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Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., speaks to media after a Senate Republican policy luncheon, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

PARKERSBURG Congress can move forward now that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has chosen a new speaker, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Thursday.

Thats welcome news from my perspective, Capito, R-W.Va., said.

Republicans in the House Wednesday voted for Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., who led the efforts to overturn the election results in four key states where President Joe Biden won.

The House has been without a speaker since Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted on Oct. 3.

Peppered by the infighting amongst Republicans in the House, Johnson was the fourth nominee for speaker following Reps. Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise and Republican Whip Tom Emmer.

The House and Senate can now address the business of the nation including aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and to address illegal entry at the southern border with Mexico.

Lets get back to work, Capito said.

Any funding bills have to include efforts to seal the southern border, which doesnt necessarily mean throwing money at the problem, Capito said. Capito spoke to reporters from West Virginia in a press briefing on Thursday from Washington.

The most migrants ever tried to cross into the United States from Mexico in the last fiscal year, according to Capito. About 270,000 migrants attempted to cross, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.

Terrorists may be coming to America through the southern border, Capito said. The flow has to be stopped at the point of entry, she said.

While barriers appear to impede illegal entry, the illegal immigration issue isnt just money, Capito said. The United States could require those seeking asylum to remain in Mexico while their cases are pending, a remain-in-Mexico policy, which worked under Donald Trump and which President Joe Biden can impose, but chooses not to, she said.

We need immigration reform, Capito said.

Other topics included the hydrogen storage hub in West Virginia, which is proposed in Washington, W.Va., and the military blockade against promotions caused by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. The hub will be part of the nations efforts toward cleaner energy, she said.

Tuberville is blocking the promotions over Pentagon abortion policies.

Capito has opposed Tubervilles methods, but deferred comment on a resolution working its way through the Senate to move on the promotions. The senator also said she was reluctant to make rule changes.

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Capito: Election of New House Speaker 'Welcome News' - Wheeling Intelligencer

Amy Torres, Executive Director of New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, joins Steve Adubato for a conversation about the ending of Title 42, our nations asylum crisis, and the need for immigration reform. Recorded 6/20/23

Steve Adubato asks Amy Torres about the state of Title 42 and immigration enforcement. Torres responds, I think its really important to understand that colloquially we use words like refugee and asylum seeker to describe people who are fleeing for their own safety, trying to protect themselves, trying to protect their loved ones. Its important to understand that in U.S immigration policy these words refugee, asylee, theyre very restrictive coded definitions that change over time and we saw that with title 42 right. There was a real restriction on the internationally recognized right to asylum, there were barriers put in place that made it very difficult to file for asylum. We saw it again when title 42 ended and the Biden Administration proposed their own new restrictions that in many ways went further than title 42, to make it even more difficult to file for asylum, to come to the U.S and stay here and seek safety. I think weve heard a lot over the last few months about a border crisis, or a migration crisis. Really what were facing in the United States is a policy crisis. We have a deeply broken immigration system that means that its more difficult than ever to try to come to the United States, and even more difficult once youre here to be able to legally stay here.

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Examining The State of Immigration Reform and the Nation's Asylum ... - InsiderNJ

It is difficult to find an issue that more exemplifies the dysfunction of American government today than immigration.

In the past year, more than a million people have entered the United States through the southern border, overflowing shelters and straining public services. Most of the newcomers claim asylum, a status that allows them to be in the country legally but leaves them in limbo. They often must wait years for their cases to be heard, and it can be a lengthy process to obtain legal permission to work.

This nation has long drawn strength from immigration, and providing asylum is an important expression of Americas national values. But Congress has failed to provide the necessary resources to welcome those who are eligible and to turn away those who are not. Instead, overwhelmed immigration officials allow nearly everyone to stay temporarily, imposing enormous short-term costs on states and cities that the federal government hasnt done enough to mitigate.

Vice President Kamala Harris and others have correctly identified corruption and instability in Central and South America as reasons many people continue to flee their homes, and the United States should do what it can to help countries with these challenges. But that is not an answer to the disruption that this recent wave of people is causing in American communities right now.

The federal governments negligence is fueling anger against immigrants and stoking divisions. The question is whether Congress, mired in dysfunction, can stir itself to enact sensible changes so the nation can reap the benefits of immigration.

Neither party has come up with a solution that is both practical and compassionate. Many in the Republican Party want to return to the Trump-era policies of strictly curtailing refugee and asylum admissions and requiring many people to stay in Mexico while their asylum cases are heard. Some Republicans still embrace the fiction that building a huge wall would solve everything, despite abundant evidence that it would be ineffective in stopping people from coming to the border. On Thursday the Biden administration moved to expand that wall as well.

Some lawmakers on the left have tried to ignore or downplay the extent of this challenge. Illegal border crossings by families, while they are a small portion of the total number of people entering the United States, are rising. The consequences of allowing huge numbers of asylum seekers to enter without sufficiently providing for them are real. The result is not only relentless pressure on the immigration system at the border and elsewhere but also a devastating failure to protect people from smugglers, who have made sneaking people into the United States a big business, or from exploitation after they arrive.

Congress can raise the level of legal immigration by increasing the quotas for employment visas and other categories that allow people to come to the United States legally and have the chance to become permanent residents and then citizens. Those targets have been too low for too long, particularly for people who can fill gaps in the labor market. In July there were more than two million open positions, for example, in construction, hospitality and retail, and the current system keeps out many engineers, computer programmers and scientists. To change that, Congress would need to act and to establish new quotas that more accurately reflect the level of immigration that Americans want and can reasonably accept.

The country has already seen the consequences of keeping legal immigration artificially low. The Trump administration, even before the pandemic, dramatically decreased its annual quota for refugees and made many other forms of legal immigration much harder to get. Even worse, the administration removed children from their parents in a cruel attempt at deterrence. That inhumane policy also didnt work, as people continued to travel north to present themselves at the border to make asylum claims. Those numbers rose every year of Mr. Trumps presidency, with the exception of 2020, and the result was chaos.

While the Biden administration has mostly ended the policy of family separation, it has been slow in resettling refugees, has not pushed for raising quotas for most other forms of legal immigration and has offered no sustainable, long-term solution to the challenge of illegal immigration. Last year the administration ended the remain-in-Mexico policy and tried to make it easier for people to apply for asylum from their home countries. Nevertheless, the number of asylum seekers has continued to soar. The asylum program was never meant to be a vehicle for large-scale immigration and still needs an overhaul, as this board has argued.

Then there is the question of how to support those who have already arrived in the United States. Its also difficult to find political heroes here.

There were the cynical tactics deployed by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and others who decided to transport thousands of immigrants to Democratic-led cities and states to see if they would maintain their longstanding posture of openness in the face of a sudden surge of newcomers. As despicable as this ploy was, it worked.

More than 145,000 people have traveled to New York State from the southern border over the past year, and the scale of this latest round of immigration has tested New Yorks fortitude and its historic embrace of newcomers; as of 2021, about one in three people in New York City was born in another country.

The current crisis has shown how difficult it can be to absorb waves of new people without adequate processes or the resources to back them up. Many of the new immigrants have come without family or other community ties, and the surge of people without a place to stay has strained the citys shelter system, when the New York region already was struggling with a shortage of affordable housing. A right-to-shelter mandate dating back four decades requires the city to provide a bed to anyone who needs one, and of the more than 115,200 people in city shelters, about half are asylum seekers.

Mayor Eric Adams has responded to this challenge with increasingly sharp, ominous statements. This issue will destroy New York City, he said on Sept. 6. Every community in this city is going to be impacted, he continued. The city we knew, were about to lose. Demonizing populations of people is dangerous and will not help the city respond to their needs, even if the mayor is right to raise the alarm and insist on more federal aid.

President Biden announced on Sept. 20 that his administration will extend temporary work permits to nearly half a million Venezuelans, a concession to intense pressure from Mr. Adams and other state and city leaders from his own party who find their communities overwhelmed.

That will help some businesses that are desperate for more workers. But Mr. Bidens reluctance is understandable; expanding work authorization without addressing Americas broken immigration system will do little to deter people from trying to cross the U.S. border unlawfully or to seek asylum, and it gives Congress a pass.

Some Republican leaders have stepped up to offer help. Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah and Gov. Eric Holcomb of Indiana wrote an essay in The Washington Post in February offering to sponsor immigrants, citing more than 300,000 job vacancies between the two states. In meaningful ways, every U.S. state shares a border with the rest of the world, and all of them need investment, markets and workers from abroad, they wrote. That border can remain an embarrassment, or it can become a big asset to us once again.

For that to happen, leaders in Congress will have to do their part. Its been a decade since Congress has seriously considered immigration reform. Both parties have missed opportunities to do so, the Democrats most recently at the end of 2022. The party had a narrow majority in Congress but failed to pursue a compromise bill that would have increased funding for border security as well as expanding capacity to hear and decide asylum claims quickly. The future of DACA, a program for those who were brought to the United States as children, is also in doubt, despite its broad public support.

The White House is limited in the actions it can take; Mr. Biden may have exhausted what he can do through his executive authority. Until Congress decides to take meaningful action, America will continue to pay a price.

Source photograph by Busara, via Getty Images.

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Opinion | The Cost of Inaction on Immigration - The New York Times

Periodically, American presidents have tried to release pressure from these systems by granting amnesty or temporary protection from deportation to large groups of migrants, as Biden recently did for Venezuelans. But these are short-term Band-Aids that do little to affect the ongoing causes of illegal immigration and still leave millions of workers vulnerable to abuse.

Congress, for its part, has proved itself incapable of passing the kind of legislation necessary to recalibrate the economic incentives. Though five major immigration reform bills have been brought to a vote since 2006, none of them made it through both the House and the Senate. To be fair, perhaps no single legislative act or executive order could ever change these dynamics. But some people have suggested targeted measures that could make unauthorized migration less chaotic, less exploitative and less profitable to unscrupulous actors.

The National Association of Immigration Judges has made a strong case for increasing the funding for immigration courts. There are now more than 2.5 million cases pending in these courts, and their average processing time is four years. To handle this backlog, the nation has fewer than 700 immigration-court judges. According to Mimi Tsankov, president of the association, this disparity between manpower and caseload is the primary reason many immigration cases, especially complex asylum cases, take years to resolve. To speed processing times, Tsankov explained, the courts need more judges but also more interpreters, legal assistants and law clerks. Improved efficiency would benefit those who merit asylum. Others say that it would also decrease the incentive to submit frivolous asylum claims in order to reside legally in the United States while waiting for an application to be denied.

Among academics, another idea keeps resurfacing: a deadline for deportations. Most crimes in America have a statute of limitations, Mae Ngai, a professor of history at Columbia University, noted in an opinion column for The Washington Post. The statute of limitations for noncapital terrorism offenses, for example, is eight years. Before the 1924 Immigration Act, Ngai wrote in her book about the history of immigration policy, the statute of limitations for deportations was at most five years. Returning to this general principle, at least for migrants who have no significant criminal record, would allow ICE officers and immigration judges to focus on the recent influx of unauthorized migrants. A deadline could also improve labor conditions for all Americans because, as Ngai wrote, it would go a long way toward stemming the accretion of a caste population that is easily exploitable and lives forever outside the polity.

One of the most curious aspects of American immigration politics is that Congress tends to invest heavily in immigration enforcement but not in the enforcement of labor laws that could dissuade businesses from exploiting unauthorized workers in the first place. Congress more than doubled the annual budgets for ICE and C.B.P. from 2006 to 2021. At the same time, it kept the budgets for the three federal agencies most responsible for preventing workplace abuse OSHA, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board essentially flat. There are now only 750 Department of Labor investigators responsible for the countrys 11 million workplaces. As absurd as it sounds, the enforcement of labor standards is a very controversial thing to do in this country, David Weil, the former administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, told me earlier this year. The laws needed to protect the interests of workers are already on the books, he said; the Department of Labor just needs funding adequate to enforce them.

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Why Can't We Stop Unauthorized Immigration? Because It Works. - The New York Times

I am an invader.

Actually, the son of invaders. But with presidential hopefuls Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis having taken aim at the 14th Amendments explicit creation of birthright citizenship, its clear that invader by association is enough to lump me in.

Im the U.S.-born son of Mexican immigrants. My parents emigrated separately, met in this country, married and had three sons. They were undocumented until I was in grade school.

The Republicans invasion rhetoric is not new. It was a winner for Trump in 2016.

The opportunists who are stirring up hatred of immigrants recognize the enduring resonance of this alleged infestation as Trump has also called it among GOP primary voters.

Even if President Joe Biden wins reelection, scapegoating immigrants will continue.

Biden bested Trump in 2020 by more than 7 million votes and 306 Electoral College votes to Trumps 232. But many of us still had to reconcile ourselves to the fact that some 74 million Americans!!! voted for a visibly corrupt liar who demonstrated great affinity for racists, white nationalists, nativists and others who later attempted a coup at his urging.

Disheartening doesnt even begin to describe the feeling.

Anti-immigration bias has been with us for a while. Lets see, there was the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798; in the 1850s, the nativist Know-Nothing Party; the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882; the Immigration Act of 1924 with quota preferences for white immigrants; and, in 2015, Trump unleashed a broad vilification of Mexican immigrants. He then won the presidency.

Not all the targets of anti-immigrant bias in our history were Asians or brown people generally. The Irish, Italians, Jews and Eastern Europeans have all been cast as dangerous and unworthy to live among us.

A nation of immigrants? Sure, but our memories are so faulty on this score.

There is still an immigration divide. Republicans focus on the enforcement part of immigration policy the border and deportations and Democrats want comprehensive reform that includes a legal path to residency for those here without documents.

As a wave of asylum seekers strains social services in New York and Chicago, Biden has directed federal money to build more of Trumps border wall, succumbing to the political heat. We need Democrats and Republicans alike to work toward a real solution comprehensive immigration reform that acknowledges the hard-working undocumented immigrants who are essential to the U.S. economy and deals with the root causes that drive people to flee murderous repression and economic hardship in their countries of origins.

Instead, here we are again with presidential aspirants using immigrants as a punching bag.

The lack of self interest in our immigration policies simply stumps me.

Consider: There is underway a ballooning of the retiree population with fewer working-age adults left to, well, work and pay into Social Security.

Immigrants can fill this gap to the benefit of all.

But gaining legal entry under current policy is so arduous to the point of impossibility that many just come and take their chances on deportation. The lure: U.S. employers who are eager to hire them.

Of course, we could be just as hard on immigrant-hiring employers as we are on the immigrants they hire. Instead, we reserve our animus for undocumented immigrants.

These employers know what too many others dont immigrants have higher work participation rates than do the native born (and lower crime rates, too).

We could, out of simple self-interest, enact comprehensive immigration reform. But this is not likely to happen soon because of our never-ending culture war.

Ominously, immigrant-bashing has expanded to include a call for the end of birthright citizenship.

The libertarian CATO Institute notes a key benefit of birthright citizenship. It speeds up the assimilation of immigrants. I would add, we get Americans who are perhaps more grateful to be Americans than Americans born of American citizens.

Hence, me. A college educated, mucho taxpaying, birthright citizen, who is also a U.S. Navy veteran and has been working past age 70.

Invaders?

The title Americans suits us birthright citizens just fine.

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Confessions of a birthright citizen - Wisconsin Examiner