Claverack said:
A lot of words to admit the fact the enforcement and security mechanisms remained in the hands of a President who…failed to enforce the border laws at his disposal in the first place.
You don't pass a law codifying Biden's open borders while giving him free rein to block any attempt at enforcing the security/ immigration control provisions. That is meaningless and a waste of time that doesn't address the issue at all for those Americans who have suffered through these Biden-Harris policies on the border since the first week of their tenure.
Biden took executive action…only recently and only after leftists discovered the border was a losing issue for them.
Why did he need a bill to do the job he already had the power to do?
Because he never wanted to enforce border law and wanted his open borders policy codified into law with Republican help.
You're asking a good question here.
While there are a lot of different elements here, there's some history that explains some of this. In November 2018, Trump issued a proclamation doing things very similar to what Biden did earlier this year with his own executive action on immigration. For example, Trump's proclamation made anyone not crossing at a port of entry ineligible for asylum. However, the Trump admin was sued to block that rule. A federal district court and then an appeals court halted the Trump rules in 2020.
So, now, Biden is trying to thread the needle by putting more exceptions in his new rules hoping they won't get blocked the same way the Trump rules were. But, the same groups have already promised to challenge the Biden rules and there's a good chance they get blocked just like the Trump rules were.
This is why it would have been cleaner and more reliable to have new legislation in place which gives Biden and future admins authority to act.
Similarly, Biden does have authority under current law to limit/suspend immigration when its detrimental to the US. But, like with any executive order or rule, it's subject to review by the courts and they often apply an "arbitrary and capricious" test. Biden couldn't say, for example, "my neighbor Juan is a jerk, so no more immigration." Lots of Trump actions were shot down with this test. This is why Biden is attaching numbers to say asylum will be halted if illegal crossing exceed X number. He is attempting to demonstrate a well reasoned measure for detrimental impacts so that his action can't be colored as arbitrary. It's one thing for us on a message board to say that immigration clearly is a problem, but it's another thing to demonstrate a reasoned approach in court. The new law could help cutoff a lot of this scrutiny.
Personally, as a fan of limited government, I prefer the conservative approach of limiting action to the laws as written. Trump often took the approach of doing what he wanted and daring/forcing the courts to block it. I'm not a fan. Our system works best when the branches of the government work together.
Another big reason Biden's executive order is not as good as having new legislation is that the bill would have allocated funds, which only Congress can do. We need the money to expand facilities and hire ICE and CBP agents and immigration judges. Any action by Biden (or any future administration) just isn't going to get the job done without this. Even under the Trump administration we know there was an asylum backlog and we didn't have enough judges.
Again, I know not everyone is a fan of the fact spittin' (I'll try to keep it down), but there's a lot of good info here about Biden's executive action, why it's not as good as the legislation and why it's going to be challenged in court:
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/06/qa-on-bidens-border-order/