The White House statement comes after a week of frantic negotiations in the Senate.
President Joe Biden on Friday urged Congress to pass a bipartisan bill to address the immigration crisis at the nation’s southern border, saying he would shut down the border the day the bill became law.
“What’s been negotiated would — if passed into law — be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in a statement. “It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”
Biden’s Friday evening statement resembles a ramping up in rhetoric for the administration, placing the president philosophically in the camp arguing that the border may hit a point where closure is needed. The White House’s decision to have Biden weigh in also speaks to the delicate nature of the dealmaking, and the urgency facing his administration to take action on the border — particularly during an election year, when Republicans have used the issue to rally their base.
The president is also daring Republicans to reject the deal as it faces a make-or-break moment amid GOP fissures.
This is not what I hear from people I know who are working here in Texas in the RGV. Many communities down there are overwhelmed with people. Politically, there is a real risk that what has been a Democratic stronghold in Texas is moving to the right based on just this one issue. Either way, there is legitimately a crisis happening down there
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Sure buddy, immigrants are super scary…
Where did you get that immigrants are scary from anything I said? I said there’s too many people for the small communities along the Rio Grande Valley to handle
Gee, maybe voting for small government Republicans for decades wasn’t such a great idea? I’d love for the federal government to be doing more to provide social services down there but you should be honest about how those communities all got so fragile to begin with and take your problems to the voters of Texas.
I’m really trying to understand your point in regards to what I said above
Those small communities are only unable to handle things because they have massively underfunded all their government agencies and social services. If the voters of Texas hadn’t sent budget busting morons to the state legislature for decades they wouldn’t be in this situation.
You don’t know that. Any community would face some challenges with a sudden influx of people. And money is not infinite. This is just slinging vitriol around.
if we had solid immigration policies, and a path for immigration through the southern border, and we actually staffed/supported it financially you wouldnt see all this
but we dont
we dont manage immigrants with the expectation they are going to come in and become citizens, and help them do so. racists are so hard set against helping people enter this country successfully it creates the environment you describe.
if you want to solve for what youre afraid of; push for easier immigration. push for immigration centers all along the border. push for services to help relocate recent immigrants.
this could all easily be accomplished.
we dont because > 50% of the country are fucking racist
No argument here with anything you just said, but it also doesn’t contradict anything I said. It’s easy to feel angry about our government’s failures and it’s easy to imagine ideal solutions. What’s a lot more difficult is accepting the reality of where we are right now and taking concrete steps toward making things better in the face of a very influential right-wing political and media machine that opposes all solutions. I think Biden is doing a fantastic job navigating this problem
The crisis isn’t at the border. The crisis is in El Salvador, Guatamala, Honduras, Venezuela, Mexico, and much of the rest of Central America.
If it were really a fucking crisis, Republicans wouldn’t be torpedoing the bill that would presumably fix the problem. It’s a political game and it always has been. Biden threatening to shut down the border only serves to take away the conservative’s political cudgel, something that they’re desperately going to need if they want voter turnout in November.
For as long as I’ve been alive, there’s been an “immigration issue” or “border crisis”. For as long as this country has been a country xenophobes have made the argument that immigration itself is a problem.
This.
And when Texas does anything to move immigrants the enlightened left grows self-righteous about how the immigrants are supposed to be cared for where they are.
Then you widely hear a sentiment: “Bussing immigrants in any form is obviously the result of lies and subterfuge”. Why else would they get on a bus to a sanctuary city/state?
The left needs to do some soul searching. If having a dozen busses show up gets you really bothered, then you’re less tolerant than you’re expecting Texas to be.
I’m solidly on the left. Pretty far along that spectrum. I’m far enough I don’t mind busses, especially if coordinated. But we cannot have an open border of any kind and no willingness to help. It’s asinine.
I have never heard this argument, personally. Me and my enlightened left homies think sharing the burden across cities and states is necessary, but that lying to people and doing it with zero planning or notice is abhorrent
Mobile isn’t allowing me to link, but I’d submit I have a reply (not yours) that starts to hit the notes I mentioned.
Lemmy, a known left haven, gets very upset about immigrants not being treated well. I’m good with that.
When the insistence that the good treatment happen elsewhere, it looks damn foolish.
Edit to add: in the past, articles about bussing here insistently called human trafficking and the allegation was solidly that immigrants were being herded or lied to to get them on busses.
Haven’t figured out how to copy/paste on mobile yet? Really?
this is objectively false. bussing immigrants around the country and then calling out unprepared states does not count
When I see an article about busses bringing immigrants, I have often found a high ranked comment about human trafficking and alleging this was all done with lies. That the bussing is immoral.
That was about a month ago.
I took down votes then, too. Except then my point was that if I was an immigrant one of the last places I’d want to remain is south Texas. Give me that bus ticket to a blue state.
It just looked like resentment that they were arriving in blue states and sanctuary cities. The same places that have long described immigrants as net positives.
Edit: “objectively false” when I have the conversation history. This is why I point to the undeserved certainty to lemmy throws around on topics.
I think it’s more that they’re being dropped off with no communication, coordination, planning, or notice at all. Just random bus loads of immigrants arriving in the night thinking there will be resources there to help them.
Oh, and then you get the obvious PR moves like bus loads showing up unannounced at the Vice President’s official residence in the middle of the night during a time where the temperatures were dangerously low. It’s sick – just using immigrants as a PR stunt to “own the libs.”
Significant portions of those involved on the thread were sure it was human trafficking. Spoke and voted that way.
I’m not saying the stunt portion of bussing is okay. But finding a term that diminishes the agency of immigrants and makes their appearance in blue areas the act of unlawful human trafficking (a specific and high bar to cross)… It just seemed convenient that everything about the arrival of immigrants was wrong.
I work with immigrants. They’re smart, capable and just want a shot at the dream. I’m not against immigration. I’m against lemmy seeming to find convenient reasons why it’s okay to happen until it happens nearby.
Those threads are not hard to find.
Texas is not responsible to house every immigrant that crosses the border. You didn’t say it, but others imply it.
Hold up. Do you think they arrive at the US border with communication, coordination, planning, and notice? Your complaint against Texas mirrors Texas’s own complaints against immigrants.
Because Texas can rationally make the same argument you just raised, I have to reject both. You don’t get to argue about a lack of coordination, because Texas doesn’t get any either.
If you want to fight back against Texas bussing immigrants to sanctuary cities, you have to flip the script: sanctuary cities need to send busses to Texas, ready to pick them up.
The bussing is immoral when they’re bussed into a town that isn’t expecting them and just dropped off. If Texas wants to coordinate the bussing with the destination cities/towns, fine do that. I have no problem with that. But when people are carted to a fucking Chicago suburb with no cold weather clothing in the dead of winter and just dropped the fuck off, how can you see that as anything but immoral?
I’ve never said that all conditions of the bussing are moral. Only that bussing itself isn’t immoral. Or human trafficking (as is often posited).
I’ve specifically said the stunt part isn’t cool. The bussing part… Can be.
I mostly agree with you, but it’s libs/Dems, not the left.