As the media pushes the idea of a Biden-Harris administration as an inevitability, let’s play their game and look at what such a presidency would be like. The palace intrigue about which swamp creatures would get which cabinet positions is irrelevant. What matters is what they would do on the crucial issues facing our nation. On immigration—arguably the most existential issue to our future—a Biden presidency would be nothing short of disastrous for our country.
Throughout the campaign, Biden promised to undo virtually everything President Trump has done on immigration. Those would be the same policies that saw our borders strengthened, loopholes tightened on asylum laws, and other moves that have made the country significantly safer for American citizens the last four years.
On the issue of the border wall, Trump’s signature issue, Biden has promised to completely stop wall construction. “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1,” he told NPR in August.
That would be the same wall that, according to Acting DHS Director Chad Wolf, decreased illegal entries in the Yuma sector by 87 percent over the last year. Wolf also reported that, thanks in part to the enhanced wall, DHS has seized more than 4 million pounds of hard drugs like fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine—which is almost double the annualized amount of drugs seized between 2009 and 2017. Apparently we’re supposed to be celebrating that Biden will be putting an end to all that.
While Biden also said he will not take down any of the border wall that Trump built, his statement needs to be taken in the context of a man running for president and trying to reassure the public that he is rational. Once ensconced in the Oval Office, his border policy will be influenced less by the wishes of the American people than the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. Translation: the border will be severely weakened.
In a Democratic primary debate last year, moderator Savannah Guthrie asked for a show of hands on the question, “Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.” Biden and every other candidate raised their hands to thunderous applause.
So the radical left will expect Biden to deliver on taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal aliens. How will he come up with the money for that mammoth bill? We never got an answer and probably never will.
A look at Biden’s campaign web site reveals his commitment to a cornucopia of failed left-wing immigration policies like DACA, catch-and-release and loosening asylum criteria. It also includes a promise to reverse Trump’s public charge rule, which denies green cards to aliens likely to become dependent on public assistance.
Allowing immigration officials to consider an applicant’s self-sufficiency, the Biden site says, “undermines America’s character as land of opportunity that is open and welcoming to all, not just the wealthy.” It also prevents our nation from going completely bankrupt, as extending full social service benefits to aliens would result in a surge of millions more from impoverished lands seeking the good life here. Are you ready to pay for that, and accept the way it will fundamentally alter our society?
Perhaps most damaging, Biden has promised “a roadmap to citizenship” for those living here illegally. He claims the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. is about 11 million, but there is credible research that number is north of 20 million. From a party that has stated its intention to pack the Supreme Court, this blanket amnesty would amount to election packing. Flooding the country with new voters likely to support one party would dilute our already wobbly electoral process and disenfranchise the votes of legal U.S. citizens.
The late, great economist Milton Friedman famously said that a welfare state and an open immigration policy are incompatible. A nation might survive with one, but not both. The nascent Biden administration wants both, and will use all the levers of government to force it upon the American people.
Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.
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