comprehensive immigration reform,” Suozzi, who has sent letters to the President and House leaders calling for bipartisan immigration reform, told a press conference. “It’s getting worse and worse. People in my district and throughout country are angry about immigration crisis. It’s a complicated issue, but I know that only way to solve complicated problems is by working across party lines. We can’t solve it in an environment of fear and anger, we need people of good will to negotiate bipartisan deal. It will require bipartisan compromise that secures border that gives Republicans what they want, and what Democrats want, whether more judges, border patrol, physical barriers, radar tech, secure border and to get to the root causes that drives people in the Northern Triangle to flee in record numbers.”
In contrast, we don’t have a clue what or if the Republican candidate Mazi Pilip thinks about immigration– herself an immigrant first welcomed as an Ethiopian Jew to become an Israeli citizen and then breezing into the United States, easily obtaining US citizenship. Will she support shutting down government in order to extract untenable, inhumane (even illegal) and frankly anti-American immigration policies including closing the border. Will she support holding up aid to Israel unless Biden complies?
But we do have a very good idea of how she will vote, based on how she performed in the Nassau County Legislature: however she is told by Republican leadership.
See also:
ENVIRONMENTALISTS ENDORSE TOM SUOZZI IN FEB. 13 SPECIAL ELECTION FOR CONGRESS NY-03 CITING RECORD, POLICIES
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