New Jersey is the most diverse and has long been a “Golden door” for the United States. We should take local Democrats’ responses to recent immigration as a sign they cannot meet this moment.

In since deleted posts on X, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop sounded his version of an alarm on New Year’s Eve to update on migrants being bussed to New Jersey train stations from Texas and Louisiana. The mayor, who is running to be governor, referred to the event as “issues” with “potential local impact.” In a way he is right. International events have a local impact in a place like Jersey City. Edison, New Jersey mayor Sam Joshi was perhaps more heinous, or honest, and flat out said “They’re not welcomed here.” This is despicable.

The reactionary responses shouldn’t come as a surprise. Nationally, media outlets like the Wall Street Journal and FOX News have reported migrants entering the U.S.  are at a “breaking point” and “only going to get worse.” The problem, as pointed out by pundits and even Democratic mayors in cities like New York and Chicago, is that our immigration system is broken and the federal government has no good plan to fix it. But I argue that our immigration situation is not just wrought by decades of bad policy, but bad politics altogether. We need to soundly reject the Right’s framing of ‘immigrants as a burden’ on our country, and the center-right’s failed policies, and instead build not walls but a social safety net for all.

Right now Biden and the Senate GOP are putting together a package of border security measures that would make those seeking asylum much less welcome in the United States. The red meat the GOP wants to throw at its election-year base is for a more militarized border in exchange for military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. But Biden should know that a deal with the GOP won’t help his chances at re-election, right? 

Biden’s immigration policy is plagued with otherterrible provisions like an app that’s supposed to give you an appointment for a hearing, but often doesn’t, and instead likely spies on you, and a return of Title 42, an especially potent weaponization of concern for public health that fast tracts expulsion. The public health emergency for COVID-19 ended May 11th 2023. I can’t even get reimbursed for COVID tests despite the surge in cases.

The right-wing framing of our immigration situation is well heard at home. Just go to any Cuban cafe in Union City and you’ll hear “People just need to come here legally.” But even folks at the Cato Institute see often there is no way. Nevermind the fact that the most reactionary narratives around immigration in the Latin American community in Hudson County come from those whose journeys were entirely sanctioned for political reasons, as the U.S. seeked to pressure Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, granting political asylum seekers tuition aid and jobs.

Other reactionary and honest viewpoints around this debate are that American citizens are getting the short end of the stick. They are. But not at immigrants’ expense. The billions being sent in bombs and bullets overseas, and billions more being skirted around our own Congress by the Biden administration, could go to housing, healthcare and education for all here. 

It starts, however, with rejecting President Biden’s and even gold bar-bearing Senator Bob Menendez’s attempts to wrangle policy without addressing public opinion. Earlier last year the Senator’s “Menendez Plan” touted a “strategic framing” for “migration management”. The proposal also attempted to skirt Congress entirely, which in the end means it can be undone, or worse, bulked up by a further detention-pilled administration.

There are no shortcuts for championing a vision that America was built by and is better because of immigrants. The reason we are in a freefall on immigration is squarely due to Biden’s fear of public opinion, and Democrats’ reluctance to change it. Menendez, after all, is a top dog for a U.S. foreign policy that’s squashed working class movements and destabilized economies and lives in Central America. Menendez can’t engage with his voters about anything without hearing calls to resign or call for a ceasefire in the brutal onslaught against Palestinians.

Hudson County can demonstrate that we are “America’s Golden Door” by passing progressive measures that guarantee housing, healthcare and education for all regardless of citizenship. We can even permit noncitizen voting in local elections, a feature of early America many don’t know about.

As Democrats and Republicans wrangle in the Capitol for what will likely be another year on the edge of democracy, working class people need only take steps across physical lines and metaphysical lines of debate to see we’re more capable of winning what we want when we’re fighting for more, for all, together.