Editors at Issues and Insights examine the problems created by the Biden administration’s policy of essentially open borders.
The political left argues that the immigrants illegally crossing our borders are in search of better lives, and that those who want to stop the flood are hateful, heartless bigots and racists. Morality is a certainly central to the dilemma, but it’s not the morality that much of the Democratic Party wants everyone to believe it is.
An average of more than 200,000 immigrants a month have illegally jumped America’s southern border during Joe Biden’s three years in the White House, almost four times the monthly rate of crossings under Donald Trump. By any fair description, our southern border is open, and this has created a humanitarian crisis of emigres being processed in cities where there are not enough services to meet the surging demand.
The Democrats and their marketing department, known as the media, insist that we have a principled obligation to absorb the immigrants. Some seem to think the poem found on the Statue of Liberty that asks “ancient lands” to “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is actually U.S. law. Or at least a tenet that we all have the duty to live by.
To drive this point home, a number of Democrat-run municipalities declared themselves to be “sanctuary cities,” where the local government refuses to comply with federal immigration law and to cooperate with immigration officials. Chicago’s welcoming ordinance, for instance, “means that the city will not ask about your immigration status, disclose that information to authorities, or, most importantly, deny you city services based on your immigration status.”
Of course now that the humanitarian crisis has arrived in these cities, officials are moaning that they can’t handle the swelling flood.
