Brooks: We Need Asylum Pause, Dems Have Supported ‘Decriminalizing’ Border

On Friday’s broadcast of “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that President Joe Biden’s immigration policies “haven’t worked” and Democrats have had left-wing positions on the issue like Democratic presidential candidates who supported “decriminalizing the border.” He also argued that it’s time for Biden to “stop the asylum process until we can digest all the people who [are] already in the system.”

Brooks said, “Well, it’s obviously Trump’s strongest point. Only 28% of Americans support Joe Biden’s immigration policy. They prefer Trump’s policy over Biden’s policy by like infinite percent. And so, Trump has the country on his side when it comes to this border. And the simple fact is, the Democrats have been sort of out of touch on this issue. In 2016, you had large numbers of candidates in a Democratic primary raise their hand and say they were for decriminalizing the border. That was — compared to where America is, that’s far off.”

He continued, “Second, the Biden policies just haven’t worked. This — our asylum system was created after World War II to help those with extreme persecution. That was a long time ago. Right now, there are like 40 million people in the world who are facing that kind of persecution. We can’t take all those people. And we can’t have a policy that prioritizes the people who are breaking the law, rather than people who are applying through the asylum system according to law. So, to me, the issue right now is not necessarily immigration, it’s chaos. And so, Biden has to do the thing which I think the British have done, which is to say, we’re going to stop the asylum process until we can digest all the people who [are] already in the system. And that will at least try to impose some order, because, if there’s just chaos, it’s going to be just bad news for Biden.”

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