Over in the comments section of my website, Tom A. has posted a lengthy and detailed — as always — response to one of my posts, in which I blamed the current border crisis entirely on President Joe Biden, and speculated he deliberately created an Open Border policy.
Tom did a lot of digging, and there a lot of complexity to the issue — such as border “encounters,” versus “crossings,” versus “deportations” and the difference between flat-out illegals, who evade authorities, and the so-called asylum seekers, who willingly surrender. The best answer I can give is this chart:
Once you strip away all the verbiage, all the double-talk, all the political maneuvering, you are left with a chart that shows “encounters” have EXPLODED since Biden took office. And “encounters” means people stopped by authorities. It does not count the so-called “get-aways,” the people who evaded authorities. And almost all of those stopped are admitted to the U.S., rather than being held in Mexico. When just about everyone gets it, that is Open Borders, no matter what Biden says or does. The chart is irrefutable.
In case you forgot, George W. Bush became president in 2001, and the encounter numbers began to plummet. The steep slide continued under President Barack Obama, who took office in 2009. In fact, the Open Borders types referred to Obama as the “great deporter.”
The numbers reached a nadir under Donald J. Trump, there was a slight rise, followed by a quick descent.
Biden entered the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2021.
As you can see, he immediately took an axe, in an unprecedented attack, to executive orders of his predecessor. It was historic. And pig-headed, and vengeful. As if nothing Trump had done made any sense.
And the “encounter’ numbers reached unprecedented highs, and are continuing to rise, month after month.
i can only speculate on Biden’s motives — revenge against Trump? Sympathy for migrants’ plight? Trying to seed future Democrats? I don’t know.
What I do know is the historic numbers are frightening, our immigration laws are shattered, and for Biden to deny it, or for his mule-like Secretary of Homeland Security to claim the border is closed, well, he’s just a lying, dog-faced pony soldier.
Being over run is pretty much well known. What to do about it is the problem. Do we issue id’s to every US citizens , with a photo and the last 4 numbers of their ss# ? How do we expell illegals,especially with criminal backgrounds? Newsom would like to make them State employees. So what do we do?
We have to keep them out because Americans are against expelling millions, and it would barely be possible.
But you would vote for Biden over Trump so he and the democrats can continue with the destruction of our once great country.
NEVER!
I’m talking about Stu.
Yes. Because Trump would be worse, in my opinion. As would have been Oz Versus Lurch, who I call out all the time.
How could anyone be worse than Biden.Trump did a great job as president.
Trump was a bad President. Most corrupt ever. The draft dodger bad mouthed the military and he wants to overthrow the Constitution. BTW, he’s also a xenophobic racist. He puts himself first and America second. He only does anything when he gets something out of it. He is a Charles Lindbergh isolationist, unlike Reagan. He wants to be the American Putin. I’m no Biden fan. I posted a lot of criticism of him in 2020. But, I’ll take Biden over criminal Trump any day.
Danny, your ass must be jealous at the amount of shit that comes out of your mouth?
So you would be happy with Biden’s policies continuing another 4 years. Even though your against them. You must hate this country.
As a blind, deaf, dumb Trumpster, you can’t see that HE hates this country and its institutions.
It is one of many, many facts you can’t comprehend.
You can’t comprehend that under Trump we had a booming economy. Millions of people came off the welfare rolls and were working. Corporate taxes were lowered and companies were coming back to our country. We were at peace. Korea stoped firing their rockets, china wasn’t threatening Taiwan. We had the border under control. These are facts . You Stu are as brain dead as Biden and Fetterman.
Being called brain dead by someone who believes everything Trump says is a compliment.
By the way, you forgot Warp Speed, the Abraham Accords and the Space Force as accomplishments.
With that said, he should never be at the Resolute desk again, sharing secrets with Russians.
I dont think biden is for open borders but hes smart enough to know that if he stopped asylum seakers from entering the u.s and generally stepped up border security then progressives are such a..holes theyd abandon him next year and let trump get back in for 4 more years so for election purposes hes got to do this attrocious on the border
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration announced it waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction on Wednesday, marking the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency.
The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement on the U.S. Federal Registry with few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas, which is part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing “high illegal entry.” According to government data, about 245,000 illegal entries have been recorded so far this fiscal year in the Rio Grande Valley Sector which contains 21 counties.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, stated in the notice.
https://apnews.com/article/border-wall-biden-immigration-texas-rio-grande-147d7ab497e6991e9ea929242f21ceb2
Stu, I know you LOVE it when I play Devil’s Advocate. So here are the questions that I see left unanswered in this response: 1) Exactly WHY are “encounters” up so much? Do semi-literate immigrants from other countries pay close attention to American border policy and laws? Where are they getting their news? Is it simply a matter of a Democrat being in office, which gives a perception of border leniency? I sure don’t know, but that’s a legitimate question. 2) You can’t simply state that “Biden revoked 31 of Trump’s executive orders” in this context without specifying exactly WHICH of those revocations resulted in said boom. That’s lazy. And please do not include the COVID-related one, because that HAD to be revoked as it was simply not legal (if we agrees that the “COVID crisis” was over, which is arguable). I would love to know exactly which of these has caused such a rise in “encounters,” and I’m sure others would, too. So let’s hear it.
As an aside, anyone who votes for a criminal conspirator with 91 indictment counts pending plus a conviction for massive fraud is a stone fool. There is NO WAY any of this is some giant conspiracy involving states, federal government, countless Republican, (Trump-appointed) judges, the military (Miley), etc. Rather, this is a case of a CAREER CRIMINAL finally getting caught red-handed. And here’s a heads-up for you maroons: HE IS GOING TO JAIL and about to lose a FORTUNE. The number of HIS OWN PEOPLE who have turned tail and will be testifying against him makes it a certainty. So buckle up, geniuses: the Orange Man is gonna be wearing an orange suit shortly, and it is well-deserved.
Nick, the “semi literates” know more about U.S. policy and the border than you and I. How? Cell phones. They get their news from relatives in the States and from the coyote cartels, who often lie to them. But what they KNOW is, once they get in, they are NEVER coming out. NEVER!
Per the executive orders, it’s from 538, and I do not have to go through all of them to illustrate it was an unprecedented attempt to cancel a previous chief executive. Far more than EVER in the past.
Anyone know the Green Card Visa Lottery?
Supposed to encourage 50,000 people per year from countries not normally applying to come to the USA, to apply for a randomly selected Green Card Visa.
1. What purpose is served by encouraging people not really interested in coming here, to come here?
2. Why, with millions now entering Biden’s Open Border from 160 countries, is the Green Card Visa Lottery not shut down as redundant and not needed, if it ever was needed or was not just a foolish idea from the start?
3. Does the right hand have any idea what the left hand is doing in Biden’s Administration?
Hey pal, why are H1-b visas so restricted? We need highly educated people here, instead of the semi-literates from Republican-controlled states. TSMC & Intel can’t staff their plants in AZ due to a lack of educated workers. Republicans want to cut legal immigration. They also dumb down education in this country.
I think former President Bill Clinton just weighed in on this issue. You might find his stance is similar to yours.
I’ve asked myself why the flow of immigrants never seems to end, regardless of who is sitting in the White House. Then I look at Congress, which has done nothing meaningful in about 40 years as it regards this issue. But you know who loves it? Business, from small farmers to large corporate agricultural entities, from meat packers and most other corporations. It’s a source of cheaper labor, and it works just fine for them. People can rail all they want about open borders, and swarms of immigrants, but if business and corporate money was truly against it, Congress would be acting. They keep on coming because it works for them and for corporate America.
Big Business wants cheap labor; what they don’t want is highly educated people threatening them.
From reading all of the above (and many diverse opinions from other sources), I have concluded that no one has any idea on how to stop the influx of illegal immigrants, nor how to deal with those already here. All we seem capable of doing is finger pointing. And our nation is slowly morphing into a giant tent city.
Keep reading. There are suggestions out there. Some have been published here.
From where you are (meaning outside, I am inside) can you search previous columns, using “border” as a search term?
Most of the ideas postulated to STOP the influx are unenforceable, given current US law about asylum seeking. The illegals know our law better than most of us. Please cite a method that you sincerely believe can END the influx, that is civilized and enforceable.
The ideas on how to get RID of illegals already here (“Let’s kick them out and send them home!”) glosses over the fact there are some 15 million illegals here. Okay, 10 million…or maybe 20 million. No one really knows ’cause who’s counting anyway? If we could fly/ship/train/bus/truck/catapult 10,000 illegals A DAY back to their home countries, it would take more than FOUR YEARS just to address those already here, and that’s assuming we’ve finally closed the open border to the south.
Like I said, lots of ideas but nothing really workable.
I have reported in the past Gallup says like 70% of Americans oppose mass deportations, because they are soft hearted and realize, anyway, it is almost impossible. The same number oppose Santuary Cities.
I asked if you could search previous Byko columns that had solutions. I just don’t feel like doing it myself.
Hey Vince, see my quoting of the AP story above, and you’ll see that Biden just “waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction.” And, if you look at Stu’s chart, you’ll see that we get these border-crossing spikes every 20 years or so–and then it goes down. Why? Things that are not sustainable–aren’t. It’s how democracy works–or as Churchill put it: “America always does the right thing after trying everything else first.” Nixon beat “end the war” McGovern by a landslide, but he still pulled us out of Viet Nam. The majority wanted out, so it happened.
This is what I mean about having faith in democracy. Biden realizes that his electoral vulnerability is the border–so he is increasingly trying to attend to it. To be fair, early on he introduced immigration reform–which I think would help, but Stu thinks is irrelevant. It’s basically the sound economic idea that if we fill our labor shortage, i.e. the jobs folks come here to get, with vetted, legal immigrants, the illegals have no incentive to come here. Also, if we beef up (i.e. hire more people) our ability to adjudicate asylum applications quickly and efficiently, that reduces that route. Another example Biden’s initiative to give foreign aid to help Panama deport more migrants — intended to stop people long before they reach the U.S..
Doubtless there is no single solution, but instead a constellation of policies that have to be used.
On the executive order front, I think, that again, you are overstating. Historic number, certainly–but what is the basis–other than the number itself–to conclude that it was “pig-headed, and vengeful” or “As if nothing Trump had done made any sense”?
For one thing, as 538 pointed out, the 31 reversals were only 14% of the orders entered by Trump. Looks like Biden thought some 86% of Trump’s orders made at least some sense. And if “cancellation” was the game, why not 50% or a 100%? Put in perspective, Trump issued 220 executive orders over 4 years, which means 189 were left in place. Also, as 538 pointed out, Trump issued EO’s at a much higher rate than his immediate predecessors.
A little more digging reveals that over half of the reversed executive orders (17) were orders on or affecting environmental regulation. https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trump-EOs-Rescinded-Table_March-3-2021_EELP.pdf Environmentalists claimed Trump engaged in an unprecedented assault on the environment–reversing and rolling back 112 rules (some dating to the 70s) and issuing various directives and executive orders (e.g. ditching the Paris Accords, and the “2 for 1” exec order which required that for any new rule, two had to be eliminated, not to mention requiring agencies to fire 2/3rds of their scientific advisory committees–and my favorite, effectively replacing independent science advisors with industry scientists. Think–if only the Surgeon General had relied on the Tobacco Institute instead of independent researchers, how much better things would be for all of us!). https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Deconstructing-Environmental-Deregulation-Under-the-Trump-Administration.pdf
If we add to environmental issues the stuff he promised in his campaign, like reversing Trump’s EO reversing DACA, ending the “Muslim Ban” ( a restriction on legal immigration) and, yeah, “Remain in Mexico” as well as the unfunded moribund EO to build the wall, and 2/3rds of the reversals are explained right there. I’m pretty sure it is not “revenge” or “pig-headed” when an elected candidate keeps the promises he ran on. If you append the 7 or 8 Obama EOs that Trump reversed, that Biden maybe reinstated, and you’ve got the whole total.
Overall, 5 will get you 10 that the reversed EO’s each have a fully researched memorandum regarding its “bad” effects, its interference with or contradiction of Biden policy and why it should be reversed. (In my reading, I came across Obama EOs that Biden reversed as well). I mean isn’t that the kind of thing White House staff does? Figure out what it needs to do to implement policy? I doubt very much these were pulled out of a hat and reversed just to get back at Trump.
So, if you want to suggest that these decisions were “pig-headed” and revenge, I like to see the Order by Order analysis that shows that is true. What is the total number that are somehow illegitimate? You can’t rely on the simple number. Sorry, there’s no logic to it. Things are always “unprecedented’ until they are.
Instead as speculating as to “motive”–we can instead speculate that Trump just did a whole lot more dumb stuff than your average president, and therefore more corrections were required than ever before. Maybe it was the number of bad orders by Trump that were “unprecedented” rather than the number of reversals. If one accepts Biden’s policies, I’ve seen quite enough to believe that case can certainly be made.
Tom, my friend, of I were to do the level, of research you suggest, I would write one column a month.
My description of vengeful stands, given the obvious emnity.
Yeah, Trump did lots of dumb stuff but I do not believe for a moment that the White House carefully reviewed each EO. I just do not believe it.
And, yeah, I could be wrong. It happened once.