With the scheduled end of Title 42 next week, the United States is about to experience the worst illegal immigration crisis in the history of the country.
For months, members of the media have either ignored the extreme humanitarian crisis at the southern border or smeared Border Patrol agents for carrying out their mission to protect the country from foreign threats. And yet, even they are starting to come around and acknowledge the scale of the problem, which is completely self-inflicted by the Biden administration.
Title 42 is the last remaining federal policy that hardly deters illegal immigration. At this moment, thousands are lined up across the border in Mexico, waiting to cross the second it expires. Nearly 3,000 others are already crossing at a single sector each day, with the streets of El Paso and other border towns completely overwhelmed. The Biden White House isn't fighting to keep Title 42 and plans to "manage" what comes after it is lifted on December 21.
"The team has been working very hard to ensure that we are taking steps to be able to manage the expiration of Title 42 and to put in place a process that will be orderly and humane," White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently said during a press briefing. "From my perspective, the issues related to ensuring an orderly, humane migration process at the border are being persistently and constantly addressed through the interagency process. And we are working through what the procedures will be in place at the moment of expiration on the 21st."
While the Biden administration prepares to handle the new influx by processing illegal immigrants more quickly and sending them into the United States indefinitely without a court date, state governors and a limited number of politicians on Capitol Hill are desperately making attempts to blunt the incoming catastrophe. "Comprehensive immigration reform" or the atrocious Sinema-Tillis plan that was released and quickly killed off last week won't solve even part of the problem. Border barriers like a wall and funding for additional agents have been proposed, but both are worthless with current asylum rules still in place.
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The only real solution to the current crisis is to reform the asylum process and raise the bar for asylum qualification beyond a simple statement of "I'm in fear." The vast majority of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. are pursuing economic opportunities and are not "in fear." Instead, they've been coached over and over again by cartel smugglers to fraudulently repeat the line, which is accepted as "proof" of an initial asylum claim.
In 2019, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham introduced legislation that solves this problem by requiring asylum claims first be made in home countries, not thousands of miles away at the border.
"Asylum applications from residents of the Northern Triangle or countries that border it would be filed at refugee processing centers – not in the United States. These centers would be established in Central America and Mexico," Graham explained. "Unaccompanied minors (UAC) from Central America would be treated the same as minors from Canada and Mexico. This would allow the United States to return all UAC to their country of origin after screening."
Democrats, led by President Joe Biden at the White House, rejected the legislation — leading to two years of record-setting barrages at the border. Since then, four million illegal immigrants, many with violent criminal records and ties to terrorism, have entered the country.
Until the issue of asylum fraud is fixed, the crush at the border will continue, and American communities across the country will pay the price.
