By Rich Lowry
Friday, December 23, 2022
The U.S. teeters on the brink of a complete
meltdown at the border, and yet the Biden administration is still consumed
with blame-shifting and evasions.
Whatever happens at the border must be the fault of the
prior administration, Joe Biden’s critics, or circumstances beyond anyone’s
control. And no matter how bad things get, it is definitely not in any way a
“crisis at the border” — a phrase as taboo at the Biden White House as “black
sheep” or “ladies and gentlemen” at Stanford University.
Pancho Villa could ride again and detach a portion of the
United States to serve as a safe haven for millions of migrants drawn from
throughout the hemisphere and Biden officials would call it a “challenge,” not
a “crisis.”
If the famous Mexican revolutionary isn’t going to
reappear, when Title 42 — the pandemic-era edict that has become a pillar of
border enforcement — inevitably expires, the historic influx of migrants is now
only going to swell. Current daily apprehensions are running at an
off-the-charts 7,000 a day and could go as high as 18,000.
It’s incredible, but true, that two years into the Biden
administration, with Donald Trump 800 miles south of the White House hawking
trading cards, Biden officials still point the finger at him.
The other day, White House press secretary Karine
Jean-Pierre said her boss has been saddled with the “system that was set” by
his predecessor. Biden, too, has claimed that he was stuck with “one god-awful
mess at the border,” and Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro
Mayorkas likes to complain about “inheriting a broken and dismantled
immigration system.”
It’s passing strange, though, that the failure of Trump’s
approach didn’t become apparent until he left office and his policies were
largely dismantled.
It’d be one thing if Biden had positioned himself as an
inheritor of Trump’s border policies, and assiduously kept them in place; then,
if crossings skyrocketed anyway, he might have had legitimate cause to argue
that the Trump measures had failed.
Instead, he declared himself a sworn enemy of all Trump
had wrought, tore as much of it up as possible, and, when a border that had
been brought under control by 2020 unraveled month by month, still blamed
it on Trump. This is a rhetorical move so audacious that most wouldn’t dare
attempt it.
Equally bold is the assertion that harsh criticisms of
Biden’s border policies are responsible for migrants’ coming. Jean-Pierre
recently said that if Title 42 is lifted, it “does not mean the border is open.
Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply doing the work of these smugglers.”
The idea is that if border hawks say we have a de facto
open border, migrants will think, erroneously, that they can come to the border
and gain entry illegally. Of course, it is the reality that migrants can come
to the border and gain entry illegally that is driving the continued flow,
rather than anyone pointing this out.
Then, there is the communism excuse. “What’s on my watch
now,” Biden has said, “is Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.” Jean-Pierre puts a
finer point on it. “Failing authoritarian regimes in Venezuela, as well as
Nicaragua and Cuba, are causing a new migration challenge across the Western
Hemisphere,” she averred. “So, what we’re seeing is a new pattern.”
It is certainly true that the number of migrants from
these countries has increased, but if the border is largely open, they are
going to feel the same incentive to come as migrants from other countries.
Migrants from these three places still accounted for only 35 percent of the
total as of August 2021. Sadly, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua have been
miserably misgoverned for a long time. What’s changed is that desperate people
living in these countries have a better chance of getting into, and staying in,
the United States than ever before.
When Title 42 goes away, it’s hard to predict exactly
what will happen — except that Biden and his team will resist taking any
responsibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment