Subject: Re: On illegal immigration
You are attempting to dismiss your opponents arguments by claiming their concerns and ideas are rooted in misunderstanding plain English.

Not really. In the past, Dope has substituted amnesty for asylum - but in a context in which it was clear that he intended to mean asylum. So I haven't nitpicked, and just went on with the discussion.

In this post, though, he didn't merely use the wrong term. He quoted the substantive standards that apply to amnesty (not asylum), and provided a link to a discussion of the various aspects of applying for amnesty (not asylum). So I pointed out that asylum and amnesty are two very different concepts and legal procedures.

I'm not dismissing his arguments, and I've continually tried to engage thoughtfully in a conversation about them. But again, much of the problem at the border isn't resulting from maladministration by DHS but because our entire system of border security is geared towards apprehending illegal crossers that aren't requesting asylum. So in the past, many of the people who get caught by DHS were simply placed into an expedited removal proceeding and sent home (typically Mexico). Now, though, so many of these folks are requesting asylum - and they're not eligible for expedited removal.

The system just isn't built for having hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers waiting four to five years for a hearing. That's not a failure to make initial apprehensions or catch people as they're crossing the border - it's a failure to have any system in place for what to do after you catch them. Congress won't pay to keep them in camps for years; Congress won't pay to speed up the immigration hearings; Congress won't pay for physical barriers (for a variety of reasons). Until they do, it's not a problem that can be solved by a President.

Which is what I'm trying to coax out of Dope - his idea for how a President can respond to an asylum crush. Trump didn't have an answer until the pandemic, so just being demonstratively unwelcoming to asylum seekers isn't going to work. And I noted in my previous post, CDC/Title 42 isn't a remedy any more, either. So I'm curious to see what he thinks Biden is doing wrong, as opposed to just dealing with an issue unsolvable by the Executive alone.