If anything was clear this week in the United Statesis that the immigration issue, perhaps above any other, will be decisive in the current contest for the elections that will define the next tenant of the White House.
Proof of this was the parallel visit that President Joe Biden and the former president made this Thursday. donald trump, who are emerging as the candidates of their respective parties for next November's elections. They visited two border towns in Texas that have become the epicenter of the current immigration crisis, but where the problem is experienced differently.
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Almost simultaneously, but about 500 kilometers away.a, the two candidates for the Oval Office spent the afternoon accusing each other of being the cause behind the wave of immigration that has been flooding the United States for several years.
Biden chose Brownsvillea Democratic-dominated town where, while there is concern about the historic flow, efforts have been made to balance border security with humanitarian considerations for new arrivals.
The current president focused his artillery on criticizing the Republicans for torpedoing a bill that included more 20 billion dollars and whose objectives were to hire thousands of new agents for the Border Patrol, increase capacities in detention centers and dramatically expand the corps of officers responsible for processing asylum applications.
The law would also have given the president powers to close the border if arrests exceeded the limit of more than 5,000 people per day.as well as other legal tools to deport new arrivals expressly if, for example, they were arrested entering illegally or a series of new requirements to justify asylum.
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As a whole, the law encapsulated everything that Republicans have been asking for for decades to secure the border and, in a certain sense, it is also a turn towards the center of the Democratic president who arrived at the White House promising to move away from the most draconian policies that characterized Trump's years in the White House.
But, according to Biden, the project was blocked to favor the former president in the presidential race – Trump openly asked Republicans to oppose it – putting the country's security at risk.
The monster accused of death is an illegal alien migrant who was brought into our country and released into our communities by corrupt Joe Biden
“Let's not fool ourselves. This bill was bipartisan and on track for approval until Trump came along and said no. That benefits my rival. What I ask of legislators is that they remember who they work for. Put aside politicking and unite by approving measures that benefit us all and not one party or the other,” Biden said.
Trump, on the other hand, chose Eagle Pass for his visit, another border post in Texas that has become a symbol of Republican defiance of the administration's policies.
In January, and by order of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the state's National Guard took over the area and forced the departure of the Border Patrol – a federal entity. Since then, they have been responsible for security in the area, generating a direct conflict with the Constitution, which grants control of the borders to national authorities.
The former president not only congratulated Abbott for his position, but also raised his anti-immigrant rhetoric, blaming Biden for being responsible for the “invasion” that is taking place in the United States.
Trump, using the same script that brought him to power in 2016, referred to migrants as “criminals,” “mentally ill,” and “carriers of infectious diseases” who are “muddying” the country’s blood.
“These are violent people who come directly from prisons, from mental institutions. The United States is being invaded by Biden's immigration crime. “It is a new form of vicious and cruel violation of our country,” Trump said.
Even, and perhaps to fuel the xenophobic instincts of some, he maintained that the newcomers speak in languages that no one understands. –despite the fact that more than 80 percent of the newcomers are Latin Americans–.
Trump's narrative on migrants was exacerbated by the murder of a nursing student in Georgia that caused a scandal in the country.
The crime is attributed to José Ibarra, a Venezuelan citizen who, according to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records, entered the country illegally in 2022, when Biden was already president.
Although the rejection of his violent death is obvious, the opinion of crime experts in the country and various university studies is that there is no correlation between immigration and crime.
“The monster accused of death is an illegal alien migrant who was brought into our country and released into our communities by corrupt Joe Biden. “He will never say Laken Riley's name, but we will,” Trump said.
Although the rejection of his violent death is obvious, the opinion of crime experts in the country and various studies from prestigious universities is that there is no correlation between immigration and crime.
At least not as Trump presents it. Last year, in fact, Graham Ousey, a criminologist at the College of William & Mary, and Charis Kubrin, of the University of California, Irvine, presented a book in which they evaluated the last two decades of crime.
Their conclusion is that there is no pattern. In fact, communities with more immigration tend to have less crime, especially violent crimes such as homicide, and the migrant population has much lower crime rates than natives.
Another study, by Ran Abramitzky, an economist at Stanford University, found that immigrants have incarceration rates that are up to 60 percent lower than those born in the United States and that those numbers have been falling since the 1960s.
In large part this is due to the fact that immigrants are very careful about committing crimes as this can lead to their deportation.
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DHS data show, in turn, that the majority of new arrivals do not have criminal records – something that would disqualify them when requesting asylum – nor are they carriers of infectious diseases.
Despite this, maintains Michael Light, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, crimes like Riley's unleash a lot of passion because the accused “should not have been in the country and therefore should not have been capable of committing a crime.”
The other thing that weighs heavily on this entire debate is that immigration has skyrocketed since Biden became president. On average, according to statistics, more than two million people a year, compared to less than one million in the previous government.
And although the reasons vary – among them the closure of borders and limited mobility that existed during the years of the covid-19 pandemic – Biden, as current president, is seen as responsible for the current crisis.
Although in recent months he has made a 180 degree turn, hardening his speech, the position of the Republicans is inexplicable, without introducing political calculation for electoral purposes, it is also true that their initial approach, no matter how well-intentioned it was, caused the tsunami that is experienced on the southern border.
And that has many, including Democrats, with alarm bells set off.
Just this week, Gallup published a survey that not only explains the former presidents' trip to Texas, but also their weight in the current race.
According to the results, today immigration is the issue that worries Americans the most, even above good government, the economy and inflation (second, third and fourth in Gallup's table). This is the first time in five years that this topic – always controversial in the United States – tops this type of list.
Something that Trump and the Republicans are very clear about. Biden too, as evidenced by his change of tone and tour this week. But nothing hides that the president, at least on this board, is playing defensively.
SERGIO GÓMEZ MASERI
TIME CORRESPONDENT
WASHINGTON
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