We don’t know specifics. Here’s what we do know: Title 42 has led to large numbers of people trying to cross the border repeatedly, inflating the number of encounters at the border. And, yes, winding down Title 42 will be challenging. 

The administration is right to recognize those challenges and work to avoid large increases in people coming to the border. Offering options for migrants that relieve some of those pressures — such as the refugee resettlement process and steering people toward an orderly process at ports of entry — would be good steps. On the other hand, to lean hard on enforcement and deterrence would be to extend policies that benefit smugglers and cartels. 

Quite simply, there are better border solutions than continuing Title 42 in spirit, if not in name. Congress has talked about some of them and could address them in concert with other urgent immigration reforms. 

Elsewhere, Uriel J. García of The Texas Tribune reports on the Supreme Court arguments we previewed yesterday, on whether the Biden administration can prioritize certain undocumented immigrants, including public safety threats, for deportation. The short version: Conservative justices seemed skeptical. The court’s ruling is likely to come by the end of June. 

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].   

BIPARTISAN BILL — For a helpful immigration bill, "broad bipartisan support" is music to our ears. Next week the House plans to take up such a bill, reports Ellen M. Gilmer of Bloomberg Government. The EAGLE Act would improve green card access for immigrants working legally and help employers meet their needs by lifting per-country caps for employment-based green cards and annual caps on family-based green cards. A similar proposal passed the Senate in 2020 under unanimous consent, and there’s a chance that could happen with the current bill. Right on schedule, CNBC’s Steve Liesman and the "Squawk Box" team break down how the green card backlog and other legal immigration bottlenecks negatively impact the U.S. economy. The need for solutions is acute. 

LIVESTOCK SECTOR — Livestock farmers are pushing the Farm Workforce Modernization Act during the lame-duck session to counter labor shortages, reports Rafael Bernal of The Hill. Right now, agricultural visas are exclusively seasonal, but livestock businesses require year-round workers, which leaves them without options. "[In the past] it was predominantly a family workforce. And so there wasn’t the foreign-born workforce in dairy that you had in seasonal agriculture when the pieces were originally written," said Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association. Rebecca Eifert Joniskan, president of the Indiana State Poultry Association, notes that the limitations in visas for workers is adding more challenges to a sector that already faces high fuel and feed prices, as well as a wave of avian influenza in the case of poultry farms. 

UNITING FOR UKRAINE — "Uniting for Ukraine is a massive improvement over traditional refugee admissions policy," Ilya Somin writes for The Volokh Conspiracy. He is a sponsor of a Ukrainian family and has experienced firsthand the advantages of the process. However, Somin points out two significant limitations: Ukrainians are granted only two years of legal protections, and a current or future administration could decide simply to end the program. Separately, Ben Cohen of The Wall Street Journal offers a detailed recap of the program since its creation in April. Cohen notes that the numbers behind the program show success: 171,000 applications to be sponsors, 121,000 travel authorizations, and roughly 85,000 arrivals since April. The latter number is three times the total of refugees from around the world resettled in the U.S. during fiscal year 2022. 

RUSSIANS IN DETENTION — Some Russian asylum seekers are being sent to immigration detention centers for months at a time, reports Miriam Jordan of The New York Times. "I thought when we left Russia that our suffering would be over," said Boris Shevchuk, a 28-year-old doctor who suffered persecution for posting antiwar messages on social media. Shevchuk and his wife made it to the U.S. border with Mexico in April, but they were sent to a detention facility in rural Louisiana, where they spent six months. During the 2022 fiscal year, 21,763 Russians were processed by U.S. authorities at the southern border, compared with 467 in 2020. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not released statistics on the nationalities of migrants in the detention centers. 

‘A BEACON OF HOPE’— In an op-ed for the Arizona Republic, Reyna Montoya and Jose Patiño, two Dreamers who have been lobbying for a legal path to citizenship since 2006, celebrate that new generations of Arizonans can have access to college tuition regardless of their legal status. "Thanks to more than 1.2 million Arizona voters, there will not be a 17th graduating class who will have to go through the pain of growing up in the state you love and being pushed away from your educational dreams," Montoya and Patiño write. "May Proposition 308 be a beacon of hope for Arizona and our nation." Elsewhere on the continuing push for action: Our friends at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration are in D.C. this week pushing for legislation this year that would permanently protect DACA recipients and Dreamers, Katherine Knott of Inside Higher Ed reports. The Presidents’ Alliance also sent a letter to Congress Monday. Several higher education associations sent a similar letter earlier this month. And yesterday, 71 mayors sent their own letter to Congress urging action, reports Rafael Bernal of The Hill.  

Thanks for reading, 

Dan