Rep. Scholten won’t acknowledge the harm from the Biden Administration’s immigration policies nor the possibility that Biden might not allow undocumented people to apply for asylum

In Rep. Hillary Scholten’s most recent weekly newsletter, the Congresswoman states: 

As many of you know, I took a trip down to the southern border recently to see the situation on the ground. We have a crisis at the border – it’s a humanitarian crisis, an economic crisis, and a national security crisis, and it demands immediate, bipartisan action. I sat down with WZZM 13 to talk about what I learned and how I’m working toward bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform. 

The WZZM 13 story that Scholten refers to can be found here, a story that I want to look at. 

Early on in the channel 13 story the reporter states, “Under the Biden administration, expulsions and apprehensions of non-citizens have spiked amid a rise in illegal border crossings.” 

This acknowledgement by the reporter is true, as many commentators are noted. In an article by Tina Vasquez, it states: 

Biden is currently considering an executive action that would prevent migrants who enter the U.S. outside of ports of entry from claiming asylum, a devastating blow to longstanding legal procedures that require migrants to be on U.S. soil to request protections. The order is a key part of a failed bipartisan bill Biden championed that would have implemented Trump-era immigration policies and granted the president the unilateral power to shut down the Southern border. 

That Democrats signed off on the bill signals they have taken a hard-right turn on immigration during an election year. The party’s wanton disregard for asylum law will almost certainly lead to further human rights violations against migrants, who are already brutalized all across the detention system where the number of people detained has nearly tripled since Biden took office in January 2021. 

This analysis shows that the reality of the Biden Administration’s US immigration policy is that it has changed much since the Trump years. Even Rep. Scolten acknowledges that the current US immigration policy is flawed. She said, “The system that we have is not set up to meet just the insurmountable demands that are being presented every single day at our southern border,” she continued. “It is truly a national security, emergency humanitarian crisis and an economic disaster.”

Rep. Scholten then goes on to say: 

“[Part of the solution] is addressing the root causes of migration that are happening in these sending countries,” Scholten said. “Right now, insurmountable numbers coming from Venezuela, as well as still out of the Northern Triangle in Central America – we have to be working with those countries, as well as our neighbor to the south, Mexico, to deal with the flow of these individuals.”

I agreement with Rep. Scholten that part of the root causes are people from various Latin American countries, but she does really address why they are fleeing. I would argue, that people from Mexico and Central American countries in particular, are fleeing primarily because of the political, economic and social conditions in those countries that the US has imposed on those countries for decades, such as direct US military interventions, the funding and training of militaries from many Latin American countries, adopting disastrous trade policies like NAFTA and CAFTA, the US support for corrupt Latin American governments, along with the role that Climate Change plays in displacing people, which is well documented in Todd Miller’s excellent book, Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration and Homeland Security. 

Rep. Scholten also talked about having bipartisan support for the Dignity Act, specifically with Rep; Salas from Florida. However, the Dignity Act is not Comprehensive Immigration Reform, nor does it address more structural elements of root causes of immigration that we have already addressed. If Rep. Scholten wants to be serious about address the immigration & border crisis, then she needs to acknowledge the harm that the Biden Administration has done and their rightward shift on immigration policy. 

For additional resources on US Immigration Policy and US Immigration History:

GRIID Popular Education Class on History of US Immigration Policy