Ray Mariano: Biden needs a plan for the Southern border
I’m a Democrat. I support most of the positions taken by President Biden. I love his bipartisan infrastructure bill, the effort to lower drug prices and his effort to get the uberwealthy to pay their fair share. I was proud to see Biden rally the free nations of the world in support of Ukraine and of his support for Israel.
I’m a Democrat. But I’m not a member of a cult. I don’t call a lie the truth and I don’t look away when crimes are committed. And when a policy, or lack of a policy, is hurting our country, even when it’s on a Democrat’s watch, I’m not afraid to say so.
That’s why I write to say that the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis at our Southern border has been a disaster.
Yes, I know that Republicans have a despicable record on the border separating children from their families, then losing track of them. To America’s shame, years later about 1,000 of those children still haven’t been reunited with their parents, while other little ones recently returned to their families barely recognize their own mother.
Yes, I know that Republicans in Congress have done nothing to advance meaningful legislation that would substantially change the current crisis. But those failures do not absolve Biden and the Democrats in Congress from doing their job.
I also realize that the Biden administration has opened immigration processing centers throughout Latin America and has opened legal pathways for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the country legally. But these steps are not nearly enough.
Mayors and governors, both Democrats and Republicans, are begging for help. In New York City, Mayor Adams said, “This issue will destroy the city.” Here in Massachusetts, Gov. Healey has said that our system is at the breaking point.
Despite these pleas for help, the White House says that “only Congress can reform our broken immigration system.” Of course that’s true. But that shouldn’t stop the president and other Democrats from proposing common sense solutions to fix the current mess.
A national system, not individual state responses
With 11.4 million undocumented immigrants living in America, there is a pressing need to overhaul our dysfunctional immigration system — the last meaningful reform was in 1986, 37 years ago. But Congress has no intention of making that happen. Why take tough votes when it’s so much easier to vilify the other side. So things keep getting worse.
With border communities literally being overrun with new arrivals, the Texas governor decided to bus some of them to other states — without any advance notice and the funding to support them. While I disagree with the way that he did it, no state should be expected to shoulder the burden of this national problem alone. Having individual governors decide where to send immigrants is a pitiful substitute for a national strategy.
The Biden administration should develop and implement a national system, a 50-state solution, to distribute immigrants fairly that includes advance notice and sufficient federal funding to support the new arrivals.
Speed up asylum, work requests, border security
More than half of all new arrivals seeking asylum have their requests denied and are then sent back to their home country. Those petitions are supposed to take less than 180 days to adjudicate. However, PBS reports that current wait times for cases in the asylum backlog average 1,525 days.
If these cases were adjudicated quickly, within the 180 days as required, it would have a major impact on the current mess. The Biden administration needs to streamline the asylum adjudication process and recommend funding to add hundreds of asylum officials to eliminate the existing backlog.
Further, right now in many cases, it takes more than a year for a new arrival to get the authorization to work. While they wait, they clog our hotels and shelters, all at taxpayers' expense.
The president needs to add staff and streamline the process so that immigrants living here can get to work and pay for their own expenses while, at the same time, providing badly needed workers for businesses facing a severe worker shortage. One of the easiest ways to do that is to empower local and state entities to authorize work permits.
The administration also needs to fund sufficient personnel and surveillance equipment to secure the border.
Biden’s recent response
As a part of a much larger measure to support Ukraine and Israel, President Biden recently recommended $13.6 billion to increase the number of border agents, add staff processing asylum petitions, and build new detention facilities.
The proposals that I’ve outlined are hardly the only steps that should be taken. But they are an important first step. Ultimately, reform of the asylum system is needed.
What we have today is not fair to anyone — not the immigrants who arrive here hoping for a better life or the hardworking Americans who are willing to welcome new arrivals but want a system in place that doesn’t overwhelm their community.
Leaders should be expected to lead. It’s time for Biden to put a plan forward and then fight for its passage. Anything less is unacceptable.
Email Raymond V. Mariano at rmariano.telegram@gmail.com. He served four terms as mayor of Worcester and previously served on the City Council and School Committee. He grew up in Great Brook Valley and holds degrees from Worcester State College and Clark University. He was most recently executive director of the Worcester Housing Authority. His column appears weekly in the Sunday Telegram. His endorsements do not necessarily reflect the position of the Telegram & Gazette.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Ray Mariano on President Joe Biden needing plan for Southern border
