US President Joe Biden said Thursday he would “not demonize” migrants as his Republican opponent Donald Trump did and called on Congress to pass a border control bill.
• Read also: Biden launches frontal attack on Trump in State of the Union address
- Listen to Mario Dumont’s editorial broadcast live every day at 5 p.m. 25 via QUB :
“I will not demonize migrants by saying they are ‘poisoning the blood of our country,'” he said in his State of the Union address to Congress, referring to recent remarks by Donald Trump. Trump, whom he did not name.
“We can argue about the border or we can resolve the problem,” he said.
A few hours before the State of the Union address, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives adopted a bill that provides for the arrest of any immigrant convicted of theft or burglary.
This text was called the “Laken Riley Act”, after the name of a student killed in February by an illegal Venezuelan immigrant, according to the police, and who became for conservatives a symbol of crime attributed to migrants, for which they blame Joe Biden.
“To his parents, I say: my heart goes out to you, having lost children myself. I understand,” Joe Biden said from the podium, showing a badge in honor of the student.
His predecessor and presidential candidate in November, Donald Trump, continues to accuse him of having transformed the southern border of the United States into a sieve.
An immigration law, negotiated for months by members of both parties, was ultimately rejected by Republicans in Congress, at the request of the former president.
Joe Biden does not deny that the United States is facing record arrivals of migrants. A record level of 302,000 interceptions was reached in December, falling in January to 176,000, according to official statistics.
At the end of the year, the border police reported some 10,000 crossings each day, an even higher rate than in previous months.
It counted for the 2023 budget year (from October 2022 to September 2023) more than 2.4 million interceptions of migrants by land, still increasing compared to previous years.
