(Washington) “Do not come to the border” without having first launched a legal procedure: Joe Biden tried Thursday to send a message combining firmness and humanity in the face of the record arrivals of migrants at the border with Mexico, a politically perilous subject for the US President.
The Democrat promised to fix a “broken” immigration system, in a speech at the White House, while acknowledging that this “difficult” problem would not be solved “overnight”.
Joe Biden will travel on Sunday, for the first time after two years in office, to the southern border of the United States, more precisely to El Paso, Texas.
He will then go to Mexico, and has already made it known that the “strengthening of the border” would be at the heart of his discussions with his counterpart Manuel Lopez Obrador, who maintains sometimes very fresh relations with his big neighbor.
The president engaged in a balancing act on Thursday.
On the one hand, he castigated “extreme” Republicans, accusing them of “demagogy” in the face of the migration crisis, and accusing them of blocking his requests for funding to deal with the problem.
“We can secure our border and fix immigration policy so that it is orderly, safe, and humane, we can do all of this without extinguishing the flame of freedom that has brought generations of immigrants to America,” he launched.
But his administration has nevertheless announced “new consequences” for migrants who cross the border illegally: the United States will more often resort to immediate expulsions, accompanied by a ban on new entry into the territory for five years.
More than 230,000 arrests were still recorded in November at the southern border of the United States, a record level.
The White House, however, also said that up to 30,000 skilled migrants would instead be allowed to enter the United States each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, the four countries from which they come. majority migrants.
These arrivals will however have to be made by plane so as not to add to the workload of the border guards on the ground, and within the framework of a legal process.
800 dead
Large swaths of the US economy, particularly in agriculture, depend on immigrant labor, but the migration system is now on the brink of collapse.
Migrants, anxious to escape poverty or violence in their countries of origin, often take enormous risks to enter American soil.
More than 800 people died in the fiscal year, many drowned in the Rio Grande River, according to a border guard official quoted by NPR radio.
These flows also exert pressure on border localities, whose infrastructure struggles to accommodate these migrants in decent conditions.
Faced with constant criticism from his opposition, but also from associations for the defense of migrants, Joe Biden, who plans to run for a second term, therefore seems finally decided to take up the subject.
So far, his administration has been mostly content to send migrants back to Mexico based on a measure put in place by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump during the pandemic.
In the name of the health crisis, it makes it possible to immediately turn back any illegal alien intercepted at the border, including potential asylum seekers.
This measure, dubbed “Title 42”, is the subject of an intense judicial guerrilla war whose epilogue will be known in June at the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Biden administration, aware that lifting this measure will further encourage immigration candidates, is calling for funds to recruit border staff as well as judges specializing in asylum.