Biden has the power to defuse the Central American migrant crisis. He just needs to use it

grants attempting the dangerous trip and afford them protection from their persecutors.

Interestingly, the framework for this approach is buried in prospective immigration legislation Biden sent to Congress soon after his inauguration. His proposed U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 would fund a $4 billion, four-year plan to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and make it easier for refugees to secure visas to travel to and enter the United States — and avoid the dangerous trek to our border. Designated processing centers would be set up in the Central American region to process displaced persons for refugee resettlement.

The wide-ranging legislation, which has been introduced in both houses of Congress, includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and a plan to clear immigration backlogs. However, Republicans have made clear the likelihood of passage is slim.

But here’s the thing about the provisions related to refugee processing: New legislation is not required. The president already has the legal authority to designate how many refugees can come from specific regions of the world, and the United States already sets up refugee centers around the globe. In addition, the UNHCR operates in Central America and, of course, the U.S. State Department maintains a presence there via our embassies.

Presidential authority to establish refugee numbers with appropriate consultation with Congress was provided in the Refugee Act of 1980. For geopolitical reasons, U.S. presidents have never allowed meaningful numbers of refugees to come from Central America.

In 1985, during the height of civil wars in Central America, only 3,000 openings in a total allotment of 70,000 refugees were designated for Latin America and the Caribbean; 50,000 were allowed from East Asia.

The pattern continued during President Obama’s last year in office. He established a 2017 refugee quota of 110,000 — but, despite serious violence in Central America, only 5,000 of those were assigned to Latin America and the Caribbean; 35,000 went to Africa and 40,000 to the Near East/South Asia region.

Trump dropped the refugee quota to 45,000 in October 2017 and decreased the number of Latin American and Caribbean refugees who could be admitted in 2018 to 1,500, although the actual number allowed entry from the region was 955.

Biden already has an excellent and useful tool to help address the southern border situation and the challenge of so many migrants coming here from Central America. He should use it to set a bold annual refugee figure of at least 50,000 for Central America and immediately work with the UNHCR to set up processing centers.

Bill Ong Hing is a professor of law and migration studies at the University of San Francisco and the founder of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco.

©2021 Los

Angeles Times

Thirty years ago, when I was still a music critic, I received a letter from a lady who informed me in no uncertain terms that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

This was after I‘d written about the origins of gospel music, a subject on which I considered myself, if not expert, reasonably well informed. But Minnie C. Howard, a church musician in West Palm Beach, politely sliced me up with such surgical precision that, though I was bleeding from a dozen rhetorical wounds, I could only admire the cutting.

So I did the only thing that made sense. I got her on the phone, and we had an amiable chat about my ignorance.

This sort of thing didn’t happen every day, but it happened. Whether the subject was music or, later, social issues, I would find myself, a few times a year, having an exchange with someone whose objections to something I’d written were interesting and well informed. I didn’t always change their minds nor they, mine. But I found value in an opposing viewpoint ably argued.

That hardly happens anymore. These days, I read critical emails with a finger hovering over the delete button, ready to consign them to oblivion the instant the writer reaches what I call “the stupid part.”

Which is never long in coming: some asinine conspiracy, some wild untruth, some silly talking point, and into the ether it goes. It occurs to me that I have become something I once scorned: a person with a closed mind.

I regret that. One thing I’ve always prized was a willingness to hear the other side, to entertain its ideas.

But these days, the other side has no ideas. Consider that the GOP didn’t even bother to put forth a platform in last year’s campaign — reportedly the first time it has failed to do so since 1856. “The Republican

Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president’s Americafirst agenda,” read the resolution it adopted in place of a statement of party policies and priorities.

No ideas. Thus, on the one side you have many of us grappling with era-defining challenges: climate change, immigration, aging infrastructure, poverty, pandemic and race, to name a few. Meantime, on the other side, many of us are more worried about Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head and the threat to America’s hamburgers. The only serious issues for which they show any appetite involve banning voters from voting and protesters from protesting.

I miss the days when it was possible to have a thoughtful debate on a substantive matter with a political opposite. The loss of that offers superfluous evidence that we have become a people without common goals, common facts and thus, common ground.

And Lord, what to do about that? You cannot reason with those who have abandoned the practice.

And the unfortunate truth is that there are some things to which a mind should be closed: bigotry, ignorance, illogic and fear-mongering leading the list. So what is there to do except hope that time in the intellectual wilderness, a session in the moral woodshed, the ameliorating effects of progress, bring them back around?

May it happen soon.

There are few things more dismaying, or that make me more anxious for America’s future, or that have greater capacity to drive me nuts, than dealing with some guy who thinks the Jan. 6 insurrectionists were patriots, but George Floyd had it coming. It’s mentally and emotionally draining. That’s why, as much as you hate it, there are times these days when you simply must close your mind.

If only to protect it.