November 6, 2023 Dear John, The U.S.-Mexico border situation will not be “solved” until all parts of the border enforcement system are properly resourced. And the emergency supplemental spending bill the Biden administration has delivered to Congress seeks $13.6 billion in border security funding to do that. While some in Congress are pressing for changes to asylum and other policies, it is resources of the scale the administration is proposing that would result in essential policy changes because they would strengthen the functioning of an immigration system that is buckling under intense new pressures, Migration Policy Institute Senior Fellow Doris Meissner writes in a commentary out today. Further policy change in the absence of system capacity will not achieve the necessary results. The composition of border arrivals has changed dramatically, with the majority now coming from beyond Mexico and northern Central America. And the flows are increasingly comprised of families and unaccompanied children. Together, these changed nationalities and demographics have transformed border enforcement imperatives. Yet the border enforcement system remains out of sync. “For decades, politicians have rushed to fund Border Patrol agents, fencing, and other visible aspects of border enforcement,” writes Meissner, who was commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). “But until the immigration system’s adjudications and management capacities—especially asylum decision-making, the immigration courts, and removal functions—are fully funded and aligned with front-line border enforcement efforts, case backlogs and other breakdowns will incentivize further unauthorized migration.” The administration’s funding request enables the scale-up in capacity that is essential to that task and represents “the most meaningful step Congress could take at present,” she concludes. Until the border enforcement system is fully resourced across all its components, it will not be possible for any administration, present or future, to effectively manage spontaneous border arrivals. I commend this timely commentary to your attention. You can read it here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/border-supplemental-spending-bill. Best regards,  Michelle Mittelstadt
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
Migration Policy Institute | 
