The pressure from the former Republican president donald trump In the middle of an election year, it has forced the president of the United States, Joe Bidento make a change in the immigration policy of the Democratic Party and propose the greatest restrictions in recent years on the border with Mexico.
The The White House has proposed cutting the asylum system and redoubling the rapid returns of migrantsa long-standing Republican demand, in exchange for Congress approving new military aid for Ukraine.
However, the followers of trump They say that it is not enough and they are not willing to give concessions to Biden when there are nine months left until the elections.
Shift in immigration policy
Biden rose to power presenting himself as the complete opposite of trumpwho proposed the construction of a border wall in 2016.
The Democrat promised to make the US a “safe place for refugees and asylum seekers” and give legal status to the more than 11 million migrants undocumented people living in the country.
More than three years later, those ideas have been forgotten, amid a global increase in the movement of people and internal pressure to “control” the arrival of foreigners to the country, when in 2023 more than 2 million irregular border crossings.
This, added to the rush for the Republicans to lift the blockade on military aid for Ukraine, led to the White House to negotiate an immigration pact that includes the biggest changes to immigration laws in decades, focused on restricting the right to asylum.
”Now the immigration reform conversations are focused only on the border, on how to control it,” Yael Schacher, researcher at Refugees International, explains to EFE.
Under current laws, a person has the right to request asylum in USA on the border or within US territory.
Unlike other types of legal migration, such as work visas, the legislation does not establish a limit on the number of people who can be granted asylum each year, due to the humanitarian aspect of this protection.
”Stop treating asylum as a right that everyone can apply for is something completely new for USA”Schacher stressed.
For some of the people who supported Biden In the 2020 elections, the abandonment of his promises on migration is a “disappointment,” according to Vanessa Cárdenas, who worked on his electoral campaign, told EFE.
“He has moved a long way from what he said he wanted to do.”
This change, Cárdenas believes, can also be attributed to the fact that the Republican Party has been adopting ideas increasingly to the right, which have become part of popular thought.
Blockade with a view to the elections
Although Republicans have been denouncing an “invasion” of migrants for the alleged “open borders” policy of Bidenthey refuse to support the restrictions proposed by the president.
For this reason, the White House proposal negotiated with some legislators collapsed on Wednesday in a preliminary vote in the Senate, where practically all conservatives voted against it.
Biden He directly blames Trump for this blockage, whom he has accused of having “intimidated” Republican legislators to oppose any proposal and thus obtain electoral benefits.
The New York tycoon is the big favorite for the Republican nomination for the November elections, in which Biden He will seek re-election for a second term.
The Republican Party wants this campaign to revolve around immigration and, therefore, they have tried to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, immigration chief of Biden.
According to a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, migration is now the issue that most voters indicate as their greatest concern, surpassing inflation.
By contrast, a congressional report released this week predicted that immigration will add $7 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next decade.
Although the immigration plan seems to have no future, it shows that trump is winning Biden the story about migration.
”Republicans have turned the issue into a problem and have trapped Democrats in a debate about the border,” summarizes Rebeka Wolf, an expert at the American Immigration Council.
Source: Gestion
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