Both parties fail on immigration

Early on the morning of Aug. 10, I stood with dozens of New Yorkers at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City, welcoming the 100 or so people who arrived on three buses that day. I was part of a group coordinated by the mayor’s office, but dozens more New Yorkers had come on their own to witness and offer assistance. Since then, the New York City has shown how to greet those who arrive at our borders with compassion and dignity by investing in shelters, community-based support and legal services for newcomers. New York City recently opened a welcome center to centralize all resources, with more locations planned soon. 

This is a far cry from the politics of fear used by the governors paying to send migrants far away. But it’s a fraction of what could be done with proper federal resources.

For the last few months, governors from Texas and Arizona have sought to score political points by busing asylum seekers around the country, first to Washington, D.C. and then New York City. What started as a blatant political stunt — buses full of women, men and children frequently with just the clothes on their backs and accompanied by armed guards — reached new lows when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) apparently duped migrants into getting on a plane to Martha’s Vineyard. Those on board uniformly reported having been lured by false promises of jobs and shelters, and believed they were going to either New York City or Boston.

Lying to desperate people for political gain is reprehensible. But it does not absolve the Biden administration’s responsibility to use its full resources to support both migrants and the Americans who are defying Republican politicians’ cynical predictions and welcoming desperate people into their communities. Once again, American volunteers, churches, mutual aid societies and local politicians are on the front lines of a humanitarian emergency in our backyards.

The United States’ southern border, which has long been an ideological dividing line as much as a physical one, has now come to all Americans. Climate, corruption and conflict have contributed to a record number of displaced persons globally. Migrants crossing the southern border seeking protection generally do so in the hopes of obtaining asylum and starting a safer, more prosperous life. For decades, they have been met with policies and laws meant to deter and punish them. Those who make it across are left to their own devices in desert towns where small non-profit organizations and volunteers scramble to provide a basic level of orientation and help with onward travel. For too long, the rest of America has looked away, viewing this as a border problem, and divorcing the experiences of the people who ultimately make it to places in the interior from the realities of how they came to the United States in the first place.

Now in response to Republican governors’ political ploy, residents of New York, Chicago, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and a growing number of other localities are showing that they can acknowledge migrants’ experiences and treat these newcomers with dignity and humanity. They’re showing that with proper resources, the response to border arrivals does not have to look like a defensive assault. They are following the examples of fellow Americans who have been selflessly doing this work in border states with limited resources and support for far too long. 

As an immigration attorney, I’ve practiced asylum law for two decades. I’ve never met an asylum seeker who, ultimately, wouldn’t have preferred staying home. They come to the United States because remaining at home is not an option. More importantly, they exercised their right, under international and U.S. law, to request asylum. The first question I got from everyone I met at the Port Authority that day was how to comply with instructions from the immigration authorities.  

The Biden administration cannot continue to put its head in the sand and blame Republicans for using migrants for political gain without aggressively pursuing policy reform and additional resources. Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s repeated requests for federal support — many of which have been denied by the Biden administration — underscore the urgency with which the administration needs to find humane solutions to support migrants wherever they are, even as it also calls out reckless and reprehensible political stunts by Republican officials. The Biden administration has done little in terms of offering support, making statements that they are looking into the issue without offering concrete ideas, and reverting to approaches that have become all too familiar when handling migration from poor countries. 

Americans have an opportunity to collectively show that as a country, we remain true to the same promise that those who came before us believed in: The United States is a place of refuge, where everyone can start again and succeed.

Republican politicians must stop using desperate people for narrow political gain, and the Biden administration must use its resources and platform to demonstrate its commitment to upholding American values of welcoming and compassion. 

Camille Mackler is a visiting senior fellow for immigration at the Truman Center for National Policy. Mackler also  helps lead Evacuate Our Allies (EOA) Steering Committee, including co-chairing the Administrative Advocacy Working Group in charge of liaising with leadership at the Department of Homeland Security. She is an immigration attorney and volunteers with a number of migrant support groups, including those who are assisting migrants currently being bused to New York City. She is the author of  “Humane, Strategic & Secure: A White Paper on Immigration Policy Reform.”