Since December, illegal bridges at the U. S. Mexico borders are down more than 40 percent, and have been fairly stable so far this year. For the first time in seven decades have illegal border crossings decreased from February to March.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told NPR in an appointment on May 10 that” we have even removed or returned an unprecedented number of people this year than I think in any year since 2011.” Ernie Tedeschi, an economist, noted in an April report that the expat population’s fall since 2020 has contributed to about one-fifth of the country’s development during that time.
Progressive pundits, understandably, are celebrating these seeming emigration- related victories for the Biden administration given new historical highs in improper border crossings. ” GOP talking details are out of fashion.” Border bridges have plummeted”, read the title of a May 8 ops- ed by Washington Post journalist Catherine Rampell. ” Biden’s ‘ border problems’ is truly an economical achievements story”, was the title of an April 8 MSNBC op- ed by Zeeshan Aleem. When it comes to the recent immigration policies in the United States, a closer look suggests more of a disappointment than a achievements.
No Simply an Emigration Triumph…
” And to be honest, April’s borders apprehensions, at around 130, 000, remain high by historical requirements”, Rampell acknowledges in her WaPo row. Yet Rampell’s files quite clearly demonstrates that the number of illegal border crossings per month between January and April of this year has hovered between 125 000 and 140 000. That amount is more than double ( and nearly triple ) what we saw from 2010- 2019, when numbers constantly hovered around 50, 000 per month. Rampell’s gloating is similar to rejoicing that you only lost$ 600,000 to your investment than you did last season. Yay?
Moreover, the main reason for the decline in illegal border crossings thus far this year is n’t a result of U. S. policies, as Rampell readily admits. Following agreements with the Biden administration, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed to provide more money and safety solutions to the immigration crisis, such as military inspections, bridge checkpoints, and busing migrants away from the U. S. Mexico borders.
” It’s mainly about Mexico’s surveillance efforts, particularly the ongoing efforts to stop migrants from getting to the U. S. Mexico border”, explained Aaron Reichlin- Melnick, plan chairman at the American Immigration Council. In light of this reasoning, the Biden administration should claim a diplomatic victory in reducing a crisis to levels that are still at crisis level. And should we really trust a nation’s fate to a nation whose politicians are chosen by cartels?
Alternately, the Biden administration has been providing humanitarian fast-pass entrance slips to would-be illegal border crossings through a cell phone app called “CBP- One,” as Todd Bensman noted in a Federalist article in June. This program has made it possible for those who intended to cross illegally between land-based entry points to not be included in the “illegal crossings” category. In other words, a decline in “illegal crossings” is highly deceptive, given this spurious naming game.
… Nor an Economic Victory
Arguments that America’s lax immigration enforcement on our southern border is supposedly a success story can be much the same. Yes, the nation’s gross domestic product is slated to grow by trillions of dollars because of immigration, much of it illegal, though much of that wealth will go not to American citizens but to those immigrants themselves. Almost 60 percent , of illegal immigrant households rely on welfare, and those immigrants cost local and state governments billions of dollars in education services. Immigration expert George Borjas has pointed out that immigrants receive higher rates of government aid than natives, putting them in a position to compete with American laborers and lower wages for the working class.
This points to a broader point about American economic growth due to immigration: There are clear winners ( e. g. employers, the elite class ) and clear losers ( e. g. the working class ) when it comes to the redistribution of wealth caused by immigration. There are also winners and losers among non- Americans. In his book Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History, Todd Bensman relates how cartels help to facilitate the majority of the human trafficking along with illegal immigrants who increase their earnings in the American economy. The cartels are making billions of dollars off smuggling networks that transport people from all over the world to the Rio Grande, as the federal government is well aware of.
Nearly a thousand illegal immigrants pass away annually on our southwest border, and thousands of young women and children are smuggled across the border each year, many of whom are sexually exploited both before and after entering the country. In a special report from July 2022, the UN called it” the most dangerous border in the world.”
Who Is Really to Blame for the Border Disaster?
In his book, Bensman relates interviewing cartel members on the U. S. Mexico border. One such smuggler referred to what he termed “la invitación”, the newly elected Biden administration’s not- so- implicit welcome to immigrants to cross the border and remain. In fact, the hundreds of immigrants Bensman spoke to readily acknowledged that they had waited until Biden’s election because they thought his administration was much more welcoming to illegal immigrants. ” Millions of foreign nationals saw it all as opportunity and joined Club America in the Biden administration’s first two fiscal years alone”, he writes.
Bensman has the street cred to write well-known articles about the immigration crisis, including two lengthy investigative reports on Mexico’s internal drug war that won National Press Club awards, before working for the Texas Department of Public Safety and Center for Immigration Studies, which examined the immigration crisis. Therefore, we should pay attention when he mentions that the highest number of Border Patrol arrests ever occurred before the current presidential administration, which was 2000 ( 1. 6 million ), and that this number did not occur again until the 2021, which saw a 400 percent increase from the 2020 level. Mayorkas claimed that deportation was not a priority for his organization when asked what Congress could do during a 2022 Fox News interview.
What a Real Success Looks Like
At the conclusion of Overrun, Bensman urges politicians to carefully consider any legislation that falls under the litmus test: Will the proposal increase or decrease the chances of encouraging illegal entry from foreigners into the United States? He goes beyond that, offering a number of specific suggestions for how to begin addressing our incredibly complex border crisis. He advises against adhering to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees because it “enables an asylum policy that “nullifies most congressionally approved immigration statutes that should, if actually executed faithfully, staunch mass illegal immigration.” Currently, America is bound by this treaty to consider even the most specious asylum claims by illegal immigrants, which they ( and human smugglers ) well know.
Bensman also suggests replacing the stop-gap measures from the Trump era that had stymied the asylum system’s appeal. He pushes for a change to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act to make it clear that non-Mexican children are treated the same as Mexican children, allowing them to be removed quickly. He demands that the government demand that other nations abandon their restrictions on flow in favor of U.S.-funded infrastructure that would transport would-be immigrants to their birthplaces.
Given bipartisan agreement, the current immigration crisis, which is still a crisis despite the premature celebrations of liberal pundits, offers a rare opportunity to shore up our southern border, deter illegal immigration networks that threaten our economy, increase crime inside and outside the United States, and facilitate cartels. According to polling, even the majority of Democrats disapprove of mass migration crises like the one we’ve been dealing with for years. In the end, it would need a significant legislative lift. Once our government scraps the asylum law, which so severely undermines U.S. policy, Bensman believes that the laws we already have are” sufficient to end mass illegal immigration if merely enforced to the letter.”
Then the question becomes: Who has the political will to intervene to help both Americans and the millions of noncitizens who are being ensnared in this country?
Casey Chalk is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a columnist and editor for The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands is his book.
