Joey B Hits It Out of the Park

By Bob P.

Our long-time vol Bob P wrote up his thoughts on President Biden's executive order and speech on immigration (lightly edited):

Guys, I think Joey B hit it out of the park with his immigration speech and executive order on June 4th. He announced a reasonably restrictive policy on immigration, permitting no more than 2500 asylum-seekers per day. This extrapolates to 912,500 asylum-seekers per year. Not all would receive asylum. Those are merely the cases that would be heard.

The ACLU has announced it will challenge the new EO. But at least the Administration has announced a realistic immigration policy. In addition to the limitations on asylum-seekers, the Administration is requiring them to apply for asylum on-line before they present. This will (hopefully) reduce the influence of the criminal cartels that are smuggling these folks to the southern border. In 2022 the Biden Administration established the asylum app, but it has been consistently overloaded with users. The Biden Administration will allocate money to make the app work properly and construct a proper database.

This could go a long way to solving the problem. We probably also need detention facilities for families. These would be under the control of the federal government, as are the existing detention facilities, but they would be designed for families, not single men. They would need to be designed differently and policed differently.

We currently have about 6000 detention beds for women and families, but these are not nearly adequate. Most asylum-seekers must be released into the general population because there is nowhere else to house them. Many suffer outrageous hardships. Some become homeless people (although only a tiny percentage of homeless people are asylum-seekers). These new family facilities would also provide employment in border areas, many of which are economically depressed.

But this scheme, which was included in the Lankford Bill last Christmas, was shot down by Trump. He wants the problem to go unsolved. If Trump were elected, the whole issue would devolve into chaos, since his executive orders would likely be unlawful.

With Biden's EO, in contrast, there is at least a concept, a quota, and an app. New family detention facilities can only be constructed with money appropriated by legislation. So Congress must act.

This issue will soon turn in Biden's favor. We need to pound away at this action, which is logical and likely to be effective. The Do-nothing Republican Congress has punted on the issue, doing Trump's bidding, instead of working with the Administration (and Senator Lankford, who is a Republican), to solve the problem.