The new border chaos: a crisis of foolish Biden's own making

https://nypost.com/2021/03/04/the-new-border-chaos-a-crisis-of-bidens-own-
making/

A crisis is a terrible thing to create. This, nonetheless, is what 
President Biden has done at the southern border.

His rhetoric during the campaign suggesting an open-handed approach to 
migrants coming to the US, and his early moves to undo Donald Trump’s 
border policies, are creating a migrant surge that risks running out of 
control.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the situation isn’t a 
crisis, but “a challenge” — an “acute” and “stressful” challenge with some 
“urgency,” but merely a challenge all the same.

Consider the contours of this challenge. Twice as many people, about 
80,000, tried to cross the border illegally in January of this year as 
compared with January a year ago.

Even though it isn’t peak traveling season yet (that traditionally comes 
in May and June), the US Border Patrol has already begun releasing 
migrants into US towns on the border.

Axios reported on a briefing prepared for Biden that warned that the 
number of migrant kids is on pace to set a record, and there aren’t nearly 
enough beds to accommodate them.

Biden officials tend to discuss the “push factors,” the conditions that 
prompt migrants to flee their countries in Central America. But changing 
those underlying conditions, even if doable, is a long-term proposition. 
What we have much more direct control over is the “pull factors,” our own 
policies and practices that create an incentive to come here.

Trump had a number of false starts at the border, but, by the end, had 
created an entirely reasonable system based on his lawful authorities to 
impose order at the border. There is no good reason to rip up much of this 
arrangement, though that’s exactly what Biden has done.

During the pandemic, Trump turned around illegal crossers at the border on 
public-health grounds. Biden has created an exception for unaccompanied 
minors, which is an obvious incentive for families to send children under 
age 18.

Under Trump, the Migration Protection Protocols, also known as Remain in 
Mexico, ended the practice of letting Central American migrants into the 
US while their asylum claims were adjudicated.

This was crucial because, under the old arrangement, asylum seekers were 
allowed in while their claims were considered. Even if the claims were 
ultimately rejected, as the vast majority of them were, the migrants 
overwhelmingly ended up staying anyway. This was a huge magnet to migrants 
— get to the border and claim asylum and you’re in the United States, very 
likely to stay.

Biden has trashed the Migrant Protection Protocols. No new asylum seekers 
will be enrolled in the program, and the backlog of people who had been 
waiting in Mexico are being admitted into the United States.

He’s also suspended the so-called “safe third-country” agreements that 
Trump forged with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to get asylum-
seekers to apply in one of those countries.

The premise of the overall Trump approach was that people who feared for 
their lives in their home country because of persecution don’t necessarily 
need to come to the United States to escape. It should be enough for them 
to go to another country in the region, or if they are indeed applying for 
US asylum, to stay in Mexico while doing so.

Allowing them into the United States, with no reliable internal 
enforcement mechanism, constitutes an end-run around our immigration 
system. Because migrants, like anyone else, respond to incentives, the 
more who are allowed in, the more will come. And, since our resources 
aren’t infinite, if enough families show up at the border, it inevitably 
overtaxes our personnel and facilities.

Even if Biden has different priorities, it makes no sense to create a 
willy-nilly rush at the border before a supposedly better system is in 
place (whatever that might be).

Mayorkas blames Trump for having “dismantled our nation’s immigration 
system in its entirety,” a claim as absurd as the notion that the Biden 
administration started from scratch on vaccinations.

Trump got a handle on the border, which in 2014 and 2019 had spun out of 
control. Call it what you will, a crisis or a challenge, but Biden is on a 
path to heedlessly repeat this experience.

Twitter: @RichLowry



-- 
"LOCKDOWN", left-wing COVID fearmongering.  95% of COVID infections 
recover with no after effects.

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Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden 
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Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.

President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed 
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.