Joe Biden cannot solve the misery stemming from America’s southern border, but he could ease the problems a little if he pushed harder
Regulating the flow of migrants is hard enough. Stopping the flow of drugs across the border is. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is 50 times more potent than heroin and produced in vast quantities in Mexico. It is also especially deadly, killing more people in a year than the total of Americans who died fighting wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. All told, drug overdoses have now claimed 1m American lives since 1999.
None of these problems has a simple solution. The supply chains for fentanyl, for example, stretch to China and are quick to adapt to any disruption. America has been waging a war on drugs for half a century, with negligible success and much collateral damage. Cross-border collaboration might help, but relations between America and Mexico are touchy and likely to grow touchier as both countries gear up for presidential elections next year.
On migration, the Biden administration has groped its way to a policy that moves in the right direction: beefing up border forces, expanding legal avenues for asylum-seekers and vowing to deport illicit border-crossers swiftly. Republicans give him no credit, caricaturing him instead as letting illegal immigrants bearing fentanyl flood into the country.
Political polarisation for now rules out bold reforms on drugs or immigration . But in the meantime many smaller practical steps are possible. To reduce the harm caused by opioids, the government could expand access to treatments for addiction. It could also make test strips for fentanyl widely available , so that people know when they are about to take the lethal substance.
To relieve pressure on the border, it would help if more jobseekers were allowed in legally. America’s whole immigration system is clogged up, with would-be migrants and employers sometimes waiting years for a decision.
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