Over the past two years, many on the Left, and even some on the Right, have made excuses for policymakers’ collective failure to address the
immigration chaos
gripping communities. Perhaps the most familiar of these is that “America’s immigration system is broken.”
It’s a tired talking point because the problem is not our
immigration
“system.” It is that those entrusted to enforce our immigration laws seem hellbent on actively subverting them. And both parties bear some of the blame.
In some ways, it has become a Washington tradition for Democratic and Republican administrations to undermine the letter and spirit of America’s immigration law. Many Republicans have done so because they see mass illegal immigration as a steady supply of cheap foreign labor. They are joined by many Democrats, who view the endless tidal wave of immigrants as a reliable source of future votes and political power for their party.
But the Biden administration is by far the most notorious offender in this national self-sabotage.
Since he was inaugurated in 2021, President
Joe Biden
and his chief enabler, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have systematically ignored existing statutes and abused their authority to construct a parallel immigration system outside the constraints of the law.
For example, under Biden’s direction, the DHS has been using what’s known as “parole” authority to admit tens of thousands of foreigners without valid visas into the country. The Biden administration has also misused “temporary protected status” to create a de facto amnesty program that allows hundreds of thousands of people who entered the United States illegally to avoid deportation, sometimes for years.
Parole is a very narrow authority that allows immigration officials to admit aliens to the U.S. for urgent humanitarian reasons on a case-by-case basis after an evaluation of their unique circumstances. A child from a developing country seeking a cutting-edge medical treatment that is only available in America, for example, may be admitted into the country.
But parole was never supposed to be extended to entire classes of illegal immigrants on a categorical basis. Yet this is exactly what the
White House
plans to do, as Biden announced this month. Biden’s “parole” plan will allow tens of thousands of economic migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean into the country each month.
President Ronald Reagan famously declared that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program — and nowhere does this adage better apply than to TPS. TPS allows the president to grant foreign nationals, usually illegal immigrants, a short-term reprieve from removal proceedings in the event of a natural disaster or civil war in their home country. In practice, however, TPS designations are routinely extended for years, making them anything but “temporary.”
Nearly a half-million nationals from more than a dozen countries reside in the U.S. under this “temporary” status. But some, such as those from El Salvador and Honduras, remain here under TPS designations that were initially issued in the wake of hurricanes that struck Central America more than 20 years ago. Ironically, both countries now advertise luxury vacations to Americans through their tourism bureaus — even though our own government maintains that conditions there are still too dangerous for their own citizens to return home.
Add to this Biden’s wide-scale use of former President Barack Obama’s failed policy of “catch and release” and Mayorkas’s refusal to conduct any meaningful interior enforcement, and you have a formula that allows the White House to throw open America’s gates to a limitless number of foreigners and allow them to remain here indefinitely.
By taking these steps, Biden has turned many of America’s immigration laws into mere suggestions. He has also created a dangerous buffet of perverse incentives that are pouring fuel on an already raging immigration crisis.
To be sure, we can always do more to enhance border security and improve the efficiency of our immigration system. Unfortunately, by making it easier for migrants to break our laws and rewarding them with policies that allow them to stay for years, decades, or even generations, Biden is doing neither. In fact, he is making things worse.
Rather than repeating the disingenuous talking point that America’s immigration laws are broken and then doing everything in their power to break them, perhaps a good start might be for
Mayorkas
and his boss to begin enforcing the rules that are already on the books. We might all be pleasantly surprised with the results.
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Rep. Tom Tiffany is a congressman for Wisconsin’s 7th District.
