They Heard It through the Grapevine: Illegals Are Coming from All Over By Mark Krikorian
People around the world are responding to La Invitacion delivered by President Biden through his campaign rhetoric and executive actions.
The border crisis continues, with the total number of illegal immigrants encountered at the border in April at a 21-year high for that month, though up just 3 percent from March. But families (adults traveling with minors) from countries other than the usual Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador made up 30 percent of all illegal-alien families apprehended in April, up a whopping 34 percent from the previous month.
The New York Times reports that they’re coming not only from farther afield in Latin America — Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil — but also from India and the Middle East. The reporter quotes the director of a shelter in Tucson that helps illegal immigrants after they’ve been released into the U.S. by the Border Patrol as saying, “We never worked with such large numbers with this diversity,” including speakers of Arabic, Haitian Creole, Hindi, and Portuguese.
This being the New York Times, the story is framed as being about “pandemic refugees,” which is not a thing, because fleeing “unimaginable levels of illness and death and decimated economies and livelihoods” doesn’t make you eligible for the line-cutting exemption from immigration limits that is asylum.
But there’s no hiding the fact that the border crisis is entirely a creation of President Biden:
While most of the migrants do not necessarily understand the intricacies of U.S. border policy, many said in interviews that they perceived a limited-time offer to enter the United States. Friends and family members already in the country, along with smugglers eager to cash in, have assured them that they will not be turned away — and this is proving to be true.
“What we’re hearing back home is that the new president is facilitating entry, and there is demand for labor,” said Rodrigo Neto, who came from Brazil, where the pandemic killed his business and left him overwhelmed by debt. “I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.”
The article notes that Border Patrol agents have apprehended people from “more than 160 countries, and the geography coincides with the path of the virus’s worst devastation” – but since there are about 190-something countries in the world (depending on how you count), the “geography coincides” with the entirety of the Third World. As word spreads, more people will be coming from farther and farther afield to take Biden up on his “limited-time offer” of an open border. Or, as the Times story blandly put it, “The numbers in coming months are expected to be higher.”
And for anyone who thinks any of these people will ever be made to leave, regardless of what happens with their asylum claims (assuming they even bother to apply for asylum), there’s this:
Measures imposed under the Obama administration, such as fitting migrants with ankle monitors to ensure that they attend court hearings later, are only sparingly used.
We’re left to pine for the good old days of the Obama administration’s slightly less frivolous border policies.
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