As Americans (even Democrats) understandably grow ever more furious at President Biden’s open-border policy, don’t forget to reserve your anger for him, the cartels and the other true villains here: These illegal migrants are, overwhelmingly, just people responding to incentives.
Even before Biden took office, he and his party sent the message that foreigners rightly saw as a grand “invitación” to come to America.
Perfectly decent folk in countries facing deep poverty or under evil dictatorships quickly took up the offer.
Who in their shoes wouldn’t?
And as the border stayed open, the tides began coming from all over the world.
That proves the problem was always border enforcement.
Remember back in early 2021, when Team Biden pretended the long-term answer was to have Vice President Kamala Harris address the “root causes” of the crisis in Central America’s Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras)?
Turns out that the root-causes approach would require fixing the entire world.
And for all its supposed “humanitarian” motives, Biden’s policy remains bitterly cruel: Make it here, and you’ll likely get to stay — but first you must risk your life on a treacherous journey, possibly thousands of miles long, through extremely harsh conditions.
You’ll face deceitful drug dealers, cutthroat coyotes, human sex-traffickers and other ruthless types.
The crossing alone can be deadly: More than 890 migrants — a record number — died at the border in just the last year, from drowning in the Rio Grande, falling from heights, dehydration or by other means.
That was a 58% jump over the previous year, which also set a record.
And no one’s tracking deaths (or rapes, or other violence) along the way.
As for outright villains: We’re also seeing record numbers of “migrants” who turn out to be on the terror watchlist, and since “gotaways” who never even get stopped at the border run in the hundreds of thousands, that means some are getting through.
Meanwhile, drug cartels are tricking thousands into rushing across and turning themselves in to border agents, overwhelming the patrols to allow for unfettered smuggling operations.
The “overwhelm” has other consequences: Per court documents, agents this year have even separated children and parents, at least temporarily; one agent says it may still be happening — though Biden called it “unconscionable” during President Donald Trump’s term.
Those who do make it must stay unemployed or work illegally, even real asylum-seekers can’t work until at least six months after filing claims.
And for the many who know they’ll never qualify (or just don’t try), and so just get off the grid, that means living in the shadows forever (or at least until progressives win the power to do some mass legalization).
Biden & Co. simply ignore all this in letting them in with no way to legally work.
Yes, some have family or friends here, but others simply have nowhere to go. They end up on streets or warehoused in shelters.
Cities like New York, in turn, look to ship them elsewhere — treating them, essentially, like cattle.
Mayor Eric Adams, for example, (wrongly) believes a 42-year-old consent decree requires him to accommodate anyone claiming to be homeless, migrants included.
Yet the city’s now flat out of space; its shelter population, including 50,000 migrants, topped 100,000 this summer, 67% more than the pre-Biden record high.
So Adams sought to park the migrants outside Gotham, which only prompted counties to ban city busloads; this week, Adams dropped legal action against most of those bans.
Meanwhile, the migrants themselves are a huge burden: Adams warns they’ll cost the city $12 billion through 2025, and he just ordered budget cuts of up to 15%.
Locals everywhere (not just in New York) are screaming “not in my back yard,” decrying the migrants’ presence. Unions fear competition for jobs.
All this as migrants — whose only sin is to have born in rotten countries and to have responded to Biden’s call — struggle to eke out a path to normalcy in America.
Yet the prez shows no hint of remorse.
So everyone suffers: the border towns and “destination” cities that are overrun, the migrants themselves — even would-be immigrants who’ve followed the rules and now must wait longer for entry, given the immigration system’s enormous backlog.
Again, don’t blame the new folks for this disaster, even if they’re dumped in your nabe. They’re people, too, and deserve compassion.
It’s Biden’s open-door policy that’s driving the pain: Focus your anger at him, and demand an end to this needless, torturous insanity — now.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
