When it comes to immigration, the Biden White House thinks you’re stupid

The Biden administration isn’t completely stupid, they just think you are.

They can look around and see their laissez faire approach to illegal immigration has been a colossal failure, driving new wedges between the president and his voting constituencies.

Better do something! And fast!

In the neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side, Black parents and elderly residents are screaming at their city officials who have told them they must brace for more migrants pouring into their neighborhoods and taking up space in parks and shelters.

When city officials insist they will press on, the crowd responds in one booming voice:

“You work for us! ... You work for us! ... You work for us!”

Nor will they stop with mere protests. Those South Side residents are lawyering up to sue the city to halt expansion of migrant facilities.

In New York City, the Democratic mayor has put the administration on notice. Illegal immigration is destroying his city.

In Massachusetts, the Democratic governor has declared a state of emergency and said the migrant influx is severely stressing an already broken housing market.

The White House has an immigration problem

So, the Biden administration has problems.

Illegal immigration is overwhelming the border.

When you combine the 2,345,600 people have been granted Notices to Appear (NTAs) before an immigration court, based on Syracuse University’s TRAC immigration database, with U.S. Border Patrol estimates for migrants who successfully entered the country undetected, you get 3.8 million migrants entering the country since Biden became president, reports the New York Post.

That’s an estimate. If those numbers are anywhere close, it represents an increase in population greater than the combined populations of Vermont, Wyoming, North Dakota and Alaska. And in a single presidential term — a term that has a year to go.

The appetite for poor people to migrate is worldwide. The highly populated global south is pushing northward and putting greater pressure on the countries of the global north.

Suella Braverman, the British Home Secretary who is a daughter of immigrants, told the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday, “The wind of change that carried my own parents across the globe in the 20th century was a mere gust compared [with] the hurricane that is coming,”

The administration discovers the need of border walls

Surely the Biden administration understands these larger trends and that it had better come up with some answers.

So on Wednesday, the White House announced it would waive 26 federal public health, environmental and cultural preservation laws to accelerate construction of new border walls in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

Boom!

Did that get everyone's attention.

“Biden stuns allies with border wall bombshell”, screamed the headline from The Hill.

“The Biden administration’s decision to rush into border wall construction marks a profound failure,” thundered the American Civil Liberties Union. 

Then uses double talk to defend the decision

“It is a cruel policy,” snapped U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). "The President needs to take responsibility for this decision and reverse course."

After waiting a day for the dust to settle, Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “There is no new administration policy with respect to the border wall.”

The administration had appropriated money that it didn’t want to spend on the wall, he explained.

“We have repeatedly asked Congress to rescind this money, but it has not done so, and we are compelled to follow the law.”

Biden was also on point. Just ignore what’s going on in Texas, he seemed to imply. When asked if border walls work, he said, "No.”

So, the administration is playing a double game.

They're trying to placate the urban working class with border walls while trying to placate the Latino and human rights activists with more laissez faire.

Yes, they think we’re stupid.

But immigration from the global south is not going to slow down.

And their double talk is putting them in a double bind.

Phil Boas is an editorial page columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com. 

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Biden uses double talk on new immigration policy of more border walls