President Biden campaigned in 2020 as a proud defender of immigrants, promising to deliver a fair, orderly and humane immigration system from Day 1 of his administration. As we head into the teeth of election season, with Republicans stoking fury over immigration, it’s hard to know what the president’s promises were worth.
Mr. Biden announced on Tuesday that he was making it easier for many undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens to seek legal residency without leaving the country first. It’s his version of the Obama-era DACA policy, which protected undocumented young people called Dreamers from deportation.
Mr. Biden has delivered blessed news for what is estimated to be 500,000 families. But I still wonder where Mr. Biden is leading the country on immigration. The president likes to blame Congress for the failure to enact “comprehensive immigration reform,” whose long, slow death has been a bitter joke among immigrant advocates for years. Are his eyes on the border, on history or just on November? Are immigrants a key constituency or just political soccer balls?
Immigrants living inside the United States, including those who will receive relief from the new executive order, are in a different situation from migrants at the border. But many of us were at the border once, too, vulnerable strangers hoping to build lives and families here. My path goes back to El Salvador, a country that was brutalized by a war stoked by the United States.
I’m one of those who went north on La Bestia, the deadly migrant train from southern Mexico to the U.S. border. I crossed the swift Rio Grande with relatives, our arms locked so my cousin didn’t get swept away. We didn’t drown or get detained, and we found opportunity and family here. Now I’m a U.S. citizen, helping to lead an organization by and for immigrant workers.
That work has never been harder. As Donald Trump and his party barrel forward with a mad agenda to imprison and expel undocumented immigrants by the millions, Mr. Biden is weaving all over the road. When June began, he said he was going to shut the border to nearly all asylum seekers, borrowing from the Trump playbook. He chose to push the limits of his executive powers to deter people fleeing for their lives, repeating the Republican lie that the country must take drastic steps to secure the border.
The administration should have a clear, confident, consistent vision on immigration instead of just ping-ponging between border harshness and beneficial half measures for some of the undocumented. It should be leading us to a better place, not stealing moves from Mr. Trump and his allies.
Critics say Mr. Biden is adopting the tactics of Mr. Trump and Stephen Miller, his immigration czar, to end asylum, even using the same clause in the Immigration and Nationality Act that Mr. Trump cited to justify a travel ban on Muslim countries.
Immigrants are right to be terrified about what another Trump administration would do. Mr. Trump and his allies are promising to pull up the entire undocumented population by the roots, whatever the cost and damage. Republican-led states like Arizona and Texas are pushing their own crackdowns, with punitive laws and dangerous border barriers designed to criminalize undocumented immigrants, or possibly kill them.
We hope the worst won’t happen. But hope is not a survival plan. Members of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, an alliance of more than 70 immigrant- and low-wage worker organizations across the country, met this month in New Jersey to plan our futures. Our alliance doesn’t make a practice of asking people’s immigration status, but our member organizations are mainly made up of undocumented workers.
We learned about the many and growing tentacles of immigration enforcement — laws that deputize local authorities for immigration crackdowns, criminalize helping unauthorized migrants or turn the state police into deporters and border enforcers. We are reviving the “migrant protection committees” and other forms of grass-roots resistance that helped neighbors protect one another in the days when Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s raids swept through Maricopa County, Ariz., and family members disappeared into custody.
We’re getting ready to fight in metaphorical trenches, holding the line against unjust laws and continuing our defense of bedrock constitutional protections, like the right to seek work on the street corners. We’re not waiting to be rescued.
There have been improvements. We know that Mr. Biden’s Homeland Security and Labor Departments have been cooperating on an innovative but little-known labor-rights program, called DALE, which protects undocumented workers who blow the whistle on employers who violate laws on worker pay and safety. It’s not legalization or a path to citizenship. But it benefits the undocumented, and we’re doing all we can to help our members get it.
But Mr. Trump holds our future hostage, as he does yours. Everyone benefits from a just, humane immigration system that is fair to workers and families, is attuned to economic needs and honors the country’s long history of outsiders’ building roots and working their way into the American fabric. The economy is at stake, but it’s more than that. Millions of immigrants — including many in mixed-status families, where one spouse has citizenship or legal status and the other is undocumented — are summoning the courage to defend themselves as they protect this country and its values.
We have so much to lose. Mr. Biden knows this, and took a step in the right direction this week. We hope it’s not too late for the rest of us.