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Why Republicans hold Biden accountable for border problems
President Truman famously had a sign on his Oval Office desk that read: "The buck stops here." Indiana Republican Congresswoman Victoria Spartz believes that truth holds when it comes to President Biden and US immigration dysfunction as well.
"I will lay responsibility on President Biden because he is in charge," Spartz tells Ian Bremmer in an interview for GZERO World. "He's a top executive president. Trump is campaigning to be president, so I'll judge him if he is a president, I think he will likely might be."
Ian interviewed House members on both sides of the political aisle for this episode, and Spartz, a Ukrainian immigrant who supports increased US aid to her home country, is not surprised that the bipartisan border deal could not deliver it.
Watch full episode here: The US border at a tipping point
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week online and on US public television. Check local listings.
- Ian Explains: Why Congress can't fix the US border problem ›
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The US border crisis at a tipping point
How do you solve a problem like the US southern border? If that question makes you hum a certain Sound of Music song, just know that it's more pleasant than whatever has been floating through the minds of the hundreds of members of the US Congress. Because if there was ever a week of dysfunction on Capitol Hill, this was it. Congress failed to advance, or even entertain, a bipartisan US border deal, which also included much-needed funding to Ukraine. Why? Because of a man who is not even in government now, but very well might be back again soon: Former President Donald Trump. To unpack why the border crisis is getting worse instead of better, Ian Bremmer speaks with lawmakers on opposing sides of the aisle in Capitol Hill.
"We have an urgent need for funding for Ukraine," California Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren says in an interview for GZERO World.. "I mean, urgent...I look at some of my colleagues, and it's like the communist wing of the Republican party. They're ditching Taiwan to China, ditching Ukraine to the Russians. I mean, it's really unbelievable."
Republican Congresswoman and Ukrainian immigrant Victoria Spartz, however, defended why she wouldn't support a border deal in the current form. "I don't think that this piece of legislation really addresses the important issues and strategies that we have to deal with. I don't think it's really addresses in our border situation. It's just kind of lipstick on a pig."
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week online and on US public television. Check local listings.
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- The New York migrant crisis up close - GZERO Media ›
Ian Explains: Why Congress can't fix the US border problem
In this edition of Ian Explains, we look at the border deal that wasn’t and try to answer a very complicated question: Why is our immigration system so broken?
The US is a country of multiple realities. The economy is booming. Everything is expensive. Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. Donald Trump is the leader of the GOP. Taylor Swift is a pop icon. Taylor Swift is a Deep State asset. And then there’s immigration. In one reality, Democrats and Republicans have come together on legislation to secure the Southern border at a time when bipartisanship in Washington is all but unheard of. But in another reality, none of that matters, because the bill will never become law, Ian Bremmer explains on GZERO World.
So how did we get to this point, and why won’t anything come of it? The answer to the first question starts with Ukraine. Late last summer, US funding for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion (talk about a border crisis) was drying up. And for the first time since the war began, it was looking like Republicans were not going to approve more money until THEIR key national security issue was addressed.
Then President Biden did something truly unexpected. He said: “Ok.”
Watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television this weekend (check local listings) and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
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Migrants gather near the border wall
Biden is (re)building the wall
No, you haven’t gone back in time to 2016. Yes, the US government is building a wall along the southern border.
The Biden administration announced this week that it will bypass environmental laws to fast-track 20 miles of barrier construction in the Rio Grande Valley – where 245,000 border arrests were made over the last year.
President Joe Biden, who campaigned on stopping Donald Trump’s border wall, is being called a hypocrite by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. In a press conference on Thursday, he told reporters the decision was not a policy reversal, and while he does not believe border walls are effective, the money Congress allocated to barrier construction under Trump in 2019 could not be allocated elsewhere.
But if the money has been allocated since 2019, why restart construction now? Biden is facing pressure from his party to get illegal immigration under control. Democratic leaders from New York to Illinois fear it could strengthen Republicans' tough-on-crime platforms and cost them suburban and moderate voters.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has criticized Biden’s inaction, convinced the president to authorize work visas for nearly 500,000 Venezuelans to ease the strain on his city’s resources. Adams is currently on a tour of Latin America to dissuade would-be asylum-seekers from coming to the Big Apple.
Democrats will be trying hard not to lose gains in the state’s increasingly liberal cities and suburbs, particularly among Hispanic voters who are increasingly voting for the GOP. In Starr County, which is 95% Hispanic and construction on the wall is about to resume, voters shifted to the right by 55 points in 2020 compared to 2016.
Constructing a 20-mile barrier will neither win back these voters nor fix the country’s migrant crisis. But Biden’s decision underscores that border policy is a complex issue with decisive consequences in the 2024 election.
GOP wants immigration front and center in midterms
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
What role will immigration play in the midterm elections?
Immigration has been in the news a lot this week, and not because the US recently hit a record number of border encounters at two million. Several border state Republican governors, including those in Arizona and Texas, have started to charter buses to send immigrants from their states to the northeast, in the states and cities that are typically run by Democrats, who have generally embraced a more lax policy towards immigration, yet have not had to try and absorb the new migrants into the population in any significant numbers like the border states have. This practice has been going on for a while. Here in Washington, DC, the city has welcomed hundreds of migrants over the last several weeks. But the heat really got turned up to 11 earlier this week with a controversial stunt pulled by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who flew 40 Venezuelan migrants from Texas to the exclusive islands of Martha's Vineyard.
What's the Florida governor doing flying migrants from a state he does not run? Good question. What DeSantis has done has been a lightning rod for controversy and has attracted a lot of attention from the media to the number of migrants coming to the US, but has also led to accusations that he's acting coolly and treating these people as political pawns. DeSantis does not have much to fear from the people who've criticized this move. It's been pretty popular with Republicans and has ignited a conversation in the press about immigration that Republicans hope will help them win over independent voters in the midterm elections.
Many of these immigrants are seeking asylum in the United States, as they flee political persecution and poverty in their home countries. These people cross the border illegally, but once they have arrived and applied for asylum, they are here legally. It can take years to resolve these humanitarian claims, and many of these migrants end up staying in the US for months or even years while their cases are considered, usually relocated to other border states or places deeper in the United States.
DeSantis's controversial actions have drawn attention to this massive spike in immigrant encounters, from 1.6 million last year to over two million this year, and drawn political attention to the outsized burden that border states bear from the surge of migrants, which is a major issue for Republican voters but not so much for Democrats, who in this cycle are telling pollsters, care about abortion access and gun violence than immigration. The Biden administration is attempting to detain this surge in migrants and is deporting roughly half of the adults that they encounter. This is going to remain a major political issue that begs for a legislative solution, but Republicans and Democrats are so far apart on it, it's unlikely there's one coming anytime soon.
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