By Oscar Chacón
Executive Director of Alianza Americas
With his latest executive order (EO) on immigration and southern border control, President Biden is reinforcing a public policy approach to immigration, first taken in 1986. With the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, the U.S. embraced the notion that by making its southern border less welcoming, including using military or quasi-military force, fewer people would dare travel to the U.S. through the southern border. Deterrence is, in essence, what the EO is hoping to achieve.
The years since IRCA was enacted demonstrate the futility of such an approach. It does not produce the intended result because it ignores the set of factors that force people to leave their countries in search of protection, support, and a place where they can ultimately remake their lives. The only results measures like this produce are hardship, even death, for people determined to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.
As people even within the Biden Administration predicted in the early moments of this administration, in the absence of truly innovative approaches to hemispheric and global migration, the U.S. would repeat past mistakes. Sadly, that is exactly what is happening. This includes wasting billions of taxpayer dollars in efforts that only inflict human pain and deteriorate our moral standing at the hemispheric and global levels.
One area of failure has been the inability to create realistic mechanisms for authorized migration capable of acknowledging that we need more migration, not less, to positively resolve current and future labor force dynamics and maintain U.S. competitiveness. The U.S. Congress is the main party responsible for this failure. This fact makes the current situation beneficial for extremist political forces currently operating from within the Republican Party. By not investing in change and keeping things the way they have been for decades, xenophobic and white supremacist forces can keep arguing that our southern border is chaotic and lawless. Which feeds their mantra that the people arriving at our border are deliberate lawbreakers.
In the absence of new laws, the Biden Administration has taken measures to provide mechanisms for authorized and orderly immigration as a matter of administrative decisions supported by existing laws. By allowing, on a monthly basis. up to 30,000 humanitarian parole visas for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, the Biden Administration has effectively reduced the number of people from these nationalities arriving at the U.S. southern border. While this measure is a positive step in the right direction, it is insufficient and too narrow to cope with the changes in hemispheric migration dynamics that have been manifesting since 2021.
The other critical area of failure is that many nations south of our border have been systematically neglecting their populations’ economic, social, political, and cultural well-being for decades. The magnitude of the multidisciplinary response needed in this respect has simply been ignored. The post-World War II Europe case, where massive financial and public policy interventions, largely led by the U.S., resulted in prosperous societies with very low emigration levels, offers a very good clue about what the U.S. should support in Latin American and Caribbean nations.
Instead, the U.S. has fooled itself by promoting the notion that increased foreign direct investment (FDI) alone will produce highly improved societies in which the pressures to emigrate will magically disappear. Before FDI can make a difference in any nation, there must be a well-defined national/regional development plan that prioritizes massive investments in social and economic development with the specific goal of elevating the floor for the population in each country.
The tangible results of a new, people-centered development strategy are not immediate. However, combined with new ways of addressing migration flows, it can lead to more harmonious ways for the U.S. to evolve its relations with its southern neighbors. In short, a strategy that emphasizes a substantial betterment in the quality of life conditions in Mexico, Central American, Caribbean, and South American nations, combined with a solution-driven approach to migration policies that begins with an unequivocal recognition that immigrants and immigration are an overwhelmingly positive addition to the U.S. and integral for millions of households in the countries of origin, can be a refreshing way of redefining U.S. relations with Latin America.
Going back to the Executive Order officially announced on June 4, 2024, it is clear the political imperative leading the Biden Administration to initiate measures that promote greater restriction, exclusion, and punishment for immigrants already in the U.S., as well as those who are attempting to enter the U.S. via our southern border is the Nov. 5 elections. By embracing the idea that to improve its electoral victory chances, the Biden Administration must show his and the Democratic Party’s willingness to be tough on immigrants. Democrats are, yet again, repeating a mistake made many times. The evidence of its effectiveness is, at best, scattered. At worst, it represents major concessions to the xenophobic and white supremacist forces that will always demand more from Democrats. The history since the early 1990s is very consistent: No matter how much the Democratic Party embraces harsh positions against immigrants, they will never be harsh enough for an ever more extremist Republican Party and its supporters.
If the Democratic Party were to break, once and for all, with the idea that to win elections, they must become like their Republican opponents, the possibilities for a better future for the nation would greatly improve. This break would need to include a truly new way of handling immigrants already residing in the U.S., as well as better ways to handle people who are desperately fleeing their countries and seeking protection and support in the U.S.
A factual review of the role and impact of immigrants in the U.S. throughout history, and particularly in the last 50 years, will lead any objective observer to one conclusion: Immigrants and immigration have been huge advantages, a true blessing for the U.S., and we are a better nation for it. Therefore, it is only logical to suggest that our public policy response to anything related to immigrants and immigration should be driven by this fact. A radical change of course is long overdue.
