Another Lie
Biden’s latest bogus border ‘crackdown’
IN the Superman comics there was something called Bizarro World, where everything was the opposite of what was expected — the planet was cube-shaped instead of a sphere, Superman’s counterpart was a villain, and so on.
The Biden administration has created a Bizarro World immigration policy. The law as written places the burden of proof on a foreigner to show why he should be let in — but that burden is now on immigration officers to show why someone should be kept out.
A rule called “expedited removal,” which is supposed to speed the deportation of border-jumpers, has been transformed into a way to let them in. The system intended to keep track of illegal immigrants to make sure they show up for their deportation hearings is being turned into a taxpayer- funded welfare program to provide migrants with — I am not making this up — “mental health services” and “cultural orientation programs.”
The latest example of this is a new proposed regulation on asylum. It is being sold as a way to bar border-jumping migrants from claiming asylum here if they passed through other countries where they could have applied first. This would, in theory, apply to every person crossing the southern border illegally — Mexico, at least, has a well-developed asylum system and even features a video on its refugee agency’s website on how to apply.
Biden’s anti-borders allies like the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center have greeted this new rule with howls of outrage. They sputter that it’s a return to Trump-era policies — and Trump did, in fact, try to implement a superficially similar rule.
But when you actually look at the details of what the Biden administration is proposing, you see it’s just another Bizarro World attempt at reclassifying illegal immigration as “legal.”
The “ban” won’t apply to illegal immigrants who bring children with them. It won’t apply to anyone who schedules an appointment at the US border through the CBP One app (which is like the OpenTable reservations app, but for people whom the government has no legal right to let into the United States).
And you don’t even have to actually schedule an appointment with CBP One if there is a language or technical barrier that’s a “severe obstacle” to using it. (I recently spoke with people at a migrant shelter in Mexico who all said the app is a mess and doesn’t work.)
So instead of reducing the flow of people into the United States who aren’t supposed to be here, the administration itself intends the rule to be a means of, in The Washington Post’s words, “opening more avenues for vulnerable migrants, not turning them away.”
This is a purely political measure, designed to dupe the rubes into thinking that Biden has “moderated” his position on immigration when, in fact, he is still pursuing the same lawless policies.
And even if this did represent a reversal on immigration, Biden in his two years has already released into the United States more than 1.8 million illegal immigrants (not counting the “gotaways” who were detected but made it past the Border Patrol).
That’s about the same number of people who came in through the regular legal immigration system — meaning that this president is running a vast parallel immigration system outside the law.
Thus, in perfect Bizarro World fashion, the goal of this new asylum rule, as with many of the president’s policies, is to shift from foreigners breaking the law by crossing illegally to the government breaking the law by waving them in.