Biden & The Border: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

foreign tonight concerns immigration it's the reason I'm here well the reason I'm in this country not the reason I exist the reason for that should be obvious a tax accountant a stork and voila here I am specifically we're going to talk about the situation on our Southern border and I know what you're thinking you're thinking finally someone is going to address the Magnificent statue in El Paso known as pile of gators fishing what looks like a bunch of horny reptiles engaging in a sloppy swamp orgy but while that is certainly a situation on the border it is sadly not the situation which refers to what's going on with migrants down there and if you ask politicians on the right that situation can best be summed up like this our border is wide open and out of control and Americans are dying because of it the truth is that there is an invasion happening at our Southern border migrants are absolutely invading this country our country is under attack America is being invaded no American is safe okay let's first acknowledge the irony of cowardly freaking out about migrants in front of a song that reads Mr strong never before has a nameplate felt so intensely sarcastic but also setting aside the blatant xenophobia there are the two of you wearing matching outfits because it sure feels like you met up at Men's Warehouse made a b line for the Caucasian collection picked out the exact same suit and then wore it like Tweedledum and tweedled deportation the ride has been fear-mongering about immigration even more than usual lately and to be fair actually I don't have to be fair them but to be fairer than they actually deserve there is a lot happening at the border right now the number of Migrant encounters there which was Rising before Biden came into office reached a record high last year now that has happened for a number of reasons including that we're coming out of a global pandemic and multiple countries from Haiti to Venezuela to Ukraine are in crisis right now so there's a high number of people forced to flee their homes plus some Asylum Seekers May understandably have been encouraged by Biden's rhetoric on the campaign Trail which was notably different than his opponent look I can't only imagine what it's like to see someone in your family deported that's right I can only imagine what that's like and I've to me it's all about family beginning middle and end it's about family that's not going to happen in my Administration the idea you can't even seek Asylum ons American soil can't even seek asylum in American soil when did that happen Trump it's wrong you're going to change that yes I am yeah it's all about family beginning middle and end whatever the that means a pretty empty phrase from a presidential candidate but to be honest a pretty good tagline for fast 10. it's only mildly less comprehensible than the end of the road begins at the time that promise sounded good it is worth remembering that even if Biden wasn't your favorite candidate even if he was your least favorite candidate after four years of trump that was pretty refreshing it's like wandering through the Sahara Desert for four years and all of a sudden seeing a Panera I mean it's not necessarily Paradise in its own right but compared with what you just went through you would kill for an Asiago turkey sandwich in the lemonade no question promises like that are why we cited Biden's potential to undo Trump's damage on immigration as a key reason to vote for him just a week before the election now did we make the difference who can say nurses are the real heroes unfortunately no when it comes to the southern border Biden has disappointed in a lot of ways but it is not because he's opened up the country to an invasion it's actually in many ways the opposite many migrants including Asylum Seekers are finding it impossible to access this country through our ports of entry and the conditions that they're facing are dire in many border cities shelters and detention centers are reportedly near capacity with the director of one of them saying every day I turn away at least 10 families with children and just last month at least 40 people died when a Migrant Center caught fire and frustratingly a lot of this has been exacerbated by U.S policies that are well within Biden's power to remedy and yet he hasn't and that is basically what our story is about tonight it's about what Biden promised to do what he has and hasn't done and how his latest efforts to fix things might actually make them worse and first let's acknowledge it is impossible to assess what Biden has done at the border without looking at what he inherited Trump campaigned on high octane xenophobia and his policies reflected that from large-scale family separation to attacking DACA to his so-called remain in Mexico policy which led to massive encampments of would-be Asylum Seekers south of the board and Trump approached all of it with his signature clarity the immigration laws are horrible we're doing an incredible job we're doing a record-breaking job but we have bad laws you know when you have bad laws you can do good but you can do a lot better if you had good laws okay I mean that is total gibberish but if you look at what he's saying closely there you'll find it's also and this is true a haiku I'm I'm kidding it absolutely isn't but wouldn't it be great if it was if that buffoon was capable of accidental Beauty but it's not and he isn't so we're back to square one now to Biden's credit he created a task force to reunify the separated families he strengthened protections around Docker and he suspended the remain in Mexico policy and yet there remained huge numbers of people stuck just South of the Border in camps that look an awful lot like the ones that were there during Trump and a significant reason for that has to do with a policy called title 42 which allows the U.S to kick migrants out of the country with shocking ease and we've talked about it before but just as a refresher it's not actually an immigration law at all it is an Arcane Public Health order aimed at preventing the spread of communicable diseases the Trump Administration implemented it in March of 2020 invoking it as a safety precaution intended to prevent covid-19 from spreading through border patrol stations but the truth is long before covid its use had been floated by Stephen Miller a child's answer to the prompt draw Squidward from memory in fact the invocation of title 42 was referred to as a Stephen Miller special he was all over that a sentence I truly hope no one has to speak or hear ever again and Miller has bragged about title 42's sweeping powers the principle of it is very simple which is that during a pandemic if you come into this country your very presence here if you enter unlawfully is a threat to our Public Health full stop you go home okay first I'm you played the sound of Stephen Miller's voice in a Maternity Ward a newborn infant would instinctively say despite not having any knowledge of the English language shut the up because that threat to our public United with the CDC one former Health official said that they were effectively forced to implement it adding it was either do it or get fired in fact the CDC scientist said there was no evidence title 42 would actually slow the spread of coronavirus but the reason Trump seized on it is pretty obvious under normal circumstances migrants have the legal right to ask for Asylum no matter where they cross the border but like in cell Caillou said title 42 gave the government the power to rapidly expel any migrant without giving them an opportunity to make a case for staying in the country legally including to seek Asylum and you would hope that upon taking office Biden would move as fast as possible to get rid of it but instead his administration has been all over the place just a few months into his presidency his Secretary of Homeland Security sent this message to potential migrants the message is quite clear do not come the border is closed the border is secure we are expelling our families we are expelling single adults under um these cdc's Authority Under title 42 of the United States code because we are in the midst of the pandemic and that is a public health imperative except it wasn't a public health imperative and everyone knew it and look if you're going to Parrot Trump's harmful talking points at least throw in some of the funny ones as well every time you do a press conference to bolster some xenophobic policy like title 42 you also have to go off on attention about how Robert Pattinson should have dumped Kristen Stewart it is the least that you can do for months afterward the Biden Administration let the policy stand and even at one point defended it in court then to be fair they did try to end it only for a federal judge to block those efforts with reporting of the time indicating that the ruling was met with a site of relief inside the White House moreover by nationally expanded who could be expelled to Mexico under title 42 because while the order initially allowed the us to do that with migrants from these four countries he chose to broaden it first to include Venezuelan migrants and later to those from Cuba Haiti and Nicaragua and the administration will point out and not wrongly that they have issued humanitarian exemptions to title 42 it's estimated that around 187 000 migrants were granted exemptions from May of last year to just last month but not only is that a action of those seeking Asylum the Administration has been criticized for a lack of clarity and consistency in who is eligible and in general some have argued that there's been a pretty glaring discrepancy in who the country has and hasn't decided to allow in at a migrant shelter in Tijuana Mexico claims of a double standard special treatment for ukrainians fleeing the war and being admitted to the U.S I love that the government is helping them because they've gone through a really hard situation but that's not what happens for people here exactly we should all be treated the same the same way how do you guys account for the difference in the treatment between them and you guys racism yeah of course to so many questions like why are some people treated differently at the border why did Roseanne Barr get fired and why does your grandpa insist on pronouncing Kamala the way that he does and title 42 including Biden's expanded use of it has functionally robbed people of their basic right to make an asylum case for themselves which can be devastating just as this Honduran migrant talk about getting all the way to America with his family on the presumption he'd be able to apply for Asylum only to be taken into custody and woken up one day with an unpleasant surprise one of us asked where are you taking us is it true we're being deported they said no we're not deporting you we're taking you to a shelter and you can keep going from there and that was a lie they tricked us when we got off the bus we saw the sign that said Tijuana Baja California that's when we realized we'd been sent back so you didn't realize until you were already in Mexico right once we were already here look that is clearly not how immigration policy should work under no circumstances should people on a bus be lied to about where it's going unless that is it's a bachelorette party bus and they're demanding to be taken to another bar even though one of them already threw up on a pigeon in that case and that case alone you say sure you swing by CVS for some Pedialyte and you take them back to their Airbnb and because many migrants can't return to the country that they were fleeing they wind up stuck on our Southern border or trying repeatedly to get back into the country often at their own Peril more than 890 migrants died in border crossings last year making it the deadliest year since the US government began tracking border crossing deaths and for those stuck in Mexico The Experience can be harrowing one group found that since 2021 there have been over 13 000 reports of murder torture kidnapping rape and other violent attacks on migrants and Asylum Seekers blocked in or expelled to Mexico under title 42. now the good news is title 42 may be about to expire and the reason for that is when the broader covered Public Health Emergency ends on May 11th title 42 is expected to expire with it the bad news though is that even with over two years to plan Biden's new proposed rule may not be much of an improvement for one thing Asylum Seekers will now be expected an appointment at a Port of Entry through a new government app that Biden proudly announced in January if they're seeking Asylum they can use an app on their cell phone called cbp1one cbp1one let's just spell it out not the number one oh well thanks for spelling it out that helps a great deal this is that app and as you can see it's icon apparently features and I honestly don't know what else this could be a border patrol agent with a raging boner beanie juice since January as a way for people to request exemptions to title 42 and the early result aren't great every morning at 9 00 a.m women frantically try to refresh the government app hoping to get an appointment to enter the us we watch with Karina brasada who runs the shelter by 905 all the appointments and hope were gone it's Lottery with people's lives with people's families with people's livelihoods with people's well-being that is horrible we clearly should not be placing people's fate in the hands of a smartphone app and don't get me wrong apps can serve a lot of functions for example this one is for messaging your friends this one is for receiving Robo calls this one is for seeing what your mom is up to this one is for accidentally turning it on muttering and finally turning it off after a minimum of three choice this one is for watching democracy crumble while Cher tweets the most baffling series of emojis that you've ever seen and this one is for looking at photos of pugs Who Make a Better Living than you do the point here is we use apps for many purposes but reserving an appointment to try and secure the safety of your family probably shouldn't be one of them as of right now only about 740 people per day can get appointments through the app but since there are obviously far more people who need them a day's appointments can run out within minutes which is why some have dubbed the app Asylum Ticketmaster a truly terrifying combination of words and just take a moment to appreciate quite how shitty of a company Ticketmaster is people saw vulnerable migrants being robbed of their ability to seek assignment thought hey you know what this reminds me of Ticketmaster a company about concerts what's more many Asylum Seekers have outdated cell phones if they have them at all that don't support the CBP one app and often have limited or no access to the internet and on top of all of this it requires people to upload a selfie and its facial recognition technology has worked better for some than for others even for digitally Savvy migrants the experience has been a challenge it doesn't want to scan he doesn't want to scan his face they say the app has glitches and some even claim the facial recognition feature malfunctions for those with darker skin I get up to the option to scan my face but it has to get closer and closer but it doesn't do anything and that's the problem that it takes a long time to load and that's where it fails so we try it again yeah pretty bad at one shelter in Reynosa they even had to install bright Construction lights for people with darker skin to shine on their faces so the app would recognize them and I've got to say given the history of everything that's happened in this country ever it is hard to think of anything more on brand than a US immigration app that scans your face and says not white enough and none of this is even getting into some of the other issues with the app like that it's told migrants to report to border stations 1500 miles away and has made it very difficult for families to get appointments together and for anyone considering trying to circumvent this process by crossing the border between ports of Entry to request Asylum something that again is completely legal under by this proposal you would be presumed ineligible for Asylum unless you've already applied for it and been denied in any country that you've already passed through and as many pointed out that is eerily similar to a trump era policy that made migrants ineligible for Asylum if they pass through a third country on route to the U.S and didn't seek Asylum there first that forced people into dangerous situations and was completely antithetical to the basic tenets of U.S Asylum policy and that is something that Biden himself definitely used to understand given that remember he's the guy who said this can't even seek asylum in American soil when did that happen oh oh I can answer that for you Joe now it's in a rule that you just proposed and I know there are a lot of things that we would all like to forget from 2020 like the word cuomosexual or how everything was cake for a while or how Gonzo my hair got I look like I legally have to tell everyone that I just moved into the neighborhood but your outrage of the treatment of Asylum Seekers shouldn't be something you're just allowed to forget so if and when title 42 expires next month it seems that we're not going back to the way that things were before Trump because with Biden's new proposal we're just entering a different phase of an immigration dystopia particularly for Asylum Seekers and a lot of people are unhappy with it the U.N High commission for refugees has said it's inconsistent with the foundational principles of international Refugee law and recommended that the government refrain from adopting it look it is pretty obvious the title 42 was never a functional or compassionate model of immigration policy but neither is funneling migrants to an app whose boner icon actually makes sense now given just how thoroughly it people so what can we do well restoring the right to Asylum would roll back at least some of the harm that's been done here but that is just the start we also have to scale up capacity of our entire immigration System including our immigration courts which as we've talked about on the show before are massively overloaded they're currently estimated to have a backlog of over 2 million cases and beyond that it is critical that we also expand other legal non-asylum Pathways into this country basically we badly need actual immigration reform which means congressional action but that hasn't happened in decades and until it does our immigration system will remain fundamentally broken but that is no excuse for making things even worse with bad policy and shitty apps and I know this can be hard to hear for some Democrats who are reluctant to hear any criticism of Biden they will point out that Trump was absolutely worse on immigration which he definitely was but that is too low a bar Biden should at the very least be held accountable to the promises that he made but the problem is when it comes to Asylum seekers in particular you're talking about a group of people for whom those promises are among the easiest to break and the fact is migrants are going to keep seeking asylum in this country as they have every legal right to do and we need to make a choice in whether we are comfortable to continue leaving so many of them in squalor and danger at the border or whether we are willing to finally fulfill our nation's promise of offering them a safer more hopeful life in a free country complete with the single horniest pile of gators in the entire world

Channel: LastWeekTonight

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Length: 19min 44sec (1184 seconds)

Published: Mon May 01 2023