The republicans have been claiming that Biden and Harris are for open borders. This lie would be laughable if the truth didn’t have such horrific implications for the state of human and civil rights protections in the U.S.
At times, Democrats have run on pro-immigrant platforms. Biden himself promised in his presidential campaign that he would work with Congress to pass legislation to create a roadmap to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people in the country. At the time, Trump was under fire for his horrific treatment of immigrants, and anti-migrant policy had become unpopular, thanks to a powerful migrant-led rights movement that arose in response to Trump. However, while Biden’s record on immigration is mixed, he largely failed to follow through on his campaign promises of amnesty, while increasing border spending and maintaining a largely shuttered border to many immigrants throughout his presidency.
And today, rather than counter Republican's incredibly easy to discredit claims, the Democrats are playing into them. Changing the branding slightly, Harris’s platform mixes in references to expanding legal immigration and protecting long-time residents from deportation, but does so while proposing a brutally strict border policy that would endanger many immigrants’ lives. Rather than speaking to common sense, data-backed truths about immigration in the U.S., as shown in this website, the Democrats are largely choosing fear mongering regarding the border, just like the Republicans. Their promises are mixed, and its more difficult to trace what the Democrats are really fighting for, but they’ll promise anything they think will help them win.
Vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has been bragging that her record on border policy is tougher than Trumps. At a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, Harris pushed for harsher immigration and border enforcement policies. As Democracy Now reported, “Harris compared her record to Donald Trump’s and blamed the Republican presidential nominee for tanking a bipartisan bill that would have further militarized the southern border. Immigration advocates say the legislation would have further eroded the rights of asylum seekers.”
“Harris committed to reviving a bipartisan immigration deal that collapsed in the Senate earlier this year at last week’s Democratic national convention. The agreement, a compromise worked out between Joe Biden’s administration and congressional Republicans, would have represented the toughest clampdown on illegal immigration in years. It unravelled after GOP members withdrew support under pressure from Donald Trump, the former president and Republican nominee for November’s election, because he did not want Democrats to win credit for a potentially vote-winning issue.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/27/harris-border-wall-policy-republicans
According to some polls, all of the lying and fear mongering about things like ‘border security’ from both sides of the aisle has worked to some degree.
As news outlets recently reported, “A new Gallup poll shows Republicans and Democrats back Trump's calls for immigration curbs. Some 55 percent of respondents wanted to see immigration levels decrease, while 25 percent favored levels remaining the same. Only 16 percent of participants wanted immigration figures to increase, the lowest level since 2009. The newly released data demonstrates a shift in public attitudes toward border security and immigration. It is the first time since 2005 that the majority of Americans feel that immigration levels should be cut down.”
When it comes to immigration, the Democrats have a mixed record, but have been responsible for some of the harshest anti-migrant policies in the history of the country.
As I discuss in my forthcoming book at UGA Press, titled “Migrant Justice in the Age of Removal,” in 1996 the Clinton administration passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, which illegalized immigrants in unprecedented ways and paved the way for the Bush administration’s deportation machine in the 9/11 era, and later for the Obama administration’s drastic and historic increase in ‘orders of removal.’
Obama would go on to become known as the “deporter in chief” for the unprecedented volume of “orders of removal” his administration issued while using dragnet immigrant targeting policies through Secure Communities and other programs.
As for the Biden Administration, he continued the use of Title 42, following Trump, which turned away the large majority of immigrants and refugees at the southern border, effectively shutting down the border for his entire presidency. The Biden administration lifted Title 42 on May 11, 2023, but shortly after, this past June, “announced a sweeping new executive action aiming to ramp up deportations of migrants crossing the border,” writes Immigration Impact. “The ‘Securing the Border’ executive order created a new travel ban for migrants. This was accompanied by a regulation banning asylum to nearly all migrants crossing the border between ports of entry and changing the procedure by which migrants would be able to seek asylum. Notably, nearly all migrants were already banned from seeking asylum in May 2023 under the administration’s Circumvention of Lawful Pathways regulation, so the procedural shift was the biggest change in actual practice.”
https://immigrationimpact.com/2024/07/19/why-are-border-crossings-lowest-level-in-four-years/
https://immigrationimpact.com/2024/06/05/biden-changes-asylum-process-what-you-need-to-know/
United States Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas recently bragged in a CNN interview: “Since May of last year, we have removed or returned more individuals than in any year since 2015.”
Read these analyses of Biden’s mixed record.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/biden-first-three-years-track-record
Center for Migration Studies statement on Biden’s Border Closure to Asylum-Seekers
“This virtually unprecedented action comes at a time when overall US-Mexico border arrivals have dropped significantly over the past few months, calling into question the motivations behind the closure in an election year. It is possible that these new actions by the Biden administration will deny protection to tens of thousands of bona fide asylum-seekers, who will be returned to danger and an imminent threat of harm. It also is certain that it will drive desperate asylum-seekers, driven by smugglers, to enter the country at remote parts of the border, leading to injury and possible death. This betrays our history as a nation of laws based upon human rights principles and the preservation of life.”
https://cmsny.org/statement-border-closure-to-asylum-seekers/
From American Immigration Council:
https://immigrationimpact.com/2024/04/09/government-funding-mixed-bag-on-immigration/
The Biden Administration Is on Pace to Match Trump Deportation Numbers
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-record
Removals in 2023 will be large. “Below average proportion of cases resulted in grants of relief so far under Biden.”
https://trac.syr.edu/reports/711/
As for asylum: “Thus far during the first four months of FY 2023, the proportion of immigrants in removal proceedings who are allowed to stay in this country has fallen from 66 percent down to 54 percent. As part of this drop, there has also been a decrease in the proportion of noncitizens who have been granted relief. Compared with 17 percent granted relief during FY 2021, the rate fell to 11 percent during FY 2022 and just 10 percent so far this year. As TRAC earlier reported, expediting the speed at which asylum cases have been heard has resulted in a significant drop in the proportion of asylum seekers who have been granted asylum.[6]”
Two Weeks of the Biden Border Proclamation and Asylum Shutdown
https://humanrightsfirst.org/library/two-weeks-of-the-biden-border-proclamation-and-asylum-shutdown/
Ports of Entry Are Issuing More Notices to Appear Than Ever Before
Amnesty USA’s take: “The United States border policies are not working – for anyone.”
while Biden had run on pro-amnesty, pro-migrant sentiments, he moved far to the right on immigration during his time in office. Harris Had the “Opportunity to Reframe the Immigration Conversation as the Democratic Nominee for President,” but instead has largely followed biden’s lead, buying into the anti-immigrant ‘border security’ rhetoric and policy platform based in lies and fear mongering.
However, Democrats don’t have to do this to win. In fact, as the Immigration Lab recently reported anti-immigration rhetoric is not always a sure fire way to win an election.
They write:
“In an extensive analysis of campaign material and election outcomes from the 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2023 gubernatorial and congressional elections, we found various candidates who employed anti-immigrant rhetoric and lost their elections. We defined anti-immigrant rhetoric as overarching narratives of border securitization and the criminalization of immigrants.”
“As the U.S. gears up for the 2024 election cycle, the moral and electoral failure of anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric must be taken into account. Plain and simple, anti-immigrant rhetoric does not create electoral victories. In assessing both election outcomes and narrative trends, we see how a more humane, measured, and pragmatic view of immigrants can indeed be the morally and politically right thing to do.”
https://theimmigrationlab.org/blog/f/failure-of-anti-immigrant-us-political-campaigns-2018-2023
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/0427fed3-123b-4628-9760-27ead91f8b43/SSRN-id4724756.pdf
As Biden himself showed in the 2020 election cycle, speaking to the human rights and dignity of migrants in the Us can be a part of a winning platform. Spreading lies and myths about immigrants in an attempt to win votes only hurts us.
Here, the ACLU proposed a pathway for the Democrats to lean into human and civil rights for immigrants in the U.S., rather than the darker side of immigration policy based in lies, trumped up claims, and fear mongering.
Here, the Center for Migration Studies of New York, proposes ideas on “How to Manage the Border Without Sacrificing Human Rights”:
https://cmsny.org/statement-manage-border-without-sacrificing-human-rights/