Title 42

What is going on at the Southern border?

We hear news about people waiting to come into the US, only to face awful conditions and ultimately be pushed back to their countries. 

Part of this is due to Title 42, which has been in effect far too long. 

Title 42 is an act created under the Public Health Service Act of 1944, and it 

gives the US the right to prohibit people from coming into a country if there is a risk of disease coming into the country. 

As of now, Venezuelans are not allowed into the US, and are being turned over to Mexico. 

When they are not accepted there, they are sometimes pushed back to Panama and Nicaragua. 

Former President Donald Trump enacted it for the first time since its creation in March 2020. 

When President Biden was elected, he vowed to get rid of the act, which he had always denounced as xenophobic. 

Biden allowed it to continue until April 2022, causing a lot of the chaos at the border that many Southern states – Arizona included – are upset about. 

To his credit, he vowed to end the Title in May of 2022. 

However, the federal court overturned his decision, and so the Biden Administration has been enforcing the Title ever since, against its will.

The Administration continues to denounce the court’s decision, but for now, there’s not much it can do, and so the Title remains in effect to this day. 

Biden isn’t doing a very good job of making his position clear, however.

“We are doing this out of a public health need. It is not an immigration policy,” said Biden in a press release in September. 

Why defend it when his administration is actively condemning it? 

And does Biden know that the Act increases border crossings, rather than decreasing them, due to a feeling of desperation? 

It doesn’t make much sense, but this is nothing new with President Biden.