Politico published a story today about concerns among Democratic operatives that Mayor Eric Adams is putting the White House in a bad position with regard to migrants. The more he complains about the problems NYC is facing the better the electoral environment gets for Republicans.
The ceaseless, dire messaging is threatening Democrats in a pivotal election year, giving suburban New York Republicans another potent issue in competitive congressional races…
“If you listen to the mayor and you read the New York Post, you believe that everywhere you look in the city, there are migrants and asylum seekers on the street and you’re stepping over them,” said Alyssa Cass, a Democratic political consultant…
One person involved in a competitive Democratic campaign this year said the mayor’s comments on the migrant crisis in recent months have “affected the way Democratic voters thought about it and made it more conservative how they were thinking about it.”
The person, also granted anonymity to speak freely, said, “There were definitely times on the campaign when we were like, will he shut up already?”
While it may look like the White House is doing nothing on this issue, in fact they are scrambling behind the scenes. Karen noted this morning that Sec. Mayorkas is heading to Eagle Pass, Texas which has seen some of the largest influx. But the real action is happening in negotiations between the White House and Mexico. Sec. Blinken and Sec. Mayorkas visited and spoke to President ALMO about two weeks ago. Mexico’s stance is that they are willing to do something about stemming the flow of migrants if the US will agree to certain demands. President ALMO made these demands explicit in a speech last Friday.
In a press conference on Friday, López Obrador called on the U.S. to approve a plan that would deploy $20 billion to Latin American and Caribbean countries, suspend the U.S. blockade of Cuba, remove all sanctions against Venezuela and grant at least 10 million Hispanics living in the U.S. the right to remain and work legally.
All of those are extremely tall demands of an administration headed into a re-election campaign that may hinge on how firmly Biden is able to get control of the southern U.S. border, which saw a record 300,000 migrants processed by Customs and Border Protection in December.
Responding to those requests, a senior Biden administration official told NBC News that AMLO, as López Obrador is commonly called, “has a very ambitious agenda. For some of these things, we would need Congress to act. We share the vision that we need to lift up the region.”
Setting aside the procedural hurdles involved, there is no evidence that spreading $20 billion around Latin America is going to reduce the surge of migration to the US. In fact, it could backfire by giving lots of people the income they need to afford the services of a trafficker to bring them to the US. As for ending sanctions on Venezuela, how will that help? People are fleeing Venezuela in the millions because the socialist dictator in charge. Propping up President Maduro will only help him maintain his grip on a country that doesn’t want him in power.
Finally, the last suggestion is by far the worst. Granting permanent status to 10 million Hispanics in the US would be the equivalent of an international announcement that illegal immigration is welcome in the US. It would lead millions more migrants to start the journey toward the US in the hope that they too would eventually be granted a similar legal status. If you’re looking to discourage migrants from coming to the border, legalizing the last 10 million who came is the very worst way to do it.
And that brings us back to Joe Biden and the Democrats. Talks with Mexico are set to continue later this month but they really have no good options that I can see. They can’t agree to President ALMO’s terms and even if they somehow could that would make things worse. So we’re probably not going to get any real help dealing with this crisis from Mexico, which seems to be Biden’s last hope. Meanwhile, the ongoing influx (which some help from Gov. Abbott) is turning the mayors of NYC and Chicago into headline-generating immigration opponents. That ensures the uproar over this will not die down by election day.
Biden can’t fix the problem and he can’t make his own party stop complaining about it either. It’s a perfect storm of a problem that no amount of clever messaging by Antia Dunn can fix. Talking points don’t mean much so long as 300,000 people a month are arriving at the border.