Will Joe Biden’s immigration pledge convince or confuse the public?

This is The Guardian.

I was talking with a senior Democrat just a few weeks ago, who told me that the presidential election in November will turn on three things, inflation, Israel and immigration.

We must face the simple truth to protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.

Two weeks ago, facing growing pressure to act on immigration, Joe Biden signed an executive order temporarily limiting asylum requests on the southern border.

The simple truth is, there is a worldwide migrant crisis. And if the United States doesn't secure our border, there's no limit to the number of people may try to come here.

With some polls showing immigration topping voters concerns this year's presidential election, the president wanted to send a message that he was tackling it head on. But this week he made another announcement.

Today, I'm announcing a common sense fix to streamline the process for obtaining legal status for immigrants married to American citizens who live, live here and lived here for a long.

time.

So officially, what he did was to say that under certain circumstances, such as when over a certain number of people have been crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without papers, asylum will become unavailable to people who are crossing for a certain amount of time. Now, that doesn't mean that those people are just going to be summarily turned back. It's not the same as the pandemic-era Title 42 policy, which was in effect from 2020 through last year, which did say, no, you're just going to get sent back to your home country or sent to Mexico in some cases. What it actually does is say there are some forms of relief available to people if they go through a certain series of steps that are more complicated and are more restrictive than previous, but that at the end, the thing known as asylum, which gives you full legal status and the opportunity to ultimately apply for U.S. permanent residency and citizenship, will not be available. So, you know, the kind of the hope from the administration is that this will be seen as, well, if I can't get asylum, why should I bother to come at all? Now, according to sources familiar with that plan, it would happen once the number of daily illegal crossing hits 2,500 and the border wouldn't reopen until it drops to 1,500.. As of right now, Homeland Security officials say they're seeing on average more than 4,000 encounters each day. And once Mr. Biden signs off, the policy could take effect immediately.

And the numbers of this, I think people will find it, who don't follow this the way you do, astonishing that we're talking about numbers in the thousands and saying under this policy, the order would lift when daily arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico fall to 1,500 people a day across a seven day period. I mean, that sounds like a very big number. That's the lower number, but 2,500.. Is this the sort of scale we're talking about where thousands of people are making this move every single day?

Yes. So, first of all, it has to be an average of 1,500 or below for seven days. And then there's a 14 day wait period before they can actually open asylum applications again. So if at any time it goes above the 2,500 threshold to turn the trigger on, then the trigger will never get turned off. But yes, 2,500 is much, much, much closer to daily border crossing numbers over the past, certainly year, year and a half, than 1,500 is. It's important to remember that the U.S.-Mexico border is very long, right? This isn't thousands of people crossing at a single point on a single day. But absolutely, we are looking at numbers of border crossings that are certainly higher than we've seen for most of the 21st century. And unlike the early 21st century, late 20th century, when almost all of these were single adults looking for work who could very easily, if they were caught, they didn't have a claim to stay in the U.S. and could be pretty summarily returned to usually Mexico, which is where they're from. The current population of people is much more global. It involves a lot more families, and it involves a lot more people who are presenting themselves to border patrol agents and saying, I am seeking asylum for being harmed in my home country, which makes it much harder for the federal government, to, you know, quickly turn them around or process their claims. Latino migrants crossing the Rio Grande dividing Mexico from the U.S. is a common sight. But what is less common is Chinese migrants making the same dangerous attempt. The number of Chinese migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has increased sharply. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, nearly 10,000 crossed on foot from October to April.

And so, as you've explained, the numbers can be quite volatile depending on what people hear about what routes are available. I think there's been a fall in the number of arrivals in the year so far, but people think it's going to, you know, that may well be reversed. In your view, as a matter of policy, it's obviously got a lot of attention, this order that Joe Biden has signed. What difference on the ground, on the border, do you think it will make?

So, generally, when there's an announcement of a big crackdown, what we see is what we call a wait-and-see period, where initially numbers go down because everyone's trying to figure out what this new policy actually is, what it means. As long as some people are getting through and they're sending word of mouth back that they have successfully gotten into the United States, that means that any deterrent messages going to be muddled by that word of mouth. And what we've seen is that when people hear mixed messages about whether it's possible to come to the U.S. or not, they choose to believe the messages that are most favorable to them. So, in general, after that wait-and-see period, numbers begin to rise again. The factor that I point out in this case is the biggest reason, as far as anyone can tell, that numbers are down from last fall to this spring isn't because of anything the U.S. is doing. It's because the government of Mexico has been making more of an effort to interdict people who are traveling northward through Mexico. That means fewer people are showing up in the U.S. to begin with, which means that apprehension numbers are down. The question of whether Mexico is going to continue this and how much effort they're going to put into it is a very live one. The U.S. reportedly waited to announce this new Biden policy until after Mexico had had its presidential elections, because that gives them now a period of time before inauguration to deal with both the outgoing Mexican president and the incoming one.

It's a very good reminder that there is politics on this issue on both sides of the border, not just one. I mean, on the American side, and particularly in Joe Biden's own party, we know that he's been getting heat from Democratic mayors and governors who've been urging and requesting more help managing the people arriving into their cities and states in the last couple of years. So how was this move received within the Democratic Party?

So in D.C., because you're absolutely right that there have kind of been, you know, a few mayors and governors who have been particularly outspoken. There have also been some who have been trying to send a more nuanced message of we don't have trouble with people coming here, but we need a lot more federal resources to handle them. Because one of the problems with the state of affairs, as we've had it for the last several years, is that there's such a backlog in immigration court that if someone is sent to an immigration judge to make their asylum claim, it will be several years before they hear whether that asylum claim is valid or not. So among those Democrats, this was welcomed, as, you know, a good move politically and on the merits. There are, of course, a lot of traditional progressive Democrats who, you know, on the one hand, may very well be concerned with the immediate humanitarian impacts of this, because this is one of many policies that, in effect, are forcing people to spend longer waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border, because if they want to seek asylum, they have to present themselves at a port of entry where wait times for appointments are very long. And so they're at risk for kidnapping. The government of Mexico does not always do enough to protect them, etc. Or if they're just concerned about American ideals, right? The idea that the United States of America is sending the message that asylum is not available is concerning to Democrats who feel that it's, in fact, you know, an important part of American values to provide leadership on this.

And this goes to a larger picture. We've talked about it a lot on this podcast of Joe Biden, once again on this issue, as he has had to do on so many other issues, this straddle between left and right, particularly being an election year. I'm just interested how this played on the right, what Donald Trump and others who have been faulting Joe Biden for being too weak as they see it, on immigration, presumably Donald Trump and the others all applauded this move of Joe Biden. Or am I being naive, Dara?

I believe that you suspect the answer to your question. as you ask it, right? The line of the Republican Party is. there's kind of a Mott and Bailey here going on, right? A two step, where not only is what Biden is doing insufficient, but sometimes they will say there are things Joe Biden could be doing that would stop it and he just doesn't want to. And sometimes they will say, well, the only way to send a strong enough message is to reelect Donald Trump president. That's the only way to deter people enough from trying to come. So, you know, you had a little bit of both with this new announcement. They also have been insisting that the Biden administration could unilaterally reinstate the Trump era, remain in Mexico policy, where people who got immigration court hearings still got sent back to Mexico to await those hearings at which they got ferried back and forth along the port of entry the day of the court hearing. That does, in fact, require the consent of the Mexican government. You can't just push people back to a country that won't physically accept them. But that hasn't really played into Republicans criticisms. But there are some people who will say that because Joe Biden has demonstrated that he supports open borders or that he's trying to import new voters or any of that, that the only way to solve the border crisis would be to elect Donald Trump in November.

And Republicans, of course, in an odd position to demand action from Joe Biden and faulting him for not doing enough, because, of course, there was a deal done in the Senate that would have taken action on the southern border. But, as we reported on the podcast at the time, they nixed that at the time on the orders of Donald Trump, who said he didn't want to give Biden a political win. So we said earlier that he's made a couple of big moves in the area of immigration. You've told us now, Dara, about one of them, which, if you like, was sort of hawkish on the issue. But then, just this week, a different move that sort of faces in the other direction. What is it exactly that Joe Biden did this week?

So, to understand this, we have to kind of pivot away from the border. You know, it's often kind of treated as synonymous with immigration. And of course, there's a lot more to immigration as a policy issue than just what happens to people who are now crossing into the U.S. So this is about people who are married to U.S. citizens, but who themselves don't have any legal status. This move allows them to apply for something called parole in place, which both gives them access to a work permit in the short to medium term and allows them to apply for green cards, which they're theoretically eligible for, but which, because they weren't inspected and admitted into the United States, there are all of these other bureaucratic obstacles and risks associated with trying to get that green card. So this move kind of shortcuts all of the bureaucratic steps and gives them the ability to apply for green cards without having to leave the country and risk that they won't be allowed to return. For those wives or husbands and their children who have lived in America for a decade or more but are undocumented, this action will allow them to file a paperwork for legal status.

in the United States, allow them to work while they remain with their families in the United States. Let's be clear. This action still requires. And let's just put some numbers on this. How many people we're talking about? the phenomenon of these undocumented spouses, as have been often described, of people who are now U.S. citizens? How many people could this potentially help?

So, estimates are that you're looking at about 1.1 to 1.2 million people who are undocumented but married to U.S. citizens overall. The estimate of how many people this would help, which, you know, we don't have full requirements for the new program yet. But what we do know is that it's going to be limited to people who are, you know, have been in the U.S. for 10 years. And, based on that parameter, the universe of people is about 500,000 spouses of U.S. citizens and about 50,000 children of those people who are stepchildren of U.S. citizens who, in theory, if their parents apply for parole in place, the children would be allowed to receive relief with them. So that's not an insubstantial number of people at all. It's also, you know, if you think about the comparison being made on the U.S. side, is to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which President Obama put into place 12 years ago.

You brought us to DACA. Now, this is the program that the Obama White House established back in 2012,, which provided protection for hundreds of thousands of people who have been brought to the United States without official authorization as children, so-called dreamers. That played a role in the timing of this new Biden move. Just tell us about that.

So June 15th, 2012, was the day that President Obama announced the DACA program. June 15th landed on a Saturday this year. And in a celebration of the 12-year anniversary of DACA, on Tuesday was when President Biden announced this new move involving parole in place for spouses of U.S. citizens. What he also announced? that it's going to become easier for DACA recipients and other, you know, dreamers, which is the population of people who grew up in the U.S. without status, to get non-immigrant visas, such as high-skilled work visas, by applying at U.S. consulates abroad and being given waivers. That's a complicated process that we don't fully have the details on yet, again. But it will give DACA recipients who, in general, having DACA, doesn't give them any access to permanent legal status. It will allow some of them who, you know, would otherwise receive work visas, to come work in the U.S. and potentially become green card holders down the line, a way to regularize their status.

So probably no prizes for guessing how Republicans reacted to this one. They wouldn't have liked the first move because they would have said it hasn't gone far enough. But this one, they, even before the details were made official, Republicans were calling it an amnesty.

He's going to formally grant a mass amnesty to millions of illegal aliens that came into our country.

And you have people, you have people that have been working.

I mean, this is exactly the sort of bind Joe Biden's in, isn't he? Because he tries to do one thing to seem tough on the border. Trump will say it's not enough. And then he does something to be humane or compassionate to people who have come in without documentation. He will then be accused of being too soft on migration.

Yes, I think that the ongoing question as far as the politics of this are concerned are to what extent people see the two as connected, right? Are people really concerned about immigration overall in the way that Donald Trump and, you know, his immigration policy minds like Stephen Miller are? Or are they concerned about, you know, people coming in without papers, but may not be quite as hawkish toward long-term unauthorized immigrants? You know, there's been a shift in polling where more people support the idea of mass deportation of the unauthorized than did a few years ago. But you're still looking at. 60 plus percent of people will say we want to deport them. 60 plus percent of people will also say we want to give them legal status.

So that must be some of the same people.

Absolutely. And, you know, the sense on immigration in the U.S. is just that it's. the system has been labeled broken for so long. And there have been so many failed congressional attempts at broad reforms that at this point, it seems that a lot of the American public prefer action to inaction just generally, which is how you get polling results, like people supporting both mass deportation and mass legalization. The politics of the two aren't necessarily the same. I think we're going to have to see how closely they're connected.

That's a fascinating nuance, because I have to say, I read these two moves as Biden just going a little bit left, a little bit right and just trying to split the difference. But what you've explained there is actually that may be where a lot of voters are, that they're tough on newcomers, as it were, people coming in right now, but want to be quite sort of humane and compassionate towards those who have made lives here and are already here. Let's just go to the big backdrop. I said at the top that this is emerging. I'd spoken to a Democrat who said this is one of the three I's that are going to decide the election, the three I's being inflation, Israel, and immigration, in the view of this Democrat. Big picture, immigration is a problem for Joe Biden, right? In the sense that on the polling, he gets lower ratings from Americans for handling immigration as an issue, wherever you're coming from, than Donald Trump does.

Yes. And to be clear, the Biden administration has never really appeared to see immigration as a big political winner for them since coming into office. The Biden campaign in 2020 did make immigration a very big contrast point between them and then incumbent President Donald Trump. But what we've seen since they came into office appears to be a theory of the case that it's bad for them when immigration is in the headlines. So they better keep immigration out of the headlines as much as possible, which involves doing what they can to deter people from coming. The problem is that, for all the reasons we were discussing earlier, that's dependent on a lot of things that aren't in the U.S.'s control. And so they can't actually keep immigration out of the headlines. Now, personally, I would say that it's not actually as inevitable that the high numbers lead to the kind of chaos that we've seen in cities like New York and Chicago as all of that, that it would not be impossible for an administration to actually invest in processing people more quickly and coordinating things better, so that you just didn't have the bad optics, so to speak, of people like homeless on the streets of New York or in hotels. But that does not appear to be an option that has occurred to or been seriously considered by this administration.

Let's just drill into one very specific political weakness for the president. We've been noting on the podcast these particular groups that were crucial parts of the winning coalition for Joe Biden in 2020, namely black voters, Latino voters and the young, and that he is doing much worse with those groups than he did four years ago. What are the politics of immigration, particularly for the second of those three groups I mentioned, namely Hispanic or Latino voters? Again, a longtime assumption that they, you know, because a lot of them came from families who had come in as migrants, that therefore they liked policies that were, you know, more open to migration and would punish politicians who were hostile to migration. It's not quite as simple as that. Just talk us through the politics of that group. And when I say that group, there's lots of different groups within it. Of course, it's not a monolith. But where Latino voters might break on the issue of immigration and perhaps in terms of the actions that Joe Biden has announced this last fall.

So what we've seen since 2012 or 2014 in general in the electorate has been a shifting of the partisan coalitions such that, in general, lower education voters are shifting toward the Republican Party, especially men without college degrees. And a lot of those are African-American and Latino men. And so you'll see, you know, one of the biggest swings in support for Donald Trump between the 2016 and 2020 elections was in South Texas, which is very, very heavily Latino, but which is a region where most voters do not have college degrees, that that becomes a little more relevant. The other thing to point out when we're talking about, you know, lower education voters and when we're talking about lower propensity voters, which is, you know, people who are groups that are less likely to turn up for every single special election and every single midterm, and who maybe have to be mobilized a little harder to come out for presidential elections, is that they tend to be low information voters. They're not political junkies. They're not, you know, checking CNN every day to see what the president has done that day. And so policy announcements like the ones that Biden made two weeks ago and then this week, it's possible that they're going to break through, but it's also possible that they won't. And that, you know, the sense of whether somebody is soft on the border or whether somebody is cruel toward immigrants, is going to rely on, you know, paid media, is going to rely on just reputation, is going to rely on vibes rather than on a very sober assessment of exactly what a president has done during his four years in office.

Such an important point. And in terms of vibes, I suppose Democrats and Joe Biden's team will be hoping that the thing that really did cut through and does cut through is statements like this one from Donald Trump, when he said undocumented migrants poison the blood of our country. And that sort of the vibe of someone who is that hostile, you would think, and I suppose that the Democrats will be hoping that does cut through, not just with Latino voters, with a whole lot of voters, and would put them off. I mean, one moment where Donald Trump and Joe Biden will get to be able to make their case and press their position on immigration will be the TV debate, which brings us to what we always like to ask our guests on the podcast, which is a what else question? Something completely different. Dara, I know your specialism is immigration. So I'm just going to ask you this really, as a citizen. I presume you will be a viewer of the big TV debate that is coming Thursday of next week, June the 27th. First of all, am I right? You know, you've got that date circled in the diary. you're going to be watching. But if and when you are, they did announce the rules for the debate. And one change they made is that this time there will be no studio audience. So there'll be none of that cheering and whooping and laughing and applauding. Instead, it will be the two men, Trump and Biden, being grilled by the two moderators, the hosts from CNN. Who do you think that helps? And who do you think it hurts?

So I will say that in a previous life, I was a political reporter. And the number of debates that I had to sit through and cover, not because I thought, not because anything was actually going to change, but just because everyone thought they were important and therefore they were important, really turned me off the political theater of the whole process. It's really rare that something someone says in a debate becomes dispositive of what they would do if elected. Either they're saying things that are already on the record and known to voters, or they're saying things that their campaign will then walk back, or that their campaign won't walk back but will quietly get forgotten once they get elected. That said, I think that, because there has been so much attention paid in this election cycle to the age of both major presidential candidates, that there might be, you know, for voters who are extremely concerned about the age or cognitive capacity of one or both candidates, seeing them next to each other might actually have an influence. And I would suspect that Donald Trump, who is entirely used to major rallies as the way that he does public speaking these days, is going to be a little bit more thrown by the lack of a studio audience who can applaud his every word. So that would be my gut. That said, all it's going to take is a couple of clips of either candidate sounding like they don't know what they're talking about, for a lot of, you know, opposition researchers to cut ads about how they're old and senile. So I think we're really going to have to see whether this is a durable change in public opinion on that issue or whether it does what a lot of debates do, which is create a blip that self-corrects after a few weeks.

Yeah, I think I can completely understand why covering debates would have put you off for life. But we will be watching and we'll bring you an instant podcast very soon after that big debate, but one of the big landmark moments of the year. For now, Dara Lynn, Senior Fellow of the American Immigration Council. Thanks so much for talking to me for Politics Weekly America.

Thank you.

And that is all from me for this week. Before you go, another housekeeping reminder from us. Google Podcasts is closing this week, on June, the 23rd, to be exact. So if you are currently listening to us on that platform, make sure to follow us somewhere else. We're not on YouTube, but we are on Spotify, Pocket Cast, or Apple. Or you can find us, as always, on the Guardian website. We'll leave links to all those other platforms in the episode description. We certainly wouldn't want to lose you in this crucial year for US politics. But that is all for now. The producer was Tom Glasser. The executive producer is Maz Ebtehaj. I'm Jonathan Friedland. Thanks, as always, for listening.

This is The Guardian.