U.S. President Joe Biden announced new measures yesterday that will impose broad restrictions on migrants’ access to the U.S. asylum system when illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border reach a seven-day average of 2,500 per day. Border crossings are currently at that level, meaning the new restrictions kicked in overnight. (Washington Post)
Biden’s decision to impose these restrictions is in many ways the culmination of a trend over the past decade that has seen immigration into the U.S. become an increasingly politicized and polarizing issue in domestic politics.
Specifically, the number of crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border has been portrayed as a “crisis.” But to the extent that it is one, it is only because the U.S.—a large and wealthy country—has not expanded its capacity to receive and process migrants and asylum-seekers, largely because of a lack of political will to do so. In fact, there are serious questions about the U.S. capacity to even follow through on the restrictions that Biden announced yesterday.
In light of the political obstacles to expanding reception capacity at the border, Biden came into office four years ago pledging a “root causes” approach to migration. The thinking goes that if the U.S. can work with regional governments to increase economic opportunities in countries of origin, it will reduce the push factors that drive people to migrate to the United States. Theoretically, the root causes approach would allow the U.S. to uphold its obligations under international law—namely, migrants’ right to seek asylum—while also reducing the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
The root causes strategy, though, hasn’t worked. In part, that’s because it is limited in scope, focusing mainly on a handful of countries in Central America, many of whose governments and corrupt elites contribute to the problem, rather than solve it. But it’s also because, somewhat counterintuitively, increasing economic opportunities in the short term actually increases emigration, as push factors remain but more people gain enough financial resources to make the journey to the U.S.-Mexico border. Meanwhile, the main pull factor—the opportunities represented by U.S. employers that hire undocumented immigrants at lower wages or for jobs that U.S. citizens eschew—has similarly gone unaddressed.
As a result, Biden has felt pressure to adopt increasingly restrictive measures on immigration that often echo those imposed by his predecessor and current rival in this year’s election, former President Donald Trump. Of course, Biden has not resorted to the most draconian measures of the Trump era, but yesterday’s executive action easily marks the most restrictive border policy of any modern Democratic president.
Facing a tight presidential contest against Trump in November, most pragmatists within his administration would argue that, from a political perspective, Biden had to do something to address the perceived crisis at the border. Indeed, polling shows that migration is a top issue for Democratic and Republican voters alike. But the problem for Biden is that migration is also a wedge issue in the Democratic Party, and these new measures have already outraged much of the party’s progressive wing.