Day after day, broadcast news shows images of thousands of persons, bags in hand, wading across the Rio Grande River and climbing up its banks to meet their hosts — the agents of the U.S. Border Patrol.
There are no long ticket lines or admission fees because entry into the United States at the southern border is free — which is a far more sensible way to go than making the mistake of trying to immigrate legally, in which case the applicant could spend tens of thousands of dollars and wait for a decade or more to become a U.S. citizen.
The border — which is less a physical barrier than a Cartesian state of mind these days —has seen more than five million arrivals since the Biden administration took office in January of 2021 according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
These numbers are corroborated by Newsweek, which reports that the Border Patrol has seen a tripling of border encounters under President Biden to nearly 189,000 per month as compared to just under 51,000 per month during the Trump administration.
This increase was doubtless encouraged by the flurry of executive orders signed by President Biden soon after taking office, orders reversing many of President Trump’s immigration policies such as the requirement that migrants seeking asylum be required to remain in Mexico instead of being allowed to enter the United States while their cases were being processed.
Advocates of the open border policies being pushed by the Biden administration downplay or ignore the $20-plus billion annually that Fox News estimates will be needed to provide basic services to these new arrivals.
House Republicans calculate that this number is likely to grow much larger as each new entrant is provided with an estimated $9,000.00 of food, clothing, shelter, and medical care each year with no end in sight.
The active encouragement of this mass migration to the United States has also exacted a human cost with the Border Patrol reporting the deaths of nearly 900 migrants in just the past 12 months.
It has also richly rewarded criminal cartels that collect millions of dollars per day transporting both migrants and massive amounts of dangerous drugs such as fentanyl across the border.
This pervasive flood of synthetic opioids has resulted in the deaths of more than 75,000 Americans in the past year which, for purposes of comparison, dwarfs the 42,915 automobile accident deaths in 2021 and the number of soldiers (6,887) killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003.
Indeed, NewsNation reports that more than 400 million lethal doses of fentanyl were seized over an 18-month period in Texas alone — enough to kill every person in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Notwithstanding its continued fascination with COVID-19 face-masks, the Biden administration has been content to let President Trump’s invocation of Title 42 expire.
This law was originally enacted to authorize the federal government to prevent persons having communicable diseases from entering the country.
President Trump ordered that Title 42 be applied during the pandemic era to facilitate the rapid deportation of persons possibly infected with COVID-19 — before they could apply for asylum.
Although Title 42 itself remains on the books, migrants seeking asylum have challenged its continued application as being motivated more by a desire to keep foreign nationals out of the country than to protect the American citizenry from deadly illnesses.
A recent federal court decision striking down Title 42 would have ended its use as the Border Patrol’s most effective tool for stemming the flood of illegal immigrants.
Fortunately for those individuals who believe that we still have a southern border somewhere, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay of the lower court order on Dec. 19, 2022, thus keeping Title 42 in place while the Department of Justice prepares its response.
Roberts’ action gives some hope that Title 42 will ultimately be upheld by the high court.
The obliteration of the southern border has led to a massive influx of undocumented migrants that is already imposing enormous burdens upon the American taxpayers.
However, open border advocates continue to claim that this country is obligated to admit almost everyone who shows up on its doorstep.
They ignore the inconvenient fact that every sovereign nation including the United States has the unfettered right to set its own immigration policies and decide who gets to cross its borders.
The United States has no obligation to grant entry to any non-citizen and could suspend all immigration if it chose to do so. However, such a policy would represent an epic shift in the thinking of this administration — which has yet to articulate any coherent reason for implementing such a disastrous border policy in the first place.
Jefferson Hane Weaver is a transactional lawyer residing in Florida. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of North Carolina and his J.D. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Columbia University. Dr. Weaver is the author of numerous books on varied compelling subjects. Read more of his reports — Here.
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