Immigration Insanity

A friend and I had a chat last night, wherein we both head-scratchingly wondered why the Administration was repealing Title 42 enforcement at the southern border.

Title 42, a WWII-era public health law, has been applied to restrict entry of COVID-positive migrants since the start of the pandemic. By one report, more than 1.7 million entries were blocked (it is worth noting that these are not "unique" entries - a Title 42 rejection does not preclude a migrant from trying again, and carries fewer penalties against recidivism than a regular rejection).

The reality is that Title 42 isn't itself an immigration policy. Whatever that policy happens to be in the mind of the Democrats is the real question, and Title 42 is merely a temporary throttle.

This being an election year, where moderate Democrats are at the most risk, it's therefore not surprising that those moderates are feeling iffy about its repeal. Again, this isn't about overall immigration policy. That they seek to delay its repeal in an election year is revelatory:

- It is a recognition that the Democrats' management of the southern border is unpopular with a large segment of the electorate.

- It indicates that the Dems remain disinterested in altering their expansive and inviting border policy.

- It affirms the primacy of the party's leftists.

- It reminds us to ask, again, 'what the hell are they thinking?'

I'm an "open borders" sort. However, I am not a "no borders" sort - a nation that does not control its borders is not a nation. My views, elucidated at The Roots of Liberty five years ago, are summed up by Charles Koch:

I would let anybody in who will make the country better, and no one who will make it worse.

There are countless solid reasons to welcome immigrants - reasons that should appeal to people of all political stripes. A growing population is the health of a nation, and without immigration, the US populace would shrink (current US fertility rate is 1.70, well below the 2.1 needed for steady-state). A population that lives longer needs more worker-age and young people to sustain Social Security and Medicare. Labor force shortages can be remediated. Foreign policy goals can be abetted: inviting the freedom-loving Hong Kongers bristling under China's authoritarianism would be a great thumb in Xi's eye. Inviting Russia's educated young would sap Putin's power. Giving homes to displaced Ukrainians... there are people all over the globe that are very apt to think liberty and self-determination that'd fit in quite nicely with baseline American values - or at least what used to be baseline American values - and show up here to contribute productively to the economy and the culture.

Those aren't who's being invited, however. The legal path to immigration is tough and tortuous, and even that is stacked in favor of family members (and being botched - a couple hundred thousand green cards were wasted last year), and there has been no smidgen of indication that the administration wants to bring in more good people via channels.

Instead, it's the equivalent of a game show and a lottery. Run the Central American obstacle course, request "asylum" on whatever grounds you've been instructed to claim, and either you get sent back to try again or you get a midnight flight to some unsuspecting city or town. Or, if you are lucky, you manage to sneak past the overwhelmed Border Patrol, and now you're free range in America, but without the documentation that'd allow you to work and live as others do.

An administration that has shown zero reluctance in spending incalculably large sums of money on everything is, oddly or perhaps not, failing to manage the flood, and has instead taken a "nothing to see here, move on" attitude. Border Patrol is indeed overwhelmed, and the various processing facilities are crowded to several times capacity.

The Left's rationale for its approach to the southern border (if we can assign one) centers on Central American poverty and violence, and indeed, that appears to be the common reason for seeking asylum. However, the administration is not managing the problem, neither in messaging nor in funding/logistics, and it's not offering anywhere close to the same pathway to, say, Hong Kongers who'd have an even stronger claim to asylum.

In short, there appears to be no method to the madness. Vice President Kamala Harris was put in charge of managing the southern border crisis, and she has proven (to the surprise of few) to be nowhere near up to the task, and there are reports that she doesn't even want the job. I suppose she'd rather do ceremonial fluff - less to have to prepare for, and less chance for failure. Way to step up to leadership, Kamala.

So, what, exactly, is the administration's immigration goal?

Is it a long-term plan to flood the nation with people likely to vote Democrat once they become citizens? That'd require a policy effort to give them a pathway to citizenship, and they might actually be deluded enough to figure they can get that done at some point.

Is it a bending-of-the-knee to the Left? Is it part of a Cloward-Piven effort to overwhelm the system to the point of breaking, and usher in a phoenix-rising installation of socialism?

Or is it the incompetence they've so commonly exhibited? A "make it up as you go along" slog, informed as much by "if Trump did it, we must do the opposite" reflexiveness as anything else?

I tend to think the latter. Trump won over the GOP field in 2016 by making hay of illegal immigration, meaning it’s an issue of prime importance on the Right, and he has planted such deep roots in the Democrats' brainpans that his legacy appears to inform their approach to everything. I read, just today, that the administration is looking to roll back Trump-era regulatory reforms, right at a time when supply chain problems, labor shortages, and inflation are threatening to push the economy into recession. Geniuses at the helm, I tell you.

The Democrats are headed for a wipeout in the mid-terms. Some of them recognize that removing Title 42 restrictions on the southern border will only make that wipeout worse, but they end up being sacrificed to inevitability. Meanwhile, the rest hold onto some delusion that everything they're doing and have done are actually good and would be popular if only the voters could be made to see.

Meanwhile, the mess at the southern border is set to get much worse.

This is not how any rational person would manage things. Even for those who favor robust immigration, this is insanity.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.