A FORCED MESSAGE
“Rolling back the policies of ‘Remain in Mexico,’ sitting on the edge of the Rio Grande in a muddy circumstance with not enough to eat and — I make no apologies for that.” — President Joe Biden in March
That was one of the many ways this administration managed to open the floodgates to illegal immigrants since January. Not every message was Come To America, but who listens to the vice president when the president is so adamant?
For months, for the better part of a year, Joe Biden and all the president’s men (on Sunday TV shows) told the world how pleasant they were going to make things for illegal immigrants trying to sneak into this country via the Southern border. And the trouble at the Southern border became a crisis at the Southern border.
Then the states got involved in our federal system and asked the courts to intervene. Which they did. In August a judge in Texas told the administration to restart the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the “Remain In Mexico” policy. It’s better known that way, and better messaged.
The administration didn’t like the ruling but had to comply with it. So it told a court it would try (if Mexico can be convinced) to go back to the Trump administration policy and reopen those soft-sided “tent courts” at the border. The Biden administration so abhorred the ruling forcing its hand that it sent its message to the court in a midnight filing.
But the court’s ruling and the message might just be a blessing for the Biden administration. Although officials won’t acknowledge it. Once word gets out that the new boss is the same as the old boss, and that most illegal immigrants won’t be released into the United States to wait for court dates, the number of people making the dangerous trek to El Norte should decrease. Just as it did, sharply, when the Trump administration first came up with this policy.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants have shown up at the border since Joe Biden was inaugurated. If the flow of illegals slows, that’s one less crisis on his hands.
Although he’d never dare say that.
As if to prove that very point, “immigration advocates,” by which we mean advocates for illegal immigrants currently at the border, virtually walked out of a meeting with the Biden administration over the weekend. They virtually walked out because the meeting was being held via video. Before the meeting could even get underway, those advocates asked for time to make a statement, denounced the administration, and began turning off their computers one by one.
A White House official was quoted in Politico saying it had no choice but to comply with a court ruling, that the “Remain In Mexico” policy was not one they agreed with, but that’s “why the Department of Homeland Security immediately appealed the court injunction once it was ordered.”
And, oh by the way, “We are incredibly thankful and appreciative of the work immigration advocates and organizations do around the clock to improve our immigration system.” Immigration system. Such as it is.
The problem is that immigration policy has very little system in it.
It’s not a coincidence that the greatest periods of national growth for the United States have coincided with those of the greatest immigration. But immigration needs to be an orderly, legal and rational process. It should be more like Ellis Island and less like the Great Land Rush of 1889.
An orderly, legal and rational process — including a real border wall in places, and cameras/drones/other devices in other places — would make it all the more safe for those trying to get to this country. They have the American spirit even if they aren’t Americans yet. And they would help this country grow, no doubt, if they could get here in a structured manner, with papers in order, and a place to live. Perhaps even with a job lined up.
The late great Dr. Charles Krauthammer once wrote that border security should be essentially an NFL draft in which the United States has the first million or so draft picks. We can make those picks on any criteria we like, from education to enterprise to technical skills.
As for hired help, at this point the country could use more of that, too. But with a pandemic on, opening the gates shouldn’t be an option. As much as this administration wags its finger at Americans about the pandemic, allowing migrants to flood across the border seems yet another mixed message.
As for the immigration advocates who’d turn off their computers and insult a friendly administration, we suppose they get paid to make such statements. As Upton Sinclair once noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”