[As delivered at a September 19, 2024 hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability.]
Thank you for the invitation to speak before this committee.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but with regard to immigration, at least, the title of this hearing is a little misleading – the Biden-Harris record on immigration is the result of neither “incompetence” nor “failure”.
The largest border crisis in the history of our country – probably the largest such event in human history – began on January 20, 2021, on purpose, not due to incompetence.
Since that date, there have been more than 10 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, and would certainly have been a proper subject for congressional oversight, but at least would be understandable, since we all have shortcomings and make missteps.
Rather, the ongoing border crisis is the result of ideology.
There are only two ways of looking at the immigration issue overall. Either no one in the world outside the United States 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.
So, no one gets to come in, with exceptions, or everyone gets to come in, with exceptions.
The Immigration and Nationality Act is based on the former assumption – no foreigner has a right to move here, but we, the people, decide there are specific grounds admit a limited number of people – maybe because they have a relative here, or a job skill, or what have you. There are varying opinions about how to manage that – what the numbers should be, what the categories should be and so on – but all of those differences of opinion are under the same umbrella, as it were, of immigration as a privilege granted by the American people.
This administration’s approach to immigration is based on the second view, 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 – terrorists, criminals, deadly diseases, and even those limitations are highly circumscribed.
Strictly speaking, this is not “open borders”, though that description may do as shorthand. Instead, I would describe the Biden-Harris approach as one of “unlimited immigration” that holds that any limits on the level of immigration are morally indefensible, and circumventing those limits by any means available, is a moral duty.
This is fundamentally contrary to federal law, of course, not to mention contrary to the Constitution and the very concept of national sovereignty and consent of the governed.
The fruit of that ideology is spelled out in detail in my written statement. The most common pretext for subverting the will of the people for limits on immigration is asylum; and chief practical means of achieving unlimited immigration are unlawful releases from detention and unlawful grants of mass, categorical parole.
This “unlimited immigration” perspective also requires an inversion of the proper role of the executive. The allocation of authority in the INA is that the president has the power to keep out anyone he thinks should be excluded, but can let in only those he has been specifically authorized by Congress to admit.
Due to its belief in unlimited immigration, the Biden-Harris administration’s understanding is the precise opposite: They have acted for three and a half years on the belief that the president may let in anyone he wants, but may keep out aliens only for very narrow reasons.
Let me close with one example to illustrate this. The CBP One parole scheme seeks to funnel through ports of entry aliens who ostensibly would otherwise cross the border illegally. When this unlawful program was started, in May 2023, 1,000 inadmissible aliens were given appointments per day. The next month, that number was increased to 1,250, and then later that month increased again to 1,450 a day, i.e. more than half a million a year.
These numbers have no basis in law, nor did Congress even authorize the president to come up with a number, as with refugee resettlement – the administration has simply made up numbers for how many inadmissible aliens to admit, based mainly on how quickly they can be processed and released, and changes those numbers at will.
This is illustrative of the Biden-Harris approach to immigration, which might be put this way: “We get to let in anyone we want, in any number, for any reason, and we dare Congress to do anything about it.” This is not the way a self-governing people’s immigration system should work.