Politico has a Thursday story admitting that “Biden and his team are being proved wrong” on immigration, but the article never identifies what Biden got wrong exactly.
Sure, the article quotes tons of open-borders activists who blame the “economic crisis,” “natural disasters,” “extreme poverty,” “malnutrition,” “violence,” the “impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,” “weather challenges,” “crime,” and “economic challenges” — but none of these are the right answer. None of these explain why border apprehensions started shooting upward as soon as Biden was sworn into office.
The article does mention that Republicans are “stepping up their attacks against the president,” and it does report that Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson “contends that Biden caused the situation at the border because of his rollback of certain Trump-era policies at the start of his presidency.”
But the article never says what these policies were. Or how reversing them would cause a border crisis. Instead, we are told that “supporters of the president counter that in recent months, Biden has not made any major substantive policy changes that would explain the new uptick in arrivals.”
Oh, so there were no “major substantive policy changes” that occurred “in recent months”? But what about before that? What about when Biden first came into office? Were there any “substantive policy changes” Biden made then that would have caused the border crisis we are seeing today?
Absolutely, there was.
Migrants from around the world are flooding our southern border because they know they can abuse loopholes in our asylum system to gain entrance into the United States. And they know that once they are in the U.S., Biden has pledged not to make any effort to deport them.
President Donald Trump closed the loophole in our asylum system by instituting his Migrant Protection Protocols, more commonly known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Instead of just letting migrants claim asylum at the border and then disappear into the country, Trump worked out a deal with Mexico to house migrants claiming asylum in Mexico while their cases were adjudicated in the U.S.
Since migrants were denied access into the U.S. under the “Remain in Mexico” policy, the flood of migrants to the border slowed to a trickle. Trump’s policy worked.
But Biden reversed Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy on the first day of his presidency. And the flood of migrants abusing our asylum system to gain entrance into our country has been growing ever since.
Until Democrats come to grips with the fact that the border crisis isn’t caused by climate change or violence or poverty, but instead caused by Biden’s reopening of the asylum loophole, the crisis will only get worse.
