LIZ PEEK: BIDEN IS PLAYING WITH FIRE IN A BID FOR HISPANIC VOTE
https://www.nysun.com/article/biden-is-playing-with-fire-in-a-bid-for-hispanic-vote
President Biden is following in President Obama’s footsteps, scrambling to curry favor with disgruntled Hispanics before an upcoming election. Under pressure from immigration activists, Mr. Biden has rescinded Title 42, a policy adopted by President Trump that allowed for the swift expulsion of those entering the United States illegally.
As of May 23, Title 42 will be gone. That will open the doors to what will doubtless be another wave of caravans heading north, the participants convinced that the current White House will allow them to stay. They’ll have every reason to think so. Mr. Biden has long blasted his predecessor for his “inhumane” treatment of people trying to gain asylum here.
Mr. Biden has eagerly undone the policies — including the construction of a border wall and the “Remain in Mexico” approach — that helped slow the stream of migrants during the Trump years. Title 42 used the threat of Covid-19 as an excuse to expel undocumented people; now that the pandemic has receded, activists pressed Mr. Biden to change course.
The Biden-friendly New York Times reported late last year that over the prior twelve months, “encounters” of illegal migrants had soared to 1.7 million persons, a level not seen since “at least” 1960, “capping a year of chaos at the southern border.” The Times noted that under Title 42, one million individuals had been deported, which invites the question: what happened to the other 700,000?
The Biden White House won’t tell. We know from eyewitness accounts that thousands of illegal immigrants have been bused or flown to cities around America, sometimes under cover of darkness, as border facilities became overwhelmed.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has absurdly claimed the border is “not open,” refused last September while testifying before the Senate and the House, to make even a “ballpark” guess of how many people apprehended at the border had been released into the country.
Why won’t they confess to what they are doing? Because they know that allowing hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world to enter our country illegally represents a profound breakdown in our rule of law and is extremely unpopular.
The Biden team has refused to describe the mess at the border as a crisis, but that is how Americans see it, and it is yet another issue on which Mr. Biden is seen to be failing. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, only 33 percent approve of the job Mr. Biden is doing on immigration, while 52 percent disapprove. A telling 83 percent said it was an important issue.
Why would Mr. Biden touch this hot button topic just months before the midterms? For the same reason Mr. Obama announced in 2012, months before his reelection bid, his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. He was panicked that he and his party had lost favor with Hispanic voters, and he reckoned that protecting people who had arrived as children via an executive order would help mend fences.
Mr. Obama had promised Hispanics that immigration reform would be his top priority. He failed to come through; DACA was his peace offering. Today, Democrats are again losing Hispanic support. Polling confirms what politicos have noted about recent Republican wins in Virginia and Texas; after voting for Donald Trump in historic numbers, Hispanic voters are indeed shifting to the GOP.
In the same Economist poll, Mr. Biden’s job approval among Hispanics came in at 45 percent, not much higher than the 42 percent approval the president wins from all adults. Perhaps more worrisome, Hispanics give the Democratic Party a 38 percent favorability rating, compared to 39 percent from all respondents, and the GOP a 33 percent rating compared to 36 percent from the broader population. That is not expected.
So Mr. Biden is playing with fire by removing Title 42. Over the coming months there will likely be a surge — again — of people pouring our southern border. Scenes of chaos and misery could well overwhelm possible good news on Covid-19 or the Ukraine war that might boost the president’s appalling approval ratings.
Published on The New York Sun
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