These three immigration issues will be the top stories of 2023
Anna Giaritelli
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President Joe Biden could be in for a rude awakening in 2023 as battles over U.S. immigration policy come to a boiling point on Capitol Hill and at the southern border.
Immigration analysts expect three matters to be the biggest stories this coming year: the worsening border crisis, the forthcoming fight from House Republicans, and legislative reforms to the legal system.
Border crisis
At the forefront of Republicans’ immigration agenda is reining in the unchecked surge of immigrants to the U.S.-Mexico border — a matter that Biden and appointed border czar Vice President Kamala Harris have yet to deem a “crisis,” even as a record-high quarter of a million unaccompanied children have been smuggled into the country under their watch.
Federal law enforcement at the nation’s borders encountered more noncitizens attempting to get into the United States without permission in November than any other month in U.S. history — topping 283,000 encounters. Under Biden, the number of illegal immigrant arrests surged into six digits in his first two months in office and has only continued to rise, forcing border officials to release most people into the country rather than remove them.
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Immigrant rights groups have maintained for two years that the border crisis has been blown out of proportion by those who want to see greater restrictions on immigration levels.
For example, the number of immigrants who tried more than once to get into the U.S. has increased under Biden. This is due to a pandemic public health policy that allowed border officials to send illegal immigrants back south of the border immediately, where many tried again to get in.
“So in FY21, there were 1,145,432 people crossing for the first time out of 1,734,686 total encounters,” American Immigration Council Policy Director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote in a post about fiscal 2021 encounters along the southern border.
https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1451651728466665485
The Biden administration has attempted multiple times to end this pandemic policy, known as Title 42, but was most recently blocked from doing so in December. While the Trump administration used Title 42 to expel upwards of 90% of illegal immigrants, the number dropped drastically under Biden to 30% to 50% in recent months.
Showboat efforts by Republicans
In the lead-up to the midterm elections, Republicans touted their plan to introduce policies that would reduce the number of people attempting to enter the U.S. illegally. The party’s plans largely consist of reimplementing policies from the Trump administration, some of which are tied up in court battles or were rescinded by Biden.
However, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, expects any legislation introduced by Republicans to be more for show than actual policymaking. Expect “messaging bills” to score points with supporters, Vaughan said.
Republicans are likely to follow through on their vows to hold the Biden administration accountable for its enforcement of federal immigration policies over the past two years. Its Oversight, Homeland Security, and Judiciary committees have put Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on notice of forthcoming investigations into his department and a willingness to launch an impeachment inquiry if they find wrongdoing.
Immigration reform on Capitol Hill
In Washington, all eyes are on Congress, which will reconvene Tuesday for the new session.
Over the past two years, Democrats controlled the House and Senate, but a marginal comeback by Republicans in the lower chamber means Democrats will not be able just to push legislation through. Democrats in the Senate will have to get enough Republicans in the House on their side and water down any immigration bills to appeal to both sides of the aisle.
Bipartisan immigration reforms are not something that Congress has been able to do in nearly three decades.
“There are few signs that suggest that 2023 will be a year of sweeping breakthroughs on the immigration front in Congress, though smaller targeted actions may be feasible, particularly in the legal immigration realm,” said Migration Policy Institute’s communications director Michelle Mittelstadt in an email Monday.
Part of the challenge for House Republicans is the party’s slim majority, Mittelstadt said, as well as its base’s preference that it focuses on addressing the border before considering changes to U.S. policies.
“Congress and the Biden administration will continue to be under pressure to take steps to expand legal immigration, which is just now emerging from a pandemic-induced slump,” Mittelstadt added.
The conservative Border Security Alliance organization in Arizona agreed that Congress should take a “broader look at our legal immigration policies for a long-term solution,” as did Daniel Di Martino of the conservative Manhattan Institute in New York.
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“The backlog is really becoming unsustainable,” said Di Martino, a graduate fellow at the institute. “What I expect in the future is a lot more talk about legal immigration.”