Biden’s new migrant protections may undermine his tough-on-border stance

Just two weeks ago, President Joe Biden issued an executive order designed to show he’s tough on illegal immigration by partially closing the border. Now Republicans say he is heading in the opposite direction with a move that will help some illegal immigrants obtain legal status.

Biden announced on Tuesday that he would give illegal immigrants married to U.S. citizens an easier path to citizenship in response to pressure from his left flank. Two weeks earlier, he rolled out a policy to deny asylum to illegal border crossers as polling shows immigration to be a major flashpoint in the 2024 race for president.

The dual announcements reflect an attempt to please all sides on one of the most divisive issues of the 2024 election cycle. But Biden risks erasing the tough-on-border messaging he delivered at the start of the month with new protections that Republicans say amount to “amnesty.”

The balancing act was evident as the president rolled out his latest executive order this week, with the White House calling for expanded “lawful pathways” for immigrants even as it reiterated the need to secure the border.

“The president is trying to play the middle,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon told the Washington Examiner. “He proposed a very tough border control act that many progressive members of his own party and conservative Republicans rejected. The main thing with this [newest] executive order is keeping families together.”

The question is whether voters will appreciate the nuance or side with Republicans who say his policies have caused a crisis at the border.

In both cases, Biden can contrast himself with Donald Trump, Bannon argues. The asylum restrictions allow the president to highlight a bipartisan border deal the former president helped tank in the Senate earlier this year, while helping immigrants married to U.S. citizens stay in the country will be compared to Trump’s controversial family separation policy.

To be eligible, illegal immigrants would need to have been in the country for 10 years and married to an American citizen as of June 17. It’s a population that was already eligible for green cards via their marriage, though those immigrants until now needed to return to their home country as part of the process.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made similar points as Bannon during the afternoon press briefing Tuesday, contrasting Biden with Trump without naming the former president directly.

“Making sure we’re protecting families is a priority of this president,” she said. “The way to actually deal with this is to have comprehensive immigration legislation. … What we have seen is Republicans getting in the way because of what the last president said.”

But several reporters asked about the timeline of the move, coming after Biden has been in office for 3 1/2 years and as the general election sharpens into focus. One asked if the new order was a “counterweight” to the one made two weeks ago.

Republicans, as expected, panned the move as an election-year amnesty stunt that will contribute to more illegal border crossings. Trump’s ex-senior adviser for policy, Stephen Miller, even suggested the action was worthy of impeachment.

Tom Homan, who served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration, said Biden’s order “will result in more illegal aliens crossing the border to take advantage of a giveaway program” and predicted it will lead to increased marriage fraud.

Conservatives also predicted that lawsuits against the order will emerge quickly given that the policy change was made without congressional approval. The White House insists it is on solid legal footing.

Immigration has been a vexing political issue for Biden. It is his worst-polling policy area, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, with just 32% approving how he’s handled it.

There is also evidence that voters are sympathetic to Republican arguments on the issue, with a CBS poll finding that over 60% of respondents, including a majority of Hispanics, now favor mass deportations. Gallup polls have repeatedly found immigration among the top voter concerns heading into the presidential election.

While immigration may be a GOP-friendly topic, the most recent executive action could also help Biden in swing states such as Arizona, Nevada, or Georgia, which all have more than 100,000 voters living in mixed-status households.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) made this case in an op-ed for the Spanish-language news outlet Univision.

“The road to the White House runs through Nevada, and people in my state are paying attention,” she wrote. “We know that our immigrant community makes us stronger and that we can make our border more secure while we fix our broken immigration system.”