The president, Joe Biden, has received criticism from one side and another for how he addressed the issue of immigration during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.
After dedicating only a minute of his speech to the problem of irregular migration and the humanitarian crisis at the border, several legislators, presumably from the Republican Party, reproached him for his actions with booing.
But the criticism was not limited to the opposition party, members of Biden's own caucus in the House of Representatives also lamented the way in which he tackled the problem.
President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill on February 7, 2023. Jacquelyn Martin / AP
“I think he lacked a lot. He has to do more ”
, he declared in an interview with Noticias Telemundo
Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif.
"We need a status not only for dreamers, but for all people who work and pay their taxes, who can come out of the dark."
The president asked Congress on Tuesday to approve at least one plan to provide "pathways to citizenship for Dreamers, those with temporary status, farmworkers, and essential workers."
[USA. reduces border crossings while migrants expelled to Mexico denounce precarious conditions]
However, analysts consulted by Noticias Telemundo considered that
there was no tangible plan on Biden's part to materialize an immigration reform of this type
, since at the beginning of his administration in 2021 several attempts at change failed.
On the border, Biden noted that his recent expansion of Title 42, a Trump-era policy to expel migrants without the right to seek asylum, to include migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela had reduced illegal crossings by citizens of those countries by 97%.
Migrants at the border were left wanting Biden to propose solutions for them
Feb 8, 202301:53
During fiscal year 2022, which ended on September 30, the Customs and Border Protection Office intercepted almost 2.4 million migrants who crossed the border with Mexico, a record increase driven by the massive arrival of Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans.
"We were waiting for him to give us hope"
Biden also pointed out that there are a record number of personnel working to secure the border, saying that they "have arrested some 8,000 human smugglers and seized more than 23,000 pounds of fentanyl in the last few months alone."
However,
Biden's optimistic tone regarding the challenges at the border contrasted with the reality experienced daily by thousands of migrants
who have been stranded in Mexico as a result of his immigration policies.
"We were really waiting for him to say more in favor of us or to realize the obvious problem we have, and to give us hope about the problems presented by the application that is supposedly helping us through," he said in interview with Telemundo News a Venezuelan migrant who is waiting from Mexico for his asylum process in the United States.
For these two consumers, Biden's speech was "very vague" about the economic recovery
Feb 8, 202301:45
In another of the fundamental issues that Biden touched on this Tuesday night, that of the economy, some Latinos considered that his statements about the good state of employment and other economic indicators did not correspond to the reality of inflation.
“He is very optimistic, but
what he says has no correlation with what is being experienced,”
said Magdalena Frías, a Latina mother of two from Washington DC who says she has great difficulties paying rent with a minimum wage.