OPINION:
The Biden immigration policy is appalling on its face, but looks can be deceiving. Despite the record surge of illegal entries wracking the U.S. southern border states during President Biden’s still-fresh tenure, apparent failure appears intentional. Americans shouldn’t fall for the ruse.
Vice President Kamala Harris drew the short straw in the lottery to pick the administration’s immigration point person. Thus far, her thorniest dilemma since pulling the unenviable assignment nearly three months ago has been to dream up new ways of explaining why she hasn’t managed yet to see the border emergency for herself.
U.S. authorities recorded more than 180,000 border enforcement encounters in May, an eight-fold spike over the same month in 2020, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The thought, then, of standing in camera range of the trampled thoroughfares of human smuggling is ample motivation for the vice president to opt for southbound side excursions. During a coronavirus vaccination campaign stop in Greenville, S.C., on Monday, Ms. Harris was met with peeved demonstrators shouting, “Go to Texas,” and holding signs that read, “Border is That Way.”
She knows very well where the borderlands lie, having overflown them last week on her way to confer with Central American leaders about the “root causes” of the immigration crisis. While visiting Guatemala, the woman famous for dodging tough questions with loud yuks barely managed a quiet warning to prospective border-crossers: “Do not come.”
Such perfunctory advice could only have fallen on closed ears. For Guatemalans and their neighbors in Honduras and El Salvador, the trek north can mean a U.S. job and a ten-fold hike in income.
Well aware of the magnetic effect of U.S. dollars on northbound migration, the Biden-Harris team has offered $4 billion in economic assistance over four years to those Northern Triangle nations. The trekkers can do math, though, and have a financial incentive to stay on course: Ensconced in U.S. cities and towns, they sent back remittances worth $21.6 billion in 2018 alone, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Americans can do math, too, and it is obvious that Ms. Harris’ mission to Central America was designed to feign concern over the border surge without taking steps to curtail it.
By promising to naturalize illegals variously estimated to number between 11 million and twice that figure, by ending the Trump-era “remain in Mexico” policy whereby asylum-seekers were sent back across the border to await the results of their legal petitions, and by halting completion of the border wall, Biden-Harris has enacted an immigration policy that resembles failure, but only to those who believe border security is his goal.
Incompetence disguises intent: To flood the U.S. with immigrants — some worthy of future U.S. citizenship, some not — who would demonstrate their gratitude by voting for Mr. Biden’s political progeny forevermore. Americans must voice their disapproval in louder tones than Ms. Harris’ diversionary giggles.
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