Bidenista USA: Illegal immigration enabled
The other day I was watching illegal immigrants invading the US on YouTube. A heroic soul, with a video camera, was attempting to interview newcomers, but to no avail, since there wasn’t a soul within reach who could put together even a couple of words in English.
Finally, with the help of an American enabler of illegal immigration, working for a Christian charity, the reporter talked with a fierce-looking scrawny Haitian who announced he had “the right” to cross the border without legal clearing because “irregular migration” is a “human right.” This same Haitian impromptu constitutional scholar further suggested the US “is obliged” to maintain an open border, and admit the multitudes, no questions asked, since she “owes” to the (third) world for perpetrating “many abuses” upon the weak and poor of this earth.
Only those who still do not realize that many Americans are openly in favor of allowing illegal immigrants to run rampant would have been surprised by the Haitian scholar’s claims.
For the longest time, left liberals, and their fellow travelers, have been deliberately undermining attempts to control illegal immigration and enforce laws designed to do just that. The abomination of “sanctuary cities” (also known as ‘safe cities’ courtesy of left liberals) is only the most glaring demonstration of this dangerous and subversive tendency that is amply supplemented by various “humanitarian” legislative initiatives. And, with the Bidenistas now in charge, the pestilence stands to expand and penetrate America even deeper.
Alejandro Mayorkas, now heading homeland security, has emerged as a key player in promoting the exact opposite of what his current post is supposed to do. To begin with, there are suddenly no “illegal immigrants” any longer but only “undocumented non-citizens,” an important change of language that signals not-so-subtly Alejandro takes a light view of enforcement and leans heavily on “compassion” and finding backdoor “paths to citizenship.” And the recent outrage of disciplining mounted Border Patrol for “whipping” Haitian illegals is yet another demonstration that the current US administration is openly dedicated to gradually watering down the law of the land that it is supposedly sworn to uphold.
Sanctuary cities can now rejoice, serious illegal immigrant criminals can be assured of practical immunity from deportation, and all potential illegals can be sure that if they cross the border, and affix themselves in the interior, there would be no practical (and legal) way of being detained and deported.
Unsustainable
The Biden administration’s new immigration-enforcement guidelines will have bad practical and political effects.
At the end of September, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials laying out new guidelines for enforcing immigration law. Mayorkas’s memo would exempt from deportation most illegal immigrants who entered the United States before November 2020 unless they had some connection to terrorism or had engaged in serious criminal conduct. The new approach could both worsen problems at the southern border and make a badly needed political settlement on immigration harder to attain.
The word “immigrant” does not occur once in Mayorkas’s memo. Instead, he classifies illegal immigrants as “undocumented noncitizens.” Mayorkas declares that “the fact an individual is a removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.” Under the terms of the memo, someone being in the country illegally would not be sufficient reason for the federal government to pursue deportation.
This memo thus places a number of serious restrictions on immigration enforcement. Deportation efforts would be initiated only for individuals falling into one of three categories: a threat to border security, a threat to national security, or a threat to public safety. Under the “threat to border security” classification are people currently trying to cross the border or who “unlawfully enter[ed]” the United States after November 1, 2020. (It seems unclear whether those who illegally overstay a visa even after November 2020 would be eligible for deportation; they did not enter the country illegally in the first place.) “Threat to national security” covers individuals engaged in terrorism or espionage. The “threat to public safety” standard is relatively vague, though it usually involves “serious criminal conduct.”