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New Voting Laws Add Difficulties for People With Disabilities
Laura Halvorson was ready to vote. On Thursday afternoon, she sat in front of a ballot screen at the Igo Library in San Antonio, after spending a month preparing for this moment. It was the first time in years that she had been in a public place, other than a doctor’s office.Sitting in her wheelchair, she wore two masks — one a KN95, the other a part of her breathing machine. Because Ms. Halvorson, 38, has muscular dystrophy, a condition that progressively decreases muscle mass, and makes her more vulnerable to Covid-19, she needed to use a remote-control device supplied by poll workers to make her ballot selections.No one knew how it worked.The glitch was one of many obstacles she had to navigate, both on that day and over the previous weeks, to fulfill what she saw as her civic duty. For Ms. Halvorson and others with disabilities, casting a ballot can always present a challenge. But new voting restrictions enacted in several states over the past two years have made it even harder.A law signed last year by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, has made it more difficult for voters to cast ballots by mail and narrowed their options for voting in person, according to groups that advocate for people with disabilities and voting rights. Other Republican-led state legislatures, including in Georgia and Florida, have passed similar measures as a part of what they say are efforts to prevent voter fraud, despite rare occurrences of the crime.“Instead of embracing the more accessible forms of voting that sparked record turnout, including among voters with disabilities,” said Brian Dimmick, a senior staff attorney for the disability rights program of the American Civil Liberties Union, “states have doubled down on new and more restrictive voter-suppression laws.”None of the new laws single out those with disabilities, but advocates say they have left many people who would otherwise vote by mail with burdensome options: face the greater risk that their mail-in ballot could be thrown out — as Texas did at a higher-than-usual rate during the March primary — or go to the polls in person, which involves its own set of inconveniences or, worse, physical barriers, and often deprives people with disabilities of a sense of privacy and independence that other voters can take for granted.A polling place in Brooklyn. Nearly two million people with disabilities reported that they had some difficulty voting in the November 2020 election — double the rate of people without disabilities.Anna Watts for The New York Times“Voters with disabilities are being disenfranchised by all these new laws, from onerous ID requirements to longer lines, making the entire process less accessible,” said Shira Wakschlag, the senior director of legal advocacy at The Arc, a disability advocacy organization.Several Texas Republicans who supported the new voting law did not respond to requests for comment about its effect on people with disabilities, although a spokeswoman for Governor Abbott said in a statement that it “protects the rights of disabled Texans to request reasonable accommodations or modifications.” At a hearing last year, State Senator Bryan Hughes, the Texas bill’s author, described accommodations for voters with disabilities as potential security risks, and said narrowing them would stop others from “using those opportunities to cheat.”Voting could already be difficult for those with disabilities. About 17.7 million reported voting in the November 2020 election, according to a report by the Program for Disability Research at Rutgers University and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Eleven percent of them, or nearly two million people, reported that they had some difficulty voting in that election — almost double the rate of people without disabilities.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Final Landscape: As candidates make their closing arguments, Democrats are bracing for potential losses even in traditionally blue corners of the country as Republicans predict a red wave.The Battle for Congress: With so many races on edge, a range of outcomes is still possible. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, breaks down four possible scenarios.Voting Worries: Even as voting goes smoothly, fear and suspicion hang over the process, exposing the toll former President Donald J. Trump’s falsehoods have taken on American democracy.The right to vote privately and independently was enshrined 20 years ago by Congress in the Help America Vote Act, which was the first law to require polling places to have accessible voting systems. The law also established the federal Election Assistance Commission, an independent body that sets guidelines for states and counties to accommodate disabled voters, which can be enforced by the Justice Department.Despite the law, Thomas Hicks, the commission chairman, said disabled voters still encountered problems, including those who are blind and have trouble locating accessible voting locations, and those who use wheelchairs and need voting machines to be low enough or adjustable to eye level.For Ms. Halvorson, a former special education teacher, the difficulties include being able to raise her hands and tap the screen of a voting machine, she said, because of her reduced motor skills. She lives with her partner, accompanied by different caregivers, in a one-story house in San Antonio, and also relies on a breathing machine to survive; a bad case of pneumonia in 2014 weakened her lungs, and she was not able to make a full recovery.Voting by mail made things simpler for her. But after reports that Texas had thrown out more than 18,000 mail-in ballots from its most populous counties during the March primaries, Ms. Halvorson — who cannot write on her own and feared having to appeal a rejected ballot — felt she had no other choice but to vote in person. She wanted to “see the ballot go in” herself, she said — even if it meant risking her health.“This election is too important to wait to find out if my vote counted,” she said.A week of research about voting in person led Ms. Halvorson to a new kind of machine that Texas had recently put in place, allowing a remote to be connected to the screen and used to make selections. She called her county clerk to ensure those machines would be present at the Igo Library, her local polling place. She did not hear back, she said.Ms. Halvorson entered her polling place on Thursday, on a trip that she began preparing for a month earlier. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesLydia Nunez Landry, a disability rights activist in Houston who has a different form of muscular dystrophy, said her experience using the remote on the first day of early voting went so poorly — including a poll worker seeing Ms. Landry’s chosen candidates — that she immediately filed a complaint with the Justice Department.“I’m just so angry,” Ms. Landry said. “They constantly are changing things, it feels like, to the disability community. We’re just so confused.”Ms. Halvorson wanted a caregiver to accompany her to the polling place in case she had a similar experience and needed help. She also scheduled a coronavirus vaccine booster shot exactly two weeks before the end of early voting..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How we call winners on election night. We rely on The Associated Press, which employs a team of analysts, researchers and race callers who have a deep understanding of the states where they declare winners. In some tightly contested races, we independently evaluate A.P. race calls before declaring a winner.Here’s more about how it works.On Thursday morning, Ms. Halvorson viewed an online guide to the candidates one more time. Her former service dog, Houston, wagged his tail as he put his paws in her lap and begged for treats.She drove to the library with one of her daytime caregivers, Shae-Lynn Lewis, in a large orange, wheelchair-accessible van. A parking spot for the disabled was available, which often is not the case, Ms. Halvorson said. Then it was time to take an inventory. Ms. Halvorson ticked off aloud what to bring inside: phone, identification, water bottle, hand sanitizer and wipes, and the absentee ballot she needed to turn in.Inside the library, a voting clerk wearing a U.S. Marine Corps veteran cap waved people through to the polling room.One of the tokens of Ms. Halvorson’s day. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMs. Halvorson and her caregiver entered and waited in line to turn in the absentee ballot and receive a remote. Ms. Halvorson later said her heart “was beating out of her chest” as she saw all the people around her without masks on in such close quarters.After securing the remote and pulling in front of a voting machine, she began trying to click through on the side buttons, but the screen did not respond. She said she asked for help, but none of the workers seemed to know how it worked, either.After a few tries, she said, the up and down buttons on the remote made the screen respond. It was still hard to read, however, as the font seemed to be enlarged and cut off the party affiliations for candidates she didn’t know.The Bexar County elections administrator, Jacquelyn Callanen, did not respond to requests for comment about Ms. Halvorson’s voting experience.While at least two dozen people entered and exited the voting area within minutes, Ms. Halvorson remained inside, trying to navigate the machine. After about half an hour, she was able to deposit her ballot.Later, she said she felt fortunate that her experience was not worse. Still, she said, “It should be smooth for literally everybody.”Before Ms. Halvorson left, one observer acknowledged her efforts. “The man gave me two ‘I voted’ stickers,” she said. “He said it’s because I had to go through twice as much as everybody else.”Ava Sasani More
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Don’t Believe Lee Zeldin When He Says He Can’t Touch Abortion Access in New York
I called Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, on Monday morning to see how worried he was about New York’s governor’s race. Levine, a Democrat who’d just come from campaigning with Gov. Kathy Hochul, was pretty worried. Yes, polls have shown Hochul consistently ahead of the Trumpist Republican congressman Lee Zeldin, but Levine thought the race could go either way.“I don’t think we know how accurate polls are in New York State,” Levine told me, noting how long it’s been since New York has had a competitive statewide general election. “And there’s no doubt that Zeldin has used the crime issue to whip up energy on his side.”There are many reasons to be aghast at the idea of a gun-loving election denier taking power in a state that’s been as reliably liberal as New York. One of them is what Zeldin might do to New York’s status as a haven for abortion access.Though Zeldin is a co-sponsor in the House of the Life at Conception Act, which would bestow full personhood rights on embryos, he’s tried to neutralize abortion as a campaign issue by insisting that he couldn’t change New York’s abortion law even if he wanted to.There’s something bizarre about this argument: As Assemblywoman Deborah Glick pointed out to me, Zeldin is telling pro-choice New Yorkers that we can rely on the Legislature to protect us from him. And while it’s true that Zeldin wouldn’t be able to ban abortion anytime soon, there are many things, short of making abortions illegal, that a governor can do to make them harder to get.Zeldin’s strategy is similar to the one that Christine Drazan, the anti-abortion Republican with a decent chance of becoming governor of Oregon, is employing in her race. Both are trying to use Democrats’ success in passing state-level abortion protections against them, by arguing that these laws make their personal opposition to abortion moot.“I will not change and could not change New York’s abortion law,” Zeldin said in one ad, while Drazan told Oregon Public Broadcasting that “Roe is codified into Oregon law. Regardless of my personal opinions on abortion, as governor, I will follow the law.” But when it comes to reproductive rights, the letter of the law isn’t the only thing that matters.New York, for example, recently passed a statute that, among other things, prohibits law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state prosecutors on most abortion cases. But whether a Governor Zeldin would be totally constrained by the law is unclear. He has promised to remove Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, from office, even though Bragg was elected last year with 84 percent of the vote, suggesting a willingness to push the limit of his authority. Oregon, meanwhile, has no such law, only a written commitment from the governor, the Democrat Kate Brown, to resist out-of-state legal actions over abortion.In both Oregon and New York, there are lots of administrative levers governors could pull to stymie reproductive health care. Zeldin has said it would be a “great idea” to appoint an anti-abortion health commissioner, a position with a lot of power in the state. Shortly after the draft of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe was leaked in May, Hochul created the $25 million Abortion Provider Support Fund to help New York providers care for an expected influx of out-of-state patients, and allocated $10 million more to help clinics beef up their security. Zeldin would almost certainly do away with grants like these. Drazan has criticized a similar grant program in Oregon, referring derisively to the funding of “abortion tourism.”New York’s governor “controls the purse strings, because he controls the division of the budget,” said Glick, who led the fight to pass the 2019 Reproductive Health Act, which codified Roe and expanded the number of health professionals who can legally perform abortions in the state. As governor, she said, Zeldin could withhold money from Planned Parenthood and restrict Medicaid funding for abortion. “You can slowly starve some programs by simply not providing resources in a timely fashion.”Of course, the people who care deeply about the nuances of reproductive health policy are probably already voting for Democrats, which is why pointing out all the ways right-wing governors could erode abortion access feels so dispiriting. Politically, the anti-abortion movement has often been at its strongest when it’s fighting for regulations that strangle providers with red tape or cut off public funding, because most people aren’t going to get far enough into the weeds to get outraged.While Roe still stood, the anti-abortion movement used a strategy of regulatory siege to chip away at abortion rights in red states. With anti-abortion governors, a similar strategy could be deployed in blue ones. Speaking to New York Right to Life in April, Zeldin promised an open-door policy. “Come on in to the second floor of the New York State Capitol,” he said. “It’s been a while, but you come right on in.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
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What’s at Stake in These Elections
Midterm elections in the United States are often presented as a referendum on the party in power, and that message appears to be resonating this fall. But voters need to consider the intentions of the party that hopes to regain power, too, and what each vote they cast will mean for the future of this country.Eight Republican senators and 139 Republican representatives sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election on the basis of spurious allegations of voter fraud and other irregularities. Many of them are likely to win re-election, and they may be joined by new members who also have expressed baseless doubts about the integrity of the 2020 election. Their presence in Congress poses a danger to democracy, one that should be on the mind of every voter casting a ballot this Election Day.It will also be the first time that the U.S. electoral machinery will be tested in a national election after two years of lawsuits, conspiracy theories, election “audits” and all manner of interference by believers in Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. That test comes alongside the embrace of violent extremism by a small but growing faction of the Republican Party.The greatest danger to election integrity may, in fact, come from the results of state and local races that will determine who actually conducts the election and counts the votes in 2024. In the weeks that followed the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his supporters saw their efforts to deny the election results and prove rampant voter fraud thwarted by two things: first, their inability to produce credible evidence that such fraud had occurred and, second, an election infrastructure that was defended by honorable public servants who refused to accept specious claims of wrongdoing.Over the past two years, Republicans in dozens of states have tried to dismantle that infrastructure piece by piece, particularly by filling key positions with Trump sympathizers. As this board wrote in September, “Rather than threatening election officials, they will be the election officials — the poll workers and county commissioners and secretaries of state responsible for overseeing the casting, counting and certifying of votes.” Many of those positions are being contested this week.With Mr. Trump said to be readying his bid to return to the White House, this board urges American voters to consider how important each vote cast on Election Day, at every level of government, will be. Even if the member of Congress in your district has refused to accept Mr. Trump’s lies about this election, there are other races on the ballot in many states for offices — including secretary of state, attorney general and governor — that will play crucial roles in overseeing and certifying the 2024 presidential election.Still, with that election two years away, many voters say they are more concerned with the present threats to their livelihoods than with the equally serious but less visible threat to democracy. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that “more than a third of independent voters and a smaller but noteworthy contingent of Democrats said they were open to supporting candidates who reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as they assigned greater urgency to their concerns about the economy than to fears about the fate of the country’s political system.”Indeed, voters have good reason to look at the current moment and wonder whether the Biden administration and congressional Democrats are doing enough to meet it. High inflation is making it harder for Americans to afford what they need and want. Overall crime has risen, causing people to fear for their safety. The federal government is struggling to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and America’s increasingly tense relations with China are undermining global peace and prosperity.Republicans have presented these midterm elections as a referendum on Democratic leadership, and that message appears to be resonating.But voters need to consider the intentions of the party that hopes to regain power, too.Republicans have offered few specific plans for addressing issues like inflation, immigration and crime — and even if they win control of Congress, they are unlikely to win enough seats to shift federal policy significantly over the next two years.A Republican-controlled Senate would, however, be able to block President Biden from filling vacancies on the federal bench and on the Supreme Court. It would become more difficult to obtain confirmations for executive branch officials, as well.Republican candidates have also pledged to devote significant time and energy to investigating the Biden administration. “I don’t think Joe Biden and his handlers are exactly eager to sign Republican legislation into law, so our hearings are going to be the most important thing that we can have,” Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado told a recent rally.In addition to that spectacle, Republicans are threatening to stage another showdown over federal spending.At some point in the next year, the government is expected to hit the limit of its authorized borrowing capacity, or debt ceiling. To meet the commitments Congress already has authorized, it will need to raise that limit. This ought to be a matter of basic housekeeping, because failing to pay the nation’s bills would risk a global financial crisis. But debt ceiling votes have instead become recurring opportunities for extortion.This board has called for Congress to eliminate the debt ceiling, replacing it with a common-sense law that says the government can borrow whatever is necessary to provide for the spending authorized by Congress. There is no public benefit in requiring what amounts to a second vote on spending decisions. But for now, the ceiling endures, and Republicans have made clear that if they win control of Congress, they intend to use it as a bargaining chip with the White House to advance their party’s fiscal goals.One priority on that list is cutting taxes. Republicans already are preparing to move forward with legislation to extend the 2017 tax cuts for individuals, which mostly benefit wealthy households, while eliminating some of the offsetting increases in corporate taxation — a plan that is not easily reconciled with the party’s stated concerns about inflation or the rising federal debt.Republican proposals would also make it more difficult for the Internal Revenue Service to prevent wealthy Americans from cheating on their taxes. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, who is in position to become speaker if Republicans win a majority, has said the “first bill” that would pass under his leadership would reverse an $80 billion funding increase for the I.R.S. Congress approved that funding in August so the I.R.S. can crack down on rampant tax fraud by high-income households.Some senior Republicans have called for repealing another key piece of the August legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act: a measure that limits drug costs for seniors on Medicare, including a $35 monthly cap on payments for insulin.Republicans also have floated plans to roll back more firmly established benefits. The Republican Study Committee, a conservative policy working group whose membership includes more than half of the current crop of House Republicans, published a budget plan in June calling for Congress to gradually increase the retirement age for full Social Security benefits to 70 to check the rising cost of the program. The plan also would increase the age of eligibility for Medicare.Democrats could make it more difficult for Republicans to pursue these goals by raising the debt limit or changing the rules in the weeks between the election and the end of the year.Democrats have largely failed to connect with voters’ concerns about inflation and public safety during this campaign season. They have struggled to communicate their tangible achievements, including a big boost in funding for local law enforcement and bipartisan gun safety legislation, a historic federal investment in developing clean and low-cost sources of energy to confront climate change and the cost of living, and a breakthrough measure to bring down the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients.Undoubtedly, there is more work to be done on these and other issues, including the health of the economy and the broken state of immigration policy. Voters need to decide which party they trust to do that work.But the 2022 elections are also an opportunity for every American to do their part in defending the integrity of American elections. The task of safeguarding our democracy does not end with one election, and it requires all of us to play a role. Our nation’s governance depends on it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
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Can Republicans and Democrats Find a Way Forward on Immigration?
Any hope for immigration reform on undocumented Dreamers, border security or legal immigration will likely hinge on compromise, something that has eluded lawmakers for decades.WASHINGTON — A drug needle goes into a person’s arm; an adult and child walk through a graveyard; and footage of migrants walking along a sandy stretch of a border wall, in Yuma, Arizona, streams while ominous music plays in the background of this video.It is a 40-second political ad in support of Blake Masters, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, who is running against Mark Kelly, the incumbent Democrat. The ad connects fatal overdoses of fentanyl and methamphetamines to a spike in illegal migration at the southwestern border. It is one of more than 400 political ads tying immigration to drugs this election cycle, according to America’s Voice, a pro-immigration advocacy group.And it is part of a false G.O.P. narrative that connects fatal overdoes of fentanyl to a spike in illegal migration and presents Republican immigration hard-line immigration policies as an answer to crime and the drug epidemic. Most of the fentanyl comes into the country through official ports of entry on the southwestern border, hidden in legitimate commerce.The false narrative, which resonates with voters across the country, is just one example of how toxic the issue of immigration has become. Republicans have stepped up attacks against President Biden as weak and ineffective on immigration, making it even more difficult for the Biden administration to secure any meaningful immigration reform after the midterm elections, especially if the G.O.P. controls at least one legislative chamber.But even if Republicans win control in Congress and want to advance their immigration policies, particularly on border security, they will have to find some compromise with Democrats to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate — something that has been elusive for years, regardless of party control.Here are some of the major immigration issues facing the Biden administration that would require striking a compromise with Republicans for any legislation to move forward.The DreamersImmigration advocates demonstrating in front of the Capitol to support protections for DACA recipients earlier this year.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe Obama-era program, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the country as children and have grown up in the United States. Court challenges against the policy have been successful and appeals have largely been exhausted, leaving the fate of these immigrants — many of whom hold jobs in sectors that are already struggling to find workers, such as agriculture and manufacturing — in the hands of Congress.If Congress is unable to come to an agreement to enshrine the policy in law, and a judge stops allowing current participants, known as “Dreamers,” to renew their status, about 1,000 of them will lose the ability to work every business day over a two-year period, said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration reform advocacy group that draws support from the tech industry.“This would cause terrible, unneeded human and economic hardship for millions of individuals,” Mr. Schulte said in a recent letter to Democrats, referring to the Dreamers, others who would be eligible for the benefit and their family members. He said the results of so many forced out of the work force “would be extremely harmful” for the country’s economy.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.The top Republican in the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who is in line for the speaker role, has said that if the G.O.P. wins back control, striking a deal to protect DACA recipients in exchange for border security is a non-starter. But significant job losses in Republican districts among DACA recipients could force the Republicans’ hands if their employers put pressure on their elected officials to find a solution.There has been and continues to be bipartisan support to create a pathway to citizenship for the Dreamers, according to a recent poll commissioned by FWD.us. But previous efforts have failed without enough Republican support.“It’s put up or shut up time” for Republicans if they actually want to do something on border security, Mr. Schulte said in an interview with The New York Times.Democrats have already shown that they are open to some kind of compromise measure.Border SecurityA Border Patrol agent detaining migrants who crossed the border near Yuma, Ariz.John Moore/Getty ImagesFor Republicans, when it comes to immigration, border security is the top priority.During Mr. Biden’s time in office, there has been a record-breaking spike in illegal migration at the southwestern border, part of a global trend exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.Many migrants are fleeing violence and poverty with the hope that they will find work or asylum in the United States. They are coming across the southwest border illegally, because there are not enough legal pathways for them to come to the United States. Limits on visas were set based on the U.S. economy in the 1990s and have largely remained the same, even though the country’s economy has grown more than twice as large since then.Even so, Republicans blame the Biden administration. House Republicans have threatened to impeach the Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, should they retake the majority, blaming him for the extraordinary number of illegal border crossings. They have also threatened to impeach the attorney general, among other officials.For Republicans, improving border security starts with restoring former President Donald J. Trump’s restrictive immigration measures. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the first step is completing Mr. Trump’s border wall, a pricey project that Mr. Biden paused when he took office. Fights over the wall also led to a government shutdown in 2018. Democrats say the wall is ineffective and sends a message that the country does not want to let anyone in.Republicans also argue that restricting asylum and withholding welfare benefits for immigrants are two policy changes that would deter migrants from crossing the southwestern border illegally, though undocumented immigrants are not eligible for most federal public benefits.“We have plenty of welfare recipients; we need productive citizens instead,” Mr. Scott said on his campaign website.There may be room for movement. Legislation introduced last year by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, had the support of two Democratic senators, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, and could provide a road map for compromise. The bill calls for hiring more people in the immigration agencies to address spikes in migration and speeding the process for determining an asylum case in immigration court. That proposal did not include a pathway to citizenship for the Dreamers, and the measure has yet to advance.So far, bills that included both border security and new pathways for legal immigration have hit dead-ends. Senator Dick Durban, Democrat of Illinois, recently reminded Republicans of a proposal in 2013 that had bipartisan support in the Senate. Mr. Durbin said if the legislation had passed, the country would not be in the current situation where there are not enough immigrants legally authorized to work in the agriculture sector. Legal ImmigrationFarm workers harvesting asparagus in Firebaugh, Calif.Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York TimesAnother challenge facing the Biden administration is the labor shortage across the country, which continues to worsen as the economy adds new jobs, even as fears of a recession grow. Democrats and many businesses that employ both low and high-skilled workers argue the labor shortage could be addressed through issuing work authorizations and paths to citizenship as well as expanding programs for immigrants to come work in the United States.Many businesses argue that allowing the expiration of work authorizations for Dreamers and other immigrants in the country on a temporary status would result in significant disruptions to the work force. Businesses pushing for immigration reform have pressed Congress to pass measures providing work authorizations that could give an immediate boost to the economy, lower food prices and fill critical job openings.Businesses, particularly in the agriculture industry, are also pushing to fix the country’s current farm labor shortages by passing new laws for immigrants to work in the agriculture work force.The House last year approved measures that would give about four million immigrants currently in the United States without documentation or with expiring permissions a path to citizenship. But the bills died without enough support in the Senate.While Democrats want to expand legal immigration, Republicans typically want to decrease it. Many Republicans see adding more paths to citizenship for immigrants already in the country on an expired or temporary status as a form of amnesty. They also argue that immigrants take jobs away from Americans.What’s NextMigrants seeking asylum wait to be processed by Border Patrol agents along a section of border wall near Yuma, Ariz.John Moore/Getty ImagesFor years, Republicans have largely owned the narrative on immigration, which is mostly focused on illegal immigrants and border crossings. In this election cycle, Republicans outspent Democrats on immigration-related ads on streaming services and traditional television nearly 15 to 1 — with $119.4 million compared to Democrats’ $8.1 million, according to BPI, a communications and marketing agency that tracks this data.Democrats see little political advantage in talking about immigration during the campaign. But letting Republicans fill that void means the G.O.P. message is often the only narrative Americans hear about immigration.In general, border and immigration policy are two of Mr. Biden’s least favorite issues to discuss, his staff has said, since it is an enormous challenge with no clear, quick solution. And there has been disagreement within the Biden administration over how to approach the border, with some aides supporting some of the restrictive policies of the last administration, according to two people familiar with the discussions.But immigration advocates say if Mr. Biden is serious about protecting Dreamers and pursuing other immigration reforms, Democrats must start reclaiming the narrative on immigration with a positive message that resonates with voters.“They’d better get on the messaging train,” said Beatriz Lopez, the chief political and communications officer with the advocacy group, Immigration Hub.There are brighter messages on immigration for Democrats to talk about, Ms. Lopez said. Her organization has found that voters in battleground states largely agree on protecting the Dreamers. She said they also approve of what the Biden administration has done to reunite immigrant families who were separated during the Trump administration. And voters support efforts to crack down on international drug cartels.Customs and Border Protection, for example, seized 14,700 pounds of fentanyl between October of last year and the end of September, which is more than five times the amount in 2019. About 80 percent of the fentanyl seized by the agency last year was done at ports of entry on the southwestern border.“Democrats have an opportunity to lean in,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group. “Talk about the fact that we can do big things, and get the ball rolling on affirmative positive immigration action, versus just playing into the right and talking about enforcement.”Jeanna Smialek More
