Congress' Failure to Overhaul Immigration Policy Fuels Immigration Pressures and Backlog.

Congress has repeatedly failed to address the broken immigration system in the US, with legislative initiatives falling flat due to partisan differences and other rifts. Republicans have rallied voters behind campaigns to close the border with Mexico, while Democrats have long resisted border security initiatives without measures to grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants residing in the United States. As a result, the legacy of inaction is seen in factories and farms, where undocumented migrants work grueling jobs for low wages, in the skyrocketing backlog of asylum cases, in the enrichment of cartels trafficking migrants and drugs to the US-Mexico border, and in the uncertainty at the border after the expiration of pandemic-era restrictions on entry.