Smith:  An Immigration Plan for the New Administration

Immigration has been a major campaign issue, one where rhetoric won out over reality and where migrants have been unfairly demonized for political gain. Now that Donald Trump has won a decisive victory, however, will there be room for common sense solutions?

The situation is actually much more stable than it was a year or two ago. I check regularly with migrant shelters along the border – El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, Deming, New Mexico as well as Palomas and El Modelo, Mexico – and the number of migrants has dramatically decreased. In fact, four of these shelters have closed because of a lack of migrants.

This is due to two factors. First, the agreement between the Biden administration and the former president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to have Mexico tighten its southern border and make it much more difficult for migrants to enter Mexico and head for the US.

Second, Biden’s very restrictive executive order limiting the number of permissible asylum claims. The numbers in Biden’s  order amount to about 500,000 a year which seems to me to be too low. We’re a rapidly aging country with a declining birth rate and a shortage of workers. Trump and his advisors will obviously review these numbers but I predict that the business community – particularly agriculture and construction – will finally make themselves heard in terms of the need for guest workers.

No matter what the numbers turn out to be, the new administration has to do a better job of assisting those communities to which migrants are going.

As for those crossing illegally, I’m with the columnist, Thomas Friedman who says that we need “a high wall with a big gate.” We have an obligation to control our border and the tools to do it are in reach. The most important tool – more so than additional wall construction –  is more Border Patrol agents. I have seen them at work in the Sunland Park, New Mexico area on numerous occasions and am impressed with their training, skills, and careful treatment of the migrants they detain. Funding for more agents was contained in S. 4361, the bi-partisan bill sponsored by Senators James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), Chris Dodd (D- Connecticut) and Kyrsten Sinema (I- Arizona) but the bill was killed on orders from Trump.

S.4361 was a massive effort on the part of those three senators and could be a good starting point for new legislation which would include funding for more agents. Senators Dodd and Lankford will remain in the Senate and could lead a renewed effort to achieve consensus, particularly Lankford.

What about those migrants who are already in the US?

a.        Roughly 11 million migrants are here illegally, most of whom came legally but then overstayed their visas. The vast majority have families, homes, jobs or businesses, pay taxes and lead solid, law-abiding lives. We should allow them to “clean up” their situations by registering, showing that they have no criminal behavior, and paying a fine. The fine would have to be sufficiently large so that those who have come here legally don’t feel that “jumping the line” pays off.

Those who have significant criminal records could be deported. This is not a new issue; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been doing it for years. The Enforcement and Removal Operations arm of ICE nearly doubled arrests and removals last year.

b.        The young people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) were brought here by their families and are not guilty of any criminal intent. It would be barbaric, therefore, to force them to leave the country.

c.        There are many thousands awaiting either asylum or parole hearings. The delay in processing their cases is not their fault; it is due to an insufficient number of judges or magistrates. Funding was available for this in the bi-partisan Senate bill, S.4361, the Border Act of 2024.

There are several other factors that have to be considered.

1.        Drugs.

Migrants have been characterized as the major source of drugs entering the US and that simply isn’t true. The vast majority of drugs come through our ports of entry in large trucks. S. 4361 would have appropriated $2 billion to develop technology to inspect these trucks without subjecting them to the kinds of inordinate delays that could have huge economic consequences. Mexico is, after all, our biggest trading partner and much of that trade is via trucks crossing the border.

2.        Relations with Mexico.

The president-elect cannot put together an effective immigration program without having a strong, cooperative and respectful relationship  with Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first woman and first Jewish President. This would include a better coordinated effort to combat the cartels that are making billions of dollars off human smuggling and the movement of drugs. These brutal and now multi-national cartels are the villains here, not migrants, and we do not have an effective bi-national effort to combat them.

3.        Aid to the “sending countries” especially in Central America.

El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have been major “sending countries” and we need to continue reaching out to help them break their cycles of violence, corruption and poverty. This, however, is a very long-term issue.

Rhetoric about migrants helped win the election for Donald Trump. Now it’s time for reality. Let’s not overlook the contributions migrants make to our society, an aging society that needs an influx of not only young workers but people of all ages who are committed to building better lives here for themselves and for our country.

Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by Morgan Smith, a retired lawyer and government official from Colorado who now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Smith writes regularly on border issues. He has been going to the border – mostly Juárez and Palomas – at least monthly for the last 13 years to document conditions there and assist a variety of humanitarian programs and, more recently, migrant shelters. The column appears in the Rio Grande Guardian with the permission of the author. Smith can be reached by email via morgan-smith@comcast.net.

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