The one issue you (probably) won’t hear Biden talk about in the debate 

Where Ronald Reagan was the Great Communicator, Joe Biden is the political equivalent of a mime. But it’s not his fault — at least, not entirely — as he’s often forced to triangulate his communications strategy between progressives and conservatives.

These days, sound policies are often a zero-sum game, guaranteed to infuriate either the right or the left. Often, the most politically expedient approach is to say nothing at all. 
 
To take an example that’s sure to come up at the debate tonight: President Biden’s border policies.  

Put your hand up, everyone (anyone?), if you knew that Biden is pushing one of the biggest and most fundamental changes in asylum rules since…well, ever. Under current immigration law, people seeking asylum simply have to show that they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country. Biden changed the rules last year and added an additional requirement: People applying for asylum in the U.S. now have to present themselves at a port of entry to claim asylum.  

If they cross the border illegally and then claim asylum, they must prove that they have not transited a “safe country” to arrive in the U.S. If they have, they must have applied for asylum there and been refused before their application for asylum in the U.S. can be considered. This is a presumption against granting asylum rather than a hard disqualification; under Biden’s new rules, people in unusual circumstances can still have their cases considered. 

You might think this new rule is overly harsh. But it’s not crazy.  

The “first safe country” rule has been endorsed, sort of, by the United Nations as not violating international conventions on the treatment of refugees. Objectively, it makes a lot of sense. If you have a well-founded fear of persecution in your home country, you are entitled to a safe place to live. But that doesn’t mean you are automatically entitled to live wherever you want.

Persecution is a violation of basic human rights; having to settle in Brazil instead of in Miami is not. There are examples of people transiting multiple continents to present themselves at the U.S.-Mexico border and claim asylum. That’s both absurd and potentially dangerous for the migrants themselves. 

I’m not saying that this policy is necessarily good or bad. But it is a thoughtful one, designed to address a real problem and to help bring some order to the current asylum process. Whether you like it depends on your political views. Or so you would think. 

This new policy is almost certain to infuriate lots of Biden’s supporters on the left — that is, if they know about it. But it won’t get him any love from Republicans either, even though it is a more nuanced version of a policy that former President Donald Trump himself tried to implement.

The sad fact is, Biden wouldn’t get credit from MAGA world for being tough on border security if he deputized the Boy Scouts, sent them to the Texas border and gave them orders to shoot to kill. So Biden never talks about this policy. Why trumpet a policy, even a good one, if all it will do is anger your own supporters? 

Predictably, this new rule landed the Biden administration in court, where it was struck down. It’s currently on appeal, though the court did give the administration permission to enforce the rule until the case is final. 

The politics of all this is now firmly in veep territory. The Biden administration is committed to solving the immigration problem but is desperate to ensure that progressives don’t see Biden doing too much about it. Republicans are deeply committed to acting as though they care about the border but are desperate to ensure that nothing actually gets done, so they can continue to claim that Biden isn’t doing anything to solve the immigration problem. It’s like the policy version of one of those French bedroom farces where the protagonists frantically run from one room to the next trying to avoid each other.

In a rational world, Biden would talk up this policy at every opportunity. In tonight’s debate, however, I’d be amazed if he mentions it at all, even though Trump will bludgeon him about asylum-seekers and the border at every opportunity. I’m not sure what it says about our politics that it’s sometimes better to pretend to be incompetent than to appear to be insensitive, but it says something. 

Chris Truax is a Republican and an appellate attorney.