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SO YOU WANT to come to America. Venezuela, your home country, is suffering under Nicolás Maduro’s violent kleptocracy. What to do? Good luck getting a green card: employers won’t bother sponsoring a low-skilled worker like you, and you have no immediate family in America to vouch for you. Your WhatsApp is filled with news of friends who have crossed America’s southern border. You decide to follow them and, after a hellish trip, make it to the Rio Grande. You could try to slip across undetected—about 600,000 “gotaways” managed it last year. Or you can tell the border agents who intercept you that you want asylum. Odds are that they will release you with a court date scheduled in several months’ time, kickstarting a process that may take years. Welcome to America.
In November 2023 nearly 250,000 migrants crossed the southern border. The surge—and the perception that America’s borders are open—is a giant political liability for President Joe Biden. Just 27% of Americans tell pollsters that they approve of his handling of the border. More than twice as many trust Donald Trump on the issue. The fact that surging migration over the southern border could cost Mr Biden the election in November has made the problem trickier to solve. Wrangling over a deal to fund Ukraine in exchange for tighter border security and asylum limits has dragged on for months. Although Senate leaders say an agreement is close, some Republicans—reportedly including Mr Trump—seem to want the border chaos to fester, to better beat Mr Biden over the head with it during the election campaign.
Several factors explain the surge: violence and instability around the globe; plentiful job openings in America; the accurate perception that Mr Biden is more welcoming than his predecessor; and cumbersome, limited pathways to come legally. An overwhelmed border apparatus also invites more crossings, notes David Bier of the Cato Institute, a think-tank. When people hear that they are unlikely to be detained and deported, more try their luck.
Decades of neglect and partisan rancour have crippled America’s immigration system and created a situation where immigrants view asylum-seeking as the surest way to get into the country, rather than a long-shot attempt. Congress last made meaningful reform to immigration law in 1990. Comprehensive, bipartisan reform has seemed close several times since, only to fall apart in the end. In 2006, 2007 and 2013 bipartisan Senate bills included a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, more visas for workers and stricter enforcement at the border. In recent years Democrats have largely been animated by the desire to protect daca recipients, immigrants who were brought to America as children, from deportation.
Mr Trump’s candidacy upended the politics of immigration. When he launched his campaign in 2015, the number of migrants apprehended nationwide was at its lowest level since 1971. That fact did not, of course, stop Mr Trump from declaring that migrants threatened the American way of life. (“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”) In 2019 irregular entries at the southern border jumped. Mr Trump saw detention as a means of deterrence and made some migrants with pending asylum claims wait in Mexico. At one time during his presidency nearly 57,000 people were detained. The surge was so great that even Mr Trump released a quarter of migrants into the country immediately with a notice to appear (NTA) in immigration court.
Borderline, personalities, disorder
Mr Biden reduced detentions—the number in custody today is around 38,000—and scrapped the requirement to remain in Mexico. He has tried less effective deterrents. His administration wants to steer migrants towards ports of entry where they arrive for appointments made via a smartphone app. Most are admitted with permission to stay for a year or two. By contrast people caught crossing illegally are presumed ineligible for asylum, with a few narrow exceptions, and quickly deported.
Chart: The Economist
At least that is how it is supposed to work. In reality most migrants who cross illegally are still being released into the country, and irregular arrivals far exceed those at official crossings. Once on American soil a migrant can request asylum, which involves a screening with an asylum officer. Because of Mr Biden’s reluctance to pursue detention and an insufficient number of asylum officers, in November seven in ten were handed an NTA and sent on their way.
Last year the Biden administration also began granting parole to up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans each month, if applicants identified a financial sponsor in America. Again the goal was to make flows more orderly and decrease illegal arrivals. Permission to stay lasts two years but can be revoked at any time. Illegal crossings by Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans plummeted. But Venezuelans, who are less likely to have social ties to America, continue to enter illegally. “Most of the Venezuelans arriving now don’t have family, friends, relatives,” says Theresa Cardinal Brown, who served in the Department for Homeland Security in the Bush and Obama administrations.
Once across the border, migrants head to cities. Shelter systems in New York City, Chicago and Denver are overwhelmed and their mayors want Mr Biden’s help. This is partly the doing of Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, who is busing migrants to Democratic-run cities. But big cities are also natural magnets for migrants.
With an NTA in hand, new arrivals enter the court system, where the backlog is growing faster than judges can keep up. Cases in immigration court surpassed 3m in November. It takes more than four years on average just to get an initial asylum hearing. Doubling the number of judges would clear the backlog—but only by 2032, according to an estimate from the Congressional Research Service.
Half of asylum cases are denied, and decisions are inconsistent. One judge in Houston denied 95% of her asylum cases last year; another in San Francisco denied just 1% of hers. But the immense wait, low chance of detention and the prospect of work in America encourage migrants with a weak claim to cross the border. Prioritising the most recent arrivals’ cases would reduce this incentive, notes Stephen Yale-Loehr of Cornell Law School. A long journey seems less worth it if the reward is deportation rather than an NTA.
The looming election, Mr Trump’s perceived strength on border issues and Mr Biden’s desire to arm Ukraine mean that the president wants to make a deal. His openness to tougher border enforcement is also no doubt fuelled by Americans’ rightward turn on immigration. Polling from YouGov suggests that more Americans favour building a southern border wall than don’t. Even 32% of Democrats now say they support the idea, up from 20% in 2022.
Whether the House and the Senate can agree on reform is questionable. A deal may include funding for more Border Patrol agents, the ability to shut down migrant intake if encounters reach a certain level, a higher bar for migrants to pass their interview—so that they are not released into the country unless they are likely to actually receive asylum—and limits on parole. Any changes to asylum rules will almost certainly be challenged in the courts.
But House Republicans have waffled, often insisting that they would accept nothing other than HR2, a hardline immigration bill passed along party lines last year that would be dead on arrival in the Senate. On the left, progressives do not want to tighten access to asylum. Both groups should beware. A new poll from The Economist and YouGov suggests that a plurality of Americans want Congress to pass a bill that both funds Ukraine and restricts asylum. The politicians should not ignore their voters. ■
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U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Craig Hudson | Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Now that President Donald Trump has set out his landmark tariff plans, the Federal Reserve finds itself in a potential policy box to choose between fighting inflation, boosting growth — or simply avoiding the fray and letting events take their course without intervention.
Should the president hold fast to his tougher-than-expected trade policy, there’s a material risk of at least near-term costs, namely the potential for higher prices and a slowdown in growth that could turn into a recession.
For the Fed, that presents a potential no-win situation.
The central bank is tasked with using its policy levers to ensure full employment and low prices, the so-called dual mandate of which policymakers speak. If tariffs present challenges to both, choosing whether to ease to support growth or tighten to fight inflation won’t be easy, as each courts its own peril.
“The problem for the Fed is that they’re going to have to be very reactive,” said Jonathan Pingle, chief U.S. economist at UBS. “They’re going to be watching prices rise, which might make them hesitant to respond to any growth weakness that materializes. I think it’s certainly going to make it very hard for them to be preemptive.”
Under normal conditions, the Fed likes to get ahead of things.
If it sees leading gauges of unemployment perk up, the Fed will cut interest rates to ease financial conditions and give companies more incentive to hire. If it sniffs out a coming rise in inflation, it can raise rates to dampen demand and bring down prices.
So what happens when both things occur at the same time?
Risks to waiting
The Fed hasn’t had to answer that question since the early 1980s, when then-Chair Paul Volcker, faced with such stagflation, chose to uphold the inflation side of the mandate and hike rates dramatically, tilting the economy into a recession.
In the current case, the choice will be tough, particularly coming on the heels of how the Jerome Powell-led central bank was flat-footed when prices started rising in 2021 and he and his colleagues dismissed the move as “transitory.” The word has been resurrected to describe the Fed’s general view on tariff-induced price increases.
“They do risk getting caught offsides with the potential magnitude of this kind of price increase, not unlike what happened in 2022 where, they might might feel the need to respond,” Pingle said. “In order for them to respond to weakening growth, they’re really going to have to wait until the growth does weaken and makes the case for them to move.”
To be sure, the Trump administration sees the tariffs as pro-growth and anti-inflation, though officials have acknowledged the potential for some bumpiness ahead.
“It’s time to change the rules and make the rules be stacked fairly with the United States of America,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC in a Thursday interview. ” We need to stop supporting the rest of the world and start supporting American workers.”
However, that could take some time as even Lutnick acknowledged that the administration is seeking a “re-ordering” of the global economic landscape.
Like many other Wall Street economists, Pingle spent the time since Trump announced the new tariffs Wednesday adapting forecasts for the potential impact.
Bracing for inflation and flat growth
The general consensus is that unless the duties are negotiated lower, they will take prospects for economic growth down to near-zero or perhaps even into recession, while putting core inflation in 2025 north of 3% and, according to some forecasts, as high as 5%. With the Fed targeting inflation at 2%, that’s a wide miss for its own policy objective.
“With price stability still not fully achieved, and tariffs threatening to push prices higher, policymakers may not be able to provide as much monetary support as the growth picture requires, and could even bind them from cutting rates at all,” wrote Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management.
Traders, however, ramped up their bets that the Fed will act to boost growth rather than fight inflation.
As is often the reaction during a market wipeout like Thursday’s, the market raised the implied odds that the Fed will cut aggressively this year, going so far as to put the equivalent of four quarter-percentage-point reductions in play, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tracker of futures pricing.
Shah, however, noted that “the path to easing has become narrower and more uncertain.”
Fed officials certainly haven’t provided any fodder for the notion of rate cuts anytime soon.
In a speech Thursday, Vice Chair Philip Jefferson stuck to the Fed’s recent script, insisting “there is no need to be in a hurry to make further policy rate adjustments. The current policy stance is well positioned to deal with the risks and uncertainties that we face in pursuing both sides of our dual mandate.”
Taking the cautious tone a step further, Governor Adriana Kugler said Wednesday afternoon — at the same time Trump was delivering his tariff presentation in the Rose Garden — that she expects the Fed to stay put until things clear up.
“I will support maintaining the current policy rate for as long as these upside risks to inflation continue, while economic activity and employment remain stable,” Kugler said, adding she “strongly supported” the decision in March to keep the Fed’s benchmark rate unchanged.
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Employees of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hug each other as they queue outside the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Building, after it was reported that the Trump administration fired staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at the Food and Drug Administration, as it embarked on its plan to cut 10,000 jobs at HHS, in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 1, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
A surge in federal government job cuts contributed to a near record-setting pace for announced layoffs in March, exceeded only by when the country shut down in 2020 for the Covid pandemic, according to a report Thursday from job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Furloughs in the federal government totaled 216,215 for the month, part of a total 275,240 reductions overall in the labor force. Some 280,253 layoffs across 27 agencies in the past two months have been linked to the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency and its efforts to pare down the federal workforce.
The monthly total was surpassed only by April and May of 2020 in the early days of the pandemic when employers announced combined reductions of more than 1 million, according to Challenger records going back to 1989.
“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] plans to eliminate positions in the federal government,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president and workplace expert at the firm. “It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs.”
However, DOGE has continued to cut aggressively across the government.
Various reports have indicated that the Veterans Affairs department could lose 80,000 jobs, the IRS is in line for some 18,000 reductions and Treasury is expected to drop a “substantial” level of workers as well, according to a court filing.
The year to date tally for federal government announced layoffs represents a 672% increase from the same period in 2024, according to Challenger.
To be sure, the outsized layoff plans haven’t made their way into other jobs data.
Weekly unemployment claims have held in a fairly tight range since President Donald Trump took office. Payroll growth has slowed a bit from its pace in 2024 but is still positive, while job openings have receded but only to around their pre-pandemic levels.
However, the Washington, D.C. area has been hit particularly hard by the announced layoffs, which have totaled 278,711 year to date for the city, according to the report.
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BERLIN, GERMANY – FEBRUARY 24: Robert Habeck, chancellor candidate of the German Greens Party, speaks to the media the day after German parliamentary elections on February 24, 2025 in Berlin, Germany. The Greens came in fourth place with 11.6% of the vote, down 2.9% from the previous election. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump will “buckle under pressure” and alter his tariff policies if Europe bands together, acting German economy minister Robert Habeck said Thursday.
“That is what I see, that Donald Trump will buckle under pressure, that he corrects his announcements under pressure, but the logical consequence is that he then also needs to feel the pressure,” he said during a press conference, according to a CNBC translation.
“And this pressure now needs to be unfolded, from Germany, from Europe in the alliance with other countries, and then we will see who is the stronger one in this arm wrestle,” Habeck said.
Elsewhere, outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he believed the latest tariff decisions by Trump were “fundamentally wrong,” according to a CNBC translation.
The measures are an attack on the global trade order and will result in suffering for the global economy, Scholz said.
On Wednesday, Trump imposed 20% levies on the European Union, including on the bloc’s foremost economy Germany, as he signed a sweeping and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy.
Germany is widely regarded as one of the countries likely to be most impacted by Trump’s tariffs, given its heavy economic reliance on trade.
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.