President Joe Biden admitted that America’s immigration system is broken on Friday, echoing sentiments shared by several Democratic governors and mayors who are overburdened by the border crisis.
Biden told a group of governors who were at the White House that bipartisanship in Congress has stalled after the Senate failed to pass a border security bill that would have included extra staffing for Border Patrol, along with other recent legislation.
“Congress has had a long, proud history, a bipartisan history, on immigration reform and abiding by our international treaty obligations, which we signed related to immigration,” Biden said. “These reforms made America a nation of laws, a nation of immigrants, and the strongest economy in the world. But something changed. Over time, our laws and our resources haven’t kept up with our immigration system, and it’s broken. And our politics has failed to fix it.”
The Senate bill would have also made changes to the asylum process, granted the president expulsion authority, and increased the number of Border Patrol agents and asylum officers, if passed. Republicans who opposed the bill said it did not go far enough.
“[The bill] also included the toughest set of reforms to secure the border ever in history. The Border Patrol chief himself said, ‘We need more people. We need more agents on the line.’ Our bipartisan bill got the Border Patrol the agents they need. It funded and hired 1,500 more agents and officers, 100 more immigration judges, 4,300 more asylum officers to get asylum decisions in months instead of years. But then, as we all know, petty politics intervened. The speaker of the House has refused to vote on the bill, even though, again, there’s significant support,” the president said.
The governors are in Washington this week to discuss bipartisan solutions to key issues facing the states, including border security, federal and state responses to natural disasters, high crime rates, and education.
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Biden encouraged the governors to contact lawmakers who prevented the legislation from passing and push them to pass meaningful border security legislation. He said that “doing nothing” was not an option.
“So if this matters to you, it matters to your state, tell your members of Congress that are standing in the way — show a little spine,” Biden said.
