Candidate Kamala Harris is doing her best to project strength at the border. But it is far too little, too late. The largest border crisis in U.S. history—probably the largest such event in human history—is not the result of incompetence or failure. It was launched in January 2021 on purpose.
Since then, there have been more than ten million “encounters” of inadmissible aliens at our borders, millions of whom have been—and continue to be—unlawfully allowed to enter the United States. This did not happen because the Biden-Harris Administration and its impeached Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, made mistakes or miscalculations. That would have been bad enough. But the ongoing border crisis is the result of principle, not incompetence.
There are only two ways of looking at the immigration issue overall. Either no one in the world outside the U.S. has the right to move here, but we make certain limited exceptions, or everyone in the world has the right to move here, with certain limited exceptions.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which still technically sets the terms of federal law, is based on the former assumption: no foreigner has a right to move here, and “We the People” decide if there are specific grounds to admit a limited number of people. Maybe they have a relative living here or a job skill that would benefit our country. There are varying opinions about how to manage new entries—what the numbers should be, what the categories should be, and so on—but all of those differences of opinion are based on the same assumption: immigration is a privilege, granted by the American people through laws enacted by their elected representatives.
This administration’s approach to immigration is based on the opposite view: that everyone in the world has a right to move here if they choose to, and the American people have no right to place limits on immigration, apart from those related to basic safety such as keeping out terrorists, violent criminals, or people with highly contagious, deadly diseases. Even those exceptions are highly circumscribed.
Strictly speaking this is not “open borders,” though that description may do as shorthand. Instead, the Biden-Harris approach would be better described as one of “unlimited immigration”: any limits on the level of immigration are taken to be morally indefensible, and circumventing those limits by any means available is considered a moral duty.
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