The Forgotten

For John, BLUF:  There is no doubt there are problems at the US Southern Border.  Large numbers of people are fleeing problems in their home nations and seeking asylum in the United States.  One wonders why they don't seek asylum in Meico?  In the mean time, millions are trying to do it the regular way, the legal way.  What of them?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Biden and the Blame Game at the Border

Here is the sub-headline:

The issues involved are nearly impossible to settle as long as policymakers regard decency as a political weakness rather than as a moral strength.

From The New Yorker, by Writer Jonathan Blitzer, March 28, 2021 (For the 5 April Print Edition).

Here is the lede plus three:

During the past decade, three U.S. Presidents have each faced a humanitarian emergency at the southern border.  Barack Obama did in 2014, when tens of thousands of children from Central America arrived, without their parents, to seek asylum.  Five years later, under Donald Trump—and the harshest border-enforcement regime in more than half a century—record numbers of children and families overwhelmed federal authorities.  Now, two months into Joe Biden’s Presidency, it’s his turn. Last Thursday, the topic dominated the first press conference he has given since taking office.  “What we’re doing right now is attempting to rebuild the system that can accommodate what is happening today,” he said.  “It’s going to take time.”

There are currently some eighteen thousand unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody, including more than five thousand who remain in holding cells, as the government scrambles to find space to house them.  Republicans who were silent when Trump was separating migrant children from their parents and eviscerating the asylum system are now denouncing “Biden’s border crisis.”  The messaging appears to be effective; it’s causing all sorts of confusion.  Biden is turning away forty per cent of asylum-seeking families and virtually all single adults arriving at the border, under a controversial Trump policy known as Title 42, which he has left in place.  Even so, everyone from TV news anchors to the President of Mexico is blaming Biden for encouraging more migrants to travel north, because he vowed to stop Trump’s heedless cruelty.  Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, tweeted that Biden has “emphasized the humane treatment of immigrants, regardless of their legal status.” He meant it as a criticism.

The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has predicted that the United States will encounter more migrants by the end of 2021 than it has at any point in the past two decades. He has also, like the rest of the Administration, avoided labelling the situation a crisis.  “This is not new,” he said.  “We have experienced migration surges before.”  What is new, though, is the pace:  for most of March, about five hundred and fifty children have been arriving at the border every day.  Both Mayorkas and Biden have gone on television to announce that the border is closed; at a White House press briefing, Roberta Jacobson, from the National Security Council, made the announcement in Spanish.  But it was directed more at critics in Congress than at people in Honduras and Guatemala, the countries from which most of the families and children are coming.

The word “crisis” is both an overstatement and an understatement of the situation.  There were more families and children seeking asylum at the border under Trump in 2019 than there are now. And the current numbers, if higher than Biden anticipated, are not unexpected.  The pandemic has led to renewed desperation in Central America, as have two hurricanes that devastated the region last fall, displacing tens of thousands of people.  Yet, in another sense, the situation is worse than much of the public understands, because the issues involved are genuinely complex and nearly impossible to settle as long as policymakers in Washington continue to regard decency as a sign of political weakness rather than of moral strength.

The Author is correct, it is a mess at the Southern Border.  And later on he mentions that it is the plan of the Biden Adminisration to help fix problems in Central America, and bypassing oppressive regimes in the process.  Something we should have been doing since the 1950s.

The author tells us of the inequity of it all.  He pulls out the word "Decency" and asks that our political masters show some.  Perhaps because of some word limit, he avoids talking about doing the right thing for the rest of those seeking to come to the United States and become citizens.  There are millions out there who have done the paperwork properly and have had the prerequisite medical examinations, only to be waiting on line for a chance to legally enter this nation.  This extract is from the Migration Policy Institute:

Because of the numerical caps and per-country caps on certain green-card categories, there are significant waits for some categories, with sharper effects on a few countries.  For example, as of April 2019, the wait for U.S. citizens to sponsor adult, unmarried children was more than seven years for most parts of the world, but was 12 years for relatives from the Philippines—and more than 21 years for those from Mexico.  As of November 2018, there were 3.7 million people waiting in line abroad for a family-sponsored green card, and 121,000 awaiting an employment-sponsored green card.

What does decency say we owe those who follow the rules?  What does Mr Blitzer say?

I predict that nothing will be accomplished this Congressional Term, sort of the abolition of the Filibuster, and even then I have my doubts.

Regards  —  Cliff