Some migrants streamed across the border and others gathered in makeshift camps as America’s pandemic-era Title 42 restrictions ended on Thursday, a milestone that officials worried could trigger a major new wave of migration that strains border facilities and cities across the country, The New York Times reports.
Title 42 was a holdover from the Trump administration and began in March 2020. The authority allowed U.S. officials to turn away migrants at the Southern border, on the grounds of preventing the spread of the coronavirus.
The Biden administration has put in place a series of new policies cracking down on illegal crossings and creating new legal pathways. Anybody seeking asylum who didn’t first seek protection in a country they traveled through, or first applied online, will be turned away.
U.S. officials plan to open 100 regional migration hubs across the Western Hemisphere, where people can seek placement in other nations, including Canada and Spain.
"It was a huge boon for the White House to get Spain and Canada to agree to take in asylum seekers from Latin America,” says The Associated Press. "And it helps reinforce the Biden administration’s argument that the current migration quandary facing the Americas is a global problem that needs a global solution.”
The United States increasingly has seen migrants arrive at its Southern border who are from China, Ukraine, Haiti, Russia and other nations far from Latin America, and who are increasingly family groups and children traveling alone, AP says. Thirty years ago, illegal crossings were almost always single adults from Mexico who were easily turned back over the border.
Spain, like many other nations globally, needs workers, and it will be able to choose migrants who have skills needed in the country, AP says.
On Thursday, the House passed legislation that would restart border wall construction and restrict asylum. The vote was 219-213, with no Democrats supporting the bill and two Republicans voting against it.
Comments