• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Big Picture>
  3. immigration>

Headlines and rhetoric from the border don't match reality

Mario H. Lopez
https://twitter.com/mariohlopez?lang=en
October 25, 2021
Haitian immigrants crossing the Rio Grande into Texas

U.S. Border Patrol agents observer Haitian immigrant families crossing the Rio Grande to Del Rio, Texas, in September.

John Moore/Getty Images
Mario H. Lopez is president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a nonpartisan public policy advocacy organization that advances liberty, opportunity and prosperity for all.

The weekslong headlines citing the number of migrant encounters by the U.S. Border Patrol routinely venture into the sensational. And certain activist segments, including extremist anti-immigration organizations, are all too eager to amplify the news and add their own false narratives into the public sphere.

The hyperbolic narrative was further complicated by the recent feverish rush out of Afghanistan and the spike of Haitian refugees that resulted in many stories about their makeshift camp in Del Rio, Texas, and the response from border authorities.

The common thread in the misleading claims is the desire by anti-immigrant voices to deceive average Americans, causing alarm by insinuating that millions of people are coming to our shores. Even worse, that migrants are making our country into a "cesspool of humanity," as former President Donald Trump recently claimed.

What the data shows is that numbers for monthly encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border have fluctuated for years. Reasons vary, and are often cyclical, but also driven by factors in the home countries of those who come to America just as many generations of migrants have in the past.

The pandemic, of course, resulted in very few people travelling in 2020. An increase in 2021, with conditions improving and the economy moving toward recovery, was inevitable. The numbers for border encounters also skyrocketed twice under Trump — first in April 2019 and again during the summer of 2020.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The principal factor driving the statistics for border encounters is something called Title 42, an obscure statute that allows the government to close the border if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes that there is a serious public health danger.

The invocation of Title 42 started in March of 2020, under Trump's administration, citing public health concerns despite objections from the CDC's top doctors.

Other public health experts weighed in, agreeing with the CDC. Dr. Anthony So, of the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, wrote to then-CDC Director Robert Redfield: "The decision to halt asylum processes 'to protect the public health' is not based on evidence or science."

The Title 42 rationale for turning away refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants has been kept in place by the Biden administration.

Prior to the implementation of Title 42, migrants encountered by authorities were supposed to be processed through established procedures, according to U.S. law, that may include removal or detention — or worse if someone has a criminal record, for example.

Under Title 42, everyone is blindly turned away, with no processing, and with no screening for Covid-19, despite the purported rationale. Border Patrol agents expel the vast majority of crossers immediately, sometimes within hours of being apprehended.

The immediate expulsions not only run counter to our own laws and established procedures, but they allow for migrants to repeatedly attempt crossings within a short period of time, creating backlogs of people waiting to be processed, applying for asylum, etc.

The reality is that while Title 42 drives the statistical number of encounters up, the actual number of people crossing and attempting to cross does not necessarily fluctuate wildly over time. For example, without the repeat crossers who can make multiple attempts thanks to Title 42, the numbers for the first few months of fiscal 2021 would look nearly identical to fiscal 2019, before the pandemic.

The rising number of "encounters" spurs the attention-grabbing and often sensationalistic headlines of record-setting border apprehensions that often serve as an excuse to tack on additional demonstrably false claims that we have "open borders" or that illegal immigrants are flooding the entire country.

But facts prove otherwise. The truth is, by far the most important factor that contributes to the problem of illegal immigration is the lack of suitable options for legal immigration, a point to which most Americans are oblivious since they, thankfully, never have to deal with an immigration regime so opaque and bureaucratic that it can take over 20 years to immigrate legally.

But even that only applies to a select few. Immigration policy expert David Bier sheds much needed light, explaining that "under U.S. immigration law, it is illegal for anyone in the world to travel or immigrate to the United States unless they fall into very narrow exceptions." Bier continues: "Effectively, if they don't qualify as a select few high skilled workers or family members of U.S. citizens, they can't come legally."

While the root is easy to identify for anyone who looks beyond the headlines, the solution is complicated by politicians who lack the courage and will to work constructively toward a modern and streamlined process for legal immigration. Until then, the misleading headlines and nasty rhetoric are likely to continue.

From Your Site Articles
  • Trump is dissolving Congress in plain sight - The Fulcrum ›
  • Want to know what will happen in 2020? Look to state polls - The ... ›
  • Costs, dysfunction block immigrants' path to citizenship - The Fulcrum ›
  • Repairing America’s Broken Democracy Featuring Mario H. Lopez with the Hispanic Leadership Fund - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Migrant encounters at U.S.-Mexico border are at a 21-year high ... ›
  • What are President Biden's challenges at the border? - BBC News ›
  • Immigration: Is US-Mexico border seeing a surge in migrants? - BBC ... ›
  • U.S. Customs and Border Protection | Securing America's Borders ›
immigration

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Our Staff
03 February

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Rabbi Charles Savenor
03 February

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
03 February

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Lawrence Goldstone
02 February

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Katherine Kapustka
02 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February
Videos

Video: The dignity index

Our Staff

Video: The Supreme Court and originalism

Our Staff

Video: How the baby boom changed American politics

Our Staff

Video: What the speakership election tells us about the 118th Congress webinar

Our Staff

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
03 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February

Podcast: Collage: The promise of Black History Month

Our Staff
01 February

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
30 January
Recommended
Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take
Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Civic Ed
Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcasts
Video: The dignity index

Video: The dignity index

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Big Picture
Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Big Picture