When President Joe Biden granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to nearly half a million Venezuelans in September, his critics argued that it was an incentive for other groups to seek similar relief.
The president did the right thing by granting this immigration relief because, in effect, Venezuelans faced serious food, humanitarian, security, political and even environmental challenges in their country, as the White House justified.
A few weeks after that announcement, thousands of migrants from various cities in the United States brought a clear message to the president: if he could use an administrative action to benefit 472,000 Venezuelans, why does he not do the same to benefit millions of undocumented immigrants, many of them which have been in the United States for decades?
It was a message that the well-known immigration activist of Mexican origin Elvira Arellano brought to the capital of the United States, as part of a broader mobilization of immigrants from cities such as El Paso, Chicago and New York.
“We have come to ask President Biden to use his power and make an administrative change to give parole to the 11 million undocumented immigrants so that they can have a work permit,” Mrs. Arellano, who now lives in Chicago, tells me.
“The Supreme Court issued a ruling saying that the president is the only one who has the power to make administrative changes, as he just did with half a million Venezuelans. That means that he can make a change and that is what we ask for,” she added.
This is a similar scenario to the one Barack Obama faced in 2012. In June, a few months before the midterm elections, he approved DACA and ingratiated himself with millions of Latinos. At the end of the election, Obama received 71% of the Hispanic vote and Mitt Romney only 27%. His action has given fair temporary immigration relief to hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth.
Eleven years later, President Biden is headed for a re-election bid with serious political vulnerabilities. One year before the elections, he is at a disadvantage against Donald Trump in five of the six key electoral states in 2024: Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Worse still, Biden is only supported by 50% of Latino voters and has lost support among the crucial African-American electorate. Although there is enough time to reverse the electoral dynamics, especially if Trump is convicted in any of the four criminal proceedings against him, these are signs that should worry the White House.
At this time, it seems unlikely that President Biden will approve immigration relief for more than 11 million undocumented immigrants. But the reality is that his strategy of putting “band-aids” to heal a patient in intensive care, such as the migratory phenomenon, has not worked as he expected.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported this week a total of 240,988 migrant encounters on the border with Mexico during the month of October. This is a record number.
It is very likely that the thousands of protesters who came to Washington will return to their places of origin empty-handed. But the millions of migrants who live semi-clandestinely are not going anywhere, nor will new migrants stop arriving.
While it is true that migration does not always appear as one of the main concerns of Hispanic voters, an unprecedented immigration relief from the president for undocumented immigrants could perhaps be the big surprise within the 2024 election cycle.
