The Patriot Post® · Is Biden Waking Up on Illegal Immigration?

Even Joe Biden is beginning to get it.

Most Americans have long since awakened to the calamity on our southern border. And yet while Biden refused to categorize the situation at the border as a “crisis,” he did say the following on Saturday: “I think we have to make major changes at the border. I’ve been pushing it. I’m prepared to make significant alterations at the border.” But while Biden also said he’s been pressing his GOP colleagues to do something, he failed to acknowledge that the GOP already had a reasonable set of solutions in place when Biden took office.

One of those solutions was Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy — and Biden rescinded it.

Some of those who egged Biden on to reverse the reasonably successful Trump immigration policies are now crying no mas, as immigrants continue to arrive while winter weather pounds the nation. New York City can’t deal with them, so they “regift” these people with a free ticket to a place outside New York City. Top destinations include other cities in New York as well as a return to Texas, but other destinations include Florida, Minnesota, and Colorado.

Ironically, though, the top destination for the New York exodus is Illinois. But with Chicago bursting at the seams, too, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker chose not to take New York City Mayor Eric Adams to task, but instead decided to browbeat his Texas counterpart, Governor Greg Abbott. In a letter to Abbott, Pritzker pleaded: “Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives, suspend your transports and do not send more people to our state. Your callousness, sending buses and planes full of migrants in this weather, is now life-threatening to every one of the arrivals.”

To which a spokesman for Abbott’s office rebutted, “Instead of complaining about migrants sent from Texas, where we are also preparing to experience severe winter weather across the state, Governor Pritzker should call on his party leader to finally do his job and secure the border — something he continues refusing to do.”

Recall that it was all fun and games during the Trump administration. Back then, the leftist mayors of “sanctuary” cities — those that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law — had plenty of room to allow the manageable number who were “gotaways” to hang out in their city. But now that the border has been opened up, well, we’re all dealing with the issue that has plagued Texas for years. Instead of solutions from Democrats, though, all we get is the usual whining and blaming of Republicans for the problem.

Yet to Democrats, all these border-crossers do have a purpose. “Our vegetables would rot in the ground if they weren’t being picked by many immigrants,” said New York Democrat Congressman Jerrold Nadler. “Many illegal immigrants.” The Democrat may not see a lot of truck farming in his urban New York district, but he echoes a public perception that most illegals are simply here to pick our crops.

Unfortunately, that brings up a different and unflattering comparison: that of slavery. As The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway noted on X in quoting Nadler, “Democrats in 1823: ‘Who would pick our cotton?’” Fellow Federalist writer Evita Duffy-Alfonzo added, “Today, Democrats are making the argument that low-wage working illegal migrants are necessary to pick ‘our vegetables.’” Completing the Federalist trifecta, CEO Sean Davis chimed in: “Before the Civil War, Democrats bought their slaves from human traffickers who kidnapped them and then shipped them across the Atlantic. In 2023, they use cartels to smuggle illegal immigrants across a border Democrats refuse to close.”

One common trait between Democrats and Chamber of Commerce Republicans is the attractiveness of illegal immigrants as cheap labor. Unfortunately, those of us who believe in the Rule of Law have taken a back seat to those who don’t.