WTH is Going On with Title 42? Andrew Selee on our Broken Immigration System

This Thursday, the COVID-era immigration policy Title 42 will
expire. Initiated by the Trump administration, it allowed for the
expulsion of migrants at the border under a public health
directive. It lifts as numbers of encounters at the border
continue to skyrocket – instances grew from 646,822 in 2020 to
2,766 in 2022, and have already surpassed 1.544 million this
year. These are staggering and historic numbers. Border Patrol
cannot handle the sheer quantity, processing centers are overrun
and inefficient, legitimate asylum seekers and migrants are being
delayed access for years while the US government attempts to
handle the illegal entries. Title 42 was not meant to be a
sustained solution, but its expiration – without a replacement
policy in place – means that this summer will see a humanitarian
tragedy at the US southern border. Notably, polls show that the
American public is not very divided on this question; by and
large, Americans support and encourage legal immigration, and
condemn the chaos – the humanitarian disaster, financial
confusion, and resource misallocation – that is the result of
loose and unserious border policy. And yet, Administration after
Administration, Congress after Congress, drags its feet and
leaves policy stopgaps to the courts.


Andrew Selee is the President of the Migration Policy Institute
(MPI), a global nonpartisan institution that seeks to improve
immigration and integration policies. He also chairs MPI Europe's
Administrative Council. Prior to MPI, Dr. Selee spent 17 years at
the Woodrow Wilson Center where he founded the Center’s Mexico
Institute, and served as the Center’s VP for Programs and
Executive VP. He has also worked on staff in the US Congress,
served on the Board of Directors of the YMCA, and is a columnist
for Mexico’s largest newspaper El Universal. His most recent book
is Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United
States Together.


Download the transcript here.