San Diego County Board of Supervisors calls for bipartisan action on immigration reform

Agnes Ellis February 29, 2024

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors wants lawmakers to take complete action on immigration crisis and find a solution on a new reform

San Diego, California – It’s important to deal with the complicated issues of immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the San Diego County Board of Supervisors‘ vote makes that point clear. The region wants lawmakers to take complete action. On Tuesday night, the Board voted to send a letter to Congress to support a bipartisan immigration reform bill. In the letter, the Board asked lawmakers to work with President Joe Biden to make real changes.

Full day of negations before the final decision

The choice was made after a day of talks about how to best deal with the problems that the current immigration system causes. Early in the day, County Supervisor Joel Anderson started a conversation by suggesting that asylum seekers at the border should not be allowed to enter the country. He says that measures should be temporary. Anderson already told the president about this idea in a letter, and now he was trying to get support from his board colleagues. His plan didn’t go as far as he had hoped, though, because some Democratic supervisors saw it as nothing more than a political move.

The Board instead chose a different way to move forward, one that stresses the need for both parties to work together to change the country’s immigration policies. The letter to Congress is a united call from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors for lawmakers to take action that solves the problems at the border in a fair and effective way. Notably, even Supervisor Anderson voted in favor of sending the message, even though he had previously pushed for closing the border.

Supervisor Jim Desmond agreed with Anderson’s first idea and brought up worries about the current asylum process. Desmond said that the fact that it is so easy for people to come to the U.S. and ask for asylum hurts the integrity of the legal immigration road by giving people a reason to skip over the legal process.

The Board did more than just push for federal lawmakers to act. They also took action to meet the instant needs of migrants in the county. The Board agreed that the migrant welcome center in City Heights had to close because it didn’t have enough money. They then told county staff to ask the federal government for help in building a long-term migrant home. Before it closed on February 22, the center, which had been open since October 2023, helped 80,000 refugees in a variety of ways.

The actions of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors show that they want to find fair and practical answers to the immigration problems the area is having. The Board wants to make handling immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border fairer and more long-lasting by pushing for reforms that can be supported by both parties and by working to improve support for migrants.