Misreading the Room on the Border

“Close the border.” That’s what people say they want. They didn’t ask for a multi-thousand-page piece of legislation. People have no faith that Congress can do small things competently. They sure as hell don’t trust Congress to do big things competently.

Republicans and Democrats in the Senate misread the room. Telling Americans the President has no existing power to stop a mass wave of people coming across the border is dishonest. Of course, he can. Here’s the relevant federal law from 8 U.S.C. §1182(f):

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Proponents of the law are dishonest by saying the President has no current authority to close the border. He does.

Opponents are also being a bit dishonest about the present law. Much has been said about the 5,000 aliens crossing the border.

TANGENT: Note to the media, federal law calls them “aliens” not “migrants,” you pathetic progressive hacks.

The proposed law prohibits border crossings anywhere except official points of entry. Anyone who attempts to cross outside an official entry point would be immediately deported.¹

Under the proposal, when people show up at official points of entry, they are vetted for asylum claims at the border by Customs and Immigration, not an immigration judge. Families will be DNA tested to make sure they are families and allowed to go into the United States if there is no detention space available. Their asylum claim must be processed within 90 days and, if rejected, they are immediately deported without the right to an appeal. Individuals traveling alone will be detained. Children will be treated differently. The standard of review for asylum claims will be raised to make it tougher to pass.

If an asylum seeker can be resettled in a different part of their own country or a different country, their claim to the United States will be rejected.

But, if an average of 5000 people a day show up at the border (8500 in any one day or 5000 in a rolling average over a few days), no one gets asylum, everyone gets rejected, and everyone gets sent home. The border seals up.

That’s where the 5,000 comes from. There are a few problems. First, on the pro-immigration side, the United States will not abandon asylum entry. There is no support to do so. So, we will never get the number to zero because someone is always seeking asylum. On the anti-immigration side, it doesn’t take much coordination for the cartels to mass people along the border and trot them in at 4,999 a day.

Again, here is the problem — most Americans would probably find most of the provisions reasonable. But when the proponents start with the lie that the President cannot secure the border and the Democrats show no willingness to secure the border, there is no trust to do something new when the present laws are ignored.

Lastly, the most important point is that the legislation is dead. The unveiling was the act of rolling out the body so a public autopsy could be performed. It is performative, not functional.

Meanwhile, undoubtedly, the Biden Administration is screwing something up while everyone is fighting over a piece of legislation that was dead before it got hauled out for inspection.

1. But again, how can anyone trust that would actually happen, given how the present border is maintained?