The news on the U.K.’s illegal immigration problems has not really generated much buzz stateside. Eighty thousand illegals a year are expected to get by the U.K. Border plod. Over here in the U.S., by contrast, we call 80,000 border-jumping illegals “last week”. In the two-and-a-half years since Biden became President, 5.1 million folks have entered this country illegally through our southern border according to the Customs and Border Protection (CDP) records.
You might think our CDP has a lot of work to do kicking out the 5.1 million. You would be wrong. The majority of these folks (about 60%) are allowed to stay in the country. As long as you can say you are seeking asylum and are not covered by Title 42 (which means you cannot remain in the U.S. if you test positive for Covid) you can stay until presenting yourself at a court on an assigned date. The Biden Administration helpfully asks you where you want to go and transports you around the country to various destinations. Once there you recede from view as many have to wait 10 years for a court date.
The Trump administration tried to reduce crossings on the southern border with various policies such as ‘Remain in Mexico’. But the 2,000 mile border was not secure as 400,000 illegals were still apprehended in 2020, the last year of the Trump Administration.
The U.S. is the most generous country in the world for legal immigrants and legitimate refugees fleeing war zones or in mortal peril for their beliefs. An average of one million immigrants enter the country legally each year. In many years the U.S. total of legal migrants is greater than all other countries in the world put together. At any one point in time there are four million people in the legal queue waiting for entry.
It’s not enough for some.
Unfettered illegal immigration is backed by elites across the board. Business elites want ‘cheap labour’ (sub-minimum wage), while Democrat politicians want what they believe will be new Democrat voters. The business motive is underscored by businesses’ refusal to use the E-Verify system (check for Illegals before hiring) and the new voter motive is supported by the Democrats passing legislation allowing non-citizens to vote while pushing for amnesty and citizenship for all illegals in the country.
Democrats back up their views with cultural changes, such as pushing the umbrella term ‘immigration’ to cover all methods of entering the country, both legal and illegal. According to a recent Cato Institute study, 91% of Americans support ‘immigration’, while 72% believe that it is unacceptable for anyone to illegally immigrate to the U.S. Eliding the difference between the two is a key tactic of the Democratic Party. The use of the word ‘illegal’ is now frowned upon and not used in the liberal media. All are now just ‘migrants’.
The impact of unfettered immigration has been terrible on the southern states, which has caused Governors in three of them – Texas, Arizona and Florida – to do something about it. At the end of 2021, the three Republican Governors at the time hit on the idea of setting up their own ‘illegal’ delivery service, but, unlike the Feds, only transporting the illegals to ‘sanctuary’ states and cities. ‘Sanctuary’ in this context refers to the 600 or so jurisdictions in the U.S. that have declared they will not co-operate with the Federal Government in deporting illegals. All such jurisdictions, which include 11 states, are run by Democrats.
The response last year was surprising. You’d think the liberal media and Democrat politicians in the ‘sanctuary’ areas would be grateful for the opportunity to welcome the illegals showing up on their doorstep as they arrived by the busload and planeload. But they weren’t. In fact, they were incensed and began screaming about “human trafficking”. This move by the Republican governors successfully made the point that as long as the logistical and fiscal problems of several million folks arriving in the U.S. every year are kept elsewhere, then virtue-signalling in Democrat-controlled areas reigns supreme. But once the illegals turn up in your neighbourhood, the virtue-signallers gets infected with a bad case of the NIMBYs.
Democratic Mayors and Congressional representatives from the southern border region have long urged Biden to clamp down on illegals and this year the new Governor of Arizona – a Democrat – has signed off on the Illegal Delivery Service of her Republican predecessor.
This isn’t going down well with the Democratic mayor of New York City, Eric Adams. Last week he launched an attack on the Federal Administration over its failure to curb illegal immigration: “The national government has turned its back on New York City,” he said, blaming a projected $4.2 billion budget shortfall on the influx of illegals. “Every service in this city is going to be impacted by the asylum seeker crisis.” He further pointed out “thousands of people are waiting to come across the border and potentially come to New York City. It does this great city a disservice and we’re calling on the Biden-Harris administration, the United States Department of Homeland Security, they must use all tools that are available to resolve this issue.”
The amount Adams is asking for is astonishing. Fifty-six thousand illegal immigrants have passed through the city in the last few months. 4.2 billion divided by 56,000 equals $75,000 per illegal. If this formula is applied to the 5.1 million illegals that have entered the U.S. since Biden became President that would mean the country has to pay $382.5 billion for the welfare of non-citizens.
The situation is only going to get worse in the next few weeks. Title 42 disappears on May 11th as the Biden Administration seems to have finally realised that COVID-19 doesn’t pose a mortal threat to the U.S. But with it goes the quickest way of getting rid of unwanted folks. So far, much of the media have failed to cover one of the biggest crises in the country during the last two years. They did care about the story during the Trump years, but only as a stick to beat Trump with. For Biden, they have studiously avoided covering the border as voters will see the incompetence and callousness up close as the Presidential election approaches. And we can’t have that.
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