Why Building Working Legal Pathways is the Best Policy and Politics Approach to Forced Migration — And Upholds the Best of America’s Promise

In the ongoing debates over how the U.S. should seize the opportunities and meet challenges around migration, a massive component missing from this conversation is the critical need to build legal pathways — even though it's the key to creating a truly functional system.

The Biden administration, having stopped exercising its use of the pandemic-era Title 42 authority, has recently taken critical steps to build legal pathways that actually work and are already helped reduce pressure at the U.S.-Mexico border. It should continue building on those successes by providing individuals and families options for a legal and orderly channels for migration, which we know they will consistently use over crossing without authorization.

On the other hand, the Biden administration’s recent asylum transit ban is a terrible mistake, as is the false assumption that expanded legal migration pathways need to be paired with additional hardline deterrence-first policies. We should not preemptively disqualify countless people from their right to seek asylum on U.S. soil.

America is at its best when we welcome those in need of protection, as well as those who want to work, study, or be reunited with their families in the United States.