Handing Trump a gift on immigration
The leftish idea that real borders are racist misunderstands countries
President Joe Biden’s political team is hard at work calculating what policy changes might halt the rise of former President Donald Trump in the polls. I have a proposal that should be obvious yet seems politically elusive.
According to reports, options under consideration include prescription drug caps, taxing the wealthy and reining in corporate price-gouging. Those ideas are important and they should certainly be pursued, but they may not be enough in times as berserk as these.
There are two issues driving voters in the center, who might be persuadable, to support a miscreant like Trump. One (as I have written on these pages) is the progressive overreach known as wokeness, which is driving otherwise sane people over the edge. But there’s not much to be done about that quickly—not without alienating minorities and youth that Biden needs to turn out in November. The other is border security and illegal immigration. And here something can be done, even if mainly on the messaging front. It needs a mental reset.
While numbers can be distorted and the Republicans will always scaremonger, there is little dispute that illegal entries across the Mexico border are surging. Homeland Security reports an average of 200,000 “encounters” a month—way up from a few years ago—and that 670,000 people managed to get through in 2023, adding to the roughly 11 million estimated to already be inside the country.
Seeming to recognize the problem at last, Biden has signaled a willingness to finally funnel serious funds to border security in exchange for Republican acquiescence to aid for Ukraine. The real question is why this needs to be a concession; Biden is being stymied on this by unreasonable people who seem to want the border to be porous.
What do the voters think? A Wall Street Journal poll last month showed that immigration was the second-most important issue to voters after the economy, and that only 27 percent of voters approved of Biden’s handling of it (his alarming approval rating is scarcely higher).
There is a narrative on the American far left that suggests that for people to be worrying about this is somehow racist. The falseness of that is evident in the attitudes of Hispanics themselves.
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