The wall is crucial, but it’s not everything.
Caravans of human cargo are filing into the United States because … they can. U.S. law allows it, even invites it.
Here’s how: Provided you’re not a white, South African farmer—in other words, a real refugee—you may plonk yourself at an American “port of entry,” say San Ysidro in San Diego, and simply assert your right to petition the U.S. for asylum.
Then and there you claim asylum on the grounds that your race, religion, nationality or politics expose you to persecution in the country you want to leave.
Compared to a multicultural mecca like America, where faction fighting is rising, Latin American arrivals seem rather homogeneous. Dare I say they’re largely Hispanic Catholics? Dare I ask who’s persecuting them in their homelands?
By the law’s logic, Muslim terrorists entering the U.S. through its southwestern border should have a far better legal case for asylum than Latin Americans: “I’m from Pakistan. I’m an LGBTQ activist, fleeing Islamic oppression. You’d better believe it.”
If you can’t quite manage to locate the legally designated gate, and a “misguided” U.S. border agent attempts deportation, you may, nevertheless, “defend” yourself against U.S. law by—you’re getting the hang of it!—lodging an asylum claim.
The American lawmakers and jurists who legislate and adjudicate immigration generally have the migrant’s back, and will right away accept the “credible fear” yarn he spins. He will thus be granted face-time with a judge. Their stupidity (and venality) is also his signal to vamoose, never to be seen again.
Children are the charm, a magic amulet. Courtesy of the Flores Settlement Agreement, unaccompanied children or adults with children must be released after a brief timeout in well-appointed detention centers. (“Cages,” as Democrat ingrates call this generous gift from the put-upon American taxpayer.)
All a single male or childless couple needs to do is grab a child. Borrow one if there isn’t one handy, and drag him along for the trip. However hirsute and ink-covered your juvenile is; he cannot be detained for longer than 20 days.
Next, “the child” and his adopted Caravan “family” (or predatory parent) rest up in detention, fill in asylum applications and are subsequently cut loose in the U.S. with a nod and wink. (“Come back for your court hearing, amigo, know what I mean? Grin grin, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more,” as the old Monty Python skit goes.)
Ludicrous? American lawmakers—incontestable majorities on the Republican side included—don’t think so. Why else would they have kept these aberrant, catch-and-release, mickey-mouse laws in place?!
U.S. legislators and jurists have crafted laws for Americans which, in another time and era, would have resulted in charges of treason. (Perhaps Special Counsel Robert Mueller can make himself useful: Investigate the special interests colluding in the immigration racket.)
If this is confusing, here’s the magic maxim our immigration scofflaw should follow: Just do it. Cross illegally. All roads lead to Rome—to the creation of an immutable reality on the ground: By and large, illegal migrants get to stay in the U.S., even though fewer than 10 percent of asylum applications are officially approved.
“If there is no wall, there is no security,” said President Donald Trump on one of the few reliable news outlets he has remaining: POTUS’s Twitter account.
Too true. Regrettably, the law is in even worse shape than the invisible wall, if that’s at all possible.
Despite two years without any serious political opposition, the Republicans did near to nothing to end the legal limbo described.
In the early halcyon days of 2017, Republicans floated the RAISE ACT, “Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act.” It was quickly coffined.
Other than Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, nobody defended or haggled for The Act with any vigor, during the Republican dominance on Capitol Hill, from 2017 till 2019.
Back in 2017, Camarota had raised hell for RAISE:
The “Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment,” he argued, would have slashed family reunification immigration by 50 percent—from 11 million people every decade to 5 or 6 million—still a deluge—providing a much-needed respite for economically poor Americans.
Seventy percent of legal immigrants enter the U.S. through the family reunification visa. No consideration is given to their skill, education or the needs of the American economy. Roughly half of the legal intake is lacking in any useful skills and without so much as a high-school education. Fifty percent of households headed by legal immigrants access one or more of the major welfare programs.
At current levels, legal immigration suppresses American wages, especially at the bottom rungs of the labor market, and constitutes, inarguably and overall, a fiscal drain.
America’s poor are so very poor, pleaded Camarota on behalf of The Forgotten American. You’d be giving them a raise by lowering levels of legal immigration.
From the missed opportunity of 2017, we fast forward to the border, in 2019. Yes, there is a crisis on the border. Today, that “crisis” is west of Eagle Pass, in Texas. Tomorrow it’s in your neighborhoods.
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