How unprepared for the coming tidal wave of illegal aliens clamoring to enter the United States is the Biden administration?
Administration officials are saying they expect about 7,000 border apprehensions a day once the pandemic-era Title 42 is lifted. In fact, the real number is going to be closer to 18,000 border apprehensions every day, according to Homeland Security. And the Washington Post editorial board writes that Biden isn’t ready for it.
Department of Homeland Security officials are assembling what amounts to a logistical war room to manage the coming mess — for detention facilities, transportation capabilities and Border Patrol officers themselves. Perhaps more consequentially over the long term, the administration is putting the finishing touches on a new asylum system, in the works since last year, that would accelerate an adjudication process that now typically takes five years, shrinking it to six months. That involves hiring hundreds of asylum officers who would evaluate claims from migrants that they would face persecution if returned to their home countries, and divert them from immigration courts, which already face a crushing backlog: 1.7 million cases, about 40 percent of which involve asylum claims.
Shrinking the vetting process from five years to six months? This isn’t “reform.” This is a disguised way to simply fling open the door and usher anyone and everyone into the U.S. who gets in line.
We will be assured that, despite 80% less time looking at asylum seekers to make sure we’re not letting in terrorists or violent criminals, or wife beaters for that matter, we’ll all be perfectly safe … really.
That’s a solid plan — if it survives expected legal challenges from Republicans. But it is unlikely to be in place fast enough or in sufficient scope to accommodate the likely migrant surge once Title 42 is lifted in May. A meaningful fix would require a legislative overhaul of the legal immigration system, which has eluded a dysfunctional Congress for years, and a concerted, long-term U.S. effort to address the root causes of illegal immigration — crime, violence, poverty and corruption in Central America and beyond.
Wait a minute … hold the phone. Isn’t our “Border Czar,” Vice President Kamala Harris supposed to be leading that effort?
That was supposed to be Vice President Harris’s brief, but she appears to have done little to address the problem. Absent progress on that front, the Biden administration and its successors will surely face more chaos at the border.
It’s not really Harris’s fault. These are largely failed states on our border — fiefdoms for violent drug gangs and human traffickers. There is no “addressing” problems as insoluble as crime, poverty, and hopelessness.
As far as asylum claims for people who feel they’re in danger if they go back home, the same could be said for millions of Central Americans caught in the crossfire between drug gangs. If the U.S. were to open its borders and allow them all to come in, how long before it would be impossible to tell the difference between El Salvador and the United States?
Why stop at Central and South America? There are millions of people trying to escape similar conditions in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Should someone be allowed in as a refugee simply because they’re able to walk to the border and knock on the door while tens of millions of others can’t? Where’s the fairness in that?
The Biden administration will do its best to hide the coming humanitarian catastrophe at the border. But with 18,000 people a day who need to be sheltered, fed, processed, and sent on their way, it’s going to be hard to hide the bodies once they start piling up.
Source: PJ Media
