Replace ‘migrant madness’ with common-sense LEGAL immigration
For those wondering about our “STOP THE BUSES” front page Friday, The Post is not against immigration.
We condemn the “migrant madness” now under way, but think America could — should — welcome a million or two new residents a year.
In an orderly, rational manner — the complete reverse of the insanely dysfunctional system (if you can even call it that) we have now.
That is, enforce the border but admit lots of legal migrants who can contribute to society as a whole from the start.
This is “comprehensive immigration reform” but infinitely far from what President Joe Biden and progressives mean by the phrase.
They want to simply legalize all comers, including (or especially) those who immediately become dependent on public charity.
We want all-legal comers, screened for ability to actually make it in America.
(Yes, the nation can also accept some with legitimate claims to political asylum — but the United States can’t and shouldn’t be the only haven for those fleeing oppression. Let alone the millions trying to claim asylum when they’re really just economic migrants.)
Between court rulings, tendentious interpretations of the law and a refusal to update laws written decades ago in a far different world, the left has given us the current crisis: a beyond-porous southern border; millions of illegal migrants let loose into the interior simply after saying the word “asylum” (or simply walking in, never to be even intercepted and released) — and even a messed-up legal immigration system.
Migrants then flock to the nation’s most generous cities, like New York — straining local resources at the expense of even the native poor.
The White House refuses to face this problem, or even admit it exists. Fixing it would be too hard, and even just paying the bills for the “final destination” cities would oblige the feds to cough up something like $250 billion.
To be clear, even legal immigration desperately needs reform. As of 2019, the last year before the pandemic and the Biden migrant crisis, Washington awarded just 14% of green cards via employment-based preferences, and about half those were for workers’ dependents, not actual workers.
Two-thirds were for various “family based” claims (with “family” stretching far beyond any nuclear-family ties), and the rest for various asylum/refugee claims, including 4% of the total awarded by lottery simply to high-school grads who hail from a nation that otherwise doesn’t send many migrants here.
As a result, would-be migrants who could readily support themselves and even their families have to wait for years, struggling through a bureaucracy that’s overwhelmed by far less self-sufficient claimants.
In other words: It’s back of the line for those who “play by the rules.”
And front of the line for those who (with a bit of coaching from lefty “advocates”) game the system’s absurdities.
It’s a chaotic, nation-bleeding mess that almost no one supports — but the left prefers that to a system that would actually reflect what most Americans want.
And, yes, some on the right want zero immigration of any kind, and so contribute to the stalemate in Washington.
But if liberals and even practical progressives didn’t play into the hands of extremists by defeating any compromise (as then-Sen. Barack Obama did by killing a landmark reform bill late in the George W. Bush era), the nation could get to a reasonable system.
If the crisis now has any silver lining, it’ll be as a wake-up call, driving American voters to demand their leaders finally act honestly and embrace common sense on immigration.
