The White House’s growing urgency to get Ukraine aid passed is forcing Democrats to reckon with immigration policies they’ve previously tied to former President Donald Trump, agitating President Joe Biden’s allies and underscoring the unrelenting complexities of the immigration debate.
It’s a stark moment that ties together some of Biden’s – and Democrats’– most vexing political problems. The president has wrestled with migrant surges along the US-Mexico border multiple times over the course of his administration in the face of unprecedented migration across the Western Hemisphere, while the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have formed the central foreign policy challenges of his presidency on the eve of an election year.
Fresh off Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington this week, Biden once again signaled that he was open to border policy changes in exchange for aid for Ukraine, firmly putting one of the most delicate political issues for this White House at the center of its foreign policy agenda and, in turn, placing Democrats in the uncomfortable position of supporting policies they once criticized.
“Democrats are definitely in a box because they really would like to move Ukraine aid as soon as possible but Republicans have made super clear that they won’t move the package without border security,” said Kerri Talbot, executive director at the Immigration Hub.
“It’s a sad day that they’re considering such horrible proposals,” Talbot said.
The concessions floated by the administration in recent days are, in some cases, an extension of private discussions held in the White House over the course of Biden’s presidency that received blowback from immigrant advocates, sources told CNN.
One of those included a so-called safe third country proposal that would bar asylum seekers who passed…
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