Long overdue

By the time you read this, President Joe Biden will have made his first visit to our southern border, attended the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City, and likely is aggressively promoting a new immigration reform plan. In response, I have to ask so why now?

For the entire past two years, the Biden administration has displayed an open-borders mentality.

Early on, Biden ended the Migrant Protection Protocols which kept would-be illegal immigrants in Mexico while cases were being adjudicated. Our Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has limited immigration enforcement actions, while offering no solution to escalating numbers of immigrants entering the US, as the president asks Congress to pass mass amnesty legislation that would create a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Biden has gone on record favoring the end of Title 42, a coronavirus-era measure, which allows Customs and Border Patrol to expel many immigrants on public health grounds before they are admitted and allowed to claim asylum.

It’s been said by many, “no borders, no country.” It can’t be that only now the president is hearing outcries from US-Mexico border police of being overwhelmed by the migrant encounters orchestrated by drug cartels.

In addition to meth, heroin and cocaine being transported, over 10,000 pounds of fentanyl have been seized at our border.

But beyond the profits made from trafficking drugs, criminal syndicates are reportedly earning as much as $14 million a day by smuggling people who are charged thousands of dollars to get across the border or who are forced into sex trafficking and prostitution to pay off debts.

And beyond the more than two million accounts of apprehensions of legal immigrants in fiscal year 2022, CBP estimates those who evade detection, the “got-aways.” many of whom are cartel members, represent a third of that number. No wonder that an August NPR poll indicated more than half of Americans believe there is an invasion at the southern border.

Every community is becoming a border community, a message being highlighted by governors of Texas, Arizona and Florida sending migrants to northern Democrat-led cities. Texas Congressman Tony Gonzales was quoted in September that Democrat House leadership had failed America and people in his district no longer felt safe.

Mr. Biden is now proposing a migrant parole process that allows for controlled entry and temporary work authorization for 30,000 people per month from four designated Latin American countries.

Those would-be migrants would remain in their country of origin while applying for program assistance rather than making the trek to the US and being met with unlawful expulsion. Why not simply enforce existing immigration laws?

Per an article from thehill.com, in March 2021 a group of nine Republican House members proposed a plan to increase funding for enhanced technology for border security, end catch-and-release loopholes, eliminate welfare incentives, require legal status to obtain employment, provide a ten-year path to renewable legal status, and protect the undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children (DREAMers).

Perhaps the mid-term reshuffling within the House of Representative can allow for impartial examination of ineffective security efforts and, in true bipartisan action, result in an agreed plan for regaining control of our southern border. If the US could find means to support the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico in improving migration management as well as local prosecution of criminals involved in drug smuggling and human trafficking, the resulting reduction of both arrests at the border of criminal aliens and of the numbers of Americans dying from drug overdose would represent significant steps toward the reclaiming of this nation.