Unsurprisingly, the past few weeks in Washington have engendered little Christmas cheer. The US Congress is engaged in a classic political battle of tradeoffs: Senate Republicans are stipulating that in exchange for their votes to provide continued support to Ukraine, the Biden Administration must get serious and crack down on America’s open southern border.
The argument is far from unreasonable. The White House can’t ask Americans to care about the sovereignty of a country in Europe while turning a blind eye to America’s own sovereignty.
This ongoing battle actually provides President Biden with a chance to do the right thing: he can address the crisis on America’s border, ending the burgeoning humanitarian disaster and national security threat, as well as providing support to Ukraine – mollifying his Republican critics in the process.
Biden’s open border policy has been a catastrophe. The Southern Border – which runs from the Pacific Coast to the Gulf of Mexico – has brought close to 7 million illegal migrants to the United States since 2021. This includes close to 300 individuals on the terrorist watch list and tens of thousands of unaccompanied children. Indeed, over the past three years, close to half a million unaccompanied minors have crossed the border.
The President’s relaxed approach has empowered vicious cartels that abuse vulnerable migrants and their families, with some so desperate to make the journey that they mortgage their homes in order to pay thousands of dollars to smugglers. Unsurprisingly, smuggling is now a multibillion-dollar business. Smuggling also facilitates the entry of tens of thousands of pounds of fentanyl into the United States, a particularly horrific statistic, given that one pound can kill over 200,000 people. Last year over 110,000 Americans died from fentanyl-related incidents, with the majority of victims aged under 30.
Efforts to address this crisis have been called “extreme” by leaders like Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has criticised what he calls “hard right immigration measures.” He’s wrong. This is not a solely “Republican” issue, as Democratic mayors and governors around the country feeling the brunt of mass illegal immigration have discovered.
Politicians in cities from New York to Chicago to Denver to Los Angeles are demanding action from the Biden administration. New York Mayor Eric Adams has said that the city “is being destroyed by the migrant crisis,” and that Biden had “failed” the city on immigration, noting that the lack of shelter was critical, to the point where children could be sleeping on streets. Denver’s Mayor Mike Johnston has complained that even when migrants want to find work, the federal government stands in the way with impossible bureaucracies and outdated laws.
Washington’s failure to control the country’s southern border has longer-term implications.
As I have written elsewhere, a central element of a state’s power – as well as the perceptions of its power – have always been tied to a state’s ability to control and defend its territorial integrity. America’s failure to control its southern border has direct national security implications, and not only for the US homeland: the perception of weakness is already emboldening enemies and adversaries from terrorists to the Chinese Communist Party.