The Biden Legacy on Immigration: A Complex Picture

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].
 

[00:00:00.03] - Doris Meissner

Good morning. My name is Doris Meissner. I'm a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute here in Washington, D.C., where I direct the MPI's work on U.S. immigration policy. I want to welcome everybody to the webinar this morning. The title of our webinar is The Biden Legacy on Immigration: A Complex Picture. Today we are highlighting the findings from our policy beat called Biden's Mixed Immigration Legacy, Border Challenges Overshadowed Modernization Advances. It's available on MPI's website. We will spend our time this morning partially on presentations and discussion of the key points in that policy brief, and then we will have Q&A for the second part of the call. During the webinar, please type any questions that might be coming to mind into the Q&A box. You will also have an opportunity to be posing questions once the Q&A period begins. So let me introduce our speakers this morning. They are, in order of speaking, Muzaffar Chishti, who's a senior fellow at MPI, Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, who's an associate policy analyst at MPI, Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst at MPI, and then our guest commentators who are Rafael Bernal, who is a staff writer at The Hill, on the Hill, at The Hill, and Marielena Hincapié, who is the distinguished immigration scholar at Cornell Law School.
 

So let me begin by saying that MPI has institutionally since 2016, when the first Trump administration came into office, tracked every single action on immigration that the then-President, uh, Trump took, and that has been followed by a similar pattern in the Biden administration of tracking every single issue on immigration that those administrations have taken. We thought at the time during the first Trump administration that the number was the highest historically ever of any presidency, which was the case at that time, but that has turned out now to be outdistanced by the Biden administration, which has taken even more immigration actions than were the case under the first Trump administration. So our pattern then of tracking these issues has been, of course, to analyze what they mean and to take away from them what the important policy departures have been and what the impact has been. And we've been doing that on an annual basis. Which is what brings us to the webinar today, because we are of course now at the end of the Biden administration, and the work that we have done tracking what's taken place on immigration during this administration is coming to a conclusion.
 

So what we are going to be talking about today is the overall record of the 4 years of the Biden administration. But I must add that this is a story that continues even beyond what we might be, uh, what we're going to be able to talk to you about today, because we find that just this morning, 3 new regulations have been posted, and there may well be other things that continue to happen, uh, before January 20th when the Biden administration ends. But we will, I think, be able to give you quite a complete picture, and we're going to start We're going to start with that, by doing that, by asking Muzaffar Chisti to talk broadly about the major themes from this administration's record, and then we will go on from there.

[00:04:01.02] - Muzaffar Chishti

Thank you so much, Doris, and thank you so much for all of you joining us this morning. I'm joined by my two co-authors, Colleen and Kathleen, from whom you heard. We had a third co-author, it was Madeline Green, who couldn't join us this morning. So my thanks to all of them. So Biden legacy, you know, whether he intended this or not, his presidency is now sandwiched between two Trump presidencies. And these are the two Trump presidencies in which the Trump old administration, the upcoming, used immigration as a calling card for the election. So immigration, if not the dominant theme, was a dominant theme in now three successive administrations. So you could now say that about 12 years of American presidencies, immigration has remained a very, very important sort of backdrop in politics and policy. That is hard to ignore. I think probably historically the longest 12-year period. So there were a lot of actions, as Doris just pointed out, taken by the Biden administration. And let me just first speak about the positive. Because they never get enough notice. I, I think of a legacy of a president, how much impact did you have on people's lives on a daily basis.
 

And I think that Biden administration's policy on interior enforcement is very high up there, that he actually managed to put in place an immigration enforcement policy that was actually fully implemented, that unless you're a serious criminal or a national security threat or a recent arrival, you had no fear of being deported. That was the opposite of what the legacy of the prior administration was, where everyone was targeted for, for enforcement. And this was a memo issued, and for the first time in our history, that memo was challenged by red states, was taken to the Supreme Court, and Supreme Court issued its own, uh, sort of seal of approval on, on prosecutorial discretion. And by MPI accounts, if you're a long-term resident unauthorized person in the country, they were like more than 80% chance that nothing would happen to you in the form of enforcement. The family detention, as we knew it in the past, is over. It was ended. Legal immigration now is back to pre-COVID, pre-Trump normal. In the Biden administration, from FY '21 to '24, 4.3 million people got green cards in this country. The refugee admission, which had stalled under the Trump administration at 11,000, reached a new high close to the Clinton era.
 

So this year, 100,000— more than 100,000 people as refugees were admitted, which is close to the mid-'90s. And for the first time, there's a large— the highest number of people admitted from the Western Hemisphere of the world. 11.5 million visas were issued by Department of State, outpacing their old record. 1.1 million foreign students are enrolled at US universities today, and they doubled the length of the work authorization to give people for all kinds of immigration benefits. And my favorite of all, naturalization record— 3.5 million people were naturalized under the Biden administration, which is the highest of any one term of the presidency in our history, reducing the backlogs for naturalization applications from 11 months to 5 months. Now, this is all positive, and all this unfortunately is not particularly well known because it got overshadowed by the challenge at the border. The Biden presidency entered the office with a crisis at the border already. Which was sort of precipitated by the COVID crisis and then Title 42. But you could say that Biden's itself, his election itself became a pull factor because he had promised during the campaign that he will undo the cruel immigration border policies of the prior administration.
 

And the numbers began to reach record levels. I've said it before in other places, I think the border arrivals of the Biden administration will leave a long shadow on the immigration policy and politics of our country. Now, you— I think the second mistake that the Biden administration made was not calling it a crisis, sort of refusal to call a crisis that was unfolding under our eyes a crisis. Second, I think the administration decided to treat fundamentally as a problem of optics. That the specter of disorder is really something that people cannot tolerate. So they moved from creating incentives for more orderly arrivals and disincentives for disorderly arrivals between ports of entry. So we had CBP One, we had the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Venezuelan parole programs of which you'll hear more. All these became important parts of the Biden legacy. The result that there were 8.6 million encounters at the border. Encounters doesn't mean individuals. Some of them are repeat arrivals at the border. And Title 42 remained in place till May of '23. Now, most of us associate the Title 42 with the Trump administration, but about 86% of the people who are expelled under the Title 42 happen under the Biden administration.
 

So the record arrivals happened in first fiscal year '23 at 2.5. December of 2023 will go down as the high-water mark of arrivals at the border at 300,000. All these taken together, all these programs, 5.8 million people were let into the country under the Biden administration from the border. And we added 1.7 million people are now eligible for TPS, though they have not all taken. Now, Biden administration finally took steps to do something to meet this challenge. In May of '23, the, the circumvention of legal pathways was introduced. In June '24, the securing the border rules were all intended to discourage, essentially eliminate asylum protections at the border. And numbers went down. Last, last month, only 47,000 people arrived at the border. By October of '24, the Biden deportation of 1.5 million was equal to the Trump administration of 1.5 million being deported. So these were all important things happening, but in the public eye, they were seen as too little, too late. And then the second part of it is the states started having a more important role in the immigration enforcement. We all know the 16 States, uh, well, most red states brought multi-state lawsuits against the Biden administration, almost every action, 16 of them brought.
 

But the most important critical was the, the efforts by the Texas governor to bus people to the, from the border to the interior cities and states of our country, which then created the specter of migrants looking for public housing in the interior cities and countries and the states of our country, which then led Abbott to make the statement of the Republican National Convention that he brought the border to the interior cities and states. I could complete the sentence by saying he brought the border to the Democratic National Convention. So by the end of this election season, the politics on immigration had changed. And that's probably what led to an important part of how he saw the election unfold. So let me stop there and have Colleen go first to beef up what I just said.

[00:11:57.10] - Colleen Putel-Kavanaugh

Thank you, Muz, and thank you, Doris, for the introduction, and thank you all for joining us today. As you mentioned, the southern border plays an important part in the Biden administration's legacy on immigration. Though he entered office with promises to undo many of the Trump-era policies pertaining to the US-Mexico border, The changing reality on the ground presented new and novel challenges for the Biden administration that in many ways ultimately shaped his administration's response to the border. To put it into perspective, it helps to look at the reality our current immigration system was built upon. In the 1990s, migration to the southwest border was mostly single men from Mexico hoping to enter the US without detection in search of work. That trend began to shift in 2013 when increasing numbers of migrants, particularly families, began arriving from northern Central America and asking for asylum. And in 2021, that reality shifted once again, with more migrants arriving in large numbers from elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere and from countries all around the world. At the US-Mexico border in 2020, just 12% of migrant arrivals border-wide were from beyond Mexico and Central America. And by 2023, those migrants accounted for 51% of all arrivals, for the first time presenting a majority.

And aside from nationality, the demographic of arrivals has also shifted from single adults to families. And critically, more than ever, migrants are waiting to be processed by border authorities to ask for protection rather than seeking to enter without detection. This increase in overall numbers of arrivals and the changing demographics of those arrivals has presented a challenge for border authorities in terms of capacity and processing ability. The inability to hold migrants, especially vulnerable populations like children, for extended periods of time, facing barriers with processing migrants from all over the world, including countries with whom coordinating returns is difficult or impossible, and the fact that with current backlogs and inefficiencies in deciding asylum cases can take several years, all resulted in a high number of migrants released from the— released into the interior of the US. That was coupled with orchestrated bussing by governors of Texas and Arizona, as Muz mentioned, and also the power of word of mouth. And this ultimately brought the border into the interior with large numbers of newly arrived migrants heavily concentrated in certain cities like New York, Chicago, and Denver. And these cities were already facing housing shortages, though they created this patchwork system to respond to the needs of newly arrived migrants and more than 2 years on have adapted to this new normal, each with a unique set of service offerings for the newly arrived population.

Combinations of city services and non-governmental organizations have moved from reacting to these emergency needs of newly arrived migrants to aiding in medium and long-term needs like permanent housing, school enrollment, job placement, and more. With a system ill-equipped for the current reality, the Biden administration put together a series of carrot and stick approaches, pairing increased enforcement with options for orderly and safe migration. The increased enforcement limited access to asylum for irregular border arrivals, while options for orderly migration, like the CBP One app, which allowed migrants traversing through Mexico to make an appointment to be screened for entry to the country at a point of entry along the border, or the nationality-specific parole program like the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan parole program that allowed those nationals with sponsors in the US to apply for entry to the country, pay for their own plane ticket, and fly to an interior airport. These approaches, seen by some as too little, too late, and by others as too restrictive, along with efforts to curb migration throughout the Western Hemisphere, did cause a major shift in migrant border arrivals. Borderwide monthly migrant encounters have reduced precipitously from the high of over 302,000 in December borderwide to 106,000 in October of this year, the month for which we most recently have data.

And for some nationalities like Cubans, Haitians, and Venezuelans, where they arrive at the border has shifted with more migrants of those nationalities arriving to ports of entry, likely using the CBP One app, rather than arriving irregularly between ports of entry. All in all, the state of migration fundamentally shifted during the Biden administration, requiring these new tools to manage it, but nonetheless presented difficulties for the administration and overall shone a very bright light on how our current immigration system fails to match that reality that exists on the ground. And I'll leave it there. Thank you.

[00:16:55.11] - Kathleen Bush-Joseph

Thanks, Muz and Colleen. We wanna get to your questions, so I'm gonna briefly focus on one of the most historic aspects of the Biden administration's legacy. Here at the Migration Policy Institute, we've been tracking the use of liminal statuses or twilight statuses to extend protection to millions of people over the course of the 4 years. And we have found that in the article we had it at 3.4 million beneficiaries have benefited from these statuses. There was actually new data released right after we published, and that number is actually now 3.6 million beneficiaries of processes that were preserved and extended expanded from previously existing programs like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, as well as completely new processes that were established. The Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan parole process that Colleen and my colleagues were talking about was newly established under the Biden administration and allowed for record-high numbers of people to obtain protection from deportation as well as access to work permits, which are life-changing developments. When people are able to work lawfully and exist without having that fear of deportation, as Muz is saying, that can really be a huge boost, not only for the economy but also in individual immigrants' lives.
 

And one of the things that I wanted to highlight here is that these were boundary-pushing moves and a major aspect of the executive actions that the Biden administration took. And there were not only a large number of beneficiaries, but also these individual processes that were created that strained in some ways U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which was trying to keep up with all of the applications and issue statuses as quickly as it could. All of this also really underscores the lack of congressional action on immigration during the Biden administration's term. Congress actually used to pass adjustment acts and provide for protections for humanitarian populations such as parolees, but Even the Afghan Adjustment Act did not pass during the Biden administration, and these people now face uncertainty with the Trump administration coming back into office. And with that, I can transition to that while the Biden administration was protecting so many people from deportation and providing work authorization, It was also ramping up deportations, as Muz said. In total, over fiscal years 2021 to 2024, the Biden administration deported 1.5 million people, matching the Trump administration record, which is not very well known. A major difference, though, was that the Biden administration focused on returning people at the US-Mexico border quickly, once they had arrived there, whereas the Trump administration focused on removing people from the interior.
 

Now, I wanna conclude by drilling into one final point, which is this temporary protected status, one of the protections that's been in the news and was a major aspect of the Biden administration's twilight statuses. The number of beneficiaries of this program reached 1.1 million people recently. And I want to underscore that that is the highest number ever and by a lot. That's more than double the 537,000 people who had the status in 2022, which was already a record. I'll hand it back over to Muz now.

[00:21:15.24] - Muzaffar Chishti

Thank you. Thanks so much, Kathleen and Colleen, both. So I mean, just in sum, you could look at the Biden legacy from two different lenses. If you look at from the lens of legal immigration, they finally brought an old archaic system into the 21st century with modernization and innovation and technology. And you have seen the results, I think, in really clear, convincing terms. If you look at from the lens of the border, it was seen as a porous, out-of-control border, and the measures that were finally put in place had detractors on all sides of the political spectrum. So it's clear they didn't seem to have pleased either people from the left or on the right. But in the process, if control was the aim, they brought the border under much more control than they began with. So ironically, they're handing over to Trump 2 administration a much more controlled border and a much more robust legal immigration system. And along with the economy, which they're also handing it up in a pretty good state. You could say the Biden administration is handing a better economy and a more controlled border to the next Trump administration, for which the two more dominant themes of this election, but I think for which they don't expect any thank you notes.

So let me, Doris, turn it back to Doris.

[00:22:36.23] - Doris Meissner

All right, with that, we have the two lenses and we have two commentators who have watched these issues so closely. Rafael, let me turn first to you, staff writer, for The Hill. What was it like to cover this administration? Do you think— what would be your comment on the depiction that we've made based on the record as we've seen it?

[00:23:00.21] - Rafael Bernal

Thank you. Thank you for having me here. And I guess I'll do— commit the Washington capital sin and actually answer your question. Covering this administration was a little disappointing in the sense of you had a lot of people who were committed to transparency in, you know, whether DHS, the White House, and, you know, even DOJ, but who couldn't provide the kind of transparency that, knowing them in their private phase during the Trump administration, and I'm not going to throw anyone under the bus for this one, but they know who they are, uh, they, they did want that kind of transparency. They, they wanted to really justify They wanted the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, to really justify its policies, which often, you know, didn't happen. And then they couldn't do that when they were in, in, in, in government themselves. I think the separation that Muz put up about the border and then what was accomplished is one good way to separate it. The other way to separate it is really the Biden administration policy-wise. It like Roger Ebert would give it a thumbs up and, you know, in the sense of it was able to execute a lot of complicated policies that other administrations had failed at.
 

Politics-wise, it was nothing short of a disaster, really. I mean, and really the proof of that is really the 2024 election and how voters ended up seeing both immigration and the border, first of all, as one issue, which is a problem. And second of all, you know, in the manner that President Trump paints those issues, which is a problem for Biden and was a problem for Democrats generally. There's one thing the Biden administration— you can't really blame them in the sense of Trump has had a bully pulpit that's different from anything that's existed in American politics for the last decade. And it's very hard to try to convince a population, uh, that, that your policies are the right solution to a problem when the problem is being redefined often in ways that aren't particularly accurate by an opponent that's so powerful as Trump. The other thing that you can't blame Biden is that we have to admit that we're living in a historical global context where migration is seen as a problem by a larger proportion of people and voters in this country than it historically has. So, you know, Biden couldn't really do much about it.

Um, what you can sort of blame them is that there were two factions in the Biden administration when he started. There were the, the the sort of the DHS tactical people who really see success as numbers and as, you know, fewer people getting in and, you know, deportation orders actually executed and sort of the law enforcement people who do their law enforcement job and they do it quite well, frankly. And then you had the human rights side who said, well, we have to measure success by how many people are benefited by this, by how many people are naturalized. And in that sense, the one success story in that context, like absolute success story within the Biden administration, I would say was USCIS. They did a fantastic job in implementing the policy that they said they would implement. You can agree with it, disagree with it, but they said they were going to do something. They did it with scarce resources. I think to sum it up, pretty much I was forgetting Title 42. Title 42, I think, is sort of evidence of what went wrong in the Biden administration. Any border expert knows that it didn't work.

It caused recidivism. It had all sorts of issues. Um, and my, my, my colleague Alex Bolton, my excellent colleague Alex Bolton recently wrote a story in the past month about Democratic senators saying privately to him, not, uh, didn't want to put their name on it, that some of them thought that removing Title 42 was the worst thing, was, was essentially what lost Biden the, the election or the upper ground on immigration. Of course, that's a very illogical thing to say if you know what that policy did and did not do, but it might actually bear some political ground. Now, to sum it all up, my other excellent colleague, Rebecca Beitsch, she wrote a profile on Blas Nuñez-Neto probably a year ago, I'd say. He said something to her that stuck with me. He said that, paraphrasing, that if both sides are angry at you, you must be doing something right. And well, in the press, we use that all the time. It was great. And also, I mean, not to not be critical of the press, the press did a terrible job in general of covering these issues and continues to. And, you know, we have a lot, a lot of work to make up for.
 

But anyway, so Blas said this, that's usually the press's excuse. But it is very blind to the idea politics is about alliances and doing things the way they did in the context that they did it, getting the results that they did, politically speaking, put a lot of Democrats on the back foot and didn't give them ammunition to say, well, this is what Democrats believe on immigration. This is why we're different from Trump. This is how we're going to make things better for you. I could go on, but I think that pretty much sums it up. They did not build the alliances and give ammunition to their political friends that, you know, could have made a political difference for them.

[00:29:21.08] - Doris Meissner

Fascinating comments and certainly a setup for you, Marielena, in terms of the final comment here. Marielena, you're such a veteran of these issues and you've watched them over many administrations. Certainly during this one. Talk to us about what you've heard and what you see as that intersection between politics and policy, politics and substance that leaves us in such an uncertain place in terms of what the legacy of the administration actually has been.

[00:30:01.10] - Marielena Hincapié

Great. Thank you, Doris, and to Muz, and the MPI's steadfast leadership, and this great team that produced this report, and to Rafael for joining this panel as well. So first, I'll begin by explaining that although I'm in the advocate slot, I'm not here representing any particular institution. I'm just here as me, Marielena Hincapié. I come to you as an immigrant from Colombia who grew up in a working-class community in a working-class family, in a mixed-status family, and who has loved ones who voted for Trump. I'm currently a visiting scholar at the Cornell Law School and a Nixon Fellow at the Cornell Brooks Public Policy School, which has really given me the spaciousness to reflect on this moment and both how we got here and where do we go from here. And so I'll share the good, bad, and the ugly of president's legacy at a macro level because I think the report report does a really great job in that. And I'd rather get into the conversation. So, you know, I'll start from the perspective that the good is that, you know, I begin by saying that I look at immigration through an anti-poverty and an economic justice lens.

And when I think about President Biden's legacy, I look at his transformational economic policies that have had significant strides in reducing poverty among low-income immigrants low-income families, including immigrants, and particularly the expansion of the Child Tax Credit Act, the ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act, or even— and those two in particular that are estimated to have reduced child poverty by 45%. I mean, that is a staggering accomplishment. And when you combine those with the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, that also benefited low-income families, including immigrants. And that was done, you know, the impact of that is not going to be felt for about a decade. But those had very concrete benefits for low-income families and immigrants that included reducing energy costs through incentives for energy-efficient home, for example, upgrades that could lower people's utility bills, lowering the price of prescription drugs, the creation of jobs, particularly by investing in clean energy. All of those things are going to— I believe that at some point in history, we will look back and see President Biden's legacy as one that left the country in a much better place economically. However, of course, first, voters did not understand the complex nature of those policies.

Second, when you're focused on the impact of grocery prices this week, that just doesn't matter. And I worry that the immigration issue will overshadow those huge accomplishments of his legacy, which I think of also as benefiting immigrants in this country. And as the report noted, right, the administration's policies have led to a rebound in legal immigration to pre-pandemic levels and also the rebuilding of the refugee resettlement program, which was decimated by the Trump administration. And When you look at those things, and as you know, both of each of the authors, co-authors talked about this, I mean, the impact on legal immigration and the fact that those are many of those beneficiaries are workers who could fill critical gaps in the workforce in key industries throughout the country, especially in rural areas, in places like upstate New York where Cornell is based. Like those are important victories that will be and are being felt in communities across the country. Under DHS Secretary Mayorkas and USCIS Director Ur, um, Jaddou, their leadership, their teams made government more efficient, um, and reduced some of the backlogs. And again, the report, um, talks about this, right? The increased rates of naturalization, quicker processing of work permits, and for longer periods of time.

Um, those are win-win for both government but also for workers and their employers and their families. Um, and they've used technology to communicate more efficiently with applicants via text and emails and process applications faster. And then finally, very dear to my heart is the DHS policy that provided deferred action for undocumented workers that are experiencing labor disputes. And that is really critical because again, there, that allows workers to not only exercise their labor rights, but to help improve the conditions in their workplace for all workers. And so that has had the opportunity to be really transformational for workers. And there are many other things that I could point to, but each of these, whether big or small, take a Herculean effort. And I want to acknowledge the stellar teams at DHS, Department of Labor, and other federal agencies that have made these significant changes possible, along with many, many others that the report talks about and many others that we won't have time to do, though. So on to the bad. Again, In agreement with everything that's been shared so far, I think the two main issues is really the border, the mismanagement, and also the crisis that was fabricated by Governor Abbott and DeSantis by bussing and flying people and the cruelty behind that.

So I'll talk a little bit about those. But, you know, President Biden began his term with a pro-immigrant vision for America that recognizes that diversity is a strength, that immigrants are key to who we are as a nation. He appointed a diverse cabinet and other political leaders throughout his administration that were immigrants or children of immigrants. However, shortly after sending a bill to Congress and moving quickly to undo a lot of the harms from the Trump era during President Biden's first 100 days, the numbers at the border started increasing. And I think, again, as we've heard, and I really see this as Biden's inner circle, his political and communications folks, failed to understand that this was a narrative war. And the fact that they refused to call it a crisis when that is what voters were seeing on their screens, whether on their iPhones or on their TV screens, et cetera, they fell silent and decided not to prioritize immigration. And by doing so, they ceded the narrative and opened up the attacks that we have now and leading us to where we are now. Democrats also who had a trifecta failed to understand that authoritarians across the globe, including those in the United States like governors DeSantis and Abbott and others who have those tendencies, have been using immigration as a weapon to undermine democracy.
 

And Democrats failed to— and Biden failed to prioritize immigrants and immigration. And in doing so, again, left the floor to Abbott, DeSantis, and the Trump campaign. And so finally, let's talk about the ugly, which is where we are today. You know, given all of this, I would say that part of what we need to understand is how did this opposing viewpoint rise to power? What was the lie at the center of their narrative? And, you know, I see this as the lie essentially that immigrants by default are threat— threats. They are invaders, they are takers, and they're undercutting who we are as a nation. And that is a code for whiteness and for or white nationalism. And so as a movement, we have to be self-reflective. Like, how did we lose the majority of people on this? You know, when people from all walks of life in the United States have benefited from immigration, and unless we're indigenous, we are all descendants of immigrants or of enslaved Africans. And it's because of the movement having focused for so many years on a policy agenda and campaigns that were simply about achieving citizenship for the undocumented.
 

And we were talking in a very insular way, only pretty much to ourselves and not even to our family members or others in our community. So I think that that's one of the things I would point to. Also, I think just recognizing that this is a global phenomenon, right? We have record numbers of people moving across the globe. And then finally, we thought that people who agreed with us have been revealed as actually not really totally agreeing with us. I think the economics, it's the reason I started with the economics, because that is a big part of what I believe led people to vote how they voted, but also because of the apparent crisis that people were experiencing in their communities. And so I'll just close by saying that collectively, I believe that we have failed to see the forest through the trees. We've been so insular, so focused on the weeds of the policies and the laws and have lost track of the fact that this is a narrative war that's about remaking America for the next 10, 15, 20, 30 years. And this is a time for us for listening, learning, for realignments, and for rebuilding the country.

Thank you, Doris.

[00:38:51.22] - Doris Meissner

Okay, well, now we have quite an overview and we also have quite a list of questions that people have written in. So we're of course turning to the Q&A part of the program. Please type any further questions that you have into the Q&A or the chat box or email them to [email protected]. I am going to— I will have to tell you that many, many of the questions are dealing with what's likely to come, what could happen under the next Trump administration. I'm going to try to avoid those because we don't know, and the speculation is not what we're trying to do today. What we're trying to do today is understand the record that has been established and what the nuances of that record are. So let me turn to a couple of questions that deal with those issues. One is— I'm going to lump a couple— why is there such a huge gap between the realities on the ground and the perception? Is this the administration's fault? Is this the fault of the way press coverage takes place today. On the issue of press coverage, Rafael, you're noted here as saying that the press covered Biden poorly and continues to provide poor coverage on immigration. How should the press be covering? What would have contributed, um, not only in terms of press coverage but also this gap between perception and reality? Uh, let me ask you first, Rafael, but then, uh, uh, Perhaps, Marielena, you'd like to pipe in as well.

[[FOR THE Q&A PORTION OF THE TRANSCRIPT, SPEAKERS ARE NOT IDENTIFIED BY NAME. PLEASE SEE THE RECORDING TO IDENTIFY SPEAKERS.]]

[00:40:34.14] - Speaker 5

Well, thank you. And yeah, it's an excellent question. I obviously have to start by saying that some of my colleagues, many of my colleagues are excellent reporters. There are reporters who understand the nuances of immigration. Some of them, like, at an expert level, like, they could be sources themselves. So that, that's been okay. There are— it's not that big a beat. You don't need that many reporters. What has happened is because of the media structure and how these companies make money, essentially, we need a lot of clicks. And the sort of thing that gets clicks is not usually— is usually very aligned to political posturing. And not very aligned to policy. So it's, it's like, I always say covering, covering immigration as a reporter is about as difficult as reporters who cover the Fed, for instance. And nobody wants clickbait about the Fed. You know, you want, you want the Fed to be independent, serious, policy covered, and that's it. So media was not able to rise above a very difficult political situation. It is It's not that we're the only ones turning it into clickbait. Essentially, a lot of political groups throughout the world are doing the same thing.

[00:42:05.02] - Speaker 5

We were just not able to say, listen, that's not where the story is, or, you know, enough headlines saying this is wrong, what you're hearing is wrong, this is the reality. And, you know, we collectively sort of chased the money and that I think that has proven to be a mistake. But this goes back, I'd say, at least to the mid-'90s. And if you look at the New York Times clips from the '50s, it was even worse. We have improved since then. And I'm picking on the New York Times because they have the archive. I'm sure everyone else was just as bad back then. Don't want to pick on them specifically. And just quickly on the Biden administration, What went wrong, I think, is they ceded the higher ground to Trump. They ceded the sort of his ideas were right. His definition of the problem was right. But we, we take care of it in a more humanitarian way. And obviously, you know, you'd rather have the original than the photocopy. And a lot of voters weren't really— they just weren't going to get that nuance because they weren't that interested. Frankly.

[00:43:16.05] - Speaker 1

Anything further to add, Marielena?

[00:43:18.15] - Speaker 6

Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. Look, I, not because Rafael is here, but I have the deepest respect for journalists covering immigration, right? It is a complex area that those of us who are lawyers also, you know, struggle on how to communicate about immigration laws and policies and how to humanize the issue in a way that reaches a broader audience. Second, however, I will say that the media contributed to the challenge because of those click rates and because corporate media is about what sells stories. The media contributed to a narrative that immigration was a problem, that the focus was almost exclusively on the border and not remembering to cover other stories that may have been less sexy, but about some of the issues that we've talked about today that were also positive things that the Biden administration were doing. And I think that the last piece that I'll say about that is also the importance of both humanizing and telling the stories of who we are, right? Who immigrants are in this nation. What were the, you know, what all the many ways that immigrants are contributing to local and state communities across the country and helping to run the economy of our country.

[00:44:31.15] - Marielena Hincapié

And then last thing I'll just I would say say there is a complete— I think many of us focusing on immigrant rights are using traditional media. That is not what the opposition has been using, right? The way that information is getting out there and the way that people are consuming information and a lot of misinformation and disinformation is happening through alternative and particularly digital types of media, many of which we do not. And I think the Biden administration failed to also use social and digital media in a way to get their story out about the good things that were being done.

[00:45:03.22] - Speaker 1

Okay, let me turn to questions about— on another aspect of this, which is the bill that was moving forward or that was proposed in the final year of the Biden administration. If that bill had succeeded, would it have made— would it possibly have made a difference in Biden's record on the border. And along with that, um, uh, the, the changes that have taken place at the border in terms of the numbers coming down, uh, that had to do with actions that Biden took very late in the administration, um, uh, that those along with the, the passage of a of a bill along, you know, of the Senate bill, what difference might that have made? Muz, maybe you want to take a try at that.

[00:46:01.14] - Speaker 2

Well, I think a lot of people have commented that how did the Biden administration finally get the numbers down without the bill that itself became part of the attack on the president. I think there were important similarities between the bill and what the Biden administration finally ended up doing. But there were important, huge differences, is that Biden administration at the end landed up doing a much more of a blunt instrument in controlling the border, and which has also led, therefore, a large number of people who many people argue are entitled to protection did not get it. One huge element of the bill would have been more resources. We'd have had more people in terms of personnel, both at the border among immigration judges and asylum officers. That's what it needs. I mean, we could do much better at processing people for protection claims if we had more judges and more asylum officers. I think that was— the lack of resources was a huge hindrance for this administration for getting this under control, and therefore it looked always chaotic. So to me, many elements of what Biden finally land up doing within the bill. But the big difference was the resources.

[00:47:17.20] - Speaker 6

And if I could just add that, Doris, because I think— so I would say a couple of things, right? One is, let's remember, Democrats had a trifecta, right? And so this was just not a priority, including the resource issues, right? I think there's a lot that the administration could have done that required increase in appropriations that Democrats didn't provide it. The Republicans didn't provide it once they were controlling the House. And on, you know, a big part of the legislative agenda is— or just the Biden agenda on immigration was obstruction, both by Republicans in the House once they had control on the— particularly on this issue of appropriations. And then I think that effort by Biden in January of this year was seen as a political stunt by many people. So even if it had passed, I think he still would not have benefited from the optics of that, because I think optics is a big part of this, as Muz mentioned at the beginning. And then I think the other piece is the obstruction by Texas and other states, right? There's both the— not only the bussing of migrants and flying of migrants, which DeSantis did, but also the litigation, right, which blocked every single step.

[00:48:26.19] - Speaker 6

I mean, it reminds me so much of when President Obama was elected and McConnell was very clear of like, We are going to obstruct his agenda. That's what Abbott did, frankly, through litigation. And I think that was an area that we collectively underestimated the impact that that would have on progress.

[00:48:44.15] - Speaker 5

Could I add and inject a little controversy onto that one? I think Trump's political read, as usual, was spot on. Trump saw that if that if that bill passed, if that bill became law, Biden would have something to take to the voters. And Trump's narrative, part of Trump's narrative about Biden is that he had nothing on immigration, that he was empty-handed, which, as explained by many people here, was false. But I think Trump saw that bill as a threat, and it was a political threat to him. Who knows if it would have changed the election, if it would have flipped 280,000 votes in the blue wall states. We don't know that. We can't know that. But it was Trump eliminating a potential threat, and he did it very effectively.

[00:49:35.15] - Speaker 6

Agree with you completely on that, Rafael. It's part of his genius, the narrative genius.

[00:49:42.12] - Speaker 1

So let me go to another dimension of the Biden years, and that is other governments. Particularly Mexico. There is a question here, a couple of questions about negotiations with foreign governments, the role that that has played, particularly Mexican immigration enforcement, but also things that are taking place now in Panama, et cetera. Let's talk a little bit about that topic and be sure that people understand how that has played with all this. Rafael, you've covered that. Do you want to say something more about the diplomacy surrounding Biden's efforts?

[00:50:26.04] - Speaker 5

Yeah, for sure. I think I would— the part that I would defer to the experts on is on the quantification of how much Mexico's efforts have contributed to the reduction of crossings at the border versus the changes that Biden has made domestically. But it has contributed. Biden's challenge with Mexico was he was dealing with Andrés Manuel López Obrador for a majority of his term until October 1st of this year. And López Obrador is a very transactional, very wily politician who got along famously with Trump, even if they don't speak each other's language, you know, in a phonetic sense, but they speak each other's language, like, very much so politically. So it was a little bit harder for Biden. And I do wonder, and this question is up in the air between López Obrador and now President Claudia Sheinbaum, if they regret not offering whatever it is that they offered to Biden, sort of, you know, it's usually called the United States exporting its human rights violations. If they regret not offering it sooner, do they want to deal with Trump? Claudia Sheinbaum almost certainly does not, but now she's forced to. But yeah, that diplomacy was complicated and it was very much a personality issue.

[00:51:49.11] - Speaker 5

And as always with Latin America, the fact that Mexico and the rest of the continent really, and the rest of the region, is sort of a second thought, if you're lucky, in US diplomacy, it never helps. It doesn't make the Mexicans or anyone else that willing to interact with the United States at a level that could end up with good policy results. They were willing toward the end of López Obrador. They apparently still are willing with Sheinbaum to limit and to interior deport a lot of third country nationals. How long that will last, I think now it's going to be like the The fair bet is that it'll be pretty much permanent because a big flow of migrants toward the United States ahead of the USMCA. It's not a renegotiation, but it is a renegotiation, opening up the books on the treaty. It's the last thing Mexico wants or needs. So I guess in that sense, you could say Biden was successful at finally getting Mexico to do larger part of the dirty work.

[00:53:04.17] - Speaker 4

Sorry, if I can just jump in here quickly. I was going to add to what Rafael was saying. The diplomacy aspect of the deportations that the Biden administration carried out was really important, and I think also a not well-known aspect of their strategy. They made a concerted effort to negotiate with countries that had previously been recalcitrant, which means that they weren't taking back their nationals, or at least not in large numbers. And talking about Mexico, the Biden administration came to a historic agreement with Mexico for the first time to take back third country nationals in an agreement that was paired with a humanitarian parole process, which Mexico said its agreement was contingent on. That agreement meant that the U.S. could send back Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to Mexico, which had a deterrent effect. And then there was also the agreement with China to restart deportations like there. And, you know, this was a big change that resulted in fiscal year 2023, the Biden administration deporting people to more than 170 countries around the world.

[00:54:22.22] - Speaker 1

Well, um, a little bit of a variant also then on these questions is one that talks about all of the hundreds of actions taken together under Biden. Muz, I think maybe you can start the answer on this. Did Biden completely dismantle or reverse what Trump did during the first term, or did he leave important rules intact?

[00:54:46.21] - Speaker 2

Well, I mean, I think, uh, he inherited a really bad border policy, as all of us have pointed out, and left it intact till, uh, May of 2023. So a lot of people think that bad policy was left intact for a very long time, from which we suffered. Uh, I think in terms of interior, uh, he really hugely reversed the interior enforcement and I think brought it to the best it has ever been. That, I think, will remain a very important legacy of this administration. He, and he, he brought in people under different liminal statuses to a record level. I think that will remain a very important part of this legacy. The problem is that both these two things that I just mentioned can easily be reversed. So in terms of he built something But these are all now clear that, that, that president's actions are the only way for making policy in our country since Congress is silent on these things. Therefore, the fact that they are done by each administration also tells you they can easily be undone by the next.

[00:56:00.07] - Speaker 1

Okay, there's a very practical question here. Which is how is it that with all these people coming into the country, they were able to find work in construction, find work in the service industry, be part of the economy?

[00:56:26.14] - Speaker 2

Right. Can I just take a quick second?

[00:56:28.09] - Speaker 1

Excuse me?

[00:56:31.06] - Speaker 2

No, no, did you finish your thought?

[00:56:32.24] - Speaker 1

No, no, no, go ahead.

[00:56:34.05] - Speaker 2

No, I was just going to quickly add because we also, you know, I do think in summary we do have two real important crises in our country. We do have a labor market crisis across occupations from low, mid to high levels. This is why a lot of these people who have come in, even though they came irregularly, have been absorbed. I mean, uh, Jay Powell, our Federal Reserve saying that we actually landed up having a soft landing because of the unexpected number of people who came through the border in the last 4 years. Again, another legacy of Biden administration. The reason nothing is happening on changes or reform through our legal immigration system so we could get more people legally for our labor market needs is because of the crisis at the border. So we do have these inter— these are twin crises. But they're getting interlinked. That's why I think people have just now assumed that unless we get the border crisis under control, we won't be able to address our labor market crisis.

[00:57:37.07] - Speaker 1

Well, this is a point, of course, that you've been making, Marielena. And this is the big broad picture in terms of our demographic future as a country, our economic productivity. And competitive advantage globally as a productive labor market. And those are all questions that loom large and will continue to be part of the immigration world. The degree to which the border and a border crisis stops any progress and stops conversation and understanding along those issues is one that we will need to continue to face and need to deal with. We at MPI, of course, will be continuing to cover these issues. We thank you for joining us today. We hope you'll join us again in the future for additional work that we'll be doing. We are very sorry that we couldn't get to all the questions. There were many, many, many questions. We'll answer those that we can online, but there will be an audio and video recording of available on our event website for this session. And reporters who may have additional questions, please call Michelle Mittelstadt at [email protected] with your questions. Thank you very much for joining us. Have a good day.