Against an anti-immigrant rhetoric started by Donald Trump, Biden’s election rival, the present US president has asserted his stance on the issue of immigrants, strongly in favor of them.
“One of the reasons why our economy’s growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants,” – Biden said at a Washington fundraising event for his 2024 re-election campaign – “Why is China stalling so badly economically, why is Japan having trouble, why is Russia, why is India, because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants. Immigrants are what makes us strong.”
The IMF forecasted last month that the US would grow at 2.7%, compared to other major economic superpowers witnessing a deceleration in growth rate, ranging from 0.9% in highly developed Japan to 6.8% in emerging India.
But the country’s voters hold a different view from the Democratic candidate. A poll from the AP-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research found that more than half of the US adult population think that “Biden’s presidency has hurt the country on cost of living and immigration.” And 64% of the US adults disapprove of Biden’s “handling of economy.”
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Immigrants in the US- a “crisis” ?
The United States has been afflicted with the immigrant influx since ages. For generations, America has sheltered the homeless and provided them with second lives. But unfortunately for the country itself, this long standing policy of welcoming outsiders has now posed a big hurdle in the country’s growth prospects. By the end of 2023, nearly 250,000 incidents of border crossing had been recorded, surpassing the previous peak of about 224,000 encounters in May 2022. This list of migrants constituted single adults(54%), families(41%) and unaccompanied minors(5%).
A couple months ago, the Pew Research Centre published a detailed report on How Americans view the situation at the US-Mexico border. The reports said that the growing influx of migrants into the country has strained government resources, divided Congress and emerged as a contentious issue in the 2024 Presidential election campaign.
The survey found three major factors that were cited as the driving force of migrant influx-
- good economic opportunities in US (71%)
- Violence in home countries (65%)
- belief that US immigration policies will make it easy to stay in the country once they arrive (58%).
Meanwhile, 70% of the republicans view the border issue as a “crisis” in contrast to just 22% democrats. Criticizing the government policies on the border “crisis”, 80% of the survey population believed that the government is doing a “bad job” at dealing with the problem. In fact the report suggests, it has worsened since Joe Biden became president, in other words easing restrictions on immigration.
For a country that is home to more than 35 million lawful immigrants, the 2024 presidential elections will determine the future of these immigrants and the incoming immigrants.
