HOUSTON
As the Title 42 policy expires on Thursday, the US is faced with the challenge of fixing its "broken immigration system" amid an expected surge of migrants on its border with Mexico.
"We clearly have a broken immigration system," said Lydia Guzman, the National Immigration chairperson for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
Guzman told Anadolu that LULAC, the US' largest Hispanic organization, is concerned about the ability of US border communities to handle the immigration surge and believes the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) infrastructure is not ready for this humanitarian crisis.
"We all know the situation along the border will get worse," she said.
Leading up to the expiration of Title 42 on May 11, the DHS announced the distribution of $363 million to help with shelter and migrant services at the southern border as part of Congress' $800 million package through the Emergency Food and Shelter Program. However, Guzman said the federal government needs to allocate funding appropriately so this crisis does not get even more out of hand.
"Provide more funding to border communities (shelters, churches, local governments) to better prepare for the influx rather than sending national guard troops," said Guzman. "Properly fund DHS agencies that perform intake duties and adjudication of the asylum cases."
Back in January, President Joe Biden announced a new immigration policy that would allow 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to be able to enter the US legally through a work authorization program that requires a US-based sponsor. Guzman said the number of countries listed for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in policies like that one is way too narrow.
"Expand the list of countries with TPS to include those from which the asylees are fleeing from," said Guzman. "Provide funding to Mexico, as they are partners in this, so that they can assist with humanitarian needs and set up processing centers like Colombia and Guatemala now have."
Immigration influx
Title 42 was put in place by the Trump administration back in March 2020 as a health measure to expedite extradition during the COVID-19 pandemic. The policy allowed the US to expel nearly 2.7 million migrants back across the border during that three-year period, but with its expiration, the Biden administration is now on the clock to try and fix, or at least remedy, this immigration influx.
"We're stuck with a broken asylum system that was never designed to deal with hundreds of thousands of people lining up for asylum every year," said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.
Jones told Anadolu in a phone interview that the Biden administration believed it was appropriate to eliminate Title 42 even though the policy helped to alleviate the illegal immigration problem in the US.
"Title 42 provided them with a useful tool to deport mass amounts of people without going through the normal asylum process, which could take between two to five years," explained Jones, who also said that the political safety net is no longer there.
"For at least the short term, the message in Central and South America is 'Now's the time to come to the US because they don't have Title 42 anymore.'"
What is in place is a decades-old US immigration policy known as Title 8, which is a years-long process for asylum seekers that gives them refuge in the US as long as migrants go through the proper legal steps. Otherwise, they face a minimum five-year ban from admission into the US.
"The problem with Title 8 is that unless you raise the minimum bar for asylum claims, you're going to have tens of thousands of people per week asking for asylum, and the asylum claims can take two to five years to process," said Jones.
"It's a pretty low bar to get into the system to seek asylum," he said. "If they claim that they were threatened in their home country by the police, the government, gangs, or an abusive spouse, they're likely to pass the muster to get into the US as an asylum seeker. They likely will only be denied if they talk about economics or money as to why they're seeking asylum status."
However, there is also a catch to Title 8, which Jones said many migrants do not understand.
"Title 8 can only be used for single men and women," he said. "The moment you have any family come across the border, you can't apply Title 8 to the asylum process for that family."
Title 42 exacerbates division
The expiration of Title 42 has driven a political wedge between Republicans and Democrats, one that makes a bipartisan solution for new immigration laws highly unlikely.
"Republicans who support amnesty or Democrats who support tougher restrictions on migrants, they will basically alienate themselves from their own parties respectively," said Jones.
On an even larger scale, LULAC said the politicization of the immigration problem rather than treating it as a humanitarian crisis is what makes it difficult to find a proper solution.
"LULAC rejects the fearmongering and scapegoating used by politicians for pure campaigning and political posturing," said Guzman. "Using terms like invasion, murderers and cartels during a humanitarian crisis is unacceptable and will not be tolerated."
The bottom line, emphasized Guzman, is that the US immigration problem needs to be fixed, or else it is going to get worse.
"What we need is immigration reform," said Guzman. "Because the (Biden) administration is trying to implement policies to a system that is clearly broken and hasn't been addressed in decades."
But in order to achieve that goal, both Democrats and Republicans will have to come to the table and work together.
"Congress is divided on the issue because immigration law is a partisan subject which causes gridlock for lawmakers," said Jones. "The only way to change and fix the broken system is to enact a bipartisan immigration law, but in today's polarized politics, that effectively is not going to happen."
