Freedom

Opinion by Mark Krikorian 

Talk about using people as political pawns.

The White House complained Monday about Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s latest busload of migrants dropped off at the vice president’s doorstep on Christmas Eve. But the administration’s response was to use the 100 or so illegal immigrants as an argument for its mass-amnesty legislation, a bill so radical even Speaker Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t bring it up for a vote.

Abbott reported Monday that Texas over the past several months had bused nearly 16,000 illegal border-jumpers to the sanctuary cities of Washington, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. This may sound like a lot but it’s really just two days’ worth of illegal-migrant “encounters” at the border.

The purpose of these voluntary, state-funded bus trips is twofold: First, they offer some relief to the small border communities groaning under the burden of President Biden’s mass illegal-immigrant releases, and, second, they force a reluctant national media to cover a border disaster they’d prefer no one notice.

Migrants line up along the U.S. Mexico border fence to apply for asylum in the United States.Getty Images

And, boy, do those communities need some relief. Even the biggest of them, El Paso, has just half the population of The Bronx and is so overwhelmed by Biden’s immigration crisis that the city council voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency. Biden is releasing so many illegal immigrants there that many are sleeping on the streets, while others have set up shantytowns (Bidenvilles?), which police began to break up Monday.

Dismissing the bus trips as “political games,” the administration played its own political game. White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said, “we are willing to work with anyone — Republican or Democrat alike — on real solutions, like the comprehensive immigration restructuring and border security measures President Biden sent to Congress on his first day in office.” This was a bill — called the US Citizenship Act — that even its Senate sponsor, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, acknowledged had no chance of passage even in a Democratic-controlled Congress.

This “solution” to the border crisis would have amnestied all illegal immigrants who arrived here at least three weeks before Biden’s inauguration, weakened enforcement, brought deported illegal immigrants back to the United States and doubled legal immigration. The only thing it would have “solved” is the existence of the border.

Even the administration’s more border-focused plans are unserious. While it was clear this spring that the Biden approach to the border crisis was to let everyone in, a new “Update on Southwest Border Security and Preparedness Ahead of Court-Ordered Lifting of Title 42” makes White House goals even more explicit. One of the centerpieces of the administration approach is to pre-legalize potential illegal aliens and have Mexican officials deliver them to US officers “legally,” thus ensuring they won’t end up in the border-arrest statistics.

Abbott reported that Texas has bused nearly 16,000 immigrants to sanctuary cities. Jay Janner/AP

Nor will Tuesday’s announcement of the temporary continuation of Title 42 — which mandates expulsion of border-jumpers on public-health grounds — make much difference. The Biden administration is already flouting the Title 42 orders. Under President Donald Trump, the overwhelming majority of illegal border-crossers were expelled under Title 42, whereas last month, Biden allowed the expulsion of fewer than one-third.

None of this will solve the problem leading to the bus trips. Biden’s invitation to jump the border will attract an ever-increasing number of poor people from abroad to El Paso and other border communities, no matter how fast the revolving door turns. Hundreds of millions of people would move here if they could, and word is spreading that now is the time to try.

The only real solution is to send a clear, unmixed message that border-jumping and bogus asylum claims will no longer be tolerated.