This column will be in the form of a letter to President Joseph Biden, expressing my concern about his policies in regard to illegal immigration from Mexico.
Dear Mr. President:
I am deeply troubled by your policies regarding illegal migrants. Here are some of my concerns.
Current Situation: This year 1.7 million people entered the United States without getting permission from our government. That exceeds the 1.2 million admitted to our country legally. Mr. President, I wouldn’t expect you to reduce illegal migration to zero, but don’t you think the current number under your watch is really out of hand?
Financial benefits for illegal migrants: According to the Wall Street Journal the US is in talks to pay hundreds of millions to families separated at the border during the Trump presidency. That sum is based on a payout of about $450,000 for each child separated from a parent at our southern border. The recipients of this largess have come into our country in violation of our borders.
Your Build Back Better program is an even bigger bonanza for about 7 million of the people in the US illegally. Time magazine reported that ,”At least $100 billion of the Build Back Better Act’s budget will go to immigration-related issues, including expanding legal representation for immigrants and bolstering the asylum system, according to a White House plan. But an even bigger potential boon is buried in the fine print: the bill could provide temporary protections and a work permit to as many as seven million undocumented immigrants. There would be an expedited pathway to green cards, through visa recapture, for as many as two million more. The bill could also restore families’ access to the Child Tax Credit (CTC), providing roughly a million undocumented children with financial support . Ultimately these provisions may not pass through the legislative process. But how on earth do you justify giving billions of dollars to people who aren’t supposed to be in our country in the first place?
Collatraborative Migration Management Strategy:You put Vice-President Harris in charge of dealing with the southern border situation. She visited several Central American countries , whose internal problems she described as the core problem. However she delayed a trip to our own southern border for 94 days. Are you happy with that approach? She also cited your Administration’s “Collatraborative Migration Management Strategy” which outlines how the UnitedStates will work with other countries to address migration flows. Your plans include expanding protections and job opportunities in countries where people are leaving, creating more legal pathways to come to the United States and fostering “secure and humane management of borders.” The first point is nation building, the second sounds that your Administration would make it easier to come to the US. The third point doesn’t actually say that it is your goal to stop illegal migration.
When , if ever , would your CMMS actually stop the flow of illegal crossings of our southern border?
Stay in Mexico
Because of a court order you have reinstated, at least temporarily, the Trump Administrations “ Stay in Mexico” policy. That policy requires migrants to stay in Mexico pending a resolution of their application for asylum. However your Administration is appealing to the courts to again allow people entering our country uninvited to stay in the US.
Consider how Europe is handling the illegal migration problem. According to the German publication Deutsche Welle ,the European Commission will propose handing an extra €3.5 billion to help Turkey host Syrian refugees over the next three years in return for Turkish officials preventing migrants from making the journey to Europe. Why can’t our country make a similar arrangement with Mexico?
Border Wall
The Voice of America headlined this story: Fortress Europe Takes Shape as EU Countries Fear Bigger Migration Flows. Here are some of the salient facts:
An emergency meeting in Brussels the interior ministers of the 27 EU member-states agreed “to act jointly to prevent the recurrence of uncontrolled, large-scale, illegal migration movements faced in the past.” In addition to trying to stop migrants from crossing into the EU countries exterior borders, at least 15 EU countries have built barriers between themselves and other EU countries.
From the pictures in the VOA article, these walls appear to be quite high and topped with barbed wire.
If the EU can build walls to keep out what they call “ uninvited migrants”, why can’t the United States do something similar regarding Mexico on our southern border? The fact that the grossly incompetent Trump Administration failed to do this, despite all the rhetoric, is not an excuse for you.
This is my opinion, Mr. President: Americans should welcome legal immigrants as sisters and brothers irrespective of national origin, language preference, skin color or sexual orientation/gender self -identification. I am glad that our country is admitting large numbers of Afghan refugees. But here is a difference between legal and illegal. People who enter our country without the permission of our government should not be welcomed at all, let alone rewarded.