Defining Away Illegal Immigration
The Biden administration has announced an agreement with Panama and Colombia to reduce illegal migration through the dangerous Darien Gap. It’s a jungle chokepoint that illegal migrants headed for the U.S. from South America and beyond have to traverse, often at the cost of their lives. (See the video of a panel discussion the Center hosted on the subject featuring a local Indian leader, war correspondent Michael Yon, and Representative Tom Tiffany [R., Wis.] who personally visited the area.)
You’ll not be surprised that traffic through the Darien has ballooned in response to Biden’s catch-and-release policies at the border. You also won’t be surprised that the Biden administration response is not to change the policies that serve as a magnet to illegal immigration, but to try to define away the problem by making the migration “legal.”
The second of the “ambitious goals” of the new agreement is: “Open new lawful and flexible pathways for tens of thousands of migrants and refugees as an alternative to irregular migration.” In other words, come up with “legal” ways to admit the prospective illegal border-jumpers.
But if genuinely legal means were available, they’d already be using them. Instead, this signals an expansion of what Andy McCarthy aptly calls “Biden’s Immigration ‘Parole’ Scam.”
But the unlawful use of parole is just the tool. The policy served by that tool is one of de facto unlimited immigration. This administration believes that statutory limits on immigration are illegitimate, and it will undermine those limits if there are more people who want to come here than can be legally admitted. As Byron York put it a few months ago, “Republicans want policies that will stop, or at least dramatically reduce, the flow. Democrats want policies that will accommodate the flow.”
This is mostly true, but not entirely. There are still Republicans (like Nikki Haley and even Donald Trump) who also want to accommodate unlimited flows of immigrants, but, like George W. Bush, prefer using guest-worker programs rather than immigration parole to do it. But the objective is the same – immigration without numerical caps.
I’d contrast this with the governor of Florida, who said last fall:
And this idea of mass immigration, whether it’s illegal immigration or whether it’s just mass immigration through the legal process, like the diversity lottery or chain migration, is not conducive to assimilating people into American society.
More of this please.
