Biden needs a breakthrough on immigration

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Donald Trump’s mother came from Tong (population 500), a remote Scottish settlement that was once in Viking territory. His grandfather came from Kallstadt (population 1,200), a Bavarian village that produced the Heinz family. Joe Biden’s ancestors came from Ireland and England. In America everyone is from somewhere else — even Native Americans, though they have been there much longer than anyone.

Such is the country’s appeal that 160 million adults around the world say they would move there, too, if only they had the chance. That is many millions more than most Americans are willing to allow in.

This mismatch is at the heart of the issue that could cost Biden the election. In 2016 Trump rode “border chaos” all the way to the Republican nomination and then on to the presidency. At the time, he campaigned as if record numbers of migrants were coming across the border illegally.

That was not true then. It is true now.

There were nearly 250,000 attempts to cross the southern border in November alone. Most of the newcomers will have sought asylum and been released into America to wait years for their claims to be adjudicated. Since Biden became president, over 3.1 million border-crossers have been admitted. That is more than the population of Chicago. At least a further 1.7 million have come in undetected or overstayed their visas. Republican governors have paid for migrants to go to places run by Democrats, forcing the problems of the southern border northward. Their experience helps explain why voters trust Republicans to deal with border security by a margin of 30 points. It is the party’s biggest lead on any issue.

However, some of the blame lies squarely at Biden’s door. Trump’s language about Mexico sending rapists across the border and his cruel separation of children from their parents as a deterrent, along with his plan to build the wall, radicalized some Democratic policymakers on immigration. They thought public opinion was on their side. Voters did indeed revolt against Trumpism and while he was in office support for immigration reached a new high.

When the new Democratic administration took power its instinct was to do the opposite of whatever Trump had done. Work on the border wall stopped. Democrats ditched the remain-in-Mexico policy, which obliged asylum-seekers to stay south of the border until the authorities decided on their applications. Predictably, illegal immigration surged.

Since the midterms in 2022, Biden has quietly adopted some of Trump’s policies. He has agreed to fill gaps in the wall. Asylum-seekers who try to cross undetected will, with a few exceptions, automatically have their applications rejected. They must apply online before showing up. Yet Americans are unaware of these efforts, partly because Biden is loathe to draw attention to his triangulation, lest his own side turns on him.

The president’s room to do one thing while saying another is running out. The House has paired a stringent immigration bill with funding for Ukraine’s war. The administration resents this, because support for Ukraine makes economic and strategic sense for America regardless of the country’s policy on immigration. That reaction is an error.

Instead, in a system in which both parties use the leverage available to them, Biden should see this as an opportunity.

Once that first test is passed, immigrants are typically released awaiting a court date years in the future, because immigration courts are overstuffed with cases. The average wait for a hearing is over four years. Appeals can add to the delay. Democrats would like money to hire more officers to process claims and more judges to speed through the backlog of cases. That is reasonable, too.

There ought to be a deal here. Yet each party mistrusts the other’s motives. Republicans say they will not give more money to an administration they cannot trust to enforce immigration laws. Instead they are trying to impeach the secretary of homeland security. Democrats look at Republican demands, such as that families coming into the country can be detained indefinitely, and conclude that negotiations are being set up to fail and are therefore really a weapon against Biden. The odds are that both parties will choose campaigning over deal making.

That should worry Biden. Reporting from the Mexican side of the border suggests that if people fear Trump will win, many more will try to cross into America beforehand. Insecure borders weaken support for legal immigration and boost restrictionist parties. Immigration could bring Trump back to the White House, from where he might pull America out of the refugee convention of 1951, causing it to collapse.