The Biden Administration is abusing the asylum system in order to circumvent legal limits on immigration. They certainly aren’t doing this for humanitarian purposes, which has become transparent as the corporate media and mass immigration apologists (including those who favor mass illegal immigration) are no longer trying to deny that the “asylum seekers” pouring into the United States aren’t overwhelmingly economic migrants.
A perfect illustration of this is a June 9 article that appeared in The Dallas Morning News by Alfredo Corchado, the paper’s “Mexico-Border correspondent.” Corchado wrote:
As [Carlos Joaquin Salinas, who came illegally to the U.S. in 2019,] awaits an asylum hearing scheduled for 2026, he is recruiting family and friends from his homeland to join him in North Texas. He’s even talking to the smuggler who once charged him and his son Fernando $6,000 to cross the border between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso.
So far, he has helped more than 40 undocumented workers come to the Dallas area, he says. His actions come at the behest of employers who want more workers like him: agile, energetic people “que saben echarle ganas – who don’t quit,” he said.
In the article, none of the facts reported seem to raise any red flags for Corchado; not Salinas’ lawbreaking, his gaming of the asylum process, his ease at entering and residing illegally in the United States, the federal government’s failure to defend U.S. sovereignty and uphold the rule of law, the culpability of Mexico in the border crisis, or how human smuggling enriches violent cartels.
Not even when Salinas tells Corchado that he could bring “everyone I knew back in Guatemala” to fill open jobs in North Texas does Corchado raise the issue of how that may affect workers already here, or even how outmigration of “agile, energetic people” stunts the economic development of Guatemala.
Corchado’s concern is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims there is a “labor shortage” and so he finds the fact that millions are making false asylum claims in order to work in the United States to be appropriate and necessary.
It is easy to tell from reviewing Corchado’s output that he places himself firmly on the left of American politics. Yet, he makes the same fundamental argument for mass immigration as any free-marketeer enthralled with GDP growth. America needs foreign workers, they tell us, so Americans have no right to prevent the free flow of labor into the United States. Any externalities that result can be brushed aside with bromides and platitudes, or simply ignored.
Chalk it up to the Horseshoe Theory of politics, or more likely to the reality that political alignments were never as clearly demarcated as conventional wisdom would have it. Call them the “Elite” or the “Deep State” or the “Uniparty,” whatever. There is a ruling class who sees immigration as a lever with which to maintain power and profit at the expense of the American citizenry. The politics of immigration are a diversion from the policies in practice. Was there every really much daylight between George W. Bush and Barack Obama when it came to immigration?
If there is any positive aspect to Biden’s approach to immigration, it’s that the mask is fully off. There is no attempt on this administration’s part to even pretend that they are taking into account that which is beneficial to the average American.
Some may ignore this and put up their “No Human is Illegal” yard sign. Maybe for them it’s because they don’t want to understand how support for mass immigration conflicts with their deeply held (professed) values. Our media landscape is designed precisely to reinforce these tropes. However, the reality of 40 years of failed immigration policies cannot be ignored by the ever-growing number of voters who are anxiously searching for genuine solutions instead of sloganeering.
Corchado and his fellow travelers who make their living toeing the corporatist line can tell each other stories about how this is all for the best – and all for our benefit, even if we refuse to willingly go along with it.
We who agree with the great Barbara Jordan understand that difficult decisions are going to have to be made. We must support those who make them and oppose those who refuse. We must reject the hackneyed political theater performed for us each and every day. The question isn’t “what is to be done” but rather “who will do it?”
If we don’t get immigration right, nothing else will matter.
Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave. ~ Barbara Jordan
Eric Ruark – Numbers USA
June 16, 2023