Immigration will be a crucial issue in the November election, as events on Tuesday demonstrated.
President Biden has announced a new plan that would allow roughly 500,000 undocumented immigrants who marry U.S. citizens to gain legal status and ultimately become U.S. citizens.
Speaking at a White House event announcing the measures, First Lady Jill Biden expressed empathy for the plight of people in this situation, saying they have been haunted for years by the “shadow” of a “lost piece of paper.”
Her husband, she said, was trying to change that from a place of “compassion and experience.”
About an hour later, about 750 miles away in Racine, Wisconsin, former President Trump told supporters that Biden’s plan “will be scrapped on the first day he takes office.”
The former president argued that Biden’s actions, carried out by executive order, were “completely illegal.”
“Bad Joe is sending a message to the world that he encourages illegal immigration,” Trump added.
That marked a far more striking change from two weeks ago, when President Biden announced new restrictions on asylum seekers at the southwest border, allowing authorities to suspend asylum applications if illegal crossings reach a weekly threshold.
The border changes were criticized by progressives, but Biden was pressured to make them by polls showing immigration as one of his weakest issues in the November election.
A RealClearPolitics average of polls on Biden’s immigration policies shows 60 percent disapproval and just 32 percent approval.
Biden is scrambling to hide this Achilles heel as a close election looms, and the omens are ominous for the center-left: Across the Atlantic, right-wing populists made big gains in France and Germany in European elections earlier this month, fueled in part by public anxiety over immigration.
The magnitude of the difference in approach between Biden and Trump is striking.
Biden, who frequently speaks of his Irish ancestry, has argued that immigration is a net benefit to the U.S. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the new measures for spouses of U.S. citizens were “driven by an impulse to protect American families, not tear them apart, and this is an opportunity to do that.”
President Trump said in December that illegal immigrants were “staining the blood of our country,” sparking a fierce new controversy over his comments on the issue.
In an April interview with Time magazine, President Trump said he would use law enforcement, particularly the National Guard, to deport illegal immigrants, and that he would have “no problem using the military itself” for that purpose.
When interviewer Eric Cortellessa pointed out that the Posse Comitatus law makes it illegal to send US troops against civilians, Trump argued, “Well, these are not civilians. This is an invasion of our country, an invasion probably the likes of which no country has ever experienced.”
In the same interview, Trump did not rule out the possibility of building new camps to hold migrants awaiting deportation: “I wouldn’t rule anything out, but I don’t see a huge need for them because we’re going to be deporting them,” he said.
Mentions of mass deportations and internment camps have sparked outrage among leftists and civil rights advocates.
Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a memorandum outlining plans to fight President Trump’s immigration policies in the courts, in Congress and at the state and local levels if he is re-elected.
The ACLU memo also cites Trump adviser Stephen Miller, in a November interview with The New York Times, who said Trump would “use the vast powers of the federal government to implement the most extensive immigration crackdown” in his second term.
The problem for liberals and immigrant rights advocates is that polls show Trump’s approach is more popular than Biden’s.
A PBS News/NPR/Marist poll released Thursday found that Trump had a 10-point lead when asking Americans whether they thought the former president or Biden would best handle immigration issues, the largest advantage for Trump on any of the five topics surveyed.
These sentiments are at least partly driven by the massive influx of migrants during Biden’s term in office.
Encounters between illegal immigrants and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the Southwest border declined from February through April, but in December, the number of such encounters topped 301,000, or more than 10,000 per day, a new record.
There’s an increasingly mainstream narrative among conservatives that Democrats are encouraging immigration to attract new voters, one that’s been fueled by Trump, but not alone.
“That’s their strategy: Get as many people registered to vote as possible,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said Tuesday. “They don’t care about the citizens, they don’t care about these people. They’re just looking for voters, and they’re trying to get as many as they can before the next election, because they know what the outcome is.”
Democrats see such comments as nationalistic threats.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-Jersey) on Tuesday welcomed Biden’s spousal action, calling it “one step closer to a more compassionate, common-sense immigration system that recognizes the contributions and sacrifices of immigrants who are building the American Dream.”
As the collapse of a bipartisan effort earlier this year showed, the two parties have little common ground on immigration.
There is very little difference between Biden and Trump.
Come November, voters will have to choose which direction they want to go.
This note is a reporting column by Niall Stanage.
Al Weaver contributed reporting.
