TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) – Over the course of two weeks, President Joe Biden has imposed significant restrictions on immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. while also offering potential citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people without legal status already living in the country.
The tandem actions — the first to help immigrants in the U.S. illegally, the second to prevent others from entering the border — give the president a chance to address one of the biggest vulnerabilities facing his reelection campaign.
Americans give Biden poor marks for his handling of immigration and favor the approach taken by presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, whose administration imposed harsh policies such as separating immigrant families and who now has the largest deportation operation in US history proposed if he is re-elected.
While the White House said its latest actions are not intended to counter each other, the election-year policy changes offer something both to voters who believe border enforcement is too lenient and to those who support helping immigrants who enter illegally live in the US. They reflect the White House’s overall approach since Biden took office, using a mix of policies to limit illegal immigration and provide aid to people already in the country.
Trump and top Republicans have blasted Biden over a record number of encounters at the border, with some suggesting without evidence that Biden is encouraging a so-called “invasion” to influence the election. Tightening asylum rules as Biden did could reduce the number of border crossings.
Helping long-time residents obtain citizenship, meanwhile, could defuse criticism of immigration advocates and liberal parts of Biden’s Democratic coalition, which opposed the new border restrictions unveiled earlier this month.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in March found that only about three in 10 Americans approved of Biden’s handling of immigration. A similar share approved of his handling of border security. In the same poll, about half of U.S. adults said Biden is extremely or very responsible for the current situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, compared to about a third who said Trump was extremely or very responsible.
Biden’s latest action was endorsed by Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York, a moderate Democrat who won a special election in February to replace ousted former Republican Rep. George Santos. Suozzi’s race focused heavily on immigration and New York City’s struggle to house thousands of immigrants transported there from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Suozzi described how he was first elected mayor of Glen Cove, New York, in 1994 and helped organize centers to help groups of immigrants waiting on street corners for day laborer jobs, which he said continues to illustrate how he see issue.
“The reality is that those same guys who were on the street corners in 1994, today have their own businesses, own their own homes and their children went to school with my children,” Suozzi said on a call with reporters. “We have to take action. People are tired of this.”
Van Callaway, a hairstylist from Mesa, Arizona, who uses those pronouns, voted for Biden four years ago but was disappointed to hear that the president was making it harder to seek asylum. But they were also skeptical that the president’s plan to help legalize spouses married to U.S. citizens would actually come to fruition.
“I wish it was a simpler process so that people who need to be here can be here,” said Callaway, 29. “And I wish there was more love and acceptance in it. And more empathy. I feel like if there was a lot of empathy for immigration as a whole, the world would be a much better place.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that about 500,000 spouses of U.S. citizens will be protected under Biden’s latest action, as well as 50,000 children of a non-citizen parent. The White House said beneficiaries have been in the U.S. for an average of 23 years.
That won’t be the case for most new arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border, who can’t sign up because of Biden’s other executive actions. However, the White House notes that it has taken several other steps to make it easier for new immigrants to enter the country.
With Republicans in Congress “refusing to address our broken immigration system,” the administration has “taken action to secure our border and keep American families together in the United States,” said Angelo Fernández Hernández, a spokesman for the White House.
That includes creating a program that last year allows people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to come to the U.S. if they have a financial sponsor, pass a background check and fly into a U.S. airport — at which almost 435,000 people had used it by the end of the month. April. The administration also expanded H-2 temporary work visa programs and established processing centers beyond the U.S. border in countries such as Guatemala and Columbia.
Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson nevertheless accused Biden of trying to “play both sides.”
And Trump dismissed Biden’s move on asylum as “all for show,” suggesting the president is “granting mass amnesty and citizenship to hundreds of thousands of illegals who he knows will ultimately vote for him.”
Callaway said deciding who to vote for this year will be excruciating, “a very difficult conundrum.” They are concerned about Trump’s second-term agenda, but are also furious about Biden’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza, and are not eager to support a third party candidate who is unlikely to win. A stricter border policy would be another blow to Biden, they said.
“They’ll tell you what you want to hear, but they won’t often follow through,” Callaway said. “It feels like the things they’re pursuing are fueled by prejudice and this strange sense of victimhood.”
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Weissert reported from Washington.
