THE W SHAPED HOLE IN AMERICAN GOVERNANCE:

America's immigration problem has a lot to do with cynicism, and there is no consensus among Americans about what to do about illegal immigration. The Biden administration has inherited a mess from its predecessors and Congress, and seems intent on handing down the hideous heirloom again. (It doesn't help that mainstream media outlets have almost entirely ignored immigration, ceding the issue to right-wing media to present it however it helps them.)

The beginning of the asylum and refugee problem goes back to the Obama administration's panicky, incompetent response to Republican outcries about border crises, which, unlike the "caravans" we hear about every midterm season, were real. The crisis overlapped with the beginning of the war against the Islamic State and sporadic terror attacks. Add to this pre-existing security concerns about thousands of migrants crossing the border. The administration decided to reallocate Department of Homeland Security resources, including immigration case officers (known as "immigration judges" although they work for the executive branch), to background checks and screening on the border-crossers. Not coincidentally, this is when immigrants learned that applying for asylum could be a side door into the country.

When someone applies for asylum in the United States, they are given a work authorization and are allowed to stay--again, without any status but also without violating the law--until the USCIS processes the case to either be approved for asylum or deported. Sometimes asylees really do get lost in the country and skip the hearing--no hearing, no deportation. The Trump administration decided to fix the problem by adopting a "last-come, first-served" policy: Immigrants applying for asylum since 2018 will go ahead of everybody else in the system. So each new asylum seeker goes ahead of me and further delays my case.

Under U.S. law, an asylum case must be processed within 180 days. During the George W. Bush administration, it would take a few weeks for an applicant to come out of the system--not counting Global War on Terror-related delays. When Obama left office, because of the growing border crisis and the reduction in case officers, wait times had stretched to four or five years. Under Trump, for those who applied before the "last come, first served" policy, the wait time doubled to around eight years. The Biden administration has kept both policies but also exacerbated the surge at the southern border. The wait time is now well north of a decade.

Congress has shown no interest in fixing the problem. Republicans have an interest in prolonging it because their base voters are mobilized by the ongoing crisis. Democrats are the same because they too can mobilize their base by pointing to Republican reaction and occasional bigotry.

The Biden administration has, reportedly, considered marginal reforms but decided against them. According to Andrea Flores, a former official at the National Security Council tasked with border management, the proposals have been killed by Ron Klain, Susan Rice, and Jake Sullivan--Biden's chief of staff, head of domestic policy, and national security advisor.

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