Joe Biden: ‘Streamline and Strengthen’ Asylum Laws Used by Economic Migrants

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during the I Will
AP/John Bazemore
Neil Munro

Joe Biden wants to “streamline and strengthen” the nation’s asylum system which is pumping 100,000 migrants per month into the nation’s workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods, and suggests that people from Venezuela be allowed to move into the United States’ claimed “nation of immigrants.”

“Our asylum system needs to be improved, but the answer is to streamline and strengthen it so that it benefits legitimate claims of those fleeing persecution, while reducing potential for abuse,” Biden says in a June 24 op-ed in the Miami Herald. Migrants “have the right to have their [asylum] cases heard,” he said, even though the vast majority of the migrants tell reporters that they are looking for jobs.

Biden tries to blame Trump for the Central American migrant wave, which began under President Barack Obama in 2014. “Trump’s morally bankrupt re-election strategy relies on vilifying immigrants to score political points while implementing policies that ensure asylum seekers and refugees keep arriving at our border,” Biden said.

Biden does not promise to block the migration wave from Central America. Instead, he evades the issue by praising America as a claimed “nation of immigrants” and arguing that he can restore calm and democracy to the region:

The true solution to this challenge can be found in Mexico’s increasing prosperity and El Salvador’s improved security situation, which have both been linked to lower levels of migration. As vice president, I led a major, bipartisan effort to address the root causes that push people to flee, relieving pressure on our border by improving security, reducing inequality and expanding economic opportunity in Central America so that people feel safe to stay in their home countries. We were making progress until President Trump replaced sound strategy with hostility and inflammatory rhetoric.

Yet there is little evidence that income improvements in Central American are possible in the near term — or that migrants can be financially encouraged to stay home while Democrats and Republicans keep open the doors to the U.S. job market. “There is no amount of money in Central America that will make it better to stay there than it is here,” GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham told Durbin at a June 19 meeting of the appropriations panel. 

Biden’s Democratic peers are now blocking Trump’s proposed asylum reforms, even as 700,000-plus migrants are using those loopholes this year to get into Americans’ labor markets, K-12 schools, and neighborhoods. 

Biden also opposes a border wall — “it’s imperative that we secure our borders, but ‘Build the wall’ is a slogan divorced from reality,” he says. “We need to focus instead on improving screening procedures at our legal ports of entry and making smart investments in border technology,” he says, echoing the “high-tech virtual wall” boondoggle which was successfully used by Presidents George. W. Bush and Barack Obama to sideline public worries about migration.

Biden also suggest that migration be increased by inviting people from Venezuela to live in the United States: “To date, the administration has made every effort to capitalize politically on the Venezuelan crisis, but its refusal to grant TPS [Temporary Protected Status] to the thousands of Venezuelans fleeing persecution shows it cares little about the Venezuelan people’s suffering.”

Venezuela’s population of 32 million is suffering from a destructive dictatorship. Trump has declined to offer TPS to Venezuelans for fear it would cause a mass migration from the country into Florida.

Biden avoids some of the wilder pro-migration demands made by other Democratic candidates, such as Beto’s O’Rourke’s call for the border wall to be torn down.

But his op-ed shows his close alliance with Washington DC’s pro-migration consensus. For example, the op-ed also does not challenge the establishment’s policy of using mass legal immigration to stimulate the economy and boost Wall Street.

Overall, Biden’s op-ed shows no interest in reducing immigration, despite the huge costs it imposes on Americans’ wages, housing, civic life, and politics. For example, he lauds the city of Miami, even though its population is 70 percent Latino or immigrant:

We are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. Our country is made up of hard-working, aspirational people from every culture, from every nation — and that is an indisputable strength. There’s no better example of the richness that’s possible when the United States is closely knit together with our neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean than the city of Miami. The next president must institute effective immigration reform while restoring regional policies grounded in respect.

Mass migration has pushed wages down and forced rents up in Miami, so widening the civic gap between rich and poor, and forcing the lower-income people out to other districts.

Immigration by the Numbers

Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university.

But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately one million H-1B workers — and approximately 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.

The government also prints out more than one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.

This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth for investors because it ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.

Flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations. It also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions. The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the Heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.

 

 

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.