A father and son from Honduras pray during a migrant demonstration demanding clearer US migration policies in Tijuana, Mexico, on March 2. (By Guillermo Arias / AFP)
One of my deepest concerns about Trump as president was that he was fundamentally distorting our field of political vision. By creating a caricature of some of the worst elements of the right, he intensified a stark polarization that actually empowered the extreme left in America, and helped its takeover of all our cultural institutions.
The most successful politicians in my lifetime — Reagan and Thatcher — shifted their opposition toward their own agenda, bestowing us with Clinton and Blair. In contrast, Trump actually helped radicalize the Democrats — as they swung, for understandable reasons, to the equal and opposite positions to his.
On immigration, for example, Trump’s legislative incompetence, penchant for cruelty, and bristling xenophobia made the inverse position — humane, welcoming, internationalist and permissive — much more appealing. And so, in the Democratic primaries, the candidates vied with each other to decriminalize border crossing, end deportations, take down the wall, and abandon enforcement away from the border. Even the alleged centrist, Biden, regretted the policies he had supported under Obama. And Democrats consoled themselves by pointing to opinion polls.
And for admirable reasons, many voters did indeed side with them. And why not? When you seem to have an aggressively anti-illegal-immigration president, and you see images of kids in cages, and an epidemic shuts down the border anyway, these views have an abstract appeal. You tend not to see or not want to see the unavoidable and intrinsically cruel trade-offs that all immigration enforcement brings with it. Or the wider, global context that makes them inevitable.
Among those trade-offs: the cruelty of Trump, or, putting it less pejoratively, his toughness, had a clear disincentive effect. To some extent, it worked. As one illegal immigrant told the Wall Street Journal this week: “Many were afraid of Trump and most didn’t want to try to cross the border. But now many here are thinking of emigrating to the U.S.” The wall — for all its absurdities — was a visible sign of this.
Despite failing to pass any legislation, the Trump administration did manage to push the “positive determination rate” for dodgy asylum claims from 70 - 90 percent to under 30 percent. This had a big impact. As Rich Lowry explains, the subsequent news that it was becoming much harder to get across the border via asylum traveled back to Central America and helped reduce the numbers still further.
Trump’s hardball tactics with Mexico to get it to toughen up its own Southern border and break up caravans also helped stem the flow of migrants. The “Remain In Mexico” policy was very effective innovation, allowing those who sought to seek “asylum” outside a legal port of entry a legal process to apply without entering the US, thus avoiding logistical and humanitarian nightmares at the border. Ending this policy instantly by executive order, as Biden immediately did, as well as carve out an exception for children in the Covid immigration ban, sent a big, permissive signal, and incentivized the current surge of illegal immigrants. It could reach a twenty-year high. This really is a crisis, and it is indisputably connected to Biden’s arrival.
The dynamics of the pandemic have also obviously shifted. For the better part of a year, Covid effectively closed the border. Now, as the US economy is poised for a significant debt-driven boom and vaccination efforts in central and south America remain way behind the US, you have a classic moment for mass immigration again. Call this what it is: not a surge in asylum cases, but a big jump in economic migration. As one such would-be migrant at the border told the WSJ: “Your work doesn’t yield much in Mexico. In the U.S. you work hard, but you see the benefits quickly. That’s why I want to return.”
How big is the real push to emigrate to the US to get a better life? A Gallup poll this week of Central and South Americans brings home the broader, long-term reality: 27 percent of the 450 million people to our South want to emigrate somewhere:
Gallup then asked them where they would like to move. Of those who want to leave their country permanently, 35% — or 42 million — said they want to go to the United States.
When you add the intensifying impact of climate change, those numbers would worsen. Zooming out from the current crises, you begin to see the core dilemma. There is a big “push” — social breakdown, gang violence, terrible governance, a worsening environment to our south — and a major pull — a suddenly booming US, and an administration that is eager to give amnesty to all illegal immigrants, to suspend deportations, admit thousands of unaccompanied children even during a pandemic, to defund the wall, and to weaken border enforcement.
Something has got to give. And, yes, the fledgling Biden-Harris administration cannot be blamed entirely for the sudden surge, or the chaos at the border. There’s pent-up demand from a year of Covid; the infrastructure to immediately process hundreds of thousands of migrants, temporarily and humanely house them, and subsequently provide court dates is in a terrible state after Trump; and any new administration with a more liberal policy would have the impossible task of preventing a short-term surge of immigration while planning for a big medium-term increase.
And yet. The rhetoric from the Biden peeps contains very little emphasis on the core moral duty of government to have secure borders. Biden seems to want them all to come, and to make it easier rather than harder to immigrate — even as the foreign born population in the US is near a historic peak, even as domestic wages have been stagnant, and even as the economy has much less use for unskilled labor than at any previous point in history.
The president also told some whoppers in his presser to deflect from these realities. He said that his administration is sending everyone back who isn’t a minor. But last week, only 13 percent of illegal immigrant families were sent back, so 87 percent were let in. A significant number were also admitted without even a gesture at processing them legally.
The president said that the numbers of unaccompanied children arriving were not much different than the numbers a year ago under Trump. Also false: “The number of unaccompanied children encountered on the border rose by 61% between January and February 2021, not the 28% Biden claimed — double the increase between January and February 2019.”
He said that the Trump administration sent kids back into the desert, and allowed them to starve to death. Another falsehood: “The Trump administration either flew back migrants to their home countries directly or handed them over to Mexican authorities to do the same.” In response to a question from ABC News, Biden even inadvertently defended this Trump policy — which he had just also denounced.
In all this, it’s worth keeping in mind that even those legally allowed in with a court date almost never return to their native land, even if they show up in court, and lose their case. Around 2 - 3 percent of all the illegal immigrants in the US are deported each year. Once they’re here, the vast majority are here for good. And if the current administration is any guide, they will be granted a mass amnesty at some point in the future.
But when you read much of the mainstream press, the entire emphasis is on how racist immigration enforcement inherently is, how cruel it is to prevent anyone from immigrating, how the US is ultimately responsible for the shitty governance in much of central America, how we need to abolish or defund ICE, and how we should focus mainly on how to admit as many people as humanely and as quickly as possible. And as this message percolates, not only does it encourage ever more illegal immigration, and ever more human suffering, it freaks out voters of all races and parties who begin to sense (rightly in my view) a de facto open borders policy.
A Politico/Morning Consult poll this week found a double-digit drop in support for Biden’s proposed mass amnesty since January. The biggest drops come among black voters (down 21 points) and Hispanic voters (down 16 points) — two groups that drifted to Trump in 2020. Support for mass deportations has risen seven points in a couple of months. A new Civiqs poll also finds a sharp drop since the last election of those favoring amnesty for those already here (something I support). That position still enjoys plurality backing, but if it’s uncoupled from any serious attempt to enforce the law, it could drop further, especially if the migration surge continues.
Biden has an opportunity, it seems to me, and he’s missing it thus far. Instead of easily-disproven lies — the notion that Trump did not solve or mitigate any of the problems, or that the Biden administration is still sending everyone but children back — he should tell us the truth. Instead of platitudes, offer realism.
Explain the trade-offs. If you need time to build border infrastructure, hire countless more immigration judges, and facilitate more orderly, legal immigration, keep the border fully closed until the pandemic is fully over, and use that time to prepare. (What, for example, does Biden intend to do once the emergency pandemic bar on admitting everyone expires? Should every immigrant family that shows up be let in? It would be good to know.) Reconsider the repeal of the “Remain In Mexico” policy. It can buy you time, and protect you politically. And for Pete’s sake, don’t give press conferences that will encourage ever more children to risk their lives. (That may well mean giving kids back to their parents who come with them immediately, or sending them to relatives in their home countries.)
Then Biden needs to explain what he’s for, rather than simply what he’s against. If the Democrats really want a massive influx of unskilled labor, explain how you integrate these tens of millions, and how you avoid depressing wages for unskilled African-Americans, legal Latino immigrants, and the white working class. Explain how another wave won’t super-charge the populist right, as it has everywhere in the West in this century, including here. Tell us what your limiting principle is for immigration, if any, or what levels of legal immigration you think are the optimal ones, and why.
And if you don’t want the Trump policies to return, quit the cheap moralizing and get serious about the real-world choices. What Americans want is a sense that immigration is under control. So far, in this administration, too many people are beginning to believe it isn’t. And too many Democrats seem oddly fine with that.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue includes: my review of a book on the longer-than-realized history of child abuse in the Church; several sharp dissents from readers unhappy with my take on how the media covered the Atlanta massacres; a ton of additional reader comments on that story; a lively conversation with the best political reporter in Britain on Boris, Brexit, and the embattled Crown; a new batch of notable quotes from the week; more recommended reading; more window views; a Hathos Alert from a Biden tribal leader in the ‘burbs; a Mental Health Break featuring Elton John and an oven; and, as always, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
From a new subscriber:
Way back during the DC days of the Daily Dish, I sent you and your staff some money, valuing what you were doing and hoping to provide my share of encouragement to your endeavor. I just did a year’s subscription for the Weekly Dish after reading your post about the Asian hate-crime narrative that’s currently all the rage. It’s the Dish’s integrity and honesty that I trust and need these days. I’m a doom scroller if there ever was one, and very few of the outlets I habitually scan are other than NYT, Wash Post, the Guardian, and The Daily Beast. Your work helps me ask the right questions when I read from those sources.
I’m sad about what’s going on in this country right now. You — born a Brit — seem to see it more clearly than just about anyone else. Thanks for helping me think!
Tim is simply the best political reporter in Britain. He’s their Bob Woodward, but he can also actually write. His two books, Fall Out, and All Out War, are indispensable to understanding the politics of Brexit. He knows the Westminster political class cold.
In this episode, we talk about Boris Johnson’s astonishing luck and charm, as well as the Labour Party’s floundering. For three clips of our conversation — on the Tory leader’s knack for winning over the working class; on his and Brexit’s vindication over the vaccine; and on whether the monarchy might not survive the death of Her Majesty — pop over to our YouTube page. Listen to the whole episode here. We had a blast.
The link to our episode page also takes you to a batch of reader commentary over last week’s episode with Mickey Kaus, including a dissent over my characterization of the MSM and Biden, another dissent over my immigration stance, an environmentalist twist on the debate, and a thorough defense of child tax credits. The old Dish threads are returning to this page, and they’re as marvelous as ever.
Dissents Of The Week: When The Narrative Replaces The News
In response to last week’s column on the Atlanta massacres, a reader believes that simply the race of the victims is enough evidence to form an anti-Asian racist narrative:
As someone married to an Asian American and the father of an Asian American, I must take issue with your column. Six of the eight victims are Asian (Asian women). That doesn’t happen without specific motive. If six of the eight people you kill are Asian, that’s not an accident or a statistical anomaly. It’s clear intent.
A pithy counterpoint to that dissent comes from this reader:
These are the victims of the Boulder shooting:
Should the narrative be anti-white?
Another dissenter:
I see your point about not jumping to conclusions. But when Asian women are fetishized in pornography and in our general culture as submissive, and then this guy feels that he can go “safely” to the spa for sex, doesn’t it kind of beg the question of whether their race played a role (at least a sub-conscious one) in his thinking? I’m not sure if this is CRT so much as common sense connect-the-dots.
(Read my replies to those dissents and a few others here. Much more reader commentary on the Atlanta tragedy is available here for subscribers.)
How Far Back Does The Sex Abuse Crisis Go?
If a key condition for keeping this hushed up was the church’s power and moral authority, might it actually have been worse in previous centuries, when the church had far more of both? And why couldn’t it have been going on for centuries? How would we know otherwise? The historic gayness of the church — which I explored in this essay — was very hard to deny. But what about pederasty and pedophilia? Were these also common — and concealed — in the millennia before us?
A recent book, The Corrupter of Boys, by Dyan Elliott, a medieval historian at Northwest University, suggests that the answer to these questions is yes.
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