The Real “Border Problem

On Friday, more than six months after President Biden put her in charge of the “border problem,” Kamala Harris visited the US-Mexico border. (The White House announced her trip the day after Trump announced that he’d be going on June 30.) When asked as recently as last month why she hadn’t yet been there, Harris mocked the question. “I haven’t been to Europe either,” she said, laughing that odd laugh of hers. Earlier this month, however, she did fly down to several countries in Central America to talk about “the root cause” of the increase in undocumented immigration: the wealth and income gap between the US and those countries. It is mindboggling to me that anyone would take that seriously. How is she going to fix the gap? By magically raising the per-capita income of Guatemala and El Salvador to US standards? Meanwhile, Mexican and Central American cartels are making billions trafficking people and drugs to the US. Every day, thousands of men, women, and unaccompanied children are coming into the country. Some manage to sneak in and disappear. But most get caught or turn themselves in, knowing that the Biden administration’s policy of booking and releasing them (into the US) means, essentially, free entry. Since January, there has been a surge of border crossings, both illegal crossings and immigrants seeking asylum. Well, actually, most of the asylum seekers are people that cross the border illegally and then turn themselves in to authorities on the other side, knowing that they will be booked and released, so long as they promise to return one day for a hearing. At the current rate of 6,000 apprehensions a day, and including those that avoid detection, the total number coming into the US in 2021 could exceed 2 million. There are consequences. One is a huge increase in illegal drugs (including methamphetamines and cocaine) entering the country. Another is the human cost of trafficking humans… So, what’s the deal? Why the open-border policy? Every other sovereign country in the world has strict border controls. Biden himself was an advocate for secure borders for most of his career. He may be a little foggy upstairs, but he’s not braindead. And neither are the people around him, the people that are making the domestic policy decisions. I have two theories. The first is not my theory, but it’s fun to imagine: Keeping the southern border open is part of a Democratic two-prong strategy to maintain control of both houses of Congress and the executive office forevermore. The first prong is to make Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, states and thus secure four more Democrat senators. The second prong is to boost the Democrat voting population by bringing in several million illegal immigrants, who, the Dems think, will vote Blue. The second is more mundane: In his bid for the presidency, Trump’s position on the border struck a chord that surprised everyone, including him and his campaign. It was such a strong issue that he/they felt compelled to make it one of the pivotal “achievements” of his first term in office. The Dems were forced to oppose it. Not because they believe in open borders, but because they were committed to opposing everything that Trump did. When it was discovered that arrested children were being kept separately from their parents, the public was outraged. And so, like it or not, the Biden administration felt compelled to dismantle everything Trump did to secure the border. This led to the current surge, which the Republicans are loudly criticizing. But the Democrats can’t do anything about it or it will look like some part of Trump’s policies may have been right. Instead, they have tried their best to ignore what’s happening down there because they don’t want it to become a pivotal issue again in 2022 or 2024.