President Biden’s new border plan is as incoherent as it is unserious.
Biden will visit El Paso, Texas, on Sunday — only two years late! — and says he’s ordering the deportation of Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans who come to the border. They will have to apply for asylum from their home nation or a safe haven.
This is how it is supposed to work — for everyone! So why is Biden applying the rule to only these four countries?
In November alone, the Border Patrol logged 234,000 encounters. Roughly 90,000 of those were from the four countries Biden mentions. Under the new enforcement protocol, they’d presumably be turned away. But what about the other 144,000? Does someone from El Salvador or Guatemala who shows up at the border and asks for asylum not have to follow the same rules and get let right in? Seems so.
Meanwhile, Biden says he’ll allow in 30,000 Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans a month, by air, into the US after they apply via app for asylum. He says this is a “parole” program, but he has no legal right to do this. Asylum claims are meant to be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis — Biden is guaranteeing a quota of 360,000 a year.
So what’s the real reason behind Biden’s sudden announcement? It is to spread out the problem so that hopefully the American people don’t pay attention, and the unquestioning media give him headlines claiming he’s fixing things. Government by press release.
At the border, hundreds of thousands of people a month will still cross, and wait years for an “asylum” case — never to leave. But it’ll be fewer people than before, and Biden may avoid the optics of camps of Haitians or Venezuelans huddled under bridges. Instead, he’ll fly them in, likely at night to remote airports.
Best-case scenario for Biden: Roughly 174,000 people a month, or 2 million a year, are allowed to “legally” enter the United States (based on 30,000 a month from the “parole” program, and the 144,000 others who came in an average month like November). And the president gets to point to more deportations and smaller crowds in El Paso as a “win.”
But that’s the best case.
Mexico has only agreed to accept 30,000 a month of those turned away for trying to get in by sidestepping the parole program. There were 90,000 in November alone! So what happens to the other 60,000? Do they go back to Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela or (more likely) cross illegally into the United States? Suddenly, that 2 million-a-year number goes up.
Guess what else Biden’s plan also doesn’t address: The millions who have already crossed since Biden became president. There have been 4.4 million “encounters” in the past two years; the administration admits to sending less than half back. And those are the ones we know about. There were another 1.1 million “gotaways.”
Most of those millions were bused to a sanctuary city like New York and will never be deported, no matter what a court decides.
The fact is, Biden wants most of these people admitted. If he didn’t, he’d follow the current asylum laws that apply to everyone, not just four nations.
Biden gives away the game when he says the real problem is Republicans for opposing “comprehensive immigration reform.” That’s the code for “Everyone is let in, and everyone becomes a citizen.” That’s Biden’s plan. He just doesn’t want you to notice.
