This column is written in the form of a letter to President Joe Biden. It contains praise, questions and condemnation.
Mr. President. Thank you for winning the election in November 2020.
By doing so you have preserved our country as a constitutional democracy at least until January 2025.
International Affairs. Without your statesmanship NATO would not have been united enough to impose heavy sanctions on Russia or supply a significant flow of weapons to Ukraine. More recently, you have decided to provide heavy artillery and helicopters as well. Looking forward, The New York Times reports that , “The Biden administration and its European allies have begun planning for a different world, in which they no longer try to coexist and cooperate with Russia but actively seek to isolate and weaken it”. The non-Putin world should be very grateful to you.
That said, there is a question many people have been asking. When you called Putin a war criminal who is committing genocide your staff called those statements simply your personal opinion. Can public statements by the President of the US be purely personal and not an expression of official policy?
National Security and fighting climate change
There are trade offs between fighting climate change and the national security aspects of oil and natural gas production. You are releasing 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months. You have also decided to open more federal land to oil and gas drilling. Since the price of oil is based on a global market, increased supply should lower oil prices and hence reduce oil export revenue to Putin.
However increasing the production of fossil fuels would tend to conflict with your goal of trying to slow the destructive impact of climate change. How will you balance those two goals?
Inflation
As of this writing the Consumer Price Index is reporting an inflation rate of over 8 per cent. This is the highest in 40 years. Until now you have referred to inflation as transitory or limited to a few economic sectors. You have blamed inflation on Vladimir Putin, even though prices, including food, were going up even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You have also blamed greedy corporations.
Are you relying on the Federal Reserve to curb inflation by rising interest rates? Some economists believe that the current rate of inflation has hit its peak and will decline over the next year or so. Is your policy to just hope that they are right?
Immigration and enforcing our southern border
About 2,000,000 migrants crossed the southern border of the United States in 2021, the first year of your presidency. According to Factcheck, that is an all-time record . Do you accept any responsibility at all being a bigger failure at securing our southern border than any of your predecessors?
The situation is getting worse . According to the federal Customs and Border Protection: “In total, there were 164,973 encounters along the Southwest land border in February, a 7 percent increase compared to January. Of those, 30 percent involved individuals who had at least one prior encounter in the previous 12 months, compared to an average one-year re-encounter rate of 14 percent for FY2014-2019.”
You have already taken steps to reverse Trump Administration immigration policies. It’s not just stopping construction of the border wall. Domestic violence or gang violence are now a basis for claiming asylum. You have ended Stay in Mexico and third country safe haven. You have now decided to eliminate Title 42 (it bars those from countries where “a quarantine-able communicable disease exists” from seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border) effective at the end of May. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing for a surge of migrants as a result . The DHS anticipates as many as 18,000 crossings a day — a steep jump from current migration levels of around 7,000 a day.
Please tell the American people what plan, if any, you have to protect our southern border from uninvited migration.
My policy would be to welcome those who come here through our legal immigration system, whatever their country of origin. They can legitimately be called immigrants. The current annual limit is about 1.2 million people which seems about right to me. Your policies seem designed to appease the left wing of the Democratic party and allow an unlimited number of people into our country if they simply walk across our southern border.
Mr. President, I admire you as a decent, morally-centered human being. You deserve praise for your actions in regard to Ukraine. On illegal migration you are a complete failure. On energy independence, climate change and inflation, your future plans are unclear. On balance, you deserve a grade of “ C “.