President Joe Biden’s open borders policy is expected to lure some 2.1 million illegal immigrants across the US.-Mexico line — 500,000 more than the previous record and a sure bet to kill his goal of amnesty for the 11 million already in the country.
In a new crossing forecast, the Border Patrol will likely “encounter” the most illegal immigrants since 2000, when a record 1.6 million were caught or turned themselves in to authorities.
The prediction from expert Steven Kopits of Princeton Policy Advisors comes days after Homeland Security said it caught a fiscal-year record 1.6 million immigrants. He put his calendar year forecast at “2.0-2.1 million, 400,000-500,000 more than the next closest year.”
Beyond stoking partisan anger over the issue and giving former President Donald Trump a path back to the presidency, Kopits said the breakdown at the border is likely to kill plans by Biden and Democrats to OK liberalized immigration policies, including amnesty for illegal immigrants in the United States.
“It is hard to overstate how devastating the administration’s apprehensions record is for the prospects of long-term undocumented immigrants in the U.S.,” he said in a memo.
He wrote the memo as another 3,000-strong “caravan” of illegal immigrants headed through Mexico toward the U.S. border and as Vice President Kamala Harris complained about being stuck with the hard issue of immigration instead of “all-star portfolios.”
While there was a coalition of GOP centrists interested in working with Democrats on the issue, Kopits said, “Now those hopes are dashed. No sane Republican would even want to discuss any kind of amnesty, much less propose it, before the 2022 elections at a minimum. And those on the hard right will find it all too easy to retreat to the redoubt of ‘no amnesty.’”
He has pushed for a “market-based” solution to the issue that would tie immigration to the economy and needs of business. That plan would have to first deal with the immigrants already inside the U.S., either with a form of amnesty or costly expulsion. But that appears, at best, on ice.
“The administration’s open borders policy is an unmitigated disaster, most particularly for the long-term undocumented who, in our view, warrant legal status sufficient to work without fear of apprehension. Repairing the political damage may take a decade or more,” Kopits said.
