Biden tells Congress ‘fix it’ on border, but he’s the one who broke it so badly | Opinion
Democrats probably think they had a good political moment at the State of the Union address Thursday night when they chanted “fix it” after President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass border-security legislation.
The thing is, the chant should have been aimed directly at Biden. When it comes to the illegal immigration crisis roiling the country, there’s so much he could do to “fix it,” or at least vastly improve it. At a minimum, he could reverse the very actions he took early in his presidency — and revise the attitude he and his party bring to the issue.
Biden campaigned on overturning most of President Donald Trump’s actions that helped slow illegal immigration. Early in his term, he ended Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. That alone opened the door to new border crossers: officials recorded nearly 250,000 encounters with migrants attempting to cross in December, a record high.
The merits of the bipartisan legislation are debatable. Sometimes, something is in fact better than nothing. More resources are needed for the border. But the bill falls far short of what’s needed for asylum reform in particular. And simply processing more migrants isn’t the answer; more have to be turned back faster, and the criteria for asylum must be significantly tighter.
More significant steps that in the past might have seemed over the top now seem necessary. Given the huge numbers of people arriving, we must consider ending the practice of allowing people to stay in the U.S. while awaiting adjudication of their asylum cases, except for perhaps the most dire few. Adding more asylum officers is great, but not if they aren’t given new, strict criteria to evaluate applications. And yes, we’ll need more walls and fences.
Don’t discount how much the rhetoric and actions from Biden and other Democrats helped get us to this crisis. Biden tacitly admitted this in his speech, when he noted that people would take the risk to pay a smuggler to come here because “they know if they get by … it’s six to eight years” until they have a court hearing.
Well, how did that happen, Mr. President? The Biden administration has used “parole” policy to release more than 1 million people into the country. As a candidate, Biden promised to halt deportations and release more asylum seekers into the U.S. The word went out.
What’s changed? Democratic governors and mayors are feeling the consequences of sanctuary policies they were able to espouse under the false name of “compassion.” So many migrants are showing up in places such as New York, Chicago and Denver — many due to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s politically brilliant policy of offering them bus rides to those areas — that Biden’s fellow Democrats are begging him to reverse course.
The president and his party spent years encouraging immigration. Biden, to his credit, was not a full-blown open borders advocate, as so many in his party were. It’s partly why he won the Democratic nomination in 2020 — being just a little less progressive than his competitors.
But he immediately governed like they would have. So, when he asks someone else to “fix it,” he should at least meet them halfway and reverse the very policies that broke it so badly.
This story was originally published March 8, 2024 at 5:31 AM.
