There seems to be a full court press going on in the media to get the Congress to pass increased funding for Ukraine. The editors of the Wall Street Journal observe:
Washington is ready to close up shop for the holidays, and so far there’s no deal for more weapons for Israel and Ukraine with changes to border security. The question to start asking is whether the U.S. is really going to let partisan divisions turn into a betrayal of Ukraine.
Hard to believe, but perhaps it is. President Biden warned Tuesday that America is “at a real inflection point in history†that could “determine the future†of Europe. He is right on that point. Without more U.S. weapons, Ukraine will lose to Vladimir Putin. One result would be an unstable Europe. The blow to U.S. power and influence would be on the order of Saigon in 1975.
The media don’t seem to be pulling for the other components of the military spending bill making its way through Congress in quite the same way. There are some signs that they want the U. S.. to decrease funding for Israel and leave the situation at the border alone. That’s all somewhat odd since it at such odds with the views of Americans among whom the majority think we’re providing too much aid to Ukraine, agree with the support we’re giving to Israel, and 2/3s of Americans think the situation at our southern border is either a crisis or a major problem.
I think we should be providing support to Ukraine, should provide military support to Israel is they ask for it but shouldn’t go out of our way to support them, and that the situation at our southern border is one that only returning to the definition of asylum in the Immigration and Naturalization Act and turning back anyone who doesn’t meet that will fix.
However, the media really needs to come to a realistic understanding of our support for Ukraine. We don’t have munitions sitting on the shelf to send to Ukraine and we aren’t producing munitions as fast as the Ukrainians are using them. The best we can do right now is slow the pace at which the Ukrainians run out of ammo.
I agree with the WSJ editors that we’re betraying the Ukrainians but the betrayal took place a long time ago when we encouraged the Ukrainians to think they would be admitted to NATO and supported the overthrow of the legitimately elected but pro-Russian Ukrainian government in 2014.
I think we ought to support Ukraine and Israel and also agree to do something to fix the problem of people gaming our broken asylum system.
But even more than that, the war in Ukraine and Israel, and the concern of a potential conflict with China and what that might look like, expose deep and system problems in the US defense industry and defense procurement and contracting. That the vast majority of our political class – especially our elected representatives – do not seem aware or care much about this is deeply concerning.
Agree with Andy. As long as we dont redefine asylum we need to follow our own laws and allow lots of people in. I saw what was claimed to be the list of GOP demands. Amending the asylum law, IIRC, was one of them. Increasing the number of asylum judges was also there. However, there was stupid stuff like starting the wall again. Let’s hope they keep the first two, drop the latter and fund both Ukraine and Israel.
Steve
If we could surge the capability to adjudicate asylum claims much quicker, that is all that’s really needed. The draw for gaming the system is that you can get in the US and live freely knowing that your case won’t be heard for years.
The incentives would be much different if cases were adjudicated in weeks or months instead.
But of course, no one wants to do that.
I wish it were the case that “surging the capability to adjudicate asylum claims much quicker” were enough. I’ve suggested the same thing myself. However, it’s not. The present backlog is ten years long. To resolve that quickly increasing the number of judges two-fold or three-fold isn’t enough. They’d need to be increased ten-fold and those people just don’t exist.
Consequently, what we need to do are:
1. Substantially increase the number of judges
2. Return the definition of asylum to the one specified in the INA
3. Tighten the criteria beyond the absurdly low (“reasonable concern”) standard presently used by the Biden Administration
I think you are probably correct especially if they worked on the oldest cases first. However, if they started with the most recent arrivals so that there was a flood of people returning 3-4 weeks after they left I think that would quickly stem things and then you could do the backlog.
Steve