Will Republicans strike a border deal?

ON DECEMBER 6TH Republicans rejected President Joe Biden’s request for $106bn of funding, most of it to help arm Ukraine, on the basis that its provisions to secure America’s southern border did not go far enough. A group of senators now seem close to striking a bipartisan deal on immigration rules, thought to include tougher policies as the price of Republican support. But it looks likely to be defeated in the House of Representatives. On January 14th Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said that meaningful border reform would have to wait until a Republican was president. Yet on January 17th, after a meeting with Mr Biden, he hinted that he might be open to a compromise after all. Is one likely?

The scale of the problem is clear. The number of people crossing from Mexico to America has soared during Mr Biden’s presidency. December, when border officers processed more than 300,000 migrants, seems to have been a record-breaking month. Officials encountered more than 2.4m people attempting to cross in the fiscal year that ended in September, another record. The highest annual tally during Mr Trump’s presidency was 852,000. The Biden administration says the surge reflects a global trend: in September 2023, 114m people were displaced worldwide, according to the UN, the most since records began in 1975. But Republicans blame Mr Biden for removing restrictive Trump-era policies.

Senate negotiators have yet to release any details of their proposal. It may include a scheme similar to Title 42, a policy introduced by Mr Trump during the covid-19 pandemic that allowed border agents to turn away asylum-seekers on public-health grounds. The new power would cap the number of people who can cross the border each day, and allow immigration officers to reject those arriving after the limit is reached. Republicans also want to increase rapid deportations and raise the standard of “credible fear”, which allows asylum-seekers to stay in America if there is a “significant possibility” that a judge would find them at risk of persecution at home.

The sticking-point appears to be humanitarian parole, a device established in the 1950s that allows the government to grant temporary leave to remain. It has often been used to admit refugees fleeing war zones, most recently Afghanistan and Ukraine. But the Biden administration has used it especially liberally. Since January 2023 the government has allowed up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to enter via parole each month, provided that they have a sponsor in America. Republicans want to cap the number entering the country in this way; Democrats are unwilling to curtail a policy that they say relieves pressure at the border.

But there is disagreement among Republicans, too. Mitch McConnell, who leads the Republican minority in the Senate, has advised his party to make a deal: another chance at immigration reform may not come along even if Mr Trump is re-elected, he believes. But Republicans in the House, who have a narrow majority, are in no mood for compromise. They have opened impeachment proceedings against Alejandro Mayorkas, Mr Biden’s homeland-security secretary, over his response to the surge of migrants. In May 2023 they passed their own bill along party lines: it has no chance of becoming law while Mr Biden is president, but sends a clear signal to voters. The bill would mandate the construction of a wall along the southern border, require asylum-seekers to stay in a third country, such as Mexico, or be detained until their cases are resolved and remove protections for migrant children. The speaker has resisted pressure from his right wing to use a looming government shutdown as leverage: on January 18th the House passed a stop-gap spending bill to keep the government funded until March. But Mr Johnson is keen to show his colleagues that he will stand firm on border security. Hard-right lawmakers defenestrated his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, and have threatened to do the same to him if he missteps.

This febrile atmosphere makes the chances of border reform—tricky even under a more productive Congress—look slim. Plenty of Republicans will conclude that this is no bad thing. The party has made opposition to Mr Biden’s border policies a central part of its campaign in this year’s elections. That seems to be fertile ground: a recent poll found that 45% of Americans view the situation at their southern border as a crisis. ■