The immigration crisis complicates Biden’s foreign policy priorities
The White House portrayed it as a step toward compromise.
When President Biden sent his request for aid to Ukraine and Israel to Congress last month, he included a request for more money to help with security at the border with Mexico, a sweetener intended to address both a crisis if to win the support of the Republicans.
But this move now leaves Mr. Biden in a box.
By raising the issue, he fueled demands from the right for broad changes in border policy, leaving his own party divided on an issue that many Democrats see as a political vulnerability heading into 2024, which threatens the prospects for top priorities on further complicated foreign policy.
The president signaled Wednesday that he was open to further negotiations with Senate Republicans after they blocked his emergency spending bill.
Mr. Biden now faces a difficult choice about how much he will dive into talks on an issue that has defied decades of efforts to reach bipartisan compromise. And he will have to decide how far to go in giving in to conservative demands that he substantially limit the number of migrants admitted to the United States while their asylum claims are processed.
“The president of the United States should be involved,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “Everyone behind me will vote to help Ukraine if we can get the border right.”
The White House has little time to reach a compromise with a Congress whose members are leaving for recess next week. Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, told reporters he was willing to continue talks through the weekend.
On Thursday, however, Senate Republicans showed no sign of backing down.
Senior Biden administration officials have told both sides during negotiations that the White House is open to making it harder to get asylum in the United States, according to four people familiar with the matter. One such measure would impose a stricter definition that migrants must meet when they claim they need refuge because they fear persecution in their home country.
But Republicans say that’s not enough. They want the United States to impose policies that would make most migrants ineligible for asylum and have to wait in Mexico until their cases are heard.
The impasse has put the core of Biden’s foreign policy – support for the war in Ukraine – at stake.
“We are of course very concerned about this. We still have a few weeks here,” John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said of securing aid for Ukraine. “There are a small number of Republicans who want to hold that aid hostage because of some pretty extreme border policies that the president doesn’t want to talk about. That said, he did say that we are willing to negotiate in good faith.”
On Wednesday, the president implored Congress to put aside “petty, partisan, angry politics” and pass the $111 billion bill. He said that if he does not do so, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could regain momentum in the war.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said he needs US funding to defend against the Russian invasion. Mr. Kirby said Thursday that the White House was “not in a position to make that commitment to Ukraine given the situation on the Hill.”
Republicans, meanwhile, are drawing attention to migration at the southwest border, which has reached more than 8,000 border crossings per day in recent days — and has become a major political burden for Mr. Biden.
Immigration advocates say the standoff is proof that Biden should never have linked war funding to immigration reform in the first place.
“Strategically and substantively grouping the issues in the supplemental funding request was a catastrophic mistake because it was the signal, it was the beginning of what came to fruition yesterday when the president said immigrant communities are a bargaining chip,” said Heidi Altman, the policy director at the liberal National Immigrant Justice Center. “That’s treason.”
Mr. Kirby said the White House does not regret merging the administration’s foreign policy priorities with immigration into the bill because they are all of an “urgent nature.”
“It was in our urgent national security request: $6 billion for the border. We share a sense of urgency, so act accordingly,” Mr Kirby said.
Mr. Biden’s aides have consistently responded to Republican attacks on the issue of the border by pointing to a plan proposed early in the Biden administration that would have created a path to citizenship while boosting funding for the limit would have been raised. Republicans, they say, would rather use the migration crisis as a political weapon than compromise on solutions.
The White House has faced criticism from both sides, highlighting the challenge of reaching a compromise on one of the most polarizing issues in domestic politics.
Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said in a statement co-signed by 10 other Senate Democrats that “using a one-time spending package to implement these unrelated permanent policy changes sets a dangerous precedent and risks our international partners receive assistance.”
Sen. John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, spoke on behalf of his Republican colleagues Thursday when he boasted about bringing immigration to the forefront of the national conversation. “It appears we have the president’s attention,” he said.
Pieter Bakker, Eileen Sullivan, Karoun Demirjian and Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.