The former president is pushing the GOP to kill an immigration compromise so he can run on the issue.
Is Joe Biden running against Donald Trump or trying to channel him?
The president finally acknowledged last week that illegal immigration is a “crisis,” and he vowed to seal the border with Mexico if Congress passed legislation that would give him emergency authority to do so. “If that bill were the law today,” Mr. Biden said at a campaign event Saturday, “I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.” Whatever.
The border was no less a crisis last week or last year. What’s changed is the polling and the proximity to Election Day. A recent Harvard CAPS-Harris survey found that immigration is now the top concern of voters, outranking inflation and the economy. In addition, 68% of all respondents and 50% of Democrats want to see tougher border enforcement. Mr. Biden’s overall job-approval rating is barely 40%. On border security, he gets even lower marks.
The number of migrants apprehended at the border is used as a proxy for the level of illegal immigration. When apprehensions are up, it means that unlawful entries are rising. According to U.S. Border Patrol data, apprehensions last peaked at about 1.7 million in 2000, when Bill Clinton was president. After 9/11, they fell dramatically and continued to decline, more or less, over the next decade. In 2011 there were roughly 330,000 border apprehensions, down 80% from 2000.
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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