Credit where due: The Biden administration has finally made a right move in fighting the crisis at the southern border. Even more credit where due: The messaging is right.
Which might save lives.
For all the hollering from the leftist/activist side of things, President Biden's semi-clamp on the U.S.-Mexican border (and the headlines it's generating) might save many would-be immigrants from early graves. The journey from where many come is long. And blistered all over with men who mean no good.
Instead of saying things that all but encouraged that journey (which the administration has been doing for years now), last week's White House decisions might prove to turn things around.
The new policy, according to the paper, was a "far-reaching crackdown" on refugees at the border, which "dramatically expand[s] restrictions on asylum in the most aggressive effort of his administration to discourage migrants from crossing into the United States."
This is a tightrope for any administration. Nobody wants another MS St. Louis situation. But there are a number of legal ways to enter this country--our immigration laws are anything but draconian--and a nation of laws needs the law to start at the border.
President Biden said late last week that the administration would deny people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti the chance to apply for asylum if they cross the Mexican border without authorization. (Why only those four countries? Why not anybody illegally trying to cross?)
He said illegal immigrants trying to cross from those countries would be returned to Mexican soil.
"My message is this," he said, speaking of messaging. "If you're trying to leave Cuba, Nicaragua or Haiti, or have agreed to begin a journey to America, do not, do not just show up at the border."
Which is what should have been the message from the beginning.
Even with this new policy, the administration is easing up on restrictions in other ways, by allowing more legal immigration from those four countries. Emphasis on legal.
Some of the president's critics to his left say the policy is a "humanitarian disgrace." No, what is a humanitarian disgrace is what's going on at the border now.
The president, however, can only do so much. Same thing with states and governors. This is a problem that can be solved, but mainly by Congress. And the House of Representatives can barely get its stationery right these days.
The solution is twofold: First, there needs to be a border. That means a controlled border. The border doesn't need to necessarily be walled off, because drones and cameras can do the job in some places. But the border must be real. Other countries around the world--including liberal democracies in Europe--use walls to enforce their border and laws, why not the United States?
Second, as we secure the border, we can also secure this country of immigrants.
There are all kinds of laws that could be passed to lower the temperature in this debate. Such as allowing those brought here as children to become citizens. And to get the illegal immigrants on the path to becoming legal immigrants as long as they agree to certain ideas, such as applying, going to the end of the line, and passing background checks. They'd probably agree, inasmuch as this would get them out of the shadows, where they can be--and often are--taken advantage of.
Immigration needs to be a rational process--and an orderly one. The system needs practical solutions, and there are any number of them being proposed.
But with everything seized up in Washington, nothing much is getting done with this crisis. Until now we've been mainly just drifting, and watching the numbers come in month after month while listening to border agents complain. (Not to mention watching border governors fill buses with immigrants, and send them north and east.)
It's no accident that the periods of our greatest national growth and prosperity have coincided with those of the greatest immigration. But that immigration didn't look like this. That immigration was orderly, with papers in place, and sometimes even a bit of quarantine at Ellis Island as needed.
Unfortunately, it's almost an American tradition to object to immigrants, at least those who got here after your folks did. Only then is it time to pull up the ladder. It was Ben Franklin, otherwise full of common sense, who was afraid the Germans were going to take over Pennsylvania, then the nation, if we kept letting them in.
We can't give the entire world a shot at the American Dream. But the entire world isn't trying to get here. Ask yourself: Who leaves their home countries, their families, their support systems, their familiar surroundings and language, to go to another country where everything is different? Answer: Those industrial types who want to work to make their lives better.
We need them here. Eventually. And legally.