Republicans have spent two years demanding that President Joe Biden visit the US-Mexico border. They wanted Biden to face the real-world consequences of his border policies and the burden they have placed on people, not only in the border states but around the country.
Now, the GOP has gotten its wish: Biden visited the border at El Paso, Texas on Sunday, January 8. While the border situation at El Paso is bad, it is nothing like the crisis in border towns in South Texas. This is why politicians like to visit El Paso so they can ‘say’ they’ve been to the border but avoid the real crisis to the south.
What the Republicans hadn’t counted on was the fact that the president used the occasion of his border visit to make things even worse.
Here’s the key difference between Republicans and Democrats on the border. With unprecedented numbers of illegal border crossers entering the US since Biden took office, Republicans want policies that will stop, or at least dramatically reduce, the flow. Democrats want policies that will continue the flow.
For evidence of this, just look at two moments in the events surrounding Biden’s brief visit to a cleaned-up El Paso. The first moment came when Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott met Biden as Air Force One arrived. Abbott handed the president a letter outlining what needs to be done to address the border crisis.
Noting that Biden’s destination “has been sanitized of the migrant camps which had overrun downtown El Paso because your administration wants to shield you from the chaos that Texans experience on a daily basis,” Abbott demanded that Biden enforce existing US immigration law mandating the detention of illegal border crossers. And that Biden also stop allowing illegal crossers to enter the country in huge numbers.
Abbott called for the revival of former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy which required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases were adjudicated in the US. “On behalf of all Americans, I implore you: Secure our border by enforcing Congress’s immigration laws,” Abbott wrote. That was one moment.
The second moment came when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with reporters on Air Force One when he accompanied Biden on the Texas trip. Mayorkas explained the Biden administration’s new policy in which would-be illegal border crossers can download a new, administration-created app called “CBP One.”
They will use the app to make an appointment to enter the US at a port of entry. Border officials will then let them in — so much more efficient than wading across the Rio Grande — and then quickly move them elsewhere inside the US.
Under Biden’s new program, the US will grant the border crossers “parole,” the legal term for allowing an illegal immigrant to stay in the US. This way, entering the US will be quick and easy.
Having entered legally, they would stay in the US and pursue an asylum claim. This is what Mayorkas said about the plan: “What we’re trying to do is … incentivize a safe and orderly way and cut out the smuggling organizations.”
In case you’re wondering, Democrats want more immigration because they believe most of these people will eventually become citizens and vote with the liberals in future elections.
Anyway, there you have it. The Republicans want to stop the flow, while the Democrats want it to continue or even expand. Biden seeks to put the smugglers out of business by letting everyone in immediately.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy summed up the Biden immigration plan as follows recently in National Review:
Biden and Mayorkus are telling aliens the world over who want to come to the United States that they just need to let us know they’re coming ahead of time. For this, they just need to use an app or avail themselves of various hubs in Mexico (and elsewhere, to be sure). The idea is that Biden will then purport to grant them parole before they get to the border.
The fiction is that this way, when the alien hordes later show up at the border, they won’t be “without legal authorization” anymore. The parole decreed by the chief executive will be treated as if it were a visa granted under legitimate American law.
The illegal aliens will now apply for parole before they get here, so that when they arrive at the border — voila! — they are no longer illegal; they’ll have their Biden parole codes. There will no longer be reports of hundreds of thousands of illegal crossers entering the US because they’ll all have the Biden seal of approval.
The problem is the president does NOT have the legal authority to do this. Nevertheless, this is Biden’s response to the border crisis: Keep letting the illegal crossers in, only more quickly and smoothly. And call it legal.
It will be interesting to see if he can pull this off or whether the Republicans can stop him. Time will tell. Meanwhile, the Texas border (and others) will remain an absolute disaster!
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.