How Biden’s immigration battle threatens his biggest foreign policy victory
The rising number of people entering the United States from Mexico has been a political vulnerability for President Biden over the past three years, hurting his approval rating and opening him up to political attacks.
But now the crisis threatens to undermine US support for the war in Ukraine, jeopardizing the core of Biden’s foreign policy.
After meeting with Mr. Biden at the White House on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson insisted that the Republican-led House would not pass legislation to send aid to Ukraine unless Democrats agreed to impose new restrictions on the US-Mexico border.
And even if the two parties were to reach some kind of agreement, many Republicans, especially in the House of Representatives, would be reluctant to hand Mr. Biden an election victory on an issue that has given them a strong line of criticism over the election delivered. White House. The issue is also central to the candidacy of Biden’s likely opponent this fall, former President Donald J. Trump.
The standoff shows how the debate over immigration in the United States is no longer just about the border. The issue is spreading to other parts of Mr. Biden’s agenda and gaining outsized influence as Republicans use it to block the president’s top foreign policy priorities.
“I think the vast majority of members of Congress support aid to Ukraine,” Mr. Biden told reporters on Thursday before traveling to Raleigh, N.C. disaster.”
Mr. Biden has characterized aid to Ukraine as a matter of American leadership on the world stage. If the United States fails to send more, he warned last month, other allies could scale back their own commitments. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, he said, could regain momentum in the war.
But Republicans in the House of Representatives have so far remained unmoved. Mr Johnson said this week he was focusing on “national security and a humanitarian catastrophe” within US borders.
Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona and secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration, said she could not remember a time in recent decades when much of an administration’s agenda hinged on immigration policy.
The legislation Mr. Biden is pushing doesn’t just include aid to Ukraine. It also has money for Israel and Taiwan — and billions of dollars to bolster security along the U.S.-Mexico border, but not enough to meet Republican demands.
“They saw this as an opportunity and they seized it,” said Ms Napolitano, describing current immigration policies as “terrible”.
“It really means that the president has to go as far as he can and work with the people across the aisle to get a package through,” she said.
Mr. Biden has said he is willing to make compromises on the border. Democratic negotiators, with White House approval, have indicated they would consider proposals that would make it more difficult to obtain asylum in the United States.
The White House appears less willing to substantially limit humanitarian parole, a program that has allowed thousands of Afghans, Ukrainians and migrants at the border to enter the United States.
While members of Congress are still debating the details of that policy, it is not clear that a compromise is on the horizon.
In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday evening, Mr. Johnson made clear that he had discussed negotiations with Mr. Trump, who encouraged him to resist compromise.
Biden also faces opposition from progressives, who do not want to see restrictions on asylum.
“Republicans are holding foreign aid hostage to enforce extreme immigration measures that would not solve the problem,” said Nanette Barragán, California Democrat and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “Many of us support aid to Ukraine, but not at the expense of these extreme immigration policies on the table.”
Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank, said tying aid to Ukraine to border restrictions was “unprecedented.”
“It is difficult to imagine a time earlier in our country’s history when something so important from a national security perspective, which would normally unite all Americans of both political parties, has been embroiled in gamesmanship,” said Mr. Kessler.
The White House initially portrayed the decision to combine immigration with the request for military funding as a temptation, or at least an attempt at compromise, to win over Republicans who had called on Mr. Biden to get tougher on the border .
William B. Taylor Jr., who served as ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009, said there would be serious consequences for both Ukraine and the United States if the strategy failed.
“I imagine the calculation was that there is a lot of support for it and if we put them all together we will have a winning strategy,” Mr Taylor said. But if the White House fails to reach a deal, he added, it would undermine “a crucial part of American foreign policy.”
“That American leadership would be seriously damaged if we cannot provide the Ukrainians with the help that will enable them to stop the Russians now,” he said. “It has enormous consequences.”