The Staggering Costs of Biden-Harris’ ‘America-Last’ Border Policy

If I had to sum up the Biden-Harris administration’s border policy in one sentence, I would say: “America last.”

For nearly four years, we have seen the results of an unprecedented experiment: What happens when a first-world country lifts its legal restrictions and procedures on immigration and allows virtually unlimited, uncontrolled migration?

This is essentially what the Biden-Harris administration has done. Frustrated by a historic bipartisan consensus that it was the president’s duty to enforce immigration laws, they moved to replace statutes with executive orders and globalist ideology — under the euphemism of “safe, orderly, humane pathways” — to allow people to enter the United States illegally.

The Biden-Harris administration has created programs that incentivize migrants from around the world to travel by air and land to our borders, by making it clear that almost all of them will be released shortly after entering the country, having claimed asylum (usually fraudulently) based on perceived persecution in their home countries. And they have fabricated unauthorized programs to fly hundreds of thousands more aliens directly into U.S. airports with a virtual guarantee of immigration “parole” that allows them to maintain quasi-legal status.

To do all this, they pulled so many Border Patrol agents from their regular duties of registering and releasing aliens that the number of “escaped persons” who managed to sneak in — often people with criminal records they had to hide — increased dramatically to more than 600,000 a year.

Those who support this virtually open border claim that it brings only benefits, such as more cheap labor and the opportunity to demonstrate our national charity, since no foreign national who faces oppression—or merely claims to have done so—is ever turned away. They deny that there is any connection to lower employment or wages for American citizens, to increased crime, or to ruined government finances. But the facts show otherwise. Half of Americans, in a recent poll by the Center for American Political Studies, believed that increased illegal immigration had increased crime and strained resources.

This week and next week I’m going to look at five real-world consequences of the Biden-Harris border policy and their America Last philosophy. This week I’m going to look at the impact on jobs and public safety. Next week I’ll look at social housing and public services.

Jobs for the boys – but not for us

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that in the past year, American-born Americans lost more than 1.3 million jobs, while foreign-born workers gained more than 1.2 million jobs. As economist E. J. Antoni put it, “All of the net job gains went to foreign-born workers (a category the Labor Department admits includes illegal aliens), while American-born Americans lost a net 300,000 jobs.”

As David Rundell writes in Newsweek:

Because most illegal immigrants have few skills, they compete directly with less-skilled American workers. It is these less-skilled Americans, many of whom are people of color, who have suffered the most from the declining wages that illegal immigrants generate. These less affluent workers are also the ones who suffer the most when public health, transportation, education, and social services are strained by an influx of illegal immigrants who have never paid taxes.

Crime: Americans Take the Risks

Every day, the Department of Homeland Security releases hundreds of foreigners from corrupt, criminal, or even terrorist countries and lets them into the U.S. without any background information about them from their home countries. Thousands more sneak in every week as escape travelers.

The mainstream media is not only ignoring the story of how the Biden-Harris border debacle has affected American states, cities, and towns, it is actively burying it. The New York Post is a rare exception. On September 6, the Post’s Jennie Taer reported that Venezuelan brothers Dixon and Nixon Azuaje-Perez, alleged members of the brutal Tren de Aragua gang and both charged in connection with a July 28 shooting in Aurora, Colorado, have been released on $1,000 bail. They are apparently being “monitored with GPS technology,” meaning they are wearing some sort of ankle bracelet or wristband.

That should hardly reassure residents of the Denver suburb. Diego Ibarra, who is accused of killing nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia in February, was also being monitored with a GPS ankle bracelet after he attacked Border Patrol agents in an attempt to enter the country “at all costs.”

In what has become standard procedure at the Biden border, this man, also a reported member of Tren de Aragua and already proven violent, was released into the country with a notice to appear in immigration court months later. He cut off his ankle monitor and, without any interference from U.S. authorities, was working at the University of Georgia when he allegedly killed Riley.

What happened to the Azuaje-Perez brothers from Venezuela is a parable for the Biden border. They were both completely unqualified for visas because they could never prove to a consular officer that they wouldn’t be working illegally in the U.S. and then going home when their entry permits expired. Furthermore, I would be willing to bet that they both had criminal records in their home countries, which would have disqualified them on more serious grounds, but DHS had no way of knowing that.

The brothers apparently used DHS’s CBP One phone app to schedule an appointment to report to a port of entry and be released. There was no real verification of the information they gave to get that appointment, nor when they showed up at the port. Nearly every one of the more than 1,400 people who showed up at a port every day Through this process—the scope and extent of which are not defined anywhere in U.S. law—approvals are made for parole, however sketchy it may seem.

The Azuaje-Perez brothers were released at the border under the assumption that they would eventually apply for asylum. In the meantime, the risk that they would resume their gang activities was ours to bear.

Without a way to screen for gang members, sex offenders, or even terror suspects, you might think the Biden-Harris administration would be wary of using CBP One parole. But no, they’re making it even easier. Now, illegal aliens from anywhere in the world can apply from anywhere in Mexico (or via a virtual private network (technology that masks the location of your computer or smartphone) and pretend to be in Mexico). And “the Mexican government will provide security-escorted bus transportation to migrants traveling north through the CBP One app to claim asylum,” Texas Public Radio reports.

Look, Mexico doesn’t want to take any risks. And that, again, is our fault.

Next week I look at the implications for social housing and local services, and see how some communities are being burdened by sudden changes in their demographics as a result of mass illegal migration.

The border line is a weekly Daily Signal column that investigates everything from the unknown illegal immigration crisis at the border to the impact of immigration on cities and states across the country. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, terrorism and more.