 The fate of thousands of migrants at the southern borders of the United States remains uncertain as a legal provision is set to expire on December 27th. Title 42 was invoked during the Donald Trump era and cited COVID-19 as an excuse to keep refugees out. Over two years later, the policy is set to expire, but it is unclear what will happen to the refugees waiting at the borders. What is Title 42 and why was it invoked? What has been the politics around it and how have various states used it? Eugene Purir of Breakthrough News explains. Title 42 is essentially an obscure part of the U.S. code that deals with what powers the U.S. government has around immigration when it concerns public health emergencies. So under U.S. federal law and also international humanitarian law, any person who gets into the continental United States who's able to get into the country has the right to apply for asylum. So traditionally, the way quite a bit of immigration into the United States took place is people would come into the country in various different ways. And once they were in the country or at a port of entry, so they would go out to the port of entry and make a claim of asylum or enter the country another way and then go somewhere else and make a claim of asylum, they would then be allowed to, well, their case could either be processed right there, but nine times out of 10 because of everything that goes around with it, they would then be paroled into the United States quote unquote paroled because they're technically arrested and then they would be told to report to a immigration and customs enforcement or ICE office at some later date to continue the processing in which they would have a court hearing that would determine what their claims of asylum would be. So ultimately, Title 42 has usurped that normal form of functioning of the U.S. immigration system and the legal right that any person has to seek asylum here in the United States once they get to a port of entry or otherwise inside of the United States. And it's based on the fact that during public health emergencies, well, during certain public health emergencies, the government has the ability to suspend some of these other laws around your rights to claim asylum and has the ability to then eject someone from the country or not allow them to enter without any sort of hearing. So before you had to have a hearing under Title 42, there's no hearing. So ultimately Title 42 was just a way, I mean, it was about COVID perhaps for the first few months, but subsequently, and just remember now, President Biden is saying that the pandemic is over, but still using this pandemic error measure. But since the Trump administration, two and a half million people have been ejected from the United States or really not even allowed to come into the United States based on this Title 42 measure. So it's ultimately now become a tool that has nothing to do with COVID or nothing to do with public health, but it's an easy way for the government to remove immigrants or not allow them to come into the country without giving them any form of due process. So without actually evaluating whether or not they have a legal claim for asylum or otherwise, they're just keeping them out of the country. So the Biden administration has been using Title 42, just like the Trump administration as a political tool to limit immigration into the United States to prevent the racist anti-immigrant sentiment from blowing back on the Biden administration. And I think they feel the Democratic Party more broadly, although most Democrats rank and file voters actually do support allowing more immigration into the country. The political struggle around Title 42 and what's going to happen, it goes up and down, it can change all the time, and right now there are so many different variables. Most advocates for immigrants are essentially saying they have no idea what's happening, what's going to happen, and that even the things we know could happen will lead to even more gray area of what's going on. So the basic reality is for some time now actually, going back a number of months, advocates for immigrants, advocates for civil liberties have been trying to bring court cases to end Title 42, saying that it's against the U.S. law, that people do have the right to claim asylum, and you can't just keep them from coming into the country without giving them due process, because they may in fact have legal claims that allow them to enter into the country. So about a month ago, a judge ruled that this one of the legal cases that made it to a federal judge, that they were right, the advocates for immigrants, that the government was not using Title 42 correctly, that it wasn't really about the public health emergency, and the denial of due process was not warranted. So essentially since then, this drama has played out where the governors who are on the border, who are almost all Republicans at this stage in the game, except for in California, so most of the Republican governors who have been the most vocal about this have been saying that Title 42 should be allowed to remain in place, because it's an effective tool for protecting their states. Now what the irreparable harm they claim that they're going to suffer is unclear, their rhetoric, of course, is very much around crime, saying that immigrants raise crime, but we know that in Texas, which is one of the most vociferous states with this sort of narrative, that those who are coming into the country who are undocumented are two and a half times less likely to commit any violent crime than someone who is a US citizen, someone born here with citizenship. So we know that that's totally bogus, it's really about the racism, but that's what they're arguing is that Title 42 should stay because it's protecting people. They obviously don't want to say a lot about COVID because they all don't want any COVID protection but they've been making all these various arguments around safety and security. The Biden administration has essentially tried to say that they don't want Title 42, but they're in a conundrum because they also don't want the old system. The Biden administration is essentially on the same page as the Republicans for a very different reason. The Republicans are pushing a racist anti-immigrant policy, but since that has some resonance, unfortunately, with subsets of the population, the Biden administration is pandering, and other Democrats as well, but certainly the Biden administration is pandering to those who really are sympathetic to these racist sentiments about immigrants, and they don't want to let a lot of immigrants into the country either. But they know that if they remove Title 42, it would be difficult to find another mechanism that makes it this easy to just keep people out of the country. So they have been going to court and the Supreme Court will decide whether or not Title 42 is going to be able to remain for how much time, what the parameters of that are going to be. So if Title 42 was to stay, of course, it would just be the status quo and it's unclear how the Biden administration would move forward. But if Title 42 is to fall, then we also have no idea what's going to happen because there is no real system in place to replace it, and no one knows exactly what's going to happen. And there are a number of different proposals on what could happen, how it's going to work, but it really is a total gray area. So what it really ultimately comes down to is this struggle by Republican governors in particular and the Biden administration working essentially hand in glove, although for differing reasons, to just try to find some excuse, whether it's Title 42 or something else, to keep the maximum number of people out of the United States who are coming here as immigrants for extraordinarily valid reasons. And we're basically going to see that play out over the next couple of weeks. There are other lawsuits that are going to try to find other ways to bring this back up, even if the Supreme Court gets rid of Title 42. So the legal drama, the actual drama is going to continue, and it's going to be back and forth. But the one thing I think we can say for absolute certain is there is going to be a strong push on the border by Republican governors who do not want immigrants and probably by the Biden administration to find some way to establish a regime that is going to heavily limit the ability of people to enter the country and to seek asylum here in the United States. The controversies around Title 42 are part of a larger debate in the U.S. about immigration and refugees. In recent times, Republican leaders such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott have bused migrants to cities controlled by Democrats to prove a political point. Meanwhile, the approach of the Biden administration and the Democrats has been dubious too. What are the fault lines around the issue of immigration at a national level? You know, the big issue that really lays behind this entire thing is a long-running issue. It really goes back in a real way and a really contemporary way to the George W. Bush administration. And that is the issue of how many people should be allowed to come into the United States and under what rules. Now, the United States, of course, is historically a nation of immigrants. Some people came here willingly. Some people, like my ancestors, were brought over here. But the sort of historical narrative of the United States that were presented in our civics class as young people is this is the nation of immigrants. Immigrants make the country stronger. And I think a large number of people in the United States absolutely agree with that. And they feel that there should be very limited restrictions on immigration that by and large, most people who need to come here, who are seeking a better life, should be able to come here. And that historically, over time, that has been something that has brought strength to the United States of America. But it's become caught up in the politics of the decline of U.S. capitalism. Because for most of the history of America, there was the history of the rising giant of the world economy. But now, of course, it's the issue of an economy that is in total disarray, that in many ways is declining. And the overall position of America is declining. So in the context of deindustrialization and the loss of jobs and many other problems that have taken place, immigrants have become the scapegoat. So there's also a big subset of the population that is saying, well, we have to find ways to restrict people coming into the country because they're taking jobs away, they're not contributing, and all these other things, most of which have been proven to be false, but nonetheless, it has significant resonance. And there hasn't really been a real answer to this question. And in fact, both major political parties have been, in a way, kind of dancing around it for a couple of decades now. But it's really starting to come to a head because the social crises in countries like Haiti, the imposed social crisis on Venezuela because of sanctions, in countries like Guatemala and Central America and these just terrible right-wing regimes that are El Salvador destroying people's lives has obviously sent a large number of people coming and trying to come to the United States in order to seek a better life, to seek safety for themselves and their families. And so how exactly is that going to play out? So it's interesting because primarily Democrats tend to be the ones who are arguing for more quote-unquote open immigration policies while Republicans are going more restrictive. But really what has been happening is the manipulation of this process by a number of border state governors, especially Greg Abbott of the state of Texas who is sending immigrants to Chicago, to New York, to D.C. and other places. And you're seeing people like New York City Mayor Eric Adams who is a Democrat now start to sort of say that immigration system is broken, which it is. And that, you know, there's all these problems and people coming to the city are ruining everything and they're taxing our services. So in a way, kind of echoing a lot of what you hear from the governors of Texas and Arizona that immigrants are a burden, that there are a problem that they have to be dealt with. So we're seeing now that it's working to some degree that the Republican strategy of trying to essentially, you know, spread the immigration crisis out in many different ways. And the fact that the federal government isn't dealing with it effectively has actually starting to create more of a backlash against immigration. So it really is all going to fall down again to Congress because it's Congress who has to act to make the laws that govern this. And like I said, Congress has been dancing around it. So the real national conversation that will be happening entering 2023 yet again, and it will see if they kick the can down the road yet again, which they probably will since 2024 is an election year. But nevertheless, will Congress actually start to say this is what our laws of immigration are going to be. This is who needs to come in. It's going to be difficult with Republicans in control of one house, Senate in another and the White House in another trying to get to some consensus on that is going to be very, very difficult. But that's what it really comes down to. Is America going to have a deeply restrictive immigration policy, like say a country like Canada or a country like Australia that have extraordinarily restrictive immigration policies? Or is it going to have its historic immigration policies which are relatively open, especially when it was white people coming, that allow a large number of people to come to the United States to seek asylum, to seek a better life, and to contribute to the country. And I think that that is a big debate that is going to be in Congress next year with the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives because they're going to do everything possible to scapegoat immigrants to set the stage for whoever the Republican standard bearer will be in 2024 to make that a big part of their campaign. For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.