President Joe Biden is facing a tough situation because a lot of people are coming from Mexico to the US.
Democratic leaders at the state and local level, who are supposed to be his biggest supporters before the next presidential election, are strongly criticizing the way he is dealing with immigration. His likely opponent in the 2024 Republican race, Donald Trump, is intensifying his criticisms on an issue that has been an important part of his political message for almost ten years. And fewer people are supporting Mr. Biden in this situation.
Although the voting will take place in more than a year, the increasing immigration crisis is causing problems even far away from the US-Mexico border. Republican governors have been sending newly arrived migrants to cities run by Democrats, which could negatively affect Mr. Biden’s popularity and his chances of being re-elected.
The numbers show that things are getting worse. Based on early data from the US Department of Homeland Security, around 210,000 people who didn’t have the proper documents were caught by US Border Patrol when they were trying to enter the country in September. This is the best score of the year, and it almost reaches the highest number of arrests in a month which happened at the end of 2022.
If the Biden administration believed that the border crisis was getting better and the attention of the country was shifting to other problems after making changes to government policies earlier this year, the latest rise in the situation should remove that idea.
Furthermore, the way the number of immigrants is increasing indicates that there might not be a solution to this problem anytime soon. Around 25% of the people caught crossing the border last month were from Venezuela, a country in South America. Venezuela has been going through difficult times because of its ruler, Nicolas Maduro, who has a socialist dictatorship.
The situation in Venezuela has caused a lot of people to leave their country and seek refuge in other places, including the United States. Over seven million people have already fled Venezuela, and this has led to a crisis in the region. The effects of this crisis are now becoming more noticeable in the United States.
Over the past two months, more than 150,000 Venezuelans have traveled north to the US through Central America, crossing the Darian Gap.
“People don’t abruptly leave their homes just for no reason,” said Janet Napolitano, who was in charge of protecting the country during President Obama’s time, speaking to the BBC. “They are usually in a difficult situation – very poor, without a job, experiencing lots of crime, violence, and their home countries lack basic institutions. ”
A border guard in the United States sees people coming into the country who are not from there.
On Thursday, President Biden’s team shared two new actions they will take to deal with the major rise in something. These measures have made the president vulnerable to criticism from all sides of the political spectrum. The president allowed exceptions to environmental and planning rules and provided money to construct more parts of a wall on the border between the US and Mexico.
He also said that the US would start sending Venezuelan citizens back to their country directly. This practice had been stopped before because the two countries had difficult relations.
These new rules were quickly criticized. Some people who strongly oppose immigration said the rules were not enough, while some left-wing immigration activists said they were too strict. The president’s confusing explanations made things worse. He said he still thinks walls don’t work and that Congress made him spend money on it.
The Venezuelan announcement shows that the government has changed its attitude. Before, they allowed around 500,000 Venezuelan refugees in the US to apply for work permits and not be sent back to their country for 18 months.
In an attempt to calm fears that he is not taking enough action to handle the increase in people crossing the border, while also keeping his liberal followers satisfied, he seems to be satisfying neither group. This has been a difficult problem that has occurred several times regarding border policies during Biden’s presidency.
Immigration has become a very divided topic. This is partly because of Mr Trump’s strong “build the wall” words and sometimes harsh policies while he was president. This has greatly limited Mr. Biden’s ability to handle the crises.
While President Barack Obama was able to increase the number of deportations and make the border stronger without facing backlash from liberal activists, Mr. Biden doesn’t have the same advantage. Now, every action he does regarding immigration is seen within the ongoing political battles between Mr. Trump and the Republicans, and the Democrats on the opposite side.
Now, the latest surveys show that during the argument between different political parties, the people are starting to become less supportive of the president.
In a recent poll by Marquette University, registered voters were asked to pick who they thought was doing a better job on immigration and border security: the current president or the previous one. More than half of the people (52%) said they liked Mr Trump better, while only 28% chose Mr Biden.
This is the equal biggest difference between the two candidates, along with the economy. It is opposite to subjects like abortion and climate change, where Mr Biden is clearly ahead.
The NBC News poll showed that 45% of Americans believed that Republicans were better at handling immigration, while only 27% thought Democrats were better. This is a big change from when most American people liked the Democrats during the time Trump was president.
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Why hasn’t Trump received money like other presidents did for a border barrier.
The ongoing alarming news from the border, along with the pressure on public services in big US cities where the migrants are going, is impacting people’s thoughts and feelings.
If the crisis doesn’t improve before the serious campaigning for the 2024 general election starts, the president will have a disadvantage in competing against his Republican opponent.
Ms Napolitano says that fixing the immigration problem will require the Biden team to work together.
“She says that it calls for diplomatic communication. ” We need to invest in other countries to reduce the reasons why people want to migrate. And it needs to have a strong and secure border, as well as effectively enforcing our immigration laws that should be changed and improved.
Ultimately, what really matters is whether or not the new immigration policies implemented by Mr. Biden are effective, rather than the criticism he may face for his actions this week. If they cannot stop the flow of migrants from Venezuela and other places, it becomes harder for Biden to get re-elected.