With government spending set to expire, Republicans have used the debate over the budget to elevate immigration into view, attaching funding measures to border security. GOP members are pushing for more government spending on enforcement at the border and harder-line immigration policies, tying those demands into larger negotiations on the budget.

With the 2024 election nearing its peak, immigration has emerged as one of the hottest debates between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump is for hardline policies for the control of borders through mass deportations, similar to his former administration, and a secure, high wall along the border.

In a statement, former President Donald Trump announced his vision for harsher immigration laws when he presumably returns to power in 2024, proposing mass deportations and further sanitizing the borders. He said that he would restore and extend his previous hardline immigration policy, focusing on the most severe enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Biden administration's reliance on immigration parole programs has been subject to growing legal pushback from Republican-led states who say such policies bypass federal immigration laws and Congress. To be sure, immigration parole permits temporary entry into the United States on humanitarian grounds, but challenges question whether those policies exceed executive authority.

In a year in which debate over noncitizen voting is growing nationally, Republican lawmakers in states like Texas, Tennessee, and Alabama are pushing bills to restrict such voting even though it's already illegal in federal and most state elections. Proponents say such measures are necessary to preserve the integrity of elections, while opponents counter that these are solutions in search of a problem and will disenfranchise eligible voters.

The Biden administration is expanding a program that allows migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the U.S. legally through sponsorship by American citizens. That initiative offers a legal and safer alternative to irregular migration routes that have been fraught with danger and exploitation.

The U.S. is presently undergoing a sea wave of immigration, the biggest in decades, as millions seek safety and better economic opportunities. Since 2020, over nine million people have migrated to the U.S., both legally and illegally. That has caused overall population growth to swell by nearly 1.2% annually - compared with the 0.2% at which it would otherwise be growing due to falling birth rates.

Springfield, Ohio, was thrown into the middle of the national immigration debate in the wake of a tragic school bus crash last August that killed an 11-year-old boy and injured 23 other children. The driver in that crash was a Haitian immigrant-a fact that heightened local anxieties about the number of Haitian immigrants pouring into this part of America.

The Biden administration is considering revisions that would extend the tight asylum restrictions it imposed on the U.S.-Mexico border in June 2024. The revisions would lengthen the period where 28 consecutive days of fewer than 1,500 illegal crossings per day are recorded to lift the restrictions from the previous seven days.

A U.S. judge extended a temporary block on President Biden's "Keeping Families Together" program, designed to legalize the status of immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens. The decision by Texas-based District Judge J. Campbell Barker will keep the program on hold at least until September 23, 2024, while more legal arguments are heard.