In his most recent opinion column, Univision anchor and Special Advisor to the CEO Jorge Ramos complains about the most recent version of immigration amnesty enacted via administrative rule by President Joe Biden. In Ramos’ view, it simply isn’t enough.
Let this serve as your periodic reminder that Ramos is the only network newscast anchor with an opinion column. The title to this most recent one seems to have geographical variants: In Mexico, for Remodeling, it is simply titled “Thanks, but…”. For Miami’s The New Herald, its title can translate as “Romancing the Hispanic Vote”. It isn’t clear why the difference in titling, but there you go.
Ramos lays it out very clearly: it’s not enough, and what took Biden so long?
During his first presidential campaign in 2008, candidate Obama—in addition to telling Hispanics that “yes we can”—promised to send an immigration reform proposal to Congress during his first year in the White House.
And he did not do it, despite having a supermajority in both houses of Congress. Obama's unfulfilled promise has exacted a great price and has left millions of Hispanic families very vulnerable.
Had Obama fulfilled his promise, those immigrants would not be at risk of being deported and separated from their children.
For all of the above, what Biden has just done helps a lot. It is appreciated but it is not enough. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants will not have any benefits. And there is always the question as to why the president did not do it sooner and waited until there were less than five months until the November 5th elections.
Ramos’ advocacy for expanded immigration to the point of an open border is a matter of record, his cause celébre at Univision. The Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis has not given him much to cheer about lately, inasmuch as it has triggered greater overall awareness of the need to secure the border.
Ramos pushed for a number of amnesties during the Biden administration, including via budget reconciliation. In fact, Ramos was the first anchor to lend airtime and oxygen to that ill-fated effort.
Ramos, in a clear demonstration of his inability to read the room, further suggests that the way to win more Hispanic votes is via additional amnesties. And he closes out the column by, again, whining about the latest rule change not being enough.
In this electoral time when everyone wants to win over the Hispanic vote—these are times of promise—it is necessary to push for greater protections for Dreamers and for the millions who live in fear and in the shadows.
Ultimately, Biden only managed to help one-twentieth of the immigrants he set out to legalize on his first day as president. Thanks but…
One last note: the “Thanks, but” theme of his original Mexican title proves, once again, that Ramos is only really interested in standing up to Republicans. Whereas Ramos bit his tongue with this latest column, he didn’t when writing a similar column whining about the insufficiency of President George W. Bush’s immigration proposals nearly 20 years ago. That column was titled, “Thanks, Bush, But It’s Not Enough”.
Slight (D)ifference.
Click “Expand” to view translated text of Jorge Ramos’ column titled “Romancing the Hispanic Vote”, as published in El Nuevo Herald on Sunday, June 23rd, 2024:
What President Joe Biden just did changed the lives of half a million people. It's no small thing.
Undocumented immigrants who have been living in the United States for more than 10 years, without committing any crime and who are married to American citizens, will be able to legalize their immigration status.
It is, without a doubt, the best news that immigrants in the United States have received in 12 years, since President Barack Obama granted temporary residence and work permits to more than 800,000 Dreamers. It was unfinished business.
When Biden took office as president, the first thing he did was send to Congress a legalization proposal for more than 10 million undocumented immigrants. It was just a symbolic gesture.
We all knew that there were not the necessary votes in Congress for his proposal to become law. But Biden wanted to do it to differentiate himself from what Obama did not do.
During his first presidential campaign in 2008, candidate Obama—in addition to telling Hispanics that “yes we can”—promised to send an immigration reform proposal to Congress during his first year in the White House.
And he did not do it, despite having a supermajority in both houses of Congress. Obama's unfulfilled promise has exacted a great price and has left millions of Hispanic families very vulnerable.
Had Obama fulfilled his promise, those immigrants would not be at risk of being deported and separated from their children.
For all of the above, what Biden has just done helps a lot. It is appreciated but it is not enough. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants will not have any benefits. And there is always the question as to why the president did not do it sooner and waited until there were less than five months until the November 5th elections.
Without a doubt, this measure will help Biden with Latino voters and marks an enormous difference with former President Donald Trump. “Biden's actions will promote more crossings of undocumented immigrants at the border,” the Republican presidential candidate's campaign said. “Biden’s executive order will hurt Americans who are looking for work.”
The contrasts are clear: Biden legalizes half a million undocumented immigrants, while Trump threatens to carry out “the largest deportation campaign” if he returns to the White House. Whoever wins, we already know what to expect.
However, Trump and Biden share the same obsession with what is happening at the border. In that regard, the two are equal. They are terrified to realize that they have lost control of the border with Mexico and that the flow of millions from Central and South America has overwhelmed them. Neither Trump nor Biden have been able to stop the passage of undocumented immigrants... Nor will they be able to.
Trump tried to close the border twice: first, during the pandemic, and then when he imposed the “Stay in Mexico” program on his neighbor. In practice, this expelled millions of migrants to Mexico who did not want to go to the United States. And Biden was not far behind either. Two weeks ago he announced that he would temporarily close the border to asylum seekers if, on average, more than 2,500 migrants crossed per day.
While Trump's profile is clearly against undocumented immigrants, Biden's is mixed and more difficult to read.
On the one hand, it proposes closing the border to people who are fleeing violence and abuses of authority in Latin America and, on the other, it protects half a million people who have already been living in the United States for more than a decade.
Despite the differences between Biden and Trump, the United States is experiencing an anti-immigrant moment. In both parties there is a clear resistance to processing and accepting all newcomers. The narrative between Democrats and Republicans often sounds the same: the United States, they say, cannot take in all the immigrants who want to come from the rest of the world.
And yet, the American economy has perfectly absorbed the millions who have walked across the border in recent years. Unemployment is just four percent and 272,000 new jobs were created last month. What crisis?
In this electoral time when everyone wants to win over the Hispanic vote—these are times of promise—it is necessary to push for greater protections for Dreamers and for the millions who live in fear and in the shadows.
Ultimately, Biden only managed to help one-twentieth of the immigrants he set out to legalize on his first day as president. Thanks but…
