OPINION:
How about this for an immigration bill: Shut the damn border and immediately deport the millions of illegals that have invaded our nation at the invitation of the Biden regime.
The proposed Senate bill is certainly not that. It is nothing more than amnesty for the parade of scofflaws numbering as many as 8 million that have flooded across our borders illegally since President Biden took office.
Securing our southern border is not difficult. I was there in the Oval Office when then-President Donald Trump came up with a brilliant idea that effectively closed much of our southern border in a matter of days. My old boss turned to White House legal counsel Pat Cipollone and me and said, how about we put stiff tariffs on Mexico until they agree to deploy troops to the border and adopt a “safe third nation” deal that will keep illegals on their side. Can we do that?
Yes, I said. The president can impose such tariffs without legal question as border security is both an economic and national security issue. And Pat agreed.
Mr. Trump announced tariffs on Mexico that same day, and heads exploded at CNN and MSNBC for a solid 24-hour news cycle. Shortly thereafter, Mexico did indeed rush thousands of troops to the border, and the United States got its safe third nation deal.
But that’s not the end of the story. Mr. Trump then turned his National Security Council loose on Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Their leaders quickly also adopted safe third nation agreements as well. With that stroke of policy genius, he stopped the hemorrhaging across our border.
Now, here’s the buried lead: One of the first acts Mr. Biden took upon taking office was to repeal Mr. Trump’s safe third nation agreements. That reckless act alone would thereby unleash the unprecedented border crisis we are facing.
Memo to an outraged American electorate: The Senate bill will do virtually nothing to stop illegal immigration, only regulate its flow.
The Senate bill will also impose yet more direct and indirect costs on taxpayers to pay for, among other things, the legal fees of illegals. This is at a time when Mr. Biden is already draining our middle class dry while mortgaging our children’s future with his profligate “woke” spending bills.
Make no mistake about this: You cannot let 8 million illegals into this country in less than four years without doing lasting damage to the economic and national security of this country.
Fun fact: Mr. Biden’s illegal immigrant hordes represent more than the populations of Idaho, North and South Dakota, Rhode Island, Montana, and Liz Cheney’s Wyoming combined. Or does Ms. Cheney live in Virginia? Did I mention that Black children in Boston’s Roxbury section can’t use their gymnasium and recreation center anymore because it’s been confiscated to house Mr. Biden’s illegals? All politics is indeed local.
Of course, it’s bad enough that a large percentage of Mr. Biden’s army of illegals doesn’t speak English and is poorly educated. These illiterates are flooding our labor markets at the low end and thereby putting enormous pressure on American Blacks, Hispanics, and rural Whites already struggling to make ends meet in low-wage jobs. This is not conjecture: You can see it all in the government data.
It’s worse that many illegals are part of broader human trafficking and drug rings, and it’s not just the Mexican cartels that are involved. Young women and children from all over the world are being trafficked into the United States and abused on our soil in the most ungodly and depraved acts imaginable.
It is untenable that the United States is being inundated with all manner of deadly and addictive drugs entering on the backs and in the stomachs and anal cavities of immigrant “mules.” The worst of these poisons is Chinese fentanyl, which is killing 50,000 Americans a year, many of whom are young students or in the prime of their lives.
Did I mention that the dictator Xi Jinping and his merry band of Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks can’t believe how stupid and weak we are as a nation under Mr. Biden’s rule?
Worst of all, Mr. Biden, the Democratic Party, and the RINOs of our despicable Congress are importing all manner of national security and existential threats with their open border policies. These threats include hardened soldiers of radical Islam, many of whom are on the terrorist watchlist. There are Chinese soldiers infiltrating in civilian clothes, preparing to embed as sleeper cells until China triggers a war with the U.S. over anything from trade to Taiwan. And let’s not forget all the cyber criminals, spies and sappers from Russia and Eastern Europe now setting up shop on American soil, stealing and ransoming us blind.
This is beyond insanity. It is all the more crazy given that the Senate wants to bundle the single greatest domestic threat facing us — a blown-open border — with an aid package to Ukraine.
Memo to Mike Johnson: Draw a red line in the sand as House speaker, and don’t give an inch. Our economy, our culture, our political, public health, and education systems, our families and public safety, and our national security are at stake.
Call to action to every American citizen: Now is the time to call your congressman and senator and tell them you want a sealed border. And yes, elections do indeed have consequences — in this case, catastrophic ones.
• Peter Navarro served in the Trump White House as manufacturing czar and chief China hawk. This piece originally appeared at http://peternavarro.substack.com.
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