Wanted: Leadership

In his Wall Street Journal column Democrat William Galston calls for President Biden’s leadership on what he deems the “border crisis”:

The Biden administration recently announced that it will abandon this policy as of May 23, a move that has driven Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns into full panic mode. The four most vulnerable Senate Democrats—Mark Kelly of Arizona, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada—have all criticized the move. Sen. Cortez Masto, long a critic of using Title 42 to control illegal immigration, recently issued a statement disputing the move to abandon it. “This is the wrong way to do this and it will leave the administration unprepared for a surge at the border,” she said. “We should be working to fix our immigration system by investing in border security and treating immigrant families with dignity. Instead, the administration is acting without a detailed plan.”

The lack of a plan to replace Title 42 points to the larger problem: Democrats recoiled in horror at the enforcement excesses of the Trump administration, symbolized by the separation of families at the border, but they never reached an agreement on a strategy to replace these excesses.

This is no accident. While most Republicans agree on the aims of immigration policy, Democrats are split. Progressive advocates claim to oppose open borders but reject any policy that would regulate the flow of migrants into the U.S. Moderates want a better balance between immigration flows and border security. They favor reforms that would reorient U.S. policy around economic factors rather than family reunification.

What sort of leadership does he want from President Biden?

No one will solve this problem for Mr. Biden. He must take charge of his administration and make the tough calls. Endangered Democrats have done the political math and have concluded that the costs of inaction exceed the costs of angering progressive immigration activists. The president should stop looking for a no-cost way out of this morass and do what needs to be done.

This means reversing course on Title 42 and continuing to enforce it until the administration’s new system for accelerating the assessment of asylum claims is fully up and running. It also means allowing the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy to remain in force while negotiating new measures with the Mexican government to enhance the safety and living conditions of migrants who are waiting for their claims to be adjudicated.

I think he’s asking too much of President Biden. If he took those actions many in his caucus would feel betrayed and I doubt it would gain a single independent vote for Democrats. Indeed, I think it would make Democrats look that much more rudderless. In Lincoln’s words, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

I would also say that I don’t believe we have a border crisis. I believe we have an immigration crisis. With something upwards of 1.6 million people crossing our southern border last year and this year, we certainly have the highest proportion of immigrants population in more than 110 years and possibly in considerably longer than that. Most of those immigrants are from Mexico, Central, or South America. Almost none are native speakers of English but most are native speakers of Spanish. The situation is unprecedented. We have never had such a large cohort of non-English speakers in the country, all speaking the same language other than English. No one really knows how many people are entering the country illegally. Estimates vary.

Meanwhile there is pressure for us to accept more political asylum-seekers and guest workers. I believe that as the total number of immigrants rises, the more resistance there will be to admitting more for any reason whatever.