Given later marriages, delayed families, and fewer children, the growing American economy of the future needs the inflow of immigration — controlled legal immigration as we had for decades that built the world’s largest, strongest economy.
Not the “Hey, Come on in, Everybody” Oklahoma Land Rush style that’s characterized the border with Mexico under El Presidente Biden.
Certainly not as controlled as Canada’s immigration was. My grandfather was Canada’s immigration officer in Scotland decades ago. He got monthly assignments from Ottawa to recruit, say, two electricians, a carpenter, and their families. No one else got in.
You too may have noticed that pretty much everything that goes wrong under Joe Biden is someone else’s fault. Such blame-shifting is just a slightly more sly form of lying.
Biden postponed the Afghan exit from its carefully-timed April date to the peak fighting season of late summer 2021.
He dismissed Pentagon advice to plan an organized evacuation, pulled the plug unannounced late one July night, failed to alert allies, and ignited nationwide panic and the total collapse of the Afghan army we had been building for two decades.
Then, Biden had to send thousands of troops back in to conduct a chaotic but only partial evacuation that invited a deadly terrorist attack and displayed to an observing world of friend and foe how an addled American commander in chief behaves.
At the time, Joe Biden pronounced his exit “an extraordinary success.” Today, he says it was all Donald Trump’s fault.
And yet, mysteriously, Joe Biden has still sent eight-billion taxpayer dollars back into Afghanistan for reasons he refuses to divulge to an Inspector General assigned to audit such spending. What could Biden be doing with so much money that he needs to hide it?
Another significant mystery is the consistency of Joe Biden’s screw-ups. He announces a news conference that no one else knows about.
He calls his wife “the first full-time lady” and vows to “keep guns out of the hands of domestic political advisors.” And anytime he swears something is “the God’s truth,” you know it isn’t.
Is it possible that one adult who’s been elected to federal office nine times could be so wrong so often without intent? Or shame? Even if he’s never been the sharpest blade in the drawer?
The United States’ two international borders could not be more different. Yes, we fought a war with Canada, but that was in 1812 before its independence from Britain. Since 1867, the 5,524-mile border is the world’s longest undefended boundary.
In contrast, the United States has invaded Mexico 10 times, including the three-year war of 1846 when it annexed about half of Mexico.
The 1,951-mile border, much of it harsh desert not easily susceptible to monitoring (or crossing), has long been troubled. Now that the non-military invasion is northbound involving millions of Latin Americans, mainly seeking escape from gangs and access to more plentiful jobs, it has become politically volatile.
Of course, the influx has also included criminals, drug dealers, and terrorists, some of them previously deported numerous times.
Today, the approximate population of illegal aliens within the United States, roughly half of them Mexican, is more than 11 million, over twice the number 25 years ago. That is more than the entire population of Ohio, or larger than the combined populations of Kansas, Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia, Montana, oh, and Delaware.
Addressing the problems and enforcement of a human mass that large has been paralyzed by a lack of coordinated political will and an abundance of hypocrisy and expediency.
Employers enjoy the cheap labor of illegal workers who can’t complain, and politicians enjoy the support of happy businesses and the anticipated support of appreciative future voters.
Those who don’t appreciate the hordes entering illegally are legal immigrants who obeyed the law and waited in line for processing, sometimes for years. And local schools and social services get overwhelmed by new arrivals who speak no English, have few resources, and have different social mores.
Repeated congressional efforts to enact immigration reforms – perhaps they were sincere — have failed, as have various border enforcements.
One of Trump’s first acts as president was to sign an executive order to build a border wall, which became a politically useful tool to rally supporters. He got 458 miles done before Biden, in one of his first acts as president, halted construction.
Biden’s 2019-20 pandering campaign talk about the border raised the international prospect of immigration changes to provide amnesty for illegal immigrants. Once in office, the Democrat then overturned Trump’s effective enforcement efforts that had curbed border crossings.
Like many of Biden’s clumsy and inarticulate policies, the result was predictably disastrous. The number of unauthorized border crossings in the last fiscal year was 2.76 million, one million beyond the previous record.
Feigning enforcement, Biden administration officials issue appearance orders and simply send thousands of these unauthorized persons on their way aboard free bus or plane rides to inland cities.
Even a Forrest Gump would know that few of these new illegal residents will ever appear for an immigration hearing that could deport them, simply melting into the general population to draw on welfare, school, and other resources unprepared and unfunded for such demands.
Now that many have driver’s licenses, some Democrats are pushing to give them the vote, one way or another.
You might feel sympathy. But the volume of need and poverty spread the kind of humanitarian crisis now common at border crossing cities like El Paso where hundreds of migrants live on the streets.
The flood of “unauthorized” immigrants through Biden’s open border has also seen a flood of illegal drugs, especially the deadly, artificial opioid fentanyl responsible for a record number of fatal overdoses.
More unauthorized border-crossers and illegal drugs were seized during Biden’s two years than in all four of Trump’s term.
In a recent congressional hearing, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz was asked if his force had effective control of the U.S. border.
His reply: “No, sir.”
And yet, as so often happens with this administration, no effective corrective action occurs. No public outcry. They just move on to the next mess. Media acquiesces, repeats Biden’s claims he’s doing an excellent job. And there are no consequences.
Now comes the scheduled end of pandemic restrictions like Title 42. That was initially invoked at the pandemic’s onset in 2020. To prevent the spread of coronavirus, it allowed the government to expel migrants, including asylum seekers, attempting to enter the country.
The end of that authority Thursday is expected to cause an even larger surge of attempted crossings than the Biden era has already produced.
To address this mess, Joe Biden last week ordered 1,500 troops to the border beginning this weekend.
Media apparently didn’t have time to include in their coverage mention that Trump’s identical dispatch of troops to the border in 2018 produced Democrat catcalls and complaints from Kamala Harris.
She called it a publicity stunt for TV cameras and “inappropriate to require the limited resources of the United States military to be used in such a way.”
But now, it’s OK.
As often happens at RedState, a colleague, Nick Arama, made time to dig the incriminating video out of the archives.
Biden’s desperate troop order has already caused splits and election worries even among Democrats, who cite criticism of Trump’s similar moves.
Despite blatant evidence to the contrary, Biden and aides have long maintained that the border with Mexico is secure. Which prompted a perfectly pointed question by Fox News’ Peter Doocy:
If the border is secure as the administration has said, then why would we need to send 1,500 active-duty US troops down there?