WASHINGTON, DC, Nov 29 — With the numbers of illegal migrants increasing on a daily basis, one can only speculate that they have heard the news that President Biden might be greeting them with “nice try” checks when they get here. Nothing motivates one better than free American dollars—a lot of free American dollars.
Whether or not Mr. Biden ultimately succeeds in putting aside as much as a million dollars per illegal family that manages to cross our southern border is irrelevant. He denies he ever made that promise; nonetheless, when you start a rumor that “there’s gold in them there hills” you are bound to trigger a traffic jam made up of gold diggers, no matter their nationality. Not that illegals hadn’t already been joining America-or-bust caravans in large numbers since the days before Biden took office, having told the world that he intended to go easy on them, unlike his law-abiding, so-called hard-hearted predecessor.
In the short time he’s been in office, President Biden’s molly-coddling attitude, and that of his “border czarina” VP Kamala Harris, have been emboldening more and more so-called “undocumented” migrants to head north toward the Rio Grande [undocumented is a much kinder word than the word illegal].
According to the Denver Gazette, “illegal immigration spiked after President Joe Biden took office to hit a level never seen at any time in the Border Patrol’s century-long existence.”
The Wall Street Journal says, “The Border Patrol made about 1.66 million arrests of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in the 2021 fiscal year, the highest annual number ever recorded.”
Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation says that, instead of helping to check the migration, the Biden administration has taken measures to put handcuffs on border police. In a comprehensive report published on November 22, the Foundation revealed that law enforcement officers have been ordered to go easy on illegals and, as a result, deportations have fallen to record lows. “The illegal population in the U.S. could expand by millions in Biden’s first year in the Oval Office—the direct result of Biden’s unfortunate policies. The administration has already encountered over 1.7 million at the border, a figure that does not include those who just slipped in unnoticed.”
The Foundation’s report warns that the confusion at the Mexican-American border makes it easy for terrorists to hide among “vast numbers of” illegals and enter the country for the purpose of staging an attack.
As for the reported payoffs for illegals at the border, to be fair, it should be noted that the basis for that “rumor” is an effort to settle lawsuits by migrant families who were separated at the border and allegedly suffered trauma, notwithstanding the fact that they were in the U.S. illegally. The million-dollar per family number was arrived at by assuming families that crossed the border consisted of one parent and one child. Thus, a $450,000 per person payout would amount to $900,000 per family.
However, one could argue that the trauma they suffered, if there was trauma, was by far the result of the treacherous journey to the border in the first place. And, if a child was forced by its parent to make the trip, the fault for the harm it may have caused belongs to the parent, not the immigration police.
It’s also important to point out that, as a matter of fact, the U.S. authorities went to great pains to take good care of a record-breaking number of unaccompanied migrant children – nearly 150,000 of them.
Our government has provided them with safe shelter and has gone to great lengths to find relatives or sponsors who could take them in, thus far releasing some 140,000 of them. The authorities are ensuring that the remaining 10,000 or so youngsters are provided with a roof over their heads, beds, food, and medical attention, all paid for with U.S. dollars.