“First you win the argument, then you win the vote.” President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders have ignored this advice from Margaret Thatcher to their own detriment. Democrats, aided by former President Donald Trump’s denigration of Georgia’s electoral system, were gifted by voters with the narrowest of legislative majorities, 51-50 in the Senate and 220-212 (with three vacancies currently) in the House. Biden himself won the crucial three swing states by a combined total of just 42,918 popular votes.
Incautiously, Democrats plunged into policymaking without making anything like cognizable policy arguments. Trump had reduced illegal immigration by extending walls on the Mexican border and persuading Mexico’s president to hold asylum-seekers in Mexico until their (usually baseless) claims could be ruled on. Both policies were ditched on day one of the Biden administration. The policy argument: “Orange Man Bad.”
Now we see the easily predictable results. Border apprehensions are headed toward 2 million this year, the highest since the 1998-2000 boom years . So-called asylum-seekers from Central America have been joined by Middle Easterners, Africans, and, most recently, by some 20,000 Haitians, previously settled in Chile and Brazil, huddled under a bridge heading to Del Rio, Texas.
Kamala Harris’s pathetic plea, “Don’t come,” has been overwhelmed by the evidence that most of those who do come illegally are ushered into the United States and told to meet court dates which everyone knows most won’t.
The likely result is something like one million new illegal immigrants in the U.S. this year. This represents a reversal of the trend. The Pew Research Center says the illegal immigrant population peaked at 12.2 million in 2007, declined as post-recession net immigration from Mexico plunged to zero, and leveled off at 10.5 million in 2017.
via joemiller