The Economist May 28th 2022 United States 37One border expert estimates that less than
20% of people trying to cross the border
undetected are stopped. Texas has de
ployed National Guard troops, filling
whole hotels in south Texas.
Three larger points are easily lost in all
this. One is that high levels of migration
are not occurring only at America’s south
ern border. Globally, more people are dis
placed from their home countries than at
any time since 1945. Covidhit economies,
violence, persecution and hurricanes have
pushed Central and South Americans to
move. Last year in Mexico a record 131,000
people applied for asylum.
Previously, the migrants arriving at the
southern border were mainly Mexicans,
Salvadoreans, Hondurans and Guatema
lans. But instability elsewhere has led large
numbers from other countries, including
Ukraine, to show up. In February 2021,
when your correspondent visited the “hu
manitarian respite centre” run by the Cath
olic Relief Services of the Rio Grande Val
ley, it was full of Central American families
released by cbp. Recently, most of the fam
ilies there were Haitian. In the first seven
months of this fiscal year, those stopped by
cbpat the southern border included about
52,000 Colombians, compared with just
401 in 2019, and 6,700 Turks, up from 57 in
2019.
The second, larger point is courts’
greater involvement in setting immigra
tion law, in the absence of decisions by
Congress. “The judiciary is now making
our immigration policy on an ad hoc basis
in different courts across the country,” ex
plains Theresa Cardinal Brown of the Bi
partisan Policy Centre, another thinktank.
When Mr Biden tried to end the Migrant
Protection Protocols (mpp), which force
asylumseekers to wait in Mexico pending
their immigration hearings, Texas and
Missouri sued, and a federal judge ordered
Mr Biden to restart the mpp. The fate of the
mppwill be decided by the Supreme Court.
The fact that so many people want to re
ly on an obscure publichealth tool as a
bordermanagement strategy points to a
third issue: how dysfunctional America’s
immigration system is. It was designed for
a time when most migrants were Mexican
single adults trying to come to America for
work. Today whole families and children
are arriving from around the world, many
seeking asylum. A recent memorandum
from Mr Mayorkas pointed the finger at
Capitol Hill: “We are operating within a
fundamentally broken immigration sys
tem that only Congress can fix.”
The Biden administration is about to
introduce a faster system for adjudicating
on new arrivals’ asylum claims, but that
will not tackle the record backlog of asy
lum cases. (True to form, Texas has sued to
block the move.) According to Mr Cuellar,the White House has been too close to im
migrantrights advocates and not listened
enough to border communities and law
enforcement. Sister Norma Pimentel, who
runs Catholic Relief Services of the Rio
Grande Valley, says the administration ap
pears “uncertain as to how to proceed”.
Last year 650 migrants (and probably
many more) are known to have died trying
to enter America, the deadliest year on re
cord. Some, including this newspaper,
have argued that Mr Biden and his senior
advisers should go to the border to witness
the mess. Others want action, not a border
tour. “I’m to the point where I don’t even
want them here” for a photoop, says Javier
Villalobos, the mayor of McAllen, a Texas
border town. The situation is so urgent
that he wants them to “stay in Washington,
sit down, figure out what to do and fixour
border and our immigration problems”.nHoping for the best
B
eforethewarinUkraine,Nikolai
Shevchik was happy working at an
American technology startup in St Pet
ersburg. But an economic slump and
Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent
changed his mind. “For anyone who
opposes the war, it is a question of safety
now,” says Mr Shevchik, who is thinking
of emigrating. He runs a channel on
Telegram, a messaging app, where
50,000 or so likeminded Russians look
for tech jobs abroad or remote work that
pays in dollars or euros. Many have
already fled to Turkey or Armenia.
Policymakers in Washington are
looking for ways to capitalise on their
disenchantment. America has often
benefited from troubles abroad. Jewish
émigrés from Nazi Europe, such as Leo
Szilard and John von Neumann, helped
develop the atom bomb and accelerated
innovation in physics, chemistry and
more. America scooped up hundreds of
German scientists and engineers after
1945 through Operation Paperclip. Wern
her von Braun, a former ssofficer, be
came a leading force in the lunar pro
gramme. The collapse of the Soviet Un
ion led Congress to pass the Soviet Scien
tists Immigration Act of 1992, permitting
some 750 people to emigrate to America.
“These kinds of immigrants increase
entrepreneurship, invention and
growth,” says Jeremy Neufeld of the
Institute for Progress, a thinktank.
About 23% of America’s patents are pro
duced by immigrants. Mr Neufeld esti
mates that nearly half of all advanceddegreeholdersinitsdefenceindustry
were born abroad.
The Biden administration put its
weight behind a provision tucked into
the president’s proposed $33bn supple
mental budget for Ukraine that would
ease the path for Russians with technical
skills to emigrate to America. Russians
with a master’s or doctoral degree in
science, technology, engineering or
maths would no longer have been re
quired to have an American employer as
a sponsor for their h1bvisa, the employ
erbased immigration scheme. But Con
gress left this out of the bill it approved.
So the search is on for other options.
Certain requirements, such as the
need for an employer, could be waived by
executive order on nationalsecurity
grounds. The o1 visa, available to star
academics, could be reinterpreted to
allow a broader array of applicants.
Congress has another opportunity in its
version of an industrialpolicy bill,
which exempts advanceddegree holders
from the caps on green cards, America’s
permanentresidency permit.
Even if policymakers can ease the way
for the likes of Mr Shevchik to come,
America must still tackle an emerging
talent gap with its principal geopolitical
rival, China. China awards over 100,000
more advanced degrees every year than
America does. America’s byzantine
immigration system excels at kicking out
foreignborn graduates. The place re
mains attractive to skilled foreigners—if
only it will let them in.ThetalentwarRussians wanted, sort of
WASHINGTON, DC
Fitful attempts to lure Russia’s scientists and techies to America