A magnified view of the logo for “Customs and Border Protection,” the trade and cargo division, which is part of the postal service system at New York’s JFK Airport, is pictured on June 24, 2019. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Image) Regular Text Short Form
The southern border of the United States is currently wide open. Unaccompanied children, single young adults and even families are pouring in from outside the country.
Frightening rumors abound: for example, on Thursday (11) U.S. Customs and Border Protection tweeted, “In a 24-hour period, Laredo North Station border (Laredo North Station) patrols, in three crackdowns involving the use of commercial trailers, made 111 arrests in three operations against people smuggling.” This is a legitimized crisis, and despite the president’s self-serving obfuscation, this legitimate crisis is entirely of the Democrats’ making.
As this column has noted previously, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that the border crisis spiked as early as last October in anticipation that Biden might win the presidential election. During the Trump presidential transition, there was already a large “caravan” of illegal immigrants gathering in the ever-troubled Northern Triangle of Central America. This disaster, which was still in the gestation stage at the Time, finally broke out in full force at the beginning of Biden’s term, which was entirely the president’s own fault.
The “magnet” effect that immigration policy analysts often talk about is a rhetorical statement of policy that tends to attract vulnerable or opportunistic immigrants who enter the United States illegally in collusion with greedy interests and transnational human trafficking groups.
The biggest “magnet” effect for illegal immigrants is the Amnesty proposal. It could provide a “pathway” to permanent legal status or citizenship for those currently in the United States illegally. But there are countless other appealing factors, including President Biden’s campaign promise to ease enforcement efforts and the tilted policies since his inauguration, such as the Biden Administration‘s regrettable elimination of President Trump’s proven “(let them) stay in Mexico” policy and the return of the Obama-era “catch and release” approach. Many of the stowaways caught at the border were quickly released while waiting for immigration hearings, and then these people burrowed into the United States and disappeared without a trace.
The result of the “magnet” effect of illegal immigration is a rational response to the (new administration’s) incentives. This is not an earth-shattering discovery. In fact, it is a central tenet of the “economic man,” the neoclassical economic model that generally assumes that humans are perfectly rational and driven by profit, as fictionalized in the archaic science.
But illegal immigration, let alone the mass of illegal immigrants now entering the United States, is not an abstract or academic concept. Yes, amnesty and “catch and release” policies are fundamentally unjust because they deny American citizens the right to make the most important decision that any member of the public in a free country should ponder: who else should be admitted into the country.
The concept of sovereignty is undermined and becomes incomprehensible. However, the large number of illegal immigrants can also cause tangible and comprehensive harm to the public. Democrats choose to downplay these harms in order to enhance their progressive fashions through the “woke” movement, which doesn’t really do anyone any favors.
The open borders agenda has grown and facilitated smuggling rings, often referred to in the media as “drug cartels,” which are better known as brutal transnational crime syndicates. They are sometimes even in cahoots with Chinese fentanyl exporters and internationally recognized terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah.
These most vicious organizations in Western society, as even the New York Times reported in 2019, are notorious for committing rape and sexual violence against large numbers of female immigrants. Ranchers in those barren deserts of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona are in even greater crisis, with the drug cartels amounting to bad business in their backyards.
The uncontrollable influx of cheap, low-wage illegal immigrants is also hitting blue-collar workers of all races and backgrounds. The reason is simple: they entered illegally and so lack the ability to bargain in the labor market.
States that support immigration enforcement have taken an unusual hit from the U.S. Census. Previous censuses counted both legal and illegal immigrants, a miscalculation that Trump is trying to correct. When these states lost the patronage of their congressional representatives, the pan-blue states that embraced illegal immigration went on a rampage.
The truly sad part of this shameful tragedy is that it was all predictable. Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, such as “(keep them) in Mexico,” had been effective in curbing the inflow of illegal immigrants and restoring order to our porous borders.
Like the Biden administration’s capitulation to the Iranian regime in the foreign policy arena, his quick reversal of Trump-era immigration policies seems to be based not on a genuine concern for the interests of the people, but rather on a narrow “Trump is bad” decision. This posture may be well received on the pan-blue Twitter social media, but it is to the detriment of the American public.
About the Author.
Josh. Josh Hammer is a trained constitutional lawyer. He is also an opinion editor for Newsweek, a podcast contributor for BlazeTV, and a consultant and syndicated columnist for the First Liberty Institute.
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