By all objective measures, there is a serious problem developing at the US - Mexico border. A recent
article by the New York Times lays out the current scope of the problem.
Currently over 100,000 people a month are jumping the southern border. Unlike earlier migrations which were often from Mexico and driven by economic forces, the current wave of migrants are fleeing Central America and they are trying to escape mindless violence. Governments in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are unable to maintain law and order, allowing gangs to effectively take over portions of their countries. Turf wars between rival gangs and vestigial government authorities are wreaking havoc.
Business Insider ranks El Salvador as the most dangerous country to visit in the world; Guatemala and Honduras rank 6th and 5th.
El Salvador and Honduras now have the highest and second highest murder rates of 230 countries monitored by the UN. Is it any surprise we now have a crisis on the southern border?
The Time article states that over 1,000,000 migrants tried to jump the border in the year ending last September. The numbers have swelled since then. The U.S. immigration system is now swamped with a backlog of over 800,000 pending cases. The average time to process each case: 700 days. With no capacity to detain these migrants, they are being released - unceremoniously dumped at the nearest bus station or the edge of town by the authorities after being notified they will be contacted later about their immigration status.
Driven to fury by the problem and what is perceived as opportunistic obstruction by the Democratic House, the administration drove the past Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen to resign. A California court recently poured fuel on the flames by denying the administration the right to force migrants to wait in Mexico pending resolution of their claims.
As noted in The Week:
But things truly cross over into the absurd with the recent decision of a California judge to block
the Trump administration's effort to get most migrants to remain in
Mexico until their asylum hearing. The U.S. is confronting a flood of
migrants fleeing oppression, violence, and poverty in one country
(usually Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador), crossing a massive
intermediary country (Mexico) that no one claims is persecuting them,
and yet a judge insists that it's a violation of the law to deny them
entry. That ruling is either an outrageous warping of the law, in which case
it needs to be quickly overturned by a higher court, or it is a
demonstration that the law itself needs to be changed to allow U.S.
policymakers to determine who and how many get admitted to the country,
and when. In the current situation of years-long backlogs and
restrictions on detaining kids, it amounts to a wide-open door to anyone
who shows up on the border with a child claiming asylum. To the extent
that current law requires this fiasco, it needs to be scrapped and
replaced.
An exasperated President Trump responded by
threatening to send detained migrants to self-declared "sanctuary cities" where local authorities have refused to cooperate with ICE.
Within the administration, there appears to be a ying-and-yang battle between Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, his unofficial immigration czar. There is no clear administration policy or plan beyond focusing on a hard line in dealing with the issue.
Until recently the Democrats have been sitting on the sidelines, condemning the measures taken by the administration but failing to propose any concrete program of their own. In fact,
as Politico reports, the Democrats appear to be seriously torn on the issue and unable to offer anything more than rhetoric and bills addressing peripheral issues such as the Dreamers.
This might be changing. It is interesting to note that 2020 Democratic Presidential front-runner
Bernie Sanders recently opined on the issue of border security:
"If you open the borders, my God, there's a lot of poverty in this
world, and you're going to have people from all over the world. And I
don't think that's something that we can do at this point. Can't do it.
So that is not my position.”
Whether Democrats like it or not, border security and immigration are going to be key issues in the next election with
some pundits suggesting President Trump will make it a centerpiece campaign issue. Stand by for a
battle royale on this issue with each side talking past each other to their bases. Both parties have a part of the solution but with no willingness to cooperate to solve the problem, things may get a lot worse - especially for hundreds of thousands of migrants flooding into this country and the communities who have to receive and care for them.
Is there a solution? Common sense suggests there is but it certainly won't be an easy one.
The Alliance Party has laid out a pathway to reforming our immigration system:
As a nation of immigrants, we support legal immigration tied to the
country’s economic needs and capacity to assimilate newcomers. We also
support reasonable pathways to citizenship for those law-abiding persons
in the country without legal residency status, and we support strong
borders. We also believe in America’s unstinting moral obligation to
help genuine asylum seekers. We affirm that part of the definition of
self-government is the right of order to define who may and who may not
become part of the nation.
This will likely involve:
- Deploying additional financial resources, personnel, appropriate technology and infrastructure to secure the border.
- Addressing the asylum crisis by changing legislation and regulations, and providing necessary personnel and resources, to quickly screen asylum applicants and assess their claims. The right of asylum must be balanced with the duty of our government to control our borders for the general welfare of the country.
- Recognizing that the current migrant crisis has roots far south of the border, America should, as a matter of high priority, work with Central American governments and community groups to re-establish peace, law and order in these troubled neighbors.
- Enacting legislation and regulations to provide a pathway to regularized immigration status and citizenship to law-abiding migrants who are already in the country.
- Developing an immigration system that selectively admits immigrants who have the skills, aptitude and demonstrated motivation to quickly become self-supporting and contributing members of American society. There are excellent examples world-wide of immigration systems which have broad public support because they improve the general welfare of the receiving countries.
It's time to stop playing political football with border and immigration issues. We need to forge an approach that reasserts control over America's borders, treats all migrants decently and fairly, and welcomes immigrants who will make a contribution to our country.
-- Mike Power
