The border crisis has brought chaos to America
by Sean Collins, spiked:
Joe Biden has shown how much can go wrong when a government gives up on enforcing its border.
In 2023, the US reached a new milestone. Its foreign-born population reached 15 per cent, the highest-ever recorded percentage since the nation’s founding. This recent surge is driven primarily by illegal entry via the US-Mexico border, where the number of migrants continues to rise. In December 2023, we saw a new record monthly high in illegal entrants on the south-west border.
It is no exaggeration to say that the latest wave of migrants has caused a crisis. This unexpected influx has overwhelmed towns and cities across the country and left them straining to find the funds to house and feed these newcomers. Local news is full of stories of crimes being committed by newly arrived migrants.
Americans increasingly recognise that the situation is out of control. Some three-quarters say the condition of the south-west border is a ‘crisis’ or ‘very serious’. In fact, immigration has become the primary concern of American voters, recently overtaking even inflation and the economy.
Until recently, President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats tried to argue that Republicans were exaggerating the border problem. But as the situation has deteriorated, that line has been harder to maintain.
This is a crisis of Biden’s own making. Biden, along with secretary of homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas and others in the administration, have systematically adopted measures that have encouraged a largely unrestrained inflow of migrants.
Having campaigned in 2020 on overturning Trump’s immigration policies, Biden got to work quickly. In his first 100 days in office, he signed 94 executive orders designed to dismantle the border protections installed by the Trump administration. He suspended the ‘remain in Mexico’ policy, which required applicants to stay in Mexico while they awaited an asylum interview. He also scrapped agreements with Central American nations to limit immigration to the US from those countries. And he tried to impose a moratorium on most deportations, though this was blocked by a federal judge. Biden did, however, manage to stop construction on the border wall.
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