Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

B402 - The gaping hole in conix's position is her blaming Biden for the border situation. That
position is bullshit. Some objective info on those two positions most of us here agree on:

Related: [...] Ok! Since you are now into the wonderful new world of gathering facts we have more here for you:
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170717604

Title 42: Trump-era border policy creates headache for Biden

Published 20 December 2022
[...]
It was due to expire on 21 December, but two days before the deadline, Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts blocked its termination as the court considers an emergency appeal from some Republican-led states who have asked for the policy to remain in place beyond this date.
[...]
Why the recent spike?

The number of migrants arriving at the border rose dramatically after Mr Biden took office in late January 2021.

Experts point to a number of reasons for the increase, including environmental disasters and economic woes in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. In other cases - such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela - economic problems have been compounded by political repression.

There are also large numbers of repeat crossings and lingering pandemic-related economic issues across Latin America, experts say.
[...]
"And you've got people coming from countries that had not sent migrants in significant numbers before now becoming top senders of migrants, due largely to a lack of economic opportunities. Smugglers take advantage of that."

Many of the migrants are now seeking asylum, a process which was severely restricted by the previous US administration of Donald Trump.

President Biden's proposal to provide a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented Americans has also been blamed for spurring the record influx at the southern border.
[...]
Cuba, for example, has lost much of the aid [Note: Trump also cut aid to countries from which most of the border refugees come.] it received from Venezuela pre-pandemic - creating more economic difficulties there - while Nicaragua's decision last year to eliminate visa requirements for Cubans means they now have a starting point to begin their journey from Central America to the US.

A lack of diplomatic relations between the US and these countries also means that the US cannot repatriate them home.
[...]
Mr Biden, for his part, has said that sending migrants back to Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua is "not rational" and that he is working with Mexico and other countries to "stop the flow".

In mid-October, [Biden time] US and Mexican officials agreed to a plan that would enable the US to expel Venezuelans while at the same time granting humanitarian access to them by air.

Venezuelan nationals who attempt to cross the border and are detained are ineligible for the legal pathway in the future. Since the plan was introduced, "encounters" with Venezuelan migrants fell from 1,100 to 300 per day.
[...]
Trump policy expiring

A federal appeals court last week dismissed a request by 19 Republican-led states to delay the end of Title 42.

On Monday, Republican state officials presented their legal challenge to the Supreme Court. John Roberts, the chief justice who leads the conservative-dominated court. He placed a stay on a lower court's ruling while the Supreme Court decides whether to take up the case.

The Biden administration had said in a separate court filing that it was prepared to officially halt the expulsions at midday on Wednesday in compliance with a court-imposed deadline.

"While this stage of the litigation proceeds, we will continue our preparations to manage the border in a safe, orderly, and humane way when the Title 42 public health order lifts," the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in reaction to the Supreme Court's order.

In November, a federal judge ruled that Title 42 was "arbitrary and capricious" and the expulsions must stop by 21 December.

Some experts believe that Title 42 caused migrant figures to rise, as the policy does not prevent migrants from multiple crossing attempts.

In September, CBP said "the large number of expulsions during the pandemic has contributed to a higher-than-usual number of migrants making multiple border crossing attempts".

Mr Isacson said that the policy leads to statistical "distortions".

"Title 42 has made it easy for people to try over and over and over," he said. "If they keep getting caught, there's no real sanction."

Statistically, Mexican citizens are likely to be repatriated back to Mexico, which also accepts migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Collectively, more than 962,000 citizens of these countries were sent back across the border using Title 42 in the 2022 fiscal year, compared to less than 10,000 from Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.


Migrants after being detained in El Paso, Texas on 12 September Reuters

A political headache for Biden

The rising migrant figures represent a political problem for the Biden administration, setting him on a collision course with Republican-led states.
[...]
In early December, House Republicans introduced legislation that would expand the DHS's power to swiftly remove detainees without a hearing if they have been in the country less than two years.

Under current regulations, the process is limited to migrants detained within 100 miles (160km) of the border or those who have been in the US less than 14 days.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62909392

This article is over three years old, yet the points made are still valid and relevant.


RODRIGO ARANGUA/AFP/Getty Images

Yes, There’s a Crisis on the Border. And It’s Trump’s Fault.

Instead of wasting his time on a wall, the president should fix the asylum system.

By ALAN BERSIN, NATE BRUGGEMAN and BEN ROHRBAUGH

April 05, 2019

Alan Bersin served as the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and assistant secretary and chief diplomatic officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Nate Bruggeman held senior policy positions at the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection from 2009 to 2012. He is a partner in the consulting firm BorderWorks Advisers.

Ben Rohrbaugh was the director for enforcement and border security at the National Security Council from 2014 to 2016. He also served in senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Donald Trump has made border security and immigration enforcement a rallying cry of his campaign and the centerpiece of his presidency. But now, as the effects of his immigration policies have become measurable, it is clear to us—three people who have worked on the issue in previous administrations—that Trump is the worst president for border security in the last 30 years.

-
[INSERT: The Situation at the U.S.-Mexico Border Can't Be 'Solved' Without Acknowledging Its Origins
"What a Reagan-era law can teach Democrats about legalizing undocumented immigrants
[...]
Insert: Fact-checking claim about Trump administration changes to the immigration system
"Donald Trump’s Central America strategy is both cruel and incompetent
"Inside Trump’s Disastrous ‘Secret’ Drug War Plans for Central America""
Alejandro Mayorkas
stated on March 21, 2021 in in an ABC News interview:
The border surge is “challenging” because the
immigration system that had been in place
for decades “was dismantled in its
entirety by the Trump administration.”
Half-true
October 2021 -- https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=166409823
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170726473]
-

The border is currently overwhelmed with increasing numbers of migrants, in particular Central American asylum seekers. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported that 66,450 persons were apprehended between the ports of entry in February, the highest monthly total in a decade. Projections for March are even worse—exceeding 100,000—with experts concerned that monthly totals could exceed 150,000 in the coming months. CBP is reassigning officers from the ports of entry, which are critically understaffed, to help Border Patrol with the crush. CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan has said the immigration system on the border is at “the breaking point.” In response, the president threatened to close the border altogether to legal crossings, a threat he walked back on Thursday and replaced with a “one-year warning” to Mexico.

Despite the administration’s attempts to shift blame for the chaos, make no mistake: It is Donald Trump himself who is responsible. Through misguided policies, political stunts and a failure of leadership, the president has created the conditions that allowed the asylum problem at the border to explode into a crisis. The solution to our current border troubles lies in reforming the U.S. asylum system and immigration courts and helping Central America address its challenges—not in a “big beautiful” wall or shutting down the border. Yet effective action on these issues has been missing. And the president has now so poisoned the political well with his approach that there is little hope of meaningful congressional action until after the next election. Unless the administration changes course, the immigration crisis will only continue to worsen.

In fiscal year 2017, the last year of the Obama administration and the first of Trump’s, 303,916 migrants were arrested by the Border Patrol. This was the lowest level in more than three decades. The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations had worked hard to tackle the problem of illegal migration through substantial increases in border security staffing, improvements in technology, innovations in strategy and improved security coordination and assistance to Mexico. Coupled with improved economic conditions in Mexico, these administrations were hugely successful in deterring and breaking the cycle of illegal crossing: Unlawful Mexican economic immigration, which had historically been the primary immigration enforcement issue at the border, dropped nearly 90 percent between 2000 and 2016.

Is there really a border crisis?

But the nature of undocumented immigration to the U.S. has changed. Today, it is primarily driven not by Mexican economic migrants—and not by a flood of criminals, as Trump claims—but rather by large numbers of families and minors from Central America who are seeking political asylum. Although this issue first rose to public attention in 2014, the influx then was only a fraction of what it is today. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that triple the number of 2017 apprehensions—more than 900,000—will occur at the southern border in 2019. Many of those will be migrants seeking asylum, and they will descend on a border and immigration court system ill-equipped to handle those claims.

Of course, the president did not create the conditions in Central America that have driven migrants north. But his obsession with the wall, along with a series of other misguided policies, have severely hampered the U.S. government’s response to this flood. The wall has become a profound distraction and waste of time for policymakers and agency leadership as other solutions that would prove far more useful to our real immigration problems have gone neglected.

Virtually all of the desperate families from Central America who seek asylum, whether entitled to protection or not, are permitted to remain indefinitely in the United Sates while awaiting formal adjudication of their claims. These claims cannot be processed fairly, quickly and efficiently, as the immigration courts face a backlog of nearly a million cases. In fiscal year 2018, less than 15 percent of applicants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were granted asylum, but only 1.5 percent of Central American family units apprehended in 2017 have been deported. The rest have, so far, stayed. In other words, Trump, a president fixated on stopping illegal immigration, has presided over a dramatic increase in the numbers of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

It is a system that was almost designed to be exploited. Smugglers and migrant advocacy organizations like Pueblo Sin Fronteras are encouraging distressed families from Central America to travel north through Mexico, surrender to U.S. officials at the border and ask for political asylum. The ability to stay and work in the United States for years as their claims plod through the immigration court system is a powerful inducement to come here. Since the Trump administration has done so little to speed up the processing of claims, it is likely that these families will be staying in the U.S. for years. Indeed, the president’s government shutdown over the border wall only worsened the immigration court backlog.

The president’s wall is, in other words, unmoored from operational reality. A wall will not make Central America a better place to live. A wall will not stop asylum seekers from coming to the United States and being able to claim asylum. A wall will not address, let alone fix, the issues with America’s asylum system and immigration courts. The president’s attacks on Mexico and Central America, coupled with the lack of a coherent strategy for the region, have made harder the already difficult work of addressing the underlying drivers of illegal migration from Central America. Instead of working to address these problems, the president has actively made the problem worse by redirecting resources and attention to his irrelevant wall, antagonizing the people he needs to partner with to actually solve immigration problems, exacerbating backlogs and resource shortages by shutting down the government and announcing enforcement measures that cannot be sustained and which result in increasing numbers of migrants calling his bluffs.

The president may want to implement harsh border security policies, but he has faltered on the basics of governing. The administration has failed at the fundamental tasks of coordinating its plans with the relevant agencies and working through the hard problems of implementation. For instance, the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting illegal border-crossers wasted scarce prosecutorial and detention resources and could never be operationally sustained. The family separation policy—a stain on America’s moral authority—was not vetted and coordinated within the government, leading to confused implementation that still has not been resolved. Instead, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, to preserve her position, has been reduced to a yes woman, kowtowing to every pronouncement the president makes. The enduring images of the secretary’s tenure have been her lame denials of a family separation policy and lockstep support of the president’s wall demands, even as many in her department worked without pay during the shutdown. The professionals who know what it takes to solve the problem are not consulted but rather relegated to following orders.

Trump made stopping illegal immigration his signature issue. It is time to acknowledge that he has failed miserably—so we can start thinking about how to clean up the mess he has made.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/05/border-crisis-donald-trump-226573/

conix's denial of Republican immigration policy is disgusting.