Biden’s Deportations

There are some stories this week about how Joe Biden has carried out the highest number of deportations since 2014. Looking at it from a partisan angle people on the left may jump to the conclusion that Biden is bad in some way for deporting people. But what everyone ignores is that he is not deporting anyone because he does not want them here, these deportations are happening based on the proper legal process. It means the Biden administration is handling the immigration situation in the way Congress determined that it should be handled and things are working the way they are supposed to be working. Whether you like deportation or not, when the process is followed correctly, it is much better for the country, while also being fairer to the immigrants, than anything that ever happened, or certainly will happen under donald trump.

In order to understand the problem we need to look at the process as it should work, and why it has been under stress for so long. The main element of this is that the United States has a policy of being willing to accept refugees from other countries if their lives are in danger. There are disagreements over how many people we should accept and the requirements for them to qualify as refugees, but we have agreed upon laws that we need to follow. These laws have established a process to determine if someone qualifies as a refugee and the end result of that process is someone is either granted refugee status and can stay or they are determined to not qualify and they are deported.

The basic steps of this process are relatively straightforward but there are factors along the way that slow down the process which have led to our current immigration issues. It starts when a person decides they need to escape their country for some reason and come to the United States for a better life. They arrive at the border and attempt to cross. This may be done illegally, by simply crossing, or legally by going to an official entrance point. Once they arrive and encounter the authorities, they request refugee status. At that point, the United States, because it is a great country with decent people, allows the immigrant to enter with the caveat that they will need to go in front of a judge and prove their case that they truly do qualify to be a refugee. 

Going in front of a judge to determine their status is a major part of the process where issues arise. The big problem in the past few years was that there were a lot of people arriving and not enough judges to quickly work through the cases. This meant a large backlog developed and grew. Since America was not just going to kick the people out, who could be in danger if they go back to their country, we let them stay until they could face a judge and receive a ruling on their status. As the backlog swelled however the wait time also grew. Which meant it could be months or even years that someone could remain in the country awaiting their hearing. As the waiting times stretched longer, it created an incentive for others to come, even if they knew they would not qualify as a refugee. Knowing they could potentially come to the country for 6 months or a year or more before seeing a judge and having their status denied and being deported, many people decided that 6-12 months or more in the US was worth it for them to make some money before returning home. This of course exacerbated the backlog problem.

It should be noted the Democrats had an immigration bill with a measure that would have gone a long way towards alleviating this issue by adding more immigration judges which would have helped churn through these cases faster. In turn this would have significantly shortened the time people would have to wait (and be able to remain) in the US before seeing a judge. That meant there would be decisions on if they could stay or if they needed to go back, much sooner. But of course the GOP and trump blocked it because they do not want to fix our problems, they just want to complain about the problem and make their voters angry about it.

These deportations that are being reported now are likely deportations based on people seeing a judge, presenting their case as a refugee, and having the judge decide if they qualify or not. Basically, this is the process working exactly as intended. The fact that there are more deportations than there have been in a decade shows that the Biden administration is efficiently working through the backlog and doing exactly what a responsible, fair country should be doing. They are following the law, letting people present their cases, and having an impartial judge decide if they qualify based on the evidence and the law. The fact that 2014 is the last time we had this many deportations shows that the Obama administration also followed the process and efficiently enforced the law. This also shows that for all his bluster, trump was unable to deal with the immigration situation and made it worse. His failure on immigration caused the backlog to grow which is yet another problem Biden and the Dems had to fix and get under control again.

So nobody should be mad at Biden for a high rate of deportations. These are all based on the proper legal process and the immigrants had a chance to make their case to remain in the country. It was fair to them and it followed the law as our lawmakers designed it. Which is exactly what we should want from our leaders and is more than anyone can hope for over the next four years.