Biden's open borders immigration policy — why?
“BIDEN,” read the young demonstrators’ T-shirts, imitating the new president's campaign logo. “PLEASE LET US IN!” The picture ran in the New York Times, but one wonders whether whoever paid for the tees got his money’s worth. For President Biden’s administration seems determined to let in as many illegal immigrants as want to come.
The numbers are daunting. About 80,000 people tried to cross the southern border this January — about twice as many as in January 2020. That number could easily balloon this spring, traditionally the peak migration season, with fewer COVID-19 restrictions in place and with less cooperation with Mexico.
The 2019 migration surge was quashed by the Migration Protection Protocols that Donald Trump got Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, to agree to. AMLO (as he is universally called) kept Central American would-be migrants inside Mexico, which reduced attempted border crossings and stifled coyotes’ smuggling business model.
Biden could have preserved that arrangement through the end of AMLO’s term in December 2024. Instead, he rescinded the agreement by executive order and scrapped the program encouraging Central American asylum-seekers to apply in their home countries.
One predictable result: a sudden spike of what Democrats during the Trump presidency referred to as “kids in cages.” Actually, as David Harsanyi explains in National Review, the “cages” are facilities built by the Obama administration for children whose parents or guardians were detained after entering the country illegally and making (usually baseless) claims for asylum. Liberals bellowed protests when they held 2,000 minors in the Trump years. Now, under Biden, they hold 3,200.
In time, perhaps quickly, those held will be released and sent to purported relatives in the United States, often permanently since many don’t show up to asylum hearings. Many are infected with the coronavirus, but the Department of Homeland Security says it has no plans for testing.
Already, more than 100 of those released tested positive for COVID-19, and Greyhound is now demanding negative test results before migrants board its buses.
Locals aren’t happy with the inrush of illegal immigrants. The heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley produced one of the biggest increases in Trump's percentages last fall. Laredo's Democratic congressman, Henry Cuellar, lamented recently that “migrants are illegally crossing, potentially exposing border communities to the coronavirus and putting us at risk.”
Biden may have called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s end to mandatory masking “Neanderthal”-esque, but the Biden administration seems happy to send infectious illegal immigrants all around the country.
That’s reminiscent of how the Democrats most insistent on masks and lockdowns considered just fine mass demonstrations by “mostly peaceful” (that is, often violent) Black Lives Matter supporters last year. The implication is that law-abiding citizens are less deserving of indulgence than angry demonstrators or illegal immigrants.
While Trump was questioned and mocked over his immigration policies, so far, the Biden administration has gotten away with just waving aside questions.
Biden, who unlike his predecessors hasn’t held a press conference yet, simply ignored a shouted question about the “crisis” on the southern border at an event in a northeast Washington hardware store.
Asked about the tripling of detainees on the Texas border, White House press secretary Jen Psaki referred questions to the DHS, which wasn’t answering questions either. “Ask them again,” she said. “It’s not our program.”
As for the department, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the surge of illegal aliens is “enormous” and called for volunteers from the agency to help at the border. But he doesn’t want to stanch the flow permanently. “We are not saying, ‘Don’t come,’” he said last week. “We are saying, ‘Don’t come now,’ because we will be able to deliver a safe and orderly process to them as quickly as possible.”
This reluctance to defend and unwillingness to explain a policy that is being put in place by facts at the border suggest a suspicion that it’s widely unpopular. Candidate Biden made it clear he wanted a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country, and administration actions now invite many more to come in illegally.
This at a time when it’s not clear that the nation needs a new influx of relatively low-skill immigrants. The housing crisis of 2007-2008 reduced net migration from Mexico to zero for several years, and it has never rebounded to 1982-2007 levels. The Trump policies, after some stumbles and adverse court decisions, curtailed the Central American inflow.
The result is that total immigration flow has tilted toward Asia, and it has produced a higher percentage of high-skill immigrants — just what those on both sides of immigration arguments have said they want. Now, Biden is pursuing a policy that will hold down low-skill wages at a time when many have been involuntarily unemployed for months. Why?
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/bidens-open-borders-immigration-policy-why
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