Biden’s Potemkin trip to the southern border
Washington Examiner
Video Embed
Days before President Joe Biden visited El Paso, Texas, this afternoon, local and federal authorities began clearing out migrant encampments. Federal agents said this was a response to community complaints of rising crime, but it is more likely that the president’s impending visit and the need to avoid embarrassing photos was decisive.
Biden will learn nothing from his trip because he doesn’t want to learn anything. He already announced his new immigration policy Thursday, days before his trip. He is obviously going in hope of grabbing the initiative on a policy area he has botched spectacularly as he rolls out his as-yet undeclared reelection campaign.
BIDEN’S ABSURD DEFENSE OF DEBT AMNESTY POWER GRAB
In his speech announcing an expanded parole program that grants work visas to 360,000 people a year, Biden mocked the idea that migrants were coming to the United States just to make more money.
“It’s not like people are sitting around a table somewhere in Central America and saying, ‘I got a great idea. Let’s sell everything we have. Let’s give it to a coyote, a smuggler. They’ll take us on a harrowing journey for thousands of miles to get to the United States, then we’re going to illegally cross the border.’”
Actually, Mr. President, that is exactly what is happening.
Just months after Biden was sworn in, after he ended the “Remain in Mexico” policy on Day One and ended Title 42 for families with children, Javier Gomez, his wife, Maria Gomez, and his daughter crossed the border illegally into the U.S. from Mexico. “We sold our house, everything to come,” Javier Gomez told reporters. “In Venezuela, there is no food, no electricity, no medicine, no work,” Maria Gomez added. “We are blessed to have made it.”
Rodrigo Neto, who sold his shop and car to pay for his journey from Brazil, told a similar story. “What we’re hearing back home is that the new president is facilitating entry and there is demand for labor,” Neto told reporters. “I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.”
“Facilitating entry” is exactly what Biden has been doing, and it is exactly what the new policies he announced yesterday will continue to do. Instead of solving the border crisis by denying migrants entry, the president is abusing the parole authority granted to him by Congress to circumvent immigration policy that is the law of the land.
The Refugee Act of 1980 created the parole power for unique emergencies, such as a migrant needing immediate medical attention. It was not intended to give the president the power to create a broad new pathway for hundreds of thousands to enter every year. But that is exactly what Biden has done. It is flagrantly illegal.
Biden’s border crisis was exposed by the first question he was asked Thursday: “Mr. President, do you believe that migration is a human right?”
The president answered, “Well, I think it is a human right if your family is being persecuted. … I thought it was a human right for, you know, Jews in Germany to be able to escape and get help where they could.”
But the migrants flooding our southern border aren’t being exterminated like Jews in Germany. They are not being persecuted based on the five criteria identified by immigration law — race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
These are economic migrants who just want to improve their standard of living by moving into a country where they have no right to be. They are coming here because they can make more money to support their families than they can at home. Living in a poor country is hard, but it does not give anyone a right to live in America.
Migrants paroled into this country can stay only temporarily. That is why the work permits in Biden’s new parole program last two only years. But does anyone think Biden will track immigrants down after two years and send them back to where they came from? Of course not. The millions of migrants Biden has released into the U.S. to pursue asylum claims will also stay, even though they are sure to lose their claims because they are economic migrants.
Biden complains that Republicans aren’t giving him the resources needed to secure the border. The problem isn’t a lack of resources — it’s bad policy. We have the resources we need to deny migrants access, but we don’t have the resources to let in everyone who wants to be here. That, however, is exactly what Biden’s policies are accomplishing.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER