Better US Border Security Requires A New Way Of Thinking: NJ Senator

NEW JERSEY — There’s one belief that Sen. Bob Menendez shares in common with the Republicans who he says are refusing to come to the table on immigration reform: business as usual needs to change.

On Tuesday, the Democratic senator from New Jersey released his eponymously named “Menendez Plan,” a blueprint for tackling illegal immigration at the southern U.S. border. According to Menendez, his plan is largely made up of executive actions that President Joe Biden could take without Congressional approval, until “Republicans decide to come to the table and help the administration manage the current challenge.”

“For the last year, I have repeatedly expressed concerns over the Biden Administration’s decision to implement short-term deterrence policies that fail to address the cycle of irregular migration at our southwest border,” Menendez said.

“My plan provides a set of policies that will secure our borders without sacrificing our domestic and legal obligations to asylum seekers,” he added.

Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there are four pillars to his plan:

• Create New Legal Pathways and Expand Existing Pathways to Reduce Pressure at the Southwestern Border
• Increase Resources at the Border to Process Asylum Seekers and Remove People without Legal Claims to Stay in the U.S.
• Expand Humanitarian Assistance and Develop Financing to Better Integrate Migrants and Refugees in Countries Across the America
• Elevate Efforts to Counter Transnational Criminal Organizations Involved in Human Trafficking and Smuggling

Some ideas in the plan include creating new pathways to legal citizenship in the U.S., expanding access to visas, and increasing humanitarian aid to the United Nations for Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela.

Don’t think that sending more aid to help struggling foreign nations is a smart idea? Here’s something to keep in mind, Menendez says:

“If just 10 percent of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees persons of concern in the Americas find that they are unable to integrate where they currently are, nearly two million people could seek to relocate elsewhere.”

Menendez said that federal authorities need to make sure that cities receiving flows of migrants from the border are “adequately resourced.” His plan also suggests that Biden work with Congress to boost funding for border security, including higher salaries for border patrol staff and “large-scale regional processing centers” to house single adults facing potential deportation.

Families should be processed in “non-detained settings” and placed on alternatives to detention, he noted.

The plan also says that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security should internally relocate migrants to their final destinations, which would put an end to the “challenge” of states that are choosing to bus immigrants outside their borders without cooperating with federal authorities.

• See Related: Stop 'Unjust Bussing' Of Migrants, NJ Latino Pastor Group Demands

RETHINKING MIGRATION IN THE AMERICAS

Menendez said it’s time to start thinking deeper when it comes to immigration reform. One hard fact that U.S. residents need to come to grips with? The majority of migrants and refugees on the move in our hemisphere are not attempting to come to the United States.

According to Menendez’s plan:

“Most migrants and refugees in our hemisphere are attempting to integrate in Latin America and the Caribbean. Countries in the region shoulder the responsibility for 20 million refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people and stateless people. Colombia has absorbed nearly 2.5 million Venezuelans, and Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Brazil host large Venezuelan populations. Costa Rica has welcomed 370,000 Nicaraguans—a figure nearly equivalent to eight percent of the country’s population.”

Menendez’s plan also includes creating a “parole program” for people migrating to the U.S. and undocumented immigrants already living in the country if they can help ease a labor shortage that is hamstringing businesses across the nation – a situation that many Republican leaders have been lamenting over the past few years.

According to the senator:

“The governments of Colombia and Mexico have recognized that they have labor shortages that can be met by migrants and refugees. Already, Haitians and Cubans are filling vacancies at factories in Mexico. In Colombia, Venezuelans are filling gaps in the agriculture and transportation sector. In the United States, a labor shortage has led several Republican governors to call for an increase in immigration and more work permits for immigrant workers. The U.S. should view increased migration as an opportunity for growth and prosperity and as evidence of the strength of the U.S. economy.”

“The United States has traditionally viewed the Western Hemisphere’s migration and refugee challenges through the narrow lens of what is happening at the U.S. southwest border,” the senator’s office stated in a news release.

“Successive U.S. administrations have designed their domestic and foreign policies to respond to shifting needs at the border, an approach that has not created a sustainable long-term solution to a mixed flow of migrants and refugees,” Menendez’s office continued. “Our nation’s migration approach is enforcement-driven, reactive, and overly focused on punitive policies to deter migrants once they arrive at our borders; however, the region’s challenges require a comprehensive U.S. approach that recognizes individual country conditions that drive irregular migration.”

Menendez previously tried to champion an overhaul the nation’s immigration policy with proposed federal legislation that would have create an “earned roadmap to citizenship” for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, including “Dreamers,” TPS holders and farmworkers. The legislation failed to gain support in Congress.

• See Related: Democrat Plan Could Give 11M Immigrants A Path To US Citizenship
• See Related: Sen. Bob Menendez Says Biden Is Shirking His Refugee Pledge
• See Related: NJ Activists Say Biden's Playbook On Immigration Is Similar To Trump's

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