Frustrated Democrats want Biden to follow asylum cap with immigrant protections

Hispanic Democrats are increasing pressure on President Biden to take unilateral action to protect immigrants living and working in the United States.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) are furious that Biden moved this week to impose new limits on asylum seekers without also advancing legal protections for farmworkers, Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants — reforms they laid out during a meeting with the president at White House last month.

In the wake of Biden’s restrictive new asylum policy, they want the White House to release another round of immigration executive orders to provide some balance between strict enforcement and immigrants’ rights — a difficult balance in an election year in which Biden struggles to resolve the border crisis. without alienating Hispanic voters.

“I think he’s trying to solve half the problem, half the problem he managed to solve. But he needs to address the other party,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), a first-term CHC member. “I’m hopeful, as are my conversations with the White House, that more action is coming, and that’s what I hope.”

Rep. Adriano Espaillat (DN.Y.), vice chair of the Hispanic Caucus, listed a number of reforms at the top of the CHC executive order’s wish list. These reforms include efforts to protect undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, a group estimated at more than 1 million, from deportation; apply similar protections to so-called Dreamers, people brought to the country illegally as children and estimated to number more than 3 million; grant new labor protections and legal rights to immigrant agricultural workers; and expanding work permits to include more undocumented immigrants.

“I think these four — maybe in that order — could be interesting pieces that could balance what appears to be an enforcement-only initiative,” Espaillat said.

These are not the only proposals that the CHC defends.

The group also calls for accelerating — or in some cases, simply creating — a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Many of these people are already working, paying taxes, and feeding into the Social Security and Medicare systems. , Democrats argue, and should be empowered to benefit from these contributions.

“To have an enforcement-only executive order, I think is disappointing, and I think we really need to make sure that we are actually solving the problem, which requires expanding the path to citizenship,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y. ) told reporters shortly before Biden officially launched his action.

However, the path to citizenship has been controversial for decades, especially among conservatives who characterize such a policy as “amnesty” for those who broke the law the moment they arrived in the country.

In 2014, when House GOP leaders released a sweeping proposal immigration reform package which included legal status for the undocumented population, the conservatives in their conference killed in a few days. And the party has only moved further to the right since then.

With that in mind, some Democrats are suggesting that Biden adopt a more targeted proposal to offer citizenship to those serving in the U.S. military — a less controversial concept that could shield the president from Republican attacks during the campaign.

“There are other discussions about whether or not he can formalize a stronger path to citizenship for people who serve in the military, strengthening the issues around DACA,” Garcia said. “So I think there are — and he has been part of this — there are places where more can be done, and I strongly encourage the president to move forward on that.”

Still, other Democrats are urging the administration to streamline the system for processing asylum seekers at the southern border, where thousands of migrants arrive every day.

Funding to increase the number of immigration judges was included in a bipartisan Senate deal earlier this year, which was rejected by Republicans after former President Trump spoke out against the package. But Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), who represents a border district around San Diego, suggested Biden could rearrange funding internally to increase that number without congressional action.

“The way to do this is to move resources within the budget you have. I think it is possible to do this through executive order, and that is what I would like to see,” said Vargas. “People could then apply for asylum, but it would be possible to find out quickly whether they actually had a case or whether it was just economic asylum they were asking for when they didn’t have a case.”

Biden, for his part, signaled that more action — including on immigration — will be on the way after he moved to resolve the situation at the southern border, unveiling an executive order that would halt asylum applications when the average daily number of crossings reaches seven daily border crossing exceeds 2,500 people at ports of entry.

“Today I talked about what we need to do to protect the border. In the next few weeks — and I mean the next few weeks — I will be talking about how we can make our immigration system more fair and just,” he said Tuesday.

His decision to go it alone came after Senate Republicans twice blocked a bipartisan border bill — once in February, again in May — from moving forward, despite it being negotiated by Republican Sen. James Lankford (Okla.) and acclaimed as a conservative product. .

The timing, however, is significant: The situation at the southern border has emerged as a central campaign issue — and a key vulnerability for Biden — this election cycle. Voters have consistently named immigration and the border as the most important issue facing the U.S. ahead of November, and many more said they trust Trump to resolve the situation over Biden.

These dynamics led to Biden’s executive order, which fractured the Democratic caucus, pitting vulnerable Democrats worried about the situation at the southern border — and looking for something to campaign in their purple districts — against liberals up in arms over of what they consider a tough policy that reflects measures taken during the Trump administration.

“Today’s executive order severely limits access to nursing home and is deeply concerning to our caucus,” Espaillat wrote in a statement with CHC Chair Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) and Caucus Whip Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas ). “Such measures impede progress and harm migrants fleeing violence and persecution who would otherwise make a credible and meritorious case for asylum.”

But even within some of the most liberal sectors of the Democratic caucus, Biden’s executive order is dividing progressives.

In a move that raised some eyebrows, Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) — a vulnerable lawmaker who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) — praised Biden’s move as “an essential step toward securing our border,” while the Rep. Yvette Clarke (DN.Y.), co-chair of the CBC’s Foreign Affairs and Immigration Task Force, criticized the executive order, arguing that it will “prevent countless immigrants of color” from using their legal right to seek asylum in the U.S.

“We must move towards a more nuanced approach that considers the real humanitarian issues that migrants face every day,” he added.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story