The NPR Politics Podcast - One Roadblock To Immigration Fix? GOP Politicians Love The Optics

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Though both parties have agreed for decades that the U.S. immigration system is in dire need of reform, the optics of border-crossing migrants have become a red-meat campaign tactic for Republicans, precluding the possibility of compromise legislation. Recent moves by the governors of Florida and Texas have put the issue back in the spotlight.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, immigration correspondent Joel Rose, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Learn more about upcoming live shows of The NPR Politics Podcast at nprpresents.org.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, what's up NPR Politics Podcast? It's Rayvon Owen. I'm a singer and songwriter, but I also deliver the remains of dead pets to the stars of Hollywood. I know. This podcast was recorded at 12.36 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, September 19th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I may or may not still be delivering and now just being a star. All right. Now here's the show. Oh, my gosh. I think this is like the response to our query for people to submit timestamps with unusual jobs. Well, Rayvon, you certainly have an unusual job.

Certainly. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And today on the show, we're talking about the politics of immigration. So let's bring in our colleague, Joel Rose. He covers immigration for NPR. Welcome back to the show, Joel. Hey, glad to be here. Republican politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have been decrying what they are calling an immigration crisis at the southern border. And the way they've responded is by literally transporting migrants, putting them on planes

and buses to Democratic-controlled cities and states like Washington, D.C., and then most recently, Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. Here's the Florida governor's justification. The minute even a small fraction of what those border towns deal with every day is brought to their front door, they all of a sudden go berserk and they're so upset that this is happening. And it just shows you, you know, their virtue signaling is a fraud. OK, Joel, I want to start with you. Can you explain to us who the people being shipped around the country are?

Who are the folks coming to the U.S. and what are they being told? Sure. We've seen a pretty dramatic shift this year. A growing number of migrants coming from farther away in the hemisphere, places like Venezuela and Cuba and Nicaragua. And that is significant because those migrants generally cannot be quickly expelled from the U.S. under the pandemic border restrictions known as Title 42. So a lot of them are being allowed into the country, and that includes those 50 migrants who wound up on Martha's Vineyard. Three of those migrants told NPR that they were misled. They were told that they were going to Boston and were lured onto that flight, they say, with the promise of expedited work permits. When we're talking about the buses from the border, that's kind of more of a mix. Often the migrants do know exactly

where they're going, and they're just taking the state-funded buses to save money. But we've also heard of cases where migrants feel misled about the buses as well and expected to find more, you know, help and support on the other end. So the explanation that we hear from Republican politicians for doing this is that the situation at the border is has been out of control and that essentially they are experiencing a disproportionate impact from people crossing into the United States. How does that square with the reality of what you yourself have seen at the border and what the facts are? Yeah, well, it's busy at the border, no doubt about that. The Border Patrol has made a record number of apprehensions at the southern border this year, breaking the record they set

just last year. And that is straining the resources of immigration authorities and non-profit organizations at the border. But, you know, a couple of things to point out. Those are apprehensions, which means by definition that the migrants got caught or turned themselves in. About half of them are being quickly expelled under Title 42. And by the way, many are crossing multiple times, which is inflating the total number. You know, and another thing to note is that very few of those migrants actually stay at the border for long after they're released into the U.S. Most of them have friends or family somewhere in the country. So they end up in places like New York or California or Illinois or Texas and Florida, but they end up, you know, sort of in communities of immigrants and migrants

in those towns often. And then they can pursue their asylum claims in the U.S. But those can literally take years to play out because of the backlog in immigration courts. Joel, in terms of those applications for asylum taking years to play out, the governors of these states have called these immigrants illegal. And I guess I'm asking you, are they illegal? They seem to be going through a legal process. And if they were illegal, they would have been deported, and moving them around the country would be trafficking. So are they illegal? I know they might be adjudicated illegal in the future, but right now they're protected by the immigration laws of the United States. Is that correct? They have crossed the border illegally in many cases. But then, as you say, they are released into the U.S., often paroled in these days,

and they're supposed to turn themselves into immigration authorities in whatever community they wind up in to begin this legal process of pursuing their asylum claim. So I don't think I have a clear-cut answer for you on this, because they are in removal proceedings, right? I mean, they are, many of them are going to end up being ordered removed from the U.S. But for the moment, they're still in this process. They are allowed to make asylum claims when they're here. And that is legal under U.S. law. But I mean, there's no doubt, Mara, that politics is at play here. And it does seem from what we even heard Ron DeSantis himself say, the governor of Florida, that there's a sense that Democrats are virtuous signaling.

And they feel that one of the goals of these trips is to not just get attention, make immigration to a big political issue of the midterms, but also rile up Democrats. Well, owning the libs is kind of the number one strategy of a Republican politician appealing to his base. Immigration is a very hot button issue with the Republican base. You heard Ron DeSantis say liberals are going to go berserk. He wanted them to go berserk. And what was interesting about the arrival of these immigrants on Martha's Vineyard and just truth in advertising here or full disclosure, my very first journalism job was for the Vineyard Gazette on Martha's Vineyard. When they arrived, instead of Martha's Vineyard saying, oh, we please get these illegal immigrants out of our community,

they rallied to them. And there were, you know, Spanish AP students from the high school who went to translate and people came with food and housing and other kinds of aid for them. But the reason that you would send a plane load of immigrants to a small island off the coast of Massachusetts that has a winter population of 20,000 is because it's a symbol of an elite summer colony where Barack Obama has his summer house. And it clearly, the entire thing was political. And it was done to make a point and to get a rise out of your opponents, which they failed at, at least on that level. But even here in Washington, DC, I mean, the reaction, it seems in some of these places to these transports has not been, I think, a sense of anger at migrants coming, but a sense of

empathy. Yeah, I would and in Washington.C., and in New York, and in Chicago, you know, where these buses have been going for months now, we have seen kind of the same thing. We've seen immigrant advocates, you know, going to meet the buses, trying to take care of the needs of the migrants who are arriving in these communities. You know, it has been a challenge, though, because the numbers have really mounted with the buses. We're talking about thousands and thousands of migrants have been moved from the border into these cities. And, and they're unhappy that they haven't gotten more help from the mayor of D.C. on that. And in New York City, thousands of migrants have ended up in the city's homeless shelter system, to the point that Mayor Eric Adams said last week that the system is nearing its breaking point. Yeah, and just, you know, if we want to step back even

further, this country has a severe labor shortage that's only getting worse. And Congress has tried and failed over and over again to pass comprehensive immigration reform where illegal immigration would be shut down, but legal immigration would be allowed to the extent that the American labor market needs it. But it has become such a polarized political issue that neither side wants to give the other a win on immigration. And nothing has been passed. This has been going on for decades. Yes. And to that point, one of the things the White House often points out is President Biden, one of the first things he did once he got into the White House was put forth

what could have been, they say, comprehensive immigration legislation. And it's really gone nowhere in Congress. So let's take a quick break, and we will be back in a moment. Anne, we're back. And Mara, I want to talk more about the political implications of all of this. Governor Greg Abbott in Texas and Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, both of them are up for re-election this fall. And so some of this does seem like a campaign stunt as much as anything else. Well, I think it's a political stunt. Many people on both sides of the aisle have acknowledged that. And Abbott and DeSantis are not just up for reelection. They are both considering running for president. So this is something that appeals to the Republican

base. It's not just immigration as an issue. Every single election cycle, we hear about caravans. They generally disappear after election day. But immigration becomes a salient issue, an issue that's talked about more the closer we get to election day, because it's a surefire way to rally the Republican base. And if you're thinking about running for president in the Republican Party, you want to not just hit on the issues that the Republican base voter cares about, but also it's a stylistic, performative thing, owning the libs. And this does seem to be resonating with at least a portion of the Republican base. I was reading that Governor DeSantis received a standing ovation in Kansas after this. I mean, there does seem to be support amongst this, amongst, you know, a subset of the electorate.

But that being said, I mean, are there chances you think of this strategy backfiring broadly as a political strategy ahead of the midterms? Well, I don't know if it'll backfire broadly, but I can tell you that there are signs it's backfired narrowly in Florida because these immigrants were from Venezuela, which is run by a communist Marxist government. So they're kind of seen in many Hispanic communities in Florida as very much like Cubans. They're sympathetic. They're fleeing a regime that the Republican Party is supposedly against. So it could backfire in some ways. Joel, I actually have a question for you about the logistics of transporting migrants across the country. You know, my understanding is there are instances where the Department of

Homeland Security does move migrants across the country. Can you help us understand the distinction between that and what is happening now and who is paying for these trips? You're right. DHS does move migrants around when there's like acute overcrowding on part of the border. Say they would bus, I guess, or occasionally fly migrants somewhere else where they can sort of process them in a less crowded, sort of more reasonable way. But these flights and buses are being publicly paid for by the states, by the taxpayer. In Florida, the flights were funded by this program that the legislature authorized. And of course, it's interesting to note that these migrant flights actually originated in San Antonio, Texas. They were not from Florida. Yeah.

Yeah. With migrants who may have never actually set foot in Florida, though DeSantis has defended this, saying that the migrants intended to go to his state before they were instead persuaded to fly north to Massachusetts. In Texas, Governor Abbott has been using tax dollars to pay for charter buses for months now, transporting migrants from the border to cities up north, including D.C., New York, Chicago. And the governor of Arizona, by the way, has been doing something similar too. The other thing that kind of shows that it was a political stunt, at least according to the White House, is the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said that Fox News was given advance notice by these governors that these migrants were being moved, but the White House was not. But presumably, if there is some concerns about overcrowding at facilities or just seeing a

record number of migrants cross through, presumably these governors in the White House ought to be in touch because immigration is often dealt with at a federal level. They ought to be, but maybe for the same reasons that Congress can't pass immigration reform, they're not. All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. Joel Rose, we always appreciate your reporting and having you on the podcast. So thanks so much. Yeah, you're welcome. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.