Voters didn’t always like Trump’s tone, but they broadly supported his strategy at the border.
Out to lunch. That might be the kindest way to describe Joe Biden and Democrats these days on immigration. If they think they have a voter mandate to reverse restrictions advanced by the previous administration, even with the southern border effectively under siege, they’re kidding themselves.
As with other issues—taxes, climate, court-packing—the Biden administration is confusing the nation’s rejection of Donald Trump with an endorsement of a progressive agenda. But if voters wanted far-left policies, the Democratic House majority wouldn’t be so puny, the Senate wouldn’t be evenly split, and Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would be president.
Beltway elites are reluctant to acknowledge it, but Mr. Trump had his ear to the ground on immigration. Voters didn’t always like his tone—and polling suggested they didn’t share his wall fixation—but his prioritization of border security resonated with millions, including many who typically vote for Democrats. Even Democratic strategists have acknowledged that deference to progressives, who by the way are now raising state income taxes to finance five-figure Covid-relief checks for undocumented workers, played a role in the party’s underperformance among Hispanics last year. Mr. Biden ignores all this at his peril.
By the time Mr. Trump left office, he had limited to 15,000 the number of refugees admitted annually to the U.S. In February, President Biden said that he would increase the cap to 125,000, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken later reduced to 62,500. Now the administration is having second thoughts about even that lower number, and for good reasons. The number of apprehensions along the southern border in March, more than 171,000, was the highest since 2006.
According to the Journal, “the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which runs a network of child-welfare shelters to house unaccompanied minors, has exhausted its $1.3 billion budget for this year as it copes with record numbers of migrant teenagers and children.” Quantitatively, this latest surge isn’t a blip, or something that “happens every year,” which was the initial White House spin. Rather, it’s a full-blown crisis, and it finally looked as if Mr. Biden was starting to treat it that way.
This piece originally appeared at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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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.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal