(Washington) Will Joe Biden succeed in getting his migration reform adopted by Congress in the middle of an election year? Out of the question for Donald Trump and his allies who have grabbed hold of this explosive issue, at the heart of the Republican’s campaign.
The race for the White House is set to be a remake of the duel between the Democratic leader and the former president, determined to put a spoke in the wheels of his successor.
The Republican billionaire, who maintains enormous control over his party, is going out of his way to block the adoption by American parliamentarians of a law on immigration, negotiated in the Senate at the request of the president.
“As the leader of our party, there is no way I would support it,” Donald Trump said at a rally this weekend, calling the text “a terrible betrayal of America.”
And for good reason: the former president in no way wants to offer a political victory to Joe Biden a few months before the presidential election.
Record of arrests
Joe Biden was elected in November 2020 by promising to put a little “humanity” back into American migration policy – then marked by the debates around the famous “wall” on the border with Mexico, wanted by Donald Trump.
But the measures adopted during the mandate of the Democratic leader are far from unanimous. Republicans accuse Joe Biden of having allowed the country to be “invaded”, taking as an example the record number of migrants arrested at the border, 302,000 in December.
Several mayors of large cities and governors from his party came to fuel this concert of criticism.
The polls are not much more flattering. According to several opinion surveys, Americans consider the migrant crisis one of their main concerns and mainly hold Democrats responsible.
Ukraine also in the balance
Donald Trump, who had already placed immigration at the heart of his 2016 campaign, by comparing illegal migrants to “rapists”, has further inflamed his rhetoric.
In recent months, he has claimed migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States – comments that have earned him comparisons to Adolf Hitler.
According to some analysts, Donald Trump’s alarmist statements on immigration could, however, not be taken seriously if he continues to reject the bill debated in Congress, and negotiated among others by elected officials from his camp.
In his opposition to the text, the former leader can count on the support of the head of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, who boasts of the frequency of his exchanges with Donald Trump.
The “speaker”, elected following a revolt by Trumpist elected officials, warned that as it stands, any vote for strengthening the border with Mexico was “stillborn”.
Politically, “Republicans benefit from the chaos at the border and Democrats benefit from a solution to the crisis,” explains Peter Loge of George Washington University.
The issue is all the more burning since the release of new funds for Ukraine depends on the success of this migration reform – an envelope of more than 60 billion dollars insisted on by Kyiv and the American executive.
Under pressure from the right, these two subjects are now negotiated together, which endangers deliveries of crucial weapons and equipment for the Ukrainian army.
The position of Donald Trump and his allies in Congress is, however, half-heartedly criticized by certain moderate Republicans, particularly those from contested constituencies.
These elected officials also do not look favorably on the attempts by the Republican general staff to dismiss Alejandro Mayorkas, the minister responsible for immigration.
“The risk for Republicans, including Donald Trump, is that the failure of this text, supported by elected officials from both parties, will only appeal to voters in the Republican primaries” and not the American electorate as a whole, warns Mark Bayer, former chief of staff to a member of Congress.
“Among the voters who will choose the next president, there are also more moderate Republicans and independents, who want the capital Washington to resolve the problems,” he underlines.