Democratic Rep. Greg Casar (Texas) slammed President Biden’s new executive policy that will limit asylum seekers at the southern border, arguing it appeals to the GOP “talking points” on immigration and will not actually reduce illegal crossings.
“The Republican Party here in Congress tries to cover up its own failures by scapegoating immigrations. It’s the oldest trick in the book and they continue to advocate for closing legal pathways to migration, and pointing at chaos at the border,” Casar said Tuesday in an interview with MSNBC.
“Unfortunately, it created this poltiical pressure that has the President today responding by restricting asylum, which isn’t going to work because it doesn’t actually reduce the number of people being pushed out of their homes in Latin America,” he added. “It doesn’t actually create new legal pathways for people to migrate here.”
The White House on Tuesday announced the widely anticipated executive action that will turn away migrants seeking asylum who cross the southern border illegally at times where there is a high volume of daily encounters.
The order will go into effect when the seven-day average of daily border encounters exceeds 2,500 between ports of entry, meaning it will go into effect immediately. The last time average daily encounters fell below 2,500 was the first month of Biden presidency.
Casar, who is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the House Progressive Caucus, said legal pathways must be created to ensure migrants do not go through “cartels or wait in line” at the southern border.
“If we want to address what’s going on in our community on immigration, we should finally provide protections to our dreamers and to longtime families here. And then third, we need to do what folks in D.C. don’t want to talk about which is how are U.S. policies actually contributing, especially in places like Latin America, to starvation and poverty and violence that is pushing people out of their homes in record numbers?”
Casar is among a number of House liberals who have criticized President Biden’s executive action, arguing it belies America’s historic place as a global refuge for persecuted people.
But the critics, like Biden, pin most of the blame on Republicans for sinking a bipartisan immigration reform package twice this year under the direction of former President Trump. The Democratic critics contended the Republicans prevent Biden from having the resources to address the border crisis in a more orderly and humane way.
“The Congress needs to pass comprehensive immigration reform, but short of that, the President has options available, and the Congress should be talking about those options,” Casar said, adding later, “We need a clearer vision that isn’t just Republican light. Right now, we have [former] President Trump saying he’s going to solve the problem and he’s just gonna crack down but we know that he’s a con artist and a grifter.”
The Texas Democrat, who represents Texas’s 35th Congressional District which stretches from East Austin to parts of San Antonio, said he is drafting legislation that would “reduce the amount that the United States is contributing to forced migration.”
“We need a strategy that the American people believe will work, which means one, working in Latin America to reduce forced migration, two having legal pathways so that there’s order at the border and three, protecting the folks here.”