An analysis of what’s been happening at the southern border shows that the current immigrant “surge” is actually just the result of seasonal shifts and the past year’s pandemic—not anything Joe Biden has done or failed to do.
When I tuned in to ABC’s This Week on Sunday and saw that they were doing their entire show from El Paso, Texas, I thought, “Well, I guess this must really be a serious crisis, huh?” Turns out the only actual crisis was that Biden and congressional Democrats had just passed a landmark COVID-19 relief bill, and Republicans desperately needed to change the subject. So they worked the refs a bit and—voila!—instant controversy.
I almost wish Biden would don a tan suit and start whipping nonbinary, gender-fluid anthropomorphized tubers at Mitch McConnell’s head, so conservatives would have something real to whine about.
But, alas, just as there’s no outrage that could have spurred Republicans to seriously rebuke the Michelin Yam, nothing is too picayune or made up with which to smear our new president.
In a new research study, Tom K. Wong, an associate professor and director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California at San Diego, determined that “no crisis or surge ... can be attributed to Biden administration policies. Rather, the current increase in apprehensions fits a predictable pattern of seasonal changes in undocumented immigration combined with a backlog of demand because of 2020’s coronavirus border closure.”
Hmm, and I thought it was because Biden was luring people in with surplus hoards of free Obama phones. The Washington Post:
[T]he CBP’s numbers reveal that undocumented immigration is seasonal, shifting upward this time of year. During fiscal year 2019, under the Trump administration, total apprehensions increased 31 percent during the same period, a bigger jump than we’re seeing now. We’re comparing fiscal year 2021 to 2019 because the pandemic changed the pattern in 2020. In 2018, the increase is about 25 percent from February to March — somewhat smaller but still pronounced.
Look at the graphics! (The blue line is 2021.)
Of course, there has been a surge in unaccompanied minors being taken in at the border, but that might have something to do with not sending them back into the desert to fend for themselves.
And then there’s this:
The CBP has indeed reported apprehending more migrants in February 2021 than in the same month in previous years. But that too doesn’t mean it’s a surge or a crisis. In the first figure, above, the blue trend line for fiscal year 2021 is above the orange trend line for fiscal year 2019. But 2020 was the pandemic, when movement dropped dramatically. Countries around the world closed their borders. Here in the United States, the Trump administration invoked Title 42, a provision from the 1944 Public Health Act, to summarily expel migrants attempting to enter the United States without proper documentation.
In other words, in fiscal year 2021, it appears that migrants are continuing to enter the United States in the same numbers as in fiscal year 2019 — plus the pent-up demand from people who would have come in fiscal year 2020, but for the pandemic.
Now, this isn’t to say what’s happening at the border isn’t a problem. Too many children are being kept in spaces that were never designed to house as many kids as they’re currently housing. But, for one thing, the Biden team’s transition period was artificially truncated because the former guy had the gravitas of a gonorrheal prairie chicken.
Significantly, Biden isn’t tearing children away from their parents, despite conservatives’ numerous attempts to accuse the “liberal” media of hypocrisy, vis-à-vis their immigration coverage.
And while the Biden administration needs to step up its game and get these kids taken care of, at least I can sleep at night knowing he’s not going out of his way to do harm so he can win the votes of people who actually love and cherish the cruelty.
That’s a huge step in the right direction, as far as I’m concerned.
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