This July more than 130,000 migrants were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. The fastest growth in this immigration, with 40,000 of the total, was in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which comprises most of Arizona, which was the most since April 2008. U.S. authorities attribute this increase to smugglers now guiding migrants to the border across the most remote and harsh stretches of the Arizona desert between Yuma and Tucson to avoid detection. [1]
Crossing in desert areas in the summer can be deadly, with ground temperatures well exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit at times, officials say. Such extreme conditions have led to a spike in 911 calls. Agents responding to such calls for help routinely find dozens or even hundreds of migrants in need of aid and trying to surrender to arriving border agents.
Cuba is experiencing growth in out-migration. Social-media advertisements on the island have recently increased offering door-to-door transportation to the U.S. through flights from Cuba to Nicaragua and ground travel across Central America and Mexico. Although new Biden policies require Cubans to have a U.S. citizen-sponsor for legal entry to the U.S., many Cubans do not have such sponsors and some officials say, “For ordinary Cubans, finding a sponsor who has money in the U.S. is Mission Impossible.”[2]
Another indication of this migrant pressure is the recent guilty plea by the owners of a Williamsburg, Virginia cleaning business who operated a “labor trafficking enterprise” that smuggled over 100 migrants from El Salvador, including minors, and forced them to work in U.S. under threats of violence and deportation.[3]
Recommended Changes
Andrea R. Flores, who served as an immigration policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations, says, “Until Congress finds the political will to act, the president should use his authority to relieve pressure on our asylum system and give migrants the ability to legally work once they reach the United States.”[4] To that end, she recommends the following:
- “While far from perfect, the Biden administration’s parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans could serve as a model for what is possible. This policy provides safer options to people who are unlikely to meet the legal requirements for asylum, but who still have urgent humanitarian reasons to flee their homes.”
- The President should “use his authority to grant Temporary Protected Status to the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who lack work authorization, which would be a boon for immigrants and the communities that welcome them. A 2023 analysisby FWD.us, a bipartisan group founded by American business leaders that favors more humane immigration reform, found that T.P.S. holders contribute $22 billion in wages annually to the U.S. economy.”
- “The administration should also act quickly to increase the number of appointments at ports of entry; add new countries eligible for parole; lift caps on countries with urgent resettlement needs, as it did for Ukraine; and invest resources in adjudicating asylum cases expeditiously.”
Noted commentator, Fareed Zakaria, points out the obvious: “America’s immigration system is broken.” [5]Therefore, he says the following: “The laws and rules around asylum must be fixed so that immigration authorities can focus on the small number of genuine asylum seekers while compelling the rest to seek other legal means of entry. At the same time, it’s important to note that the United States is facing a drastic shortfall of labor and must expand legal immigration in many areas for just that reason. We urgently need to attract the world’s best technically skilled people so that they can push forward the information and biotech revolutions that are transforming the economy and life itself. With unemployment rates around 50-year lows, it is obvious that we need more workers in many sectors of the economy, from agriculture to hospitality. If this is done in a legal and orderly manner, Americans will welcome the new workers.”
Therefore, he says Biden “should propose an immigration bill that is genuinely bipartisan and forces compromises from both sides. It would be one more strong dose of evidence that policy can triumph over populism.” Good luck on doing that.
==========================
[1] Perez & Caldwell, Migrant Crossings on the Rise Again at U.S. Border,W.S.J. (Aug. 12, 2023); Miroff & Sacchetti, Border arrests surged in July, a blow to Biden immigration plan, Wash. Post (Aug. 1, 2023).
[2] Perez & Caldwell, Migrant Crossings on the Rise Again at U.S. Border, W.S.J. (Aug. 12, 2023).
[3] Paul, Laundry company owners guilty of trafficking migrants, minors for labor, Wash. Post (Aug. 13, 2023).
[4] Flores, We Know What Doesn’t Work at the Border. Here’s a Better Solution, N.Y. Times (Aug. 10, 2023).
[5] Zakaria, Immigration can be fixed. So why aren’t we doing it?, Wash. Post (Aug. 11, 2023).