Clueless Biden can’t fix America’s border catastrophe
President Biden’s executive order limiting the number of people who can cross the US border illegally is intended to take away Donald Trump’s strongest talking point. Good luck with that.
Biden’s order will likely not help him because it is neither effective nor a serious attempt to solve a problem that he himself created.
This order will be ineffective because it is likely to be enjoined quickly by a federal court. Progressive and pro-immigrant rights groups have already filed a court challenge, and Biden himself had said earlier that he didn’t think he had the legal authority to issue an order like this. If a district court judge issues a nationwide injunction against the order soon, it will be yet another example of him failing to solve a pressing problem.
Biden won’t get the political boost he wants even if the order is allowed to go into effect: after-all, it has so many exceptions that there’s no chance it will noticeably reduce the number of illegal migrants flocking into the country.
Biden’s order to deny asylum to illegal migrants only takes effect if there are more than 2,500 illegal encounters on the border on an average day. That number, though, excludes people who present themselves at a point of entry using the CBP One app. That’s estimated to currently be 1,500 people a day, and that number will surely rise to avoid triggering the supposed border shutdown. Americans won’t see letting 4,000 asylum claimants a day, or nearly 1.5 million a year, as a border shutdown
The number of migrants will likely be even higher than that because it also doesn’t apply to unaccompanied minors, or to the tens of thousands of people who fly to the US each month to apply for asylum under other prior exceptions Biden created. Add it all up and it’s apparent that Biden’s “tough” border policy will still let up to 2 million people into the country outside of normal immigration channels each year.
Then there’s the fact that Biden can’t avoid responsibility for creating the problem in the first place. Trump’s border policies were highly controversial, but they worked. The Border Patrol reported fewer than 75,000 encounters a month in Trump’s last three full months in the White House, and most of those were denied entry into the country.
Biden started to undo those policies almost as soon as he was inaugurated, and the number of encounters immediately skyrocketed. There were over 170,000 encounters with illegal migrants in April 2021, and that number has not dropped under 140,000 a month since then. Biden’s order can’t erase years of allowing millions of people into the country, and Trump will not let Americans forget that.
The order is actually a typical Biden move. He is a trimmer, someone who always tries to triangulate every issue. The order is lenient enough so he can legitimately say he’s not as tough as Trump, but establishing even minor limits angers the Democratic Left. It’s similar to his policy on Israel’s war with Gaza, which tries to be supportive and critical of Israel at the same time.
Biden’s problem is that there are some issues where trimming doesn’t work. You either are for Israel’s war or you’re not. You’re either for stemming the tide of illegal migration or you’re not. Halfway measures sound good in theory, but they don’t work in practice because both sides of a contentious dispute end up angry.
Weak people usually think they’re strong, and Biden is no exception to this. But voters see through the puffery. He is temperamentally incapable of taking a strong stand and holding firm, especially when his critics are within the Democratic coalition. Had Biden been willing to cross his Left flank two years ago when the border surge became a flood, he would have endured criticism but also garnered gratitude from American moderates. Now his too little, too late gesture will be scorned by progressives, moderates, and conservatives alike.
Presidents who face low job approval numbers recover by taking firm action that succeeds. Biden is both unwilling to be firm and has yet to clearly put a serious challenge to rest. That more than his age alone is why he remains the most unpopular president in decades. His immigration order is just another example of running a poorly designed play from a clearly inadequate playbook.