In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel led the EU in embracing and encouraging a wave of refugee resettlement in Europe, and paid a heavy political price for it. Her open-door policy created instability and resentment across not only Germany but much of Europe. Back over here in the States, yesterday’s CBP data shows another increase in attempted border crossings on top of an already alarming number in March. The Biden administration is making a short-term political gamble that the American people will stomach this as Biden builds what is essentially an international refugee camp on American soil.
However, they are making another, even bigger mistake that Biden and team may not even realize. By immediately and indisputably failing on enforcement, Biden is ignoring a rule demonstrated by the doomed legislative attempts at comprehensive reform in 2007, the Gang of Eight attempt of 2013, and in iterations of the DREAM Act going all the way back to 2001. What is that mistake? And what is the rule they are ignoring? Enforcement first.
The American people have, in each attempt at comprehensive legislation, ultimately pressured their legislators to quash the deal. They’ve done so because enforcement is the preceding condition for all other immigration system progress. There is a consensus, it has been demonstrated. By failing to learn that lesson, the Biden administration is hamstringing its chances at any big policy wins on immigration not just in 2021 but for the entirety of his term.
Let’s revisit the short term gamble the administration is making. That gamble is often misunderstood by news anchors that don’t realize how far afield the Biden administration is ideologically here. In Biden and team’s minds, each person we let in is an act of humanitarian justice making up for years of what they saw as a ruthless policy by Trump. To them, there’s little distinction between illegal aliens and refugees fleeing from explicitly dangerous threats. You can see that as they speak solemnly of the situation in neighboring countries, as if every child born there faces only blight and danger, as if only America can give them what they need. So, while we are all wondering what they are doing to stop the problem, they aren’t trying to stop the problem. That, my friends, is the gamble: can they survive politically while they build new facilities fast enough to call the crisis over? It’s not about limiting how many come here, it’s about building the arrival infrastructure.
Biden is essentially creating a series of international refugee camps across Texas. They are shaping the longer-term infrastructure for the waves that will come in search of amnesty. We may be at a million attempted crossings by August of this year and that’s only if the pace doesn’t escalate. Once these individuals are here, and not everyone attempting to cross gets to stay, these individuals will be provided public assistance and used by Democrats as bargaining chips in future legislative negotiations. It’s a classic patronage model, with roots far back for the Democratic party. Think of these facilities scattered across Texas as new Ellis Islands, this time with barbed wire. Words like ‘wave’ and ‘flood’ are unfortunate in this debate because we are talking about human beings, but at this stage the Biden administration is directly encouraging this flood and the criminal industry that has arisen to support it.
But the bigger mistake they are making is in dooming the chances of a comprehensive reform package. They are ignoring the lessons of contemporary history, and another round of shaming Americans for not being compassionate enough or hammering Republicans in the midterms on the issue won’t move the needle. By the way, Angela Merkel eventually climbed out of the political hole she was in after admitting 890,000 refugees to her country in a single year. A few of the ways she did so? By greatly limiting that number and using some of the very rhetoric of her opponents.
What we see in Biden and in Press Secretary Psaki’s back-and-forth with the media is what happens when ideology meets reality. They don’t have good answers, because they are making the wrong calculation: morally, politically, and practically.