US President expands migrant expulsion to fight illegal border crossings

Washington: The United States is stepping up its efforts to expel Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian migrants who are caught trying to illegally cross the US-Mexico border.

However, the government will allow up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela to enter the US by air each month. In November 2022, officials caught 82,000 migrants from these four countries.

President Joe Biden was delivering his first major speech on border security on Thursday. "This new process is orderly, it's safe and it's humane. Do not just show up at the border," he said. He added these actions alone are not going to fix the entire immigration system but they can help a good deal.

Biden also defended the role immigrants play and insisted that the US has the responsibility to accept persecuted people from around the globe. However, he said the US doesn't have enough immigration judges to adjudicate the claims related to deporting migrants and processing asylum seekers.

The new approach is said to respond to the criticism from Republicans over the record number of migrants coming to the US. On the other hand, it will also please Democrats and immigration advocates who are against the Title 42 restrictions introduced by former President Donald Trump.

National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons said Biden's actions are welcome but the US still needs congressional reforms, especially with "779,000 open jobs and not enough Americans to fill these vacancies," reported Reuters. Democratic lawmakers including Senator Bob Menendez, however, criticised the move and called it "a disastrous and inhumane relic of the Trump administration's racist immigration agenda." Republicans have outright rejected the proposal and described it as "lax border enforcement."