The president should pursue all options in his power to solve the border crisis.
Earlier this month, the Senate failed to pass a bipartisan border deal. There are many lessons to be learned from the deal’s failure. But if America is to gain control over its border and halt the influx of millions of illegal immigrants, our leaders must recognize that the primary cause of the border crisis is not a failure to enforce America’s immigration laws, but rather that the laws themselves are flawed. Still, President Biden can do more to secure the border without Congress.
President Biden faces millions of attempts to cross the southern border each year. The perception that the Biden administration welcomes illegal crossings, combined with an unprecedented number of job openings and economic stagnation in other countries, fuels our border crisis.
For decades, Republicans have argued that strict enforcement of immigration laws by the president would deter illegal immigration and secure the border. This belief persists, with the GOP attributing the current border crisis to President Biden. To some extent, this view is correct. President Biden has not utilized his expedited removal authority as extensively as his predecessors. But it is also true that today’s illegal immigrants differ from those in the past and that people around the world have figured out how to exploit our flawed laws.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the National Review Online (paywall)
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Daniel Di Martino is a graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a Ph.D. student in economics at Columbia University, and the founder of the Dissident Project, a speakers’ bureau for young immigrants from socialist countries.
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