The view to the will border on of President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, on the same day last week, confirms that immigration is now the most important and controversial issue ahead of the November elections.
Both the current and previous presidents have agreed that the enormous influx of illegal immigrants on the border with Mexico, in recent years, has reached a critical point.
However, their respective approaches to implementing a solution, if any, are totally different.
The White House is seeking Congress to pass legislation that would tighten controls and eliminate the right to asylum for those who enter illegally while Trump has promised to close the border, order mass deportations and continue building the wall he began when he was in charge of the executive. .
Biden has described the differences between the two as a choice between democratic legislation and autocratic action.
But the important thing here will be to see how voters react to a crisis that has caused more than 2.4 million people to enter the United States since Biden took office in January 2021, according to figures from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics. .
“While most illegal aliens seek a better life, the undeniable link between increased illegal immigration and crime poses a significant threat,” says Hannah Davis of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
While Biden and Trump exchange reproaches, the Republican Party, which fully supports Trump, is trying to remove Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his alleged mishandling of the immigration crisis.
According to a recent survey of Fox NewsBiden has 66% disapproval of his immigration management, coinciding with the poll numbers of the Wall Street Journal.
Although the impeachment trial against Mayorkas is unlikely to go anywhere, since the Senate is majority Democratic, the Republican-led initiative shows how this issue is consuming Congress and the two presidential candidates.
Biden has tried to get Congress to pass legislation that would provide $110 billion in aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan in exchange for stricter border controls and asylum conditions.
Although it passed the Senate, Trump ordered House Republicans to block the legislation.
This has been a serious blow to the Biden administration because it stopped the supply of vital munitions for the war in Ukraine and suspended new border controls which led Biden to accuse Trump of trying to score points at the expense of border chaos, but, If polls are anything to go by, most voters believe not enough is being done to fix the problem.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, the Biden administration has carried out 535 “immigration actions” in three years, although the general perception is that the border crisis is worsening by the day.
The reason, the Institute says, is that the measures taken by the Biden administration have coincided with “the most turbulent migration periods within the Western Hemisphere, and indeed globally, in recent history.”
On just one day in December 2023, a record 12,000 migrants arrived at the border with Mexico without authorization to enter the country.
Adding to the general perception that immigration is out of control, large numbers of illegals entering the country temporarily are being sent to cities in six states (California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois). which has caused general unrest.
More than half of Americans now support building a border wall, according to a Monmouth University poll released last week. This figure is even higher than when Trump was president and supported a border wall.
It is very likely that mass migration will continue to increase dramatically in the coming years, due to ongoing wars, climate change and economic problems, making it imperative to design long-term state policies that go beyond the presidency of shift.
