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America’s immigration policies are failing

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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.

Stay on top of American politics with Checks and Balance, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter, which examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.

Economics

Americans are getting flashbacks to 2008 as tariffs stoke recession fears

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Homemade barbecue pork chops. Katy Perry performs onstage during the Katy Perry The Lifetimes Tour 2025. A woman checks her receipt while exiting a store.

iStock| Theo Wargo | Hispanolistic | Getty Images

A few weeks ago, as Kiki Rough felt increasingly concerned about the state of the economy, she began thinking about previous periods of financial hardship.

Rough thought about the skills she learned about making groceries stretch during the tough times that accompanied past economic downturns. Facing similar feelings of uncertainty about the country’s financial future, she began making video guides to recipes from cookbooks published during previous recessions, depressions and wartimes.

The 28-year-old told followers that she is not a professional chef, but instead earned her stripes by learning to cook while on food stamps. From Rough’s yellow-and-black kitchen in the Chicago suburbs, she teaches viewers how to make cheap meals and at-home replacements for items like breakfast strudel or donuts. She often reminds people to replace ingredients with alternatives they already have in the pantry.

“I keep seeing this joke over and over in the comments: The old poors teaching the new poors,” Rough told CNBC. “We just need to share knowledge right now because everyone is scared, and learning is going to give people the security to navigate these situations.”

The self-employed consultant’s videos quickly found an audience on TikTok and Instagram. Between both platforms, she’s gained 350,000 followers and garnered about 21 million views on videos over the last month, by her count.

President Donald Trump’s announcement of broad and steep tariffs earlier in April has ratcheted up fears of the U.S. economy tipping into a recession in recent weeks. As Americans like Rough grow increasingly worried about the road ahead, they are harking back to the tips and tricks they employed to scrape by during dark financial chapters like the global financial crisis that exploded in 2008.

Google is predicting a spike in search volumes this month for terms related to the recession that came to define the late 2000s. Searches for the “Global Financial Crisis” are expected to hit levels not seen since 2010, while inquiries for the “Great Recession” are slated to be at their highest rate since the onset of the Covid pandemic.

Porkchops, house parties and jungle juice

On TikTok, a gaggle of Millennials and Gen Xers has stepped into the roles of older siblings, offering flashbacks and advice to younger people on how to pinch pennies. Some Gen Zers have put out calls to elders for insights on what a recession may feel like at this stage of life, having been too young to feel the full effects of the financial crisis.

“This is, potentially, at least on a large scale, the first time that millennials have been able to be the ‘experts’ on something,” said Scott Sills, a 33-year-old marketer in Louisiana. “We’re the experts on getting the rug pulled out from under us.”

Those doling out the advice are taking a trip down memory lane the to tail-end of the aughts. Cheap getaways to Florida were the norm instead of lush trips abroad. They had folders for receipts in case big-ticket purchases went on sale later. Business casual outfits were commonplace at social events because they couldn’t afford multiple styles of clothing.

Porkchops were a staple dinner given their relative affordability, leading one creator to declare that they “taste like” the Great Recession. They drank “jungle juice” at house parties, a concoction of various cheap liquors and mixers, instead of cocktails at bars.

“There’s things that I didn’t realize were ‘recession indicators’ the first time around that I thought were just the trends,” said M.A. Lakewood, a writer and professional fundraiser in upstate New York. “Now, you can see it coming from 10 miles away.”

 Customers shop for produce at an H-E-B grocery store on Feb. 12, 2025 in Austin, Texas.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images

To be sure, some of the discourse has centered around how inflationary pressures have made a handful of these hacks defunct. Some content creators pointed out that the federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 per hour since 2009 despite the cost of living skyrocketing.

Kimberly Casamento recently began a TikTok series walking viewers through recipes from a cookbook that was focused on affordable meals published in 2009. The New Jersey-based digital media manager said she’s found costs for what were then considered low-budget meals ballooning between about 100% and 150%. In addition to sharing the price changes, the 33-year-old gives viewers some tips on how to keep costs down.

“Every aspect of life is so expensive that it’s hard for anybody to survive,” Casamento said. “If you can cut the cost of your meal by $5, then that’s a win.”

‘A very human thing’

This type of communal knowledge-sharing is common during times of economic belt tightening, according to Megan Way, an associate professor at Babson College who studies family and intergenerational economics. While conversations about how to slash costs or to make meals stretch typically took place among neighbors in the late 2000s, Way said it makes sense that they would now play out in the digital square with the rise of social media.

“It’s a very human thing to reach out to others when things are feeling uncertain and try to gain on their experience,” Way said. “It can really make a difference for feeling like you’re moving forward a little prepared. One of the worst things for an economy is absolute fear.”

Read more CNBC analysis on culture and the economy

Way said that Americans are quick to look back to the Great Recession for a guide because that downturn was so shocking and widely felt. However, she said there’s key differences between that economic situation and what the U.S. is facing today, such as the absence of bad debt that sparked the housing market’s crash.

Still, she said there’s broad uncertainty felt today on several fronts — be it tied to the economy, geopolitics or domestic policy priorities like slashing the federal workforce or limiting immigration. That can reignite the feeling of unpredictability about what the future will bring that was paramount during the Great Recession, Way said.

In 2025, it’s clear that economic confidence among the average American is rapidly souring. The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment recorded one of its worst readings in more than seven decades this month.

With that negative economic outlook comes rising stress. When Lukas Battle made a satirical TikTok about feeling like divorces were increasingly common around the time of the Great Recession, the 27-year-old’s comments were abuzz with people talking about their parents splitting recently. (Though divorce has been seen as a cultural hallmark of the financial crisis, data shows the rate actually declined during this period.)

“There’s a second round of divorces happening as we speak,” Battle said.

Cultural parallels

That’s one of several parallels social media users have drawn between the late aughts and today. When videos surfaced of a group dancing to Doechii’s hit song “Anxiety,” several commenters on X reported feeling déjà vu to when flashmob performances were common.

Disney‘s reboot of the animated show “Phineas and Ferb,” which originally premiered in the late 2000s, similarly put the era top of mind.

Lady Gaga performing at Coachella 2017

Getty Images | Christopher Polk

“Recession pop,” a phrase mainly referring to the subgenre of trendy music that dropped during the Global Financial Crisis, has caught a second wave over the past year as Americans contended with inflation and high interest rates.

Now, in 2025, as the chorus of voices projecting a recession ahead grows, pop music has some familiar sounds.

In 2008, artists such as Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry regularly appeared on the music charts. Both Cyrus and Gaga have released new songs this year. Perry kicked off a world tour this week.

“It’s almost a permission to feel good, whether that’s through song or something,” said Sills, the marketer in Louisiana. “It’s not necessarily ignoring the problems that are here, but just maybe finding some sort of joy or fun in the midst of all of it.”

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Checks and Balance newsletter: Predictions for the Democrats’ future

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ECB members say inflation job nearly done but tariff risks loom

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Guests and attendeess mingle and walk through the atrium during the IMF/World Bank Group Spring Meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, on April 24, 2025.

Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images

After years dominated by the pandemic, supply chains, energy and inflation, there was a new topic topping the agenda at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings this year: tariffs.

The IMF set the tone by kicking off the week with the release of its latest economic forecasts, which cut growth outlooks for the U.S., U.K. and many Asian countries. While economists, central bankers and politicians have been engaged in panels and behind-the-scenes talks, many are attempting to work out whether trade tensions between China and the U.S. are — or perhaps are not — cooling.

Policymakers from the European Central Bank that CNBC spoke to this week broadly stuck a dovish-leaning tone, indicating they saw interest rates continuing to fall and few upside risks to euro zone inflation. However, all stressed the current high levels of uncertainty, the need to keep monitoring data, and the high risks to the growth outlook — sentiments also echoed by Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey in his interview with CNBC on Thursday.

These were some of the main messages from ECB members this week.

Christine Lagarde, European Central Bank president

On inflation and monetary policy:

“We’re heading towards our [inflation] target in the course of 2025, so that disinflationary process is so much on track that we are nearing completion. But we have the shocks, you know, and the shocks will be a dampen on GDP. It’s a negative shock to demand.”

“The net impact on inflation will depend on what countermeasures are eventually taken by Europe. Then we have to take into account the [German] fiscal push by the defense investments, by the infrastructure fund.”

“We have seen successive movements, you know, announcement [of U.S. tariffs], and then a pause, and then some exemptions. So we have to be very attentive… Either we cut, either we pause, but we will be data dependent to the extreme.”

Watch CNBC's full interview with ECB president Christine Lagarde

On market moves:

“When we had done our projections, we anticipated that… the dollar would appreciate, the euro would depreciate. It’s not what we saw. And there have been some counter-intuitive movements in various categories.”

“The German market has obviously been shocked in a positive way by the program soon to be put in place by the German government, with a commitment to defense, with a commitment to a big fund for infrastructure development.”

Klaas Knot, The Netherlands Bank president

On tariff uncertainty:

“If I look back over the last 14 years, in the initial days of the pandemic I think that was comparable uncertainty to what we have now.”

“In the short run, it’s crystal clear that the uncertainty that is created by the unpredictability of the tariff actions by the U.S. government works as a strong negative factor for growth. Basically, uncertainty is like a tax without revenue.”

On the inflation impact:

“In the short run, we will have lower growth. We will probably also have lower inflation. As we also see, the euro is appreciating as energy prices have also come down. So together with the sort of negative factor uncertainty in the short run, it’s crystal clear that it will accelerate the disinflation.”

It's 'crystal clear' that tariffs could hit growth in the short term, ECB's Knot says

“But in the medium term, the inflation outlook is not all that clear. I think there are still these negative factors. But in the medium term, you might get retaliation. You might get the disruption of global value chains, which might also be inflationary in other parts of the world than the U.S. only. And then, of course, we have the fiscal policy coming in in Europe. So this is actually a time in which you need projections.”

On a June rate cut and market pricing for two more ECB rate cuts in 2025:

“I’m fully open minded. I think it’s way too early to already take a position on June, whether it would be another cut. It will fully depend on these projections.”

“I would need to see a more structured analysis of the impact on the inflation profile ahead of us, and only then can I say whether the market is pricing fair or whether I don’t.”

Robert Holzmann, Austrian National Bank governor

On the need to wait for more data and news on tariffs:

“We have not seen this uncertainty now for years… unless the uncertainty subsides, by the right decisions, we will have to hold back a number of our decisions, and hence, we don’t know yet in what direction monetary policy should be best moved.”

“Before looking at data in detail, the question is, what kind of political decisions will be taken? Is it that we will have some tariff increases? Is it that we will have strong tariff increases? Is it that we will have retribution by high counter tariffs?”

We have not seen this much uncertainty for years, Austrian central bank governor says

On the ECB’s April rate cut:

“I think there’s a broad consensus [on rates]. But of course, at the margin, people differ.”

“My assessment is that at this time, it wasn’t clear yet to what extent [tariff] countermeasures were being taken. Because with countermeasures in Europe, prices may have increased. Without countermeasures, quite likely the price pressure is downward. And for the time being, we don’t know yet the direction.”

On the direction of interest rates:

“I think if the recent noises about an arrangement [on trade] were to be true, in this case, quite likely it is more towards the downside than the upside with regard to prices. But this can be changed with different decisions and the result of which, we may even imagine in [the] other direction. For the time being, no, it will be down.”

“There may be further cuts this year, but the number is still outstanding.”

Mārtiņš Kazāks, Bank of Latvia governor

On opportunity from tariffs:

“With all this uncertainty and vulnerability, this is also the time of opportunities for Europe.”

“It’s a time for Europe to grasp all the aspects of being an economic superpower and becoming a really fully-fledged political and geopolitical superpower, and this requires doing all the decisions that in the past, were not carried out fully.”

“This requires political will, political guts to make those decisions, and to strengthen the European economy and assert its place in a global world.”

Global vulnerability an opportunity for Europe, says ECB's Kazāks

On market reaction to tariffs:

“So far it seems to be relatively orderly … but if one looks at the spillovers to Europe, the financial markets are working more or less fine, we haven’t seen spreads exploding or anything like that.”

“But in terms, however, of the macro scenarios, this uncertainty is extremely elevated in the sense that, given the possible outcomes, the multiple scenarios and their probabilities are very similar with the baseline [tariff] scenario.”

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