Biden’s Immi­gra­tion Obses­sion

Pol­i­tics

Biden’s Immi­gra­tion Obses­sion

The president’s zeal for open-bor­derism is an alba­tross for his vice pres­i­dent.

(Pho­to by PAUL RATJE/AFP via Get­ty Images)

Immi­gra­tion ranks as one of the top three issues affect­ing vot­er opin­ion (Biden’s age was num­ber 1, immi­gra­tion num­ber 2, and inflation/economy in third place.) There’s lit­tle more Biden can do about num­ber 1, and lit­tle he seems to want to do about num­ber 3, but on immi­gra­tion still-Pres­i­dent Joe will leave quite a record for Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris to drag into Novem­ber.

The prob­lem is that Biden has been obsessed with immi­gra­tion. He is obsessed with find­ing new ways to bring more migrants to the U.S.—some of his tricks result­ed in tens of thou­sands of peo­ple enter­ing, oth­ers just a few hun­dred. The num­bers seemed to mat­ter less than the process. Such is obses­sion. Har­ris seems not to share his zeal, but inher­its it as a lega­cy (and an elec­toral prob­lem) just the same.

Harris’s prob­lem began on the south­ern bor­der, where prac­ti­cal­ly con­cur­rent with tak­ing office, Joe threw open the doors. The Trump cam­paign is already releas­ing ads tying Har­ris to these Biden poli­cies. “If you ever won­dered how Joe Biden could get the bor­der so screwed up. Remem­ber, he had help,” a nar­ra­tor reads in one ad. “Here’s Biden appoint­ing Kamala Har­ris to be his bor­der czar to deal with ille­gal immi­gra­tion. And here are a record num­ber of ille­gal immi­grants.”

Under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion the stan­dard was about 1,000 attempt­ed cross­ings a day. By the time the Trump admin­is­tra­tion end­ed, the U.S. was deport­ing more peo­ple than were ille­gal­ly com­ing into the coun­try. In less than a month under Biden, the num­ber of peo­ple ille­gal­ly com­ing into the coun­try shot up to more than 6,000 per day. Even with Biden’s most recent exec­u­tive order cut­ting back on immi­gra­tion, up to 2,500 cross­ings are still allowed each day. For the past three years, Biden pol­i­cy allowed near­ly 6,000 asy­lum seek­ers to ille­gal­ly cross the bor­der dai­ly, sev­en days a week. That num­ber meant the south­ern bor­der alone pro­duced an aver­age 1 mil­lion immi­grants every 200-odd days, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber giv­en oth­er­wise only about 1 mil­lion legal green card–type im …