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As a candidate in 2020, Joe Biden had ambitious immigration goals, pledging to reverse many Trump-era policies on his first day in office. Facing an unprecedented influx of migrants at the Southwest border, President Biden has shifted his stance, now advocating for border closure and supporting a more restrictive overhaul of the immigration system.
Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette delves into the deceptive nature of both major parties’ immigration policies and highlights his disappointment surrounding Biden’s evolving approach.
But once in office, Biden wound up keeping most of those policies. In fact, he borrowed most of his immigration agenda from his predecessor.
There’s Title 42, the provision of U.S. code that allows the U.S. government to keep out migrants in the name of preserving public health. That was struck down, not by the by the Biden administration, but by the courts. Biden also plans to build 23 miles of fencing and walls along the U.S.-Mexico border after promising that he would not build another foot of it. The administration has also mastered the quick processing of migrants at the border, shipping them back home, without giving them access to legal counsel or a chance to plead their case for asylum.
Now that House Republicans have gotten into the act and blackmailed the White House into supporting even more immigration crackdowns in exchange for approving additional foreign aid to vital U.S. allies, like Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan — and now that Biden seems prepared to go along with the demands to crack down on the border — a new narrative has taken hold. It suggests that, you see, Biden doesn’t really want to be a hard ass on immigration, the Republicans are making him do it. They’re forcing him to be this way. Lies, lies and more lies, on the Right and on the Left, by liberals and by conservatives.
Doesn’t anyone in Washington tell the truth anymore? What am I saying? Did they ever?