The White House’s increasingly desperate push to get more aid for Ukraine approved by Congress before funding runs out at the end of the year may lead to serious changes to U.S. immigration policy being pushed by conservatives.
Republicans have dug in on demands to limit asylum and refugee claims and even expedite deportations, pointing to record numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border they say pose a danger to the U.S. — and are insisting the issue be included in any bill that approves national security spending abroad.
They argue authorities cannot properly screen all who are arriving and that those who are entering are straining the country’s resources.
Not even a visit to Washington, D.C., by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week appears to be enough to convince Republicans to separate the two issues. Zelenskyy is expected to meet with lawmakers and U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday to press them to approve more aid.
But immigration policy experts say the urgency over Ukraine is forcing the Biden administration to play into Republicans’ hands, and capitulate to hard-right limits on immigration that won’t solve the larger issues driving record numbers of people to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“This should be an opportunity for the president to show the better side of our human nature,” said Bill Hing, an immigration law professor at the University of San Francisco.
“There is work to be done. But that’s the message he should be conveying as to why we should be responding with compassion, rather than with a hammer.”
What's happening at the border?
Despite disagreements in how to revamp immigration policy, no one is disagreeing that there has been a steady rise in arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border recently.
Arrests at the border in August through October more than doubled over the previous three months as migrants and smugglers adjusted to new asylum regulations following the end of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that severely restricted migrants’ entry into the U.S.
Illegal border crossings were at 188,778 in October, down from 218,763 in September, which was the second-highest month on record, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Republicans pushing for immigration limits point to another statistic: the number of people caught trying to cross into the U.S. who are on the so-called “terrorist watchlist.” That number rose from 98 to 169 at the southern border between 2022 and 2023, and accounted for a larger percentage of total encounters — yet still doesn’t rise to even 0.01 per cent.
The rising flow of migrants has strained CPB resources. At least one border crossing in Arizona and two more in Texas have been temporarily closed to allow officers assigned to the ports of entry to help with transportation and other support, as smugglers seek to bring groups of migrants through illegal crossings nearby.
Migrants have also been bussed from southern border states like Texas to larger cities further north, including New York City and Chicago. That has overwhelmed resources in those metropolises as well and led to some refugees sleeping on sidewalks and in parks — a situation also faced by some Canadian cities like Toronto.
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In tying the issue of immigration to Ukraine, conservative lawmakers in the U.S. have argued the country’s national security begins with securing its own borders and ensuring dangerous people aren’t entering.
“When it comes to keeping America safe, border security is not a side show — it’s ground zero,” Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday.
“Senate Republicans have no more spare time to explain this basic reality.”
But experts say the focus on potential crime and terrorism misses the fact that most people seeking asylum and refuge in the U.S. are fleeing violence, persecution and even climate change from other countries — particularly Central and Latin American nations like Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras and others.
Hing, who frequently visits the southern border and works with the USF’s Immigration and Legal Resource Center he founded, says the people and families he meets through his legal work are often desperate and simply seeking safety.
“It’s very different from the 1970s and 1980s, when a majority of people were coming from Mexico (as) economic migrants” seeking work, he said. “The ones today are not economic migrants. They’re fleeing violence. They’re not coming here for an adventure.”
What do Republicans want — and may get?
Biden has said he is willing to make “significant compromises on the border” in order to get the new funding for Ukraine passed. He originally asked Congress to approve nearly US$106 billion that includes money for Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific and the southern border.
The compromises being pushed by Republicans appear to be falling into three areas: raising the standards for asylum seekers to have their claims approved, limiting humanitarian parole and fast-tracking deportations through expedited removal.
The asylum proposal targets the initial screening tool called the credible fear interview, which claimants go through to demonstrate a fear of persecution back home under a strict set of criteria. If they are determined to have a chance of getting asylum, they are allowed to stay in the U.S. to pursue their case in immigration court. That process can take years, which critics say is then taken advantage of by claimants.
“People aren’t necessarily coming to apply for asylum as much to access that asylum adjudication process,” Andrew Arthur, a former immigration court judge and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration in the U.S., told the Associated Press.
The backlog of cases pending in U.S. immigration courts has more than tripled since 2017 to over 2 million, according to the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Some of what lawmakers are discussing would raise the bar that migrants need to meet during that initial credible fear interview. Those who do not meet it would be sent home.
But Emma Corcoran, an immigration law and policy expert and professor at the University of Notre Dame, says strengthening the interview would only lead to further delays.
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“When you actually change eligibility requirements for asylum, it puts even more of a burden on adjudicators if you make it even more strict,” she said. “(Republicans aren’t proposing) changing the adjudication process, which could actually make a difference.”
The labyrinthine refugee process can be bypassed through a policy known as humanitarian parole. That allows the U.S. government to allow people or groups of people into the country on a case-by-case basis.
The Biden administration has used humanitarian parole to grant entry to Afghans fleeing the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, as well as Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion. In January, Biden announced a plan to admit 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela via humanitarian parole, provided those migrants had a financial sponsor and flew to the U.S. instead of going to the U.S.-Mexico border for entry.
The latest U.S. government figures show that nearly 270,000 people had been admitted into the country through October under that program. Separately, 324,000 people have gotten appointments through a mobile app called CBP One that is used to grant parole to people at land crossings with Mexico.
Republicans have described humanitarian parole as essentially an end run around Congress by letting in large numbers of people who otherwise would have no path to be admitted, and want to limit the executive branch’s ability to use the program.
They also want Biden to agree to stepping up expedited removals, which allows low-level immigration officers, as opposed to an immigration judge, to quickly deport certain immigrants.
Immigration advocates say its use is prone to errors and does not give migrants enough protections, such as having a lawyer help them argue their case — something Corcoran says is crucial.
“(Immigration) judges are much more likely to move quicker on decisions where people are represented by a lawyer, rather than if they’re alone,” she said.
What happens next?
A national AP-NORC poll conducted in November found about half of U.S. adults say increasing security at the U.S.-Mexico border should be a “high priority” for the federal government, with three in 10 calling it a “moderate priority.” Republicans were more likely than Democrats to call it a high priority.
That public perception is likely what’s driving Biden to consider the Republicans’ demands in addition to the urgency over Ukraine, Corcoran said.
“He’s coming up to an election, and he wants to be seen as being tough on the border,” she said — especially if he is squaring off with Donald Trump and his hardline immigration policies.
But both she and Hing say the current debate is missing the larger issues that should be addressed — including the violence and persecution that’s causing record numbers of people to flee not just Latin countries, but also places as diverse as Senegal, Bangladesh and China.
Corcoran also says that, so long as asylum seekers remain in the U.S. while they wait for their cases to be heard, they should be allowed to work immediately. Current U.S. law forces asylum seekers to wait a minimum 150 days before they can even apply for a work permit, which can take months or even years to be approved.
Overhauling the U.S. immigration system to allow more pathways for entry under different criteria than the narrow ones outlined by asylum should also be pursued, Corcoran added.
But Hing laments that those larger conversations can’t be had so long as Republicans continue to force their priorities into the current national security debate.
“The Biden administration shouldn’t be held hostage,” he said.
—with files from the Associated Press
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