The media and Democrats often claimed that former President Donald Trump was always politicizing immigration. But President Biden has already caused a crisis with his weakening of immigration laws and his promise to deliver amnesty and free healthcare for illegal immigrants.
Trump’s brash tone during the 2016 campaign, especially in the Republican primary, fed into the belief that he was politicizing immigration to advance his campaign. This caused a massive backlash on the Left, which has a tendency to oppose any level of immigration enforcement. Biden was the Left’s solution to this injustice. And he is delivering.
Within his first month in office, the president has unleashed a series of hyperpartisan executive orders. They have no bearing on making people more secure. The Biden administration has also announced it plans to expand refugee resettlement to 110,000 persons annually, end the “Remain in Mexico” policy, end travel bans on countries with terrorist concerns, and shackle ICE from arresting illegal aliens for what they perceive as minor offenses. These include drunk driving, drug dealers, and “low-level assaults.”
These incentives for illegal immigration are paying off.
In January, we saw more than 78,000 arrests at the southern border, the largest January number in over a decade. While schools and small businesses throughout many major cities have been forced to shut their doors, sometimes for good, Biden is kicking open our borders. It represents hypocrisy that most people might rightly lament. It’s obvious that it might not be good so many people are flooding across the border during a national pandemic. But Biden is unwilling to stand up for the nation’s needs.
It’s a risky political game.
An NPR poll from August 2020 found that 78% of people wanted to close the border except for essential travel, 60% wanted to prevent illegal aliens from bringing their families to the United States, and 58% wanted to suspend admittance of refugees and asylum-seekers. We should note that daily coronavirus cases were about half as high in August as they were in early February 2021.
It’s no wonder, then, that Biden’s executive orders on immigration are his most unpopular. According to a Morning Consult poll this week, expanding refugees was supported by just 39% of respondents, the lowest of all his executive orders. Other immigration executive orders, including counting illegal aliens in the census, pausing the remain in Mexico policy, reviewing the public charge rule, and ending the travel ban, found 50% approval.
President Barack Obama ignored similar warning signs in early 2013 when a crisis was brewing at the border. For most of the next year, as the crisis worsened, his approval ratings slipped into the low 40s. Obama’s refusal to act contributed to the landslide victories secured by Republicans in 2014.
Biden, it seems, has learned nothing from his old boss. It’s already costing the country, but it may also cost Democrats in the 2022 elections.
Ryan Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) is the author of They’re Not Listening, How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution
