No. of Recommendations: 10
Hire 1 million asylum judges and process the cases instantaneously at the border.
Democrats would approve that in a heartbeat. You don't need a million, obviously, and you can't do it instantaneously (the government needs time to prepare their case against asylum). But if Congress wanted to try a tenfold (or more) increase in immigration judges to get the processing time down to a few months or less, progressives would be 100% on board with that.
It's the fact that more people are coming that we as a country can absorb. What's your plan to address that?
If there are genuinely more people coming than we have the capacity to absorb, then there are some relatively uncomplicated ways to address it. Amend the laws to tighten the criteria for asylum. Add a "safe third country" requirement that isn't dependent on a bilateral agreement. Add more judges so there are fewer people in the country legally awaiting their asylum hearing.
There are more complicated (and uncertain) ways to address it as well. Come up with a mix of legislative and funding 'goodies' to blow AMLO's socks off so he agrees to Remain in Mexico. Engage in massive development aid and resources to lift the Central Triangle countries out of their hellish conditions. Or increase the capacity of the country to absorb more people, annually (we're a nation of 330 million and have had vastly higher proportions of immigrants in the past, adding >1% of the population per year shouldn't really be unmanageable, Canada manages to do it just fine).
All of these implicate different values in immigration policy, and different political groups prioritize and emphasize different values. Politically, there probably isn't a majority coalition for any single one of them. Which is why none of them get done, even though there's lots of different ways to handle it.
