Biden’s wake-up call on illegal immigration
Hugo Gurdon
Video Embed
President Joe Biden set an ignominious new record for failure in August, as 304,162 migrants arrived in the United States by irregular means. That vast number excludes thousands more whom the administration doesn’t know about because they snuck in undetected.
It is now pretty much guaranteed that 2023 will blow away all annual records for improper, unwanted, and uncontrolled immigration. And worse is to come.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION CHARGED WITH NEW ‘SUE AND SETTLE’ END-AROUND OF CONGRESS
The Biden administration divides the flood into different streams — 20,000 from the North, 50,000 paroled to fly in, and 52,000 released into the country despite having no documents — so it can quibble over the word “illegal.” But this is a distraction that blurs an otherwise clear picture of abject federal failure. The headline number is what must command attention, for it is the true measure of illegal/irregular/improper immigration — call it what you will — an inundation taking place without the consent, and against the objections, of America’s citizens.
Absent a policy switch from laxity to enforcement, the migrant tide will rise higher because America’s attractions are permanent, and the big world is filled with people who have the means to travel here and enjoy what the internet shows them is a better life. Few are real refugees who need asylum from persecution. Most are just people who want to settle where it’s easier to build a successful life and who know nothing is stopping them.
Some of the places they’re leaving are merely poorer, others increasingly are failed states where law and order have broken down, and still, others are the “s***holes” our last president undiplomatically said they were. But whatever their variations, they are alike in offering less freedom and opportunity than we do.
No one can blame migrants for wanting to be here. But everyone should blame the Biden administration for letting them in. Biden is, amazingly, still beckoning them to come. He did it explicitly in 2020 when he was running for president. Now that Americans are cross about it, he does it implicitly, for example, with supposedly temporary work permits that, in practice, are permanent.
The U.S. illegal immigration problem is orders of magnitude worse than that of anywhere else in the world. Germany, which is next in line among developed nations, had 322,000 asylum-seekers in 2022 — hardly more in a full year than America suffers in a month. But we should not ignore other nations’ problems because to do so would fail to understand the global nature and scale of the phenomenon we must deal with. Germany, Italy, Britain, and other nations of the rich world are under siege at a time when governments are dithering in the face of international order and norms breaking down.
There are now hundreds of millions, even billions, of people who have the means and desire to migrate toward wealth. It is crucial to realize that the reservoir of migrants will never run out — never. It is no longer a matter of getting past the malign consequences of some random disaster, revolution, or war somewhere else in the world and then being able to settle back to normal. Open spigots of irregular migration are the new normal.
The immense pressure this puts on governments in wealthy nations has started to tell. The pips have begun to squeak. Officials who once responded airily to mass illegal migration by setting up “sanctuary cities” or by sending other racial virtue signals now emit sounds not of smug superiority but of lament and fear.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams suddenly realizes that the crisis will, if left unchecked, “destroy” the city he governs. If the biggest city in America can be destroyed by the migrant flood, despite being one of the farthest from the Mexican border, so can all other cities across the country.
The problem is at last understood to belong not only to Republican politicians such as Gov. Greg Abbott (TX), who must deal with migrants when they first arrive in the U.S. Abbott shipping migrants to New York, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) flying them to Martha’s Vineyard, helped open lazy and indifferent Democratic eyes to the fact that they and we face a national, indeed international, crisis and can no longer sleep through it.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
As the push of migrants from poorer countries and the lure of American freedom and wealth continue unabated, as they will, politicians must match the crisis with an access of political will, by enforcing existing immigration laws, and by enacting obviously necessary new ones.
These will be challenged in court and everywhere else by a Left that does not have America’s interests at heart. But the fight must be fought and won. As illegal immigration is now more broadly recognized as a problem of the many, not just of the few, voters will turn to politicians who recognize that dealing with it is their moral duty to the country and citizens they represent.