OPINION:
“The Man Without a Country” tells the fictional story of a 19th-century military traitor sentenced to live out his days on the high seas, devoid of contact with his American homeland. A twist in the currents of human affairs is pushing present-day Americans toward a similarly disjointed existence, devoid of the customary familiarity and security that nationhood provides. It is a consequence of President Biden’s refusal to honor his duty to protect the United States’ southern border.
Immigration policy is admittedly a complicated issue that bedevils U.S. presidents one after another, but Mr. Biden is blazing fresh pathways in sweeping away the elementary necessity of regulating the periodic influx of would-be entrants. Rather than an oversight, his unlatched door has been by design.
Undercutting his painful gauntlet of COVID-19 mandates and health emergencies hampering Americans’ ability to work, travel and socialize, the president has decided to exempt from those rules the millions of foreign nationals attempting to enter the U.S. illegally. Title 42, a Trump-era public health order allowing for the immediate expulsion of illegal immigrants as a pandemic-preventive measure, will expire on May 23, the president’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday.
The effect, outlined in a recent report by this publication’s Stephen Dinan, portends a collapse of border-control operations under a triple-size wave of immigrants. Human inflows of 18,000 per day, or more than a half-million per month, would follow the termination of Title 42, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
At that rate, Mr. Biden’s four-year term could possibly open the way for an additional 16 million immigrants, adding to the 11.4 million illegals that the Center for Immigration Studies has calculated are currently residing in the U.S. The consequence of ending Title 42, according to one immigration officer’s assessment, would be a “massive crash” of control at the border.
To be sure, Americans have a heart for fellow human beings suffering the hardships of war, famine and natural disaster. More than 76,000 Afghans were welcomed for resettlement in U.S. cities following Mr. Biden’s catastrophic retreat last August. Another 100,000 refugees from Ukraine are to be taken in as a consequence of Russia’s deadly, ongoing invasion of its neighbor. Still, it is disturbing that with his recent trip to Poland, Mr. Biden has showered more attention on the violation of Ukraine’s border than America’s.
It has been common sense across the ages that the initial consideration of immigration regulation must be national security. There is no U.S. consensus on an obligation to take in tens of millions of would-be immigrants from across the globe without regard to the well-being of law-abiding Americans.
With conscious intent, Mr. Biden is betraying the nation’s trust by failing to honor so fundamental duty of office. In contrast to the traitor of historical fiction, Americans of blameless character are to be left without a country, thanks to a policy that borders on madness.
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