We're back (not a moment too soon)

Immigration news, in context.

Dear readers,

When we announced that we’d be stepping back from BORDER/LINES last year, we knew it would be a temporary decision. We began the newsletter amid the onslaught of federal policy changes of the Trump administration. The Biden administration was a shift, both in terms of the frequency with which policy changes occurred and the tenor in which they were discussed. The machinery of the immigration bureaucracy moved slower under Biden, who began his term by promising to repair the harms of the Trump years and ended it by tacking to the right on the border. 

At the same time, local and state governments became powerful actors whose decisions affected federal policies — and national perceptions on immigration. Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s bussing scheme, one of several unilateral border “enforcement” initiatives, worked as intended, overwhelming cities like New York with new arrivals. In New York, Mayor Eric Adams blamed migrants for stretching an overburdened shelter system to its limits, even though his administration had overseen budget cuts for social services before migrants started showing up en masse.

Immigration policy remains a top-three issue for voters around the country, in many cases despite it having limited direct impact to their own lives and environment, at least in the ways they believe it to. Most voters and the public writ large continue to misunderstand or not be aware of both the basics of immigration policy and and the impact and legal context around recent developments. Now, we are at the cusp of an election poised to have enormous ramifications for every aspect of the system.

With all of this in mind, we’re excited to announce that BORDER/LINES is coming back with a new format. We’ll still provide detailed breakdowns of changes in federal immigration policy, but we’ll also be experimenting with more informal commentary, book reviews, Q&As with experts, and more. We are very open to your thoughts on how we can best serve you going forward, and feel free to reach us at borderlines.news@protonmail.ch. It’s good to be back.

-Gaby & Felipe