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Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and former U.S. Representative Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) warned against the politicization of the debate surrounding border security at a Harvard Institute of Politics forum on Tuesday.
Harvard School of Public Health professor Jacqueline S. Babha moderated the event, which discussed asylum seeking, work opportunities, and the border crisis amid growing national concern over immigration.
De Blasio attributed the politics of the migrant crisis to the “extraordinary frustration that people feel — working-class people of this country of all different ethnicities — because their standard of living has been stuck or in some ways even has gone backwards over the last few decades.”
A contributing factor to the frustrations towards immigrants, de Blasio said, is political leaders “pointing fingers wrongly at immigrants.”
De Blasio said the rhetoric surrounding immigration should better emphasize that immigrants want to “work really really hard and contribute to the country,” suggesting that this shift could help combat the politicization of the issue.
Denham said that the debate over border issues is one that has passed through several presidential administrations without a solution.
“Both parties deserve the blame on how this has gone,” Denham said.
In an interview prior to the event, de Blasio said U.S. President Joe Biden’s handling of the border crisis has been “a mixed bag,” adding that “the message of what this administration is trying to achieve has been unclear.”
During the forum, Denham said the border wall “is an important piece” of the Border Security Immigration Reform Act that Denham co-sponsored before he departed office.
“We have to look at border security as an overall process,” he added.
He also warned against “a patchwork of different pieces of legislation,” because it would not solve the full issue.
De Blasio and Denham also spent a significant portion of the event discussing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a policy that supported people who were in the United States unlawfully after being brought into the country as minors.
In Congress, Denham was one of the most outspoken Republicans in support of Dreamers, an issue he also emphasized in an interview before the event.
“The one piece that continues to get missed right now is Dreamers,” Denham said. “It’s a multigenerational issue.”
Denham and de Blasio disagreed on the potential for additional cooperation with neighboring countries to secure the U.S. border.
“I don’t think we have that sensibility,” de Blasio said. “It doesn’t work where it’s chaos trying to work with chaos.”
Denham, however, said that the United States can work on solving immigration issues with foreign nations, but “it’s just not sexy.”
The two also did not agree on whether border security will be the main issue ahead of November’s presidential election, with Denham saying it will “be the number one issue in this election” and de Blasio telling him “respectfully, I don’t agree with you on that.”
Still, de Blasio acknowledged that it will be a major issue for Biden this year.
“President Biden has been tremendously good at providing a sense of roadmap on some issues,” de Blasio said. “I think he now has to do it on immigration for his own survival.”
