LEE: Hi, this is Ms. Lee (ph) from Arlington, Va., and I've made it to the end of the school year. Now I'm off for two weeks of summer break before I restart my job as a pretransplant nurse. This podcast was recorded at...
SUSAN DAVIS, HOST:
11:36 a.m. on Tuesday, June 18.
LEE: Things might have changed by the time you hear it, but hopefully I'll start remembering that I have a first name again.
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DAVIS: I hope you have a restful two weeks 'cause that job sounds hard.
ASHLEY LOPEZ, BYLINE: Yeah, sounds interesting.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: And going into another tough job.
LOPEZ: Yeah, right?
DAVIS: Hey, there, it's the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
ORDOÑEZ: I'm Franco Ordoñez. I cover the White House.
LOPEZ: And I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.
DAVIS: And President Biden is taking another new executive action on immigration. Franco, what is this intended to do?
ORDOÑEZ: Well, President Biden's offering to protect nearly 500,000 undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens from deportation. This effort would also protect 50,000 people who are under the age of 21 whose parent is married to a U.S. citizen. They will get work permits. They'll be able to apply for green cards. All of this will be without having to leave the country. It also puts them on an easier path to citizenship. I mean, this is a really big deal. I mean, 'cause it's actually very, very difficult. You can't just get married to an American and get a green card. So trying to get married and get your status changed can actually be very risky.
And I'll just - one more thing - this would be the largest immigration effort in decades, really, ever since the Obama-era DACA program, which protected young people brought to the country illegally as children.
DAVIS: I'm glad you said that 'cause I would think that a lot of people would hear this and think marrying an American citizen unto itself would provide a pathway to citizenship.
ORDOÑEZ: Yes. It does provide a pathway to citizenship. But if you have come to the country without authorization, you cannot just transfer that. You've still broken the law. So this kind of, you know, streamlines that whole process. And if approved, this is not supposed to go into effect until the end of the summer. They're supposedly going to start taking applications. They would now have a much faster pathway to legal permanent residence and a pathway to citizenship. It's a big deal.
DAVIS: Is this trying to solve a problem that might not necessarily truly exist? I'm not sure how aggressively the U.S. government is looking to find undocumented people married to U.S. citizens to remove them from the country. I mean, is this immediately affecting a certain group of people, or is it just providing a level of comfort to people to know that it won't happen?
ORDOÑEZ: I mean, we're talking half a million people. So, I mean, this - that's a pretty big group of people who have been raising concerns. You know, in this kind of immigration debate, there are different groups who are more sympathetic and less so. One of those groups is certainly undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens. Others are young children or young people brought to the country illegally by their parents. And this group is something that advocates have been pushing for for a while. Certainly, President Biden tried to push a comprehensive immigration package which would have put millions of undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship. This is kind of a carve-out of that to kind of help progressives who have been calling for some type of relief for those here illegally.
DAVIS: Actually, I mean, we've talked a lot about immigration on the podcast. It's obviously a significant issue to voters and in the conversation of the 2024 election, but we also have new polling out that puts a finer point on that.
LOPEZ: Yeah. I mean, part of this is, like, Biden just sort of reacting to public opinion, right? He has to do something about what's happening at the border, which he did, but there's the other audience that he has for this, which is the progressive base, right? Like, these are folks who are going to be presumably knocking on doors for Democrats. And so he has to, like, sort of deal with both issues at once. And what we know about immigration and sort of public opinion is that, especially during the primaries, a lot of voters said this was their top issue, especially Republican voters. Obviously, this was a big topic during their primaries, but the sort of level of importance that immigration is playing in the election is starting to maybe wane a little bit.
So the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist (ph) poll out today shows that slightly fewer voters say that immigration is their top-of-mind issue. So we can compare this to February, where this was a top issue for 22% of people surveyed. This month, it's at 18%. You know, it's not like the biggest change, but it does kind of show that immigration is sort of trending back to kind of like what you would expect it to look like in terms of importance to voters ahead of a general election.
ORDOÑEZ: Let's just be clear. I mean, there's a big reason why Biden is doing this now. I mean, two weeks ago, he issued an executive action that essentially temporarily shut down the border to those trying to seek asylum if they didn't cross a port of entry. That really angered a lot of progressives and members of Biden's own base. I mean, politics is so much a factor in what we're seeing here today. Ashley's talking about the polls. I mean, Biden's trying to balance, you know, these Americans who want a stronger border, a stronger policy, as well as, you know, his base, that is, you know, wanting Biden to kind of fulfill his promises of a more humane immigration system.
DAVIS: He's trying to be everything to everyone on immigration, it seems. Like, we were just in the studio a couple of weeks ago talking about how Biden was trying to take this tougher stance on immigration. And this is a much more empathetic, humane framing of the immigration debate and who needs to be helped and why.
LOPEZ: Yeah. And, I mean, a lot of this has to do also with the fact that Biden is not performing very well with nonwhite voters, especially Latinos. And it is a mixed bag when it comes to immigration in terms of, like, what Latinos say they need from immigration reform. There are, of course, Latinos who want - you know, especially those who live on the border - who want border reform.
But things like this - like, people who live in mixed-status families think about these issues all the time. And, you know, community groups talk to families who, you know, care about immigration. Some of the conversations they have are, well, what is the president going to do about the fact that I'm worried that part of my family could be deported at any time? So these are conversations that happen a lot and maybe aren't the swinging issue that will get Biden independent voters. But definitely, the core coalition of voters that helped elect Joe Biden in 2020 includes people from mixed-status families.
DAVIS: Sure. In that regard, this is, like, a kitchen table issue...
LOPEZ: Right.
DAVIS: ...For families like this.
LOPEZ: Yeah.
DAVIS: All right, let's take a quick break, and we'll talk more about this when we get back.
And we're back. And Franco, I'm curious what kind of reaction this announcement is getting from within the Democratic Party, especially as you compare it to the other executive action that Biden took recently on immigration that was the cause for a lot of criticism from within his own party.
ORDOÑEZ: I mean, I think that, you know, certainly from his party, people are happy. They are pleased that Biden is, you know, providing a more humane system. I mean, it's kind of like we've been talking about. Biden's really been struggling to kind of balance both sides because there's such a demand from many Americans to kind of get control of the border amid really record number of migrants caught illegally.
It's been kind of amazing seeing how Biden has struggled with this issue, perhaps more than many previous administrations. I mean, you've had actual Democratic mayors and Democratic governors calling on Biden to do more, criticizing Biden for not doing enough. Polls show that most Americans trust Republicans more than Biden on immigration. But when I talked to some experts, like Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, who is the policy director of the American Immigration Council, he says there's actually a lot of misunderstanding about what is actually happening at the border and how and when it started.
AARON REICHLIN-MELNICK: I mean, many people simply don't know that, by the time President Trump left office, border apprehensions were at the highest level they had been for December in 20 years. So when President Biden took office, he didn't take office with a secure border already in place. He took office with a border that was already collapsing, and the situation got worse.
ORDOÑEZ: Certainly, the numbers continue to get really bad under Biden. Hence, again, you had Democratic mayors, you know, complaining about this and having concerns about this. But I do think it kind of speaks to how so many presidents have had this issue.
DAVIS: Actually, it's unclear if this will do enough to appease Democrats on immigration, but it seems pretty clear it's not going to be enough to have Biden's critics on the issue come around and say, well, now, I think he's doing a good job.
LOPEZ: Well, I mean, the reason why a lot of this hasn't been solved anyways is because, like, the Republican Party wants to keep this as a campaign issue because, you know, Franco mentioned, it really works for them. This is, like, an issue where they do really well on. You know, especially considering that there are so many seats in Congress that are competitive seats that happen to be along the border, Republicans have the calculus that, you know, keeping this issue sort of alive will not just help in the Republican, you know, presidential sense, but, like, also for, you know, their congressional races because a lot of the reason those seats are competitive is because Republicans are sort of, like, you know, outshining Democrats on the issue of the border still. So, I mean, there's just a lot of reasons for them to keep the sort of issue alive and to keep going after Democrats on it.
ORDOÑEZ: The executive action that Biden put in place two weeks ago was very similar to the bipartisan plan. You know this, Sue, about...
DAVIS: Yeah.
ORDOÑEZ: ...As good as anyone. Had - was very similar to the bipartisan plan that Republican and Democratic senators put in place to, you know, temporarily shut down the border. But, of course, it was Donald Trump - former President Donald Trump - who kind of squashed this idea largely because of the political potential impacts that Ashley's talking about - not wanting to give Biden a win. And today, you know, they're continuing to criticize Biden. They're calling today's action amnesty. They're saying it's politics, not policy - that he could have done this before. In the first place, he should never have unraveled Trump's policies from his administration.
DAVIS: I mean, there does seem to be a point there because I don't know exactly what will happen with this action, but it does seem almost certain to be contested in the courts if it goes that far. And the Supreme Court has been skeptical about executive authority as being as sweeping as this in immigration. They certainly batted back down the Obama administration when they tried to do it on their own. So, you know, this might just be more of a political exercise than a sweeping policy change at the end of the day.
ORDOÑEZ: Absolutely. I mean, that's kind of what immigration policy has been.
DAVIS: Yeah.
ORDOÑEZ: It's been a bunch of political exercises. As you point out, you know, Obama did some executive actions, which Republicans turned back. And then Biden turned back several of the executive actions that Trump did. I mean, I think that just speaks to the problems with Washington right now and Congress unable to, you know, find an agreement or find a way forward. And it's a really, really difficult issue. I've been covering it, actually, for a while. And I think, you know, maybe it's right up there in kind of, like, the emotional impact - hard as abortion, guns. I mean, this is a really heart-wrenching issue that Washington just can't get a handle on.
DAVIS: All right, let's leave it there for today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
ORDOÑEZ: I'm Franco Ordoñez. I cover the White House.
LOPEZ: And I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.
DAVIS: And thanks for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
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