The White House hoped the country’s immigration problems would dissipate. Then, images emerged last week of tens of thousands of migrants huddled under a bridge near Del Rio, Texas, after crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico.
President Joe Biden’s inability to stem the stream of migrants crossing the southern border may help Republicans persuade independents to vote for them next year.
BIDEN’S ECONOMIC APPROVAL RATINGS AND SPENDING AGENDA STALLED
Biden’s immigration job approval is low. On average, 36% of respondents told pollsters they approve of his border management and 56% disapprove, according to RealClearPolitics. In comparison, an average of 46% approve of his overall job performance, while 50% disapprove.
Polling suggests Republicans care more about immigration policies than Democrats. But the issue is becoming more prominent among independents, according to Ipsos findings published last week.
The economy was the top concern for a quarter of independent respondents in an Ipsos poll conducted in mid-September. Another fifth of independents named public health. But immigration was the most pressing problem for 1 in 10 independents.
Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos also found that Democrats are in the minority when it comes to having a positive public opinion of Biden’s handling of immigration.
“The reason that Republicans are leaning in is that indies are breaking similar to GOPers, unlike other issues,” he said.
Aggressive Progressive podcast host and former Democratic consultant Christopher Hahn downplayed the importance of the findings, contending independents vote based on economic concerns.
“This is clearly an issue the GOP uses to pump up their base,” he said. “They will try to show this as a failure of the Biden administration. However, if the nation is happy with his progress on COVID and the economy, this issue will not move the needle much in either direction.”
For Republican strategist and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s former chief of staff Cesar Conda, Biden’s border crisis is “of his own making.” Conda, part of the 2013 bipartisan immigration reform push, cited polls that indicate independents back the GOP’s “tough” border policies “by large margins.”
“This is a problem for Biden and the Democrats going into next year’s election,” he told the Washington Examiner of the 2022 midterm election cycle.
Senate Democrats are workshopping how to update immigration legislation through their sprawling $3.5 trillion partisan social welfare and climate spending package after a government official ruled last weekend that language creating a pathway to citizenship could not be included in the budget reconciliation process as is. But Conda is adamant some legal process for the undocumented would earn bipartisan endorsements.
“Republican voters support accommodating the Dreamers by strong majorities,” he said, referring to people who illegally immigrated to the United States as children.
After a record number of migrants crossed the border early in Biden’s term, the issue became subsumed by his domestic agenda. When U.S. Border Patrol reported in August they had notched almost 200,000 encounters during the month prior, a 21-year high, the president’s foreign policy in Afghanistan collapsed along with the country.
But photos of up to 14,000 Haitian migrants under Del Rio’s International Bridge last week returned attention to immigration. When Border Patrol agents were captured over the weekend chasing down migrants on horseback, it sparked further outrage over inaccurate allegations one had used a whip.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described the pictures as horrifying but preferred that an investigation “run its course.”
“One cannot weaponize a horse to aggressively attack a child. That is unacceptable. That is not what our policies and our training require,” he said Tuesday. “We will not tolerate mistreatment.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden tasked with leading his response to the root causes of illegal migration, pointed to Haiti’s recent social, economic, and political upheaval. Haiti has been recovering from a string of natural disasters and Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination this summer, and many of the migrants initially fled the country after the 2010 earthquake.
“We’ve got to support some very basic needs that the people of Haiti have to get back up and to do what folks naturally want to do, be them from Haiti or in the countries in Central America. People want to stay home,” she said. “But they leave when they cannot satisfy their basic needs.”
Biden, who campaigned on his compassion, has overturned many of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, such as the border wall. But Biden has opted to keep some of Trump’s programs, including Title 42, which permits adult migrant deportation because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Others, like Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, have been retained due to court orders.
Although Haitians who were in the U.S. before July 29 are eligible for Temporary Protection Status, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Biden is considering asking Mayorkas to extend the designation to encompass the Del Rio migrants.
Psaki defended Biden a day earlier from criticism that his officials treat Haitian migrants differently from their Northern Triangle country counterparts.
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“Obviously, any circumstance where individuals are not treated humanely, whether they are coming to our border or not, is not in line with the Biden administration policies,” she said.
