Immediate Action Needed on Border Security: Biden’s Fatal Inaction and More Commentary

Conservative: Border Security Can’t Wait

Expect “border talk to dominate” this week, predicts National Review’s Jim Geraghty. For good reason: “Government must be able to determine” whom to let in and whom not to — at a minimum blocking criminals and terrorists. “What we’re hearing about the immigration and border-security proposal emerging from the Senate so far suggests the legislation is flawed, to say the least. But if House Republicans reject that proposal, believing that they will have the opportunity to pass a better one a year from now under the newly reelected President Trump, they should be clear-eyed about the risks.” Trump may not get elected, the Senate Democrats will likely be able to filibuster, and Dems may control the House. If this is such an emergency, action can’t wait.

Migrant beat: Joe’s Ever-Growing Tide

“The number of illegal immigrants in the country has roughly doubled under President Biden,” laments Merrill Matthews at The Hill. If the nation’s “20 million illegal immigrants were a state, it would be tied with New York for the fourth most populated.” And a second Biden term could bring another “15 million to 20 million more by the time he leaves office on Jan. 20, 2029.” The growing impact of “Biden’s failure to enforce border policies is likely to be a problem for the country, the economy and especially for Democrats.” The “significant increase in foreign nationals on the terrorist watch list crossing the border” also raises the risks of “a major terrorist attack” that would likely provoke “a devastating voter backlash against both immigrants and, especially, Democrats.”

From the right: Biden’s Deadly Weakness

The strike on a US base in Jordan near the Syrian border that killed three Americans and wounded 25 was “the result of the president’s policy choices,” fumes The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. “Biden has tolerated more than 150 Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East since October. Only occasionally has he or the administration registered more than rhetorical displeasure by retaliating militarily.” “The president has put his anxieties about upsetting Iran and risking escalation above his duty to defend US soldiers abroad.” And: “The irony of Biden’s strategy — avoid escalation with Iran above all else — is that he’ll now have to strike back harder than if he had responded with devastating force the first time US forces were hit, and every time since.” “The alternative is a growing American body count.”

Eye on Ireland: Sinn Féin Sinking

It’s still “the most popular party in the country,” but support for Sinn Féin “has hit its lowest level for four years,” notes The Spectator’s Andrew McQuillan, down 7 points since October. Partly it’s the party’s “prevarication around the question of immigration,” as its leader Mary Lou McDonald has called anti-immigrant “protesters far-right while simultaneously criticizing the Irish governments’ laxity around immigration.” Partly, it’s hedging on Gaza, upsetting the part of “the party’s base which sees the Palestinian situation as analogous to Northern Ireland.” Above all, polls show “he Irish electorate want a different answer to the immigration question.” All this blurring may “snatch defeat from the jaws of what many saw as an inevitable victory” in next year’s election.

Econ watch: Trash ‘Contractor’ Rule Going Nat’l

A California law making it “harder to be an independent contractor” in the state “has gone national” thanks to the Biden administration, frets Mary Katharine Ham at RealClearPolitics. Cali’s initial law “was so calamitous” that the state “had to admit it, scrambling to make fixes and hand out hundreds of exemptions to the law” — exemptions “based on lobbying and political clout.” It also meant “businesses were unable to afford to turn freelancers into full-time employees” and pushed freelancers “out of the state.” Why on earth “export it to the rest of the American work force, over a third of which did some kind of independent contract work in 2023?” Because powerful Dems want more Americans “in unions, even if they don’t want to be.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board