Riley is incapable of writing a bad article. He's awesome.
Look Who’s Building a Border Wall Now
Biden is starting to sound like Trump, but that will only play to the former president’s strength.
By Jason L. Riley, WSJ
Updated Oct. 10, 2023 8:39 pm ET
It’s taken them a while, but perhaps Democratic leaders are beginning to understand that Trump deplorables aren’t the only voters who care about illegal immigration.
It wasn’t long ago that President Biden was dismissing the massive surge of unlawful border crossings as a seasonal phenomenon, and New York Mayor Eric Adams was grinning ear-to-ear for the television cameras while welcoming migrants in person as they arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. But that was then. Last week Mr. Adams scurried down to Latin America to dissuade potential migrants from heading north, while Mr. Biden announced plans to erect 20 miles of new barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.
This is tacit acknowledgment from Democrats that we’re dealing mainly with economic migrants in search of a better life and not refugees fleeing persecution back home, which is how liberals and the media have been framing the crisis. Mr. Biden has spent much of his presidency contrasting himself with his immediate predecessor, especially when it comes to immigration policy. How it must have pained him to go back on his pledge in 2020 that “there will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.”
Understandably, the president is less concerned about eating crow and more concerned that chaos on the border has become a political liability. Last month the veteran political strategist Rick Swartz sent a memo to fellow immigration activists with some pointed questions: “Is it humanitarian to tell migrants they have a right to claim asylum when on the merits, perhaps 80%+ will be denied even if they have a lawyer?” “Is there a duty to make every effort to educate migrants on the harsh realities they face, legally and humanly, before they embark for the US border?” “Will the border and immigration be a major cause if Biden/Dems lose in 2024?”
The Department of Homeland Security reports that some two million people entered the U.S. illegally in fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30. That’s slightly lower than the 2.2 million who came in fiscal 2022. Mr. Adams is one of several big-city mayors—Brandon Johnson of Chicago is also planning a trip to the border—who have been riding the White House about the extraordinary costs of housing and feeding hundreds of thousands of destitute new arrivals. Leaders of sanctuary cities and states all over the country have spent years suggesting that only bigots care about illegal immigration. Now they are begging the federal government to do its job.
Mr. Biden is fully aware that building another 20 miles of border wall will do practically nothing to address the problem, just as Mr. Adams knows that his message to Latin Americans will be ignored. Immigrants don’t respond to suggestions as well as they respond to incentives. Wall or no wall, so long as the administration allows people to enter the U.S. illegally and stay, we can expect them to keep coming illegally. The president may not care about border integrity, but he does care about being re-elected. That means he must at least make a show of doing something about a problem that has worsened demonstrably on his watch and could jeopardize his shot at a second term.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday, the economy remains the top concern of voters, with 19% citing it as the No. 1 problem in the country. But immigration wasn’t far behind at 14%, and that was up from 8% a month ago. A Marquette Law School poll in September showed Donald Trump with a 24-point advantage over Mr. Biden—52% to 28%—on handling immigration and border security.
Even in reliably blue states, the issue is hurting the president. According to a Siena College survey released in August, only 46% of voters in New York had a favorable view of Mr. Biden, while 50% had an unfavorable view. Moreover, the pollsters found that “New Yorkers—including huge majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, upstaters and downstaters—overwhelmingly say that the recent influx of migrants to New York is a serious problem for the state.”
Sadly, Mr. Biden’s inability to say no to his party’s left wing and give the border the attention it deserves has allowed an avoidable humanitarian crisis to not only continue but fester. It’s also allowed Mr. Trump to pound away with credibility on his signature issue. You’d think the last thing Joe Biden and the political left want is for the 2024 election to be about illegal immigration, yet here we are. Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, however noxious, proved to be an effective vote-getter once already. How foolish of Democrats to play to his strength.
Correction: An earlier version misspelled Rick Swartz’s name.
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