Liz Peek: Joe Biden’s immigration avalanche is about to bury him
What on earth is Joe Biden thinking?
As the country erupts over the horrorshow at the southern border, the White House is doing battle — not with the armed gangs infiltrating our country or the tens of thousands of people illegally streaming across our border, but with the governor of Texas, who is trying to protect his citizens from the unruly horde.
Gov. Greg Abbott has directed the construction of razor wire barriers to prevent people entering between legal ports of entry; the White House has gotten permission from the Supreme Court to take them down.
In addition, Republicans in Congress have demanded that the Biden administration secure the border in exchange for greenlighting aid to Ukraine and Israel.
This is easy, folks. Give the GOP the rules changes they want and 1) Biden’s border catastrophe gets better, generating fewer appalling headlines, and 2) the U.S. meets its promises and Biden can keep chirping that “America is back.”
Our clueless president disagrees. This issue could literally defeat Joe Biden, and he is fighting everything and anything that could make the situation better.
The No.1 issue for Republican voters in Iowa and in New Hampshire was immigration, beating out even the economy. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump was the heavy favorite in both states. Securing the border was the former president’s signature campaign promise in 2016; having delivered on that pledge, he will, for sure, hit the topic hard again in 2024.
Biden and his campaign team have gravely underestimated Americans’ anger about the approximately 8 million illegal border crossing that have been allowed to occur under the Biden administration. A recent poll from CBS showed 70 percent of respondents disapproving of Biden’s handling of immigration. Moreover, 63 percent of those surveyed said the administration should be tougher on those arriving at the border.
Day after day, prodded to justify the ever-higher numbers of migrants landing in cities and towns across the U.S., the White House has offered up the same tired lament: if only the Republicans in Congress had acted on Biden’s immigration proposal, the problem would be solved.
Has anyone bothered to read that bill? A review shows this: the White House whine is absurd.
Biden proposed the U.S. Citizenship Act on the very first day of his administration; the next month it was formally introduced in the House and Senate. Even though Democrats at the time controlled both the House and the Senate, the bill never got a vote. That’s how strongly Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi et al pushed for the measure. It died in the House two years later when the GOP took over.
The White House spin on this legislation and constant blaming of the GOP Congress has taken a toll. While 68 percent in that CBS poll say they disapprove of the way Biden is “handling matters concerning the U.S.-Mexico border,” fully 65 percent also disapprove of how “Republicans in Congress” are managing the crisis.
Score one for the Biden team.
But the blame-game is bogus and rests on a false assumption – that Biden’s bill would actually close the border. It is not true.
There’s a reason the name of the bill is the U.S. Citizenship Act — it’s all about amnesty and paths to citizenship. There is little about preventing illegal immigration. In fact, like most of the Democrats’ policies towards immigration, it would almost certainly increase the number of people arriving at the southern border, not drive it down.
Here are some highlights of Biden’s immigration bill:
Create an earned roadmap to citizenship for undocumented individuals. This section allows all illegals to gain temporary legal status immediately and apply for a green card within five years. Three years after that they can become citizens. Further, “Dreamers, TPS holders, and immigrant farmworkers” are eligible for green cards immediately. Oh, and also: the government is replacing the term “alien” with “noncitizen.”
Keep families together. This section works to speed up families bringing in their relatives and highlights “eliminating discrimination facing LGBTQ+ families.”
Embrace diversity. This portion of the bill is a poke at Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, which targeted nations harboring terrorists but did not exclude Muslims (Indonesia, for example, the largest Muslim country, was not mentioned.)
Promote immigrant and refugee integration and citizenship. This speaks for itself — it doles out lots of money to Democrat-friendly NGOs.
Grow our economy. This section encourages expediting the availability of green cards for anyone who wants to work in the U.S., legal or illegal.
The next sections of Biden’s bill are headed “Prioritize smart border controls” and “Manage the border and protect border communities.” But instead of erecting barriers to entry, physical or virtual, the White House focuses on the ability to “process” migrants faster.
Biden proposes to provide more oversight of Border Patrol, including adding special agents “to investigate criminal and administrative misconduct.” Apparently the real bad actors are the overly aggressive agents hiding behind their uniforms, not those on the terror watch list sneaking into the U.S.
The final section of the bill harks back to Biden’s fantasy about “root causes,” furthering a $4 billion effort to stamp out crime, corruption and its hideous byproducts in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. It may be horrible to say, but $1 billion per year is chicken feed to governments propped up by gang lords now raking in untold billions from their heinous sex and drug trafficking at our border.
The bill does include some worthy measures. It would expand the number of judges available to immigration courts; since asylum seekers today are given court dates nearly a decade in the future, this makes sense. It also reasonably focuses on preventing narcotics from entering the country and would allow graduates of American colleges to stay and work in America. Since taxpayers help fund those degrees, that’s a reasonable payback.
But make no mistake. This bill does not solve our border crisis and would never pass. Moreover, Joe Biden knows it.
Published in The Hill
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