For someone who has been a politician for over half a century, one would think President Joe Biden would have some semblance of knowledge about what is required to be an effective leader for the country. Unfortunately, that has been anything but the case.
Repeated policy failures have plagued the administration, the least of which has been Biden’s handling of the border. At no other time in our nation’s history has any president done more damage to border security than Joe Biden.
He created this crisis that has endangered the public, with the latest victim being Laken Riley, a nursing student in Georgia who was an illegal immigrant murdered. Biden has said he wants to fix the border, but as we all know by now, what Biden says and what he does are two different things. However, if he genuinely wants to solve this dilemma, he should heed the words of his old boss, former President Barack Obama.
During a 2009 town hall meeting, Obama laid out a simple plan on illegal immigration that the majority of Americans would find acceptable today. He emphasized the need to strengthen the borders and punish those who entered illegally. It was such a rational and straightforward plan that one wonders why it never came close to fruition.
“We are a nation of immigrants, No. 1. No. 2, we do have to have control of our borders,” Obama said at the time.
“We have to combine that with cracking down on employers who are exploiting undocumented workers,” Obama said later during the town hall. “We have to make sure that there’s a verification system to find out whether somebody is legally able to work here or not.”
Obama then elaborated on how he would handle the illegal immigrants caught crossing the border.
“You’ve got to — and then you’ve got to say to the undocumented workers, you have to say, look, you’ve broken the law; you didn’t come here the way you were supposed to,” Obama said. “So this is not going to be a free ride. It’s not going to be some instant amnesty. What’s going to happen is you are going to pay a significant fine. You are going to learn English. You are going to — you are going to go to the back of the line so that you don’t get ahead of somebody who was in Mexico City applying legally.”
“But after you’ve done these things over a certain period of time, you can earn your citizenship so that it’s not — it’s not something that is guaranteed or automatic,” Obama said. “You’ve got to earn it. But over time, you give people an opportunity.”
Obama suggested a fair and common-sense immigration reform that arguably most Americans would support. He showed that this issue does not have to be so complicated.
“Now, it only works, though, if you do all the pieces. I think the American people, they appreciate and believe in immigration,” Obama said. “But they can’t have a situation where you just have half a million people pouring over the border without any kind of mechanism to control it. So we’ve got to deal with that at the same time as we deal in a humane fashion with folks who are putting down roots here, have become our neighbors, have become our friends, they may have children who are U.S. citizens.”
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Obama made these comments fifteen years ago, and Democrats supported it. Yet, today’s Democrats in Congress would think such a policy was xenophobic and misogynistic. It’s indicative of how radical they have become. Yet, Biden should go back to the past to find the answer to immigration in the future. Hold illegal immigrants accountable, do not reward or enable them, give the immigrants who followed the law preference, and then provide an opportunity for those who came here legally to right their wrongs without giving amnesty.
Biden knows what to do. His old boss told him. So why is he so afraid to do the right thing?