The Stunning Costs of Biden-Harris’ ‘America-Last’ Border Policies

To sum up the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies in a phrase, I’d say “America Last.”

Over nearly four years, we have seen the results of an unprecedented experiment: What happens when a first world country abandons its legal limits and processes on immigration and allows nearly unlimited, unvetted migration?

This is effectively what the Biden-Harris administration has done. Frustrated by a historical bipartisan consensus that it was the president’s duty to enforce immigration law, they decided to replace statute with executive fiat and globalist ideology—under the euphemism of “safe, orderly, humane pathways”—to allow people to enter the United States illegally.

The Biden-Harris administration has created programs that induce migrants from all over the world to journey by air and land to our borders, by making it clear that they will almost all be released into the country soon after entry, after (mostly fraudulently) claiming asylum from alleged persecution at home). In addition, they have fabricated unauthorized programs to allow hundreds of thousands more aliens to fly directly into interior U.S. airports with a virtual guarantee of getting immigration “parole” that allows them to stay in quasi-legal status.

To manage all this, they pulled so many Border Patrol agents off regular duties to process and release aliens that the number of “gotaways” sneaking in—often those with criminal records to hide—dramatically increased to over 600,000 a year.

Those supporting this virtually open border argue that it brings only benefits, like more cheap labor and the ability to show our national charity, as no foreign national facing oppression—or just claiming to—is ever turned away. They deny any link with lower employment or wages for U.S. citizens, with rising crime, or with busted public finances. But the facts show otherwise. Half of Americans in a recent poll from the Center for American Political Studies thought that the illegal immigration surge had increased crime and strained resources.

This week and next, I am going to look at five real consequences of the Biden-Harris border policies and their America-Last philosophy. This week, I am going to look at the impact on jobs and public safety. Next week, I’ll look at public housing and public services.

Jobs for the Boys—Just Not Ours

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that in the last year, native-born Americans lost more than 1.3 million jobs while foreign-born workers gained more than 1.2 million jobs. As economist EJ Antoni puts it, “All of the net job growth has gone to foreign-born workers (a category which the Labor Department admits includes illegal aliens), while native-born Americans have lost a net of 300,000 jobs.”

As David Rundell writes in Newsweek:

Because most illegal migrants have few skills, they compete directly with lower-skilled American workers. It is these less-skilled Americans, including many people of color, who have suffered most from the falling wages illegals generate. These less-well-off workers are also the ones who suffer most when public health, transportation, education, and social services are strained by an influx of illegal migrants who have never paid taxes.

Crime—Americans Assume the Risks

Every single day, the Department of Homeland Security is paroling or releasing hundreds of foreign nationals from corrupt, high-crime, or even terrorist-harboring countries, letting them into the U.S. with zero background information on them from their home country. Thousands more sneak in as gotaways each week.

The legacy media does not just ignore the story of how the Biden-Harris border debacle has affected U.S. states, cities, and towns—it actively buries it. The New York Post is a rare exception. On Sept. 6, the Post’s Jennie Taer reported that Venezuelan brothers Dixon and Nixon Azuaje-Perez, alleged members of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang and both charged in connection with a July 28 shooting in Aurora, Colorado, are out on $1,000 bail. They are apparently being “monitored with GPS technology,” meaning some kind of anklet or wristband.

That should hardly reassure residents of the Denver suburb. Diego Ibarra, accused of murdering nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia back in February, was also monitored with a GPS ankle monitor after he had assaulted Border Patrol agents in an effort to “get into the country ‘at any cost.’”

Under what has become standard operating procedure at the Biden border, this man, also a reported member of Tren de Aragua and already proved to be violent, was released into the country with a notice to appear in immigration court months later. He cut off his ankle monitor, and without any interference from U.S. authorities, was working a job at the University of Georgia when he allegedly killed Riley.

What happened to the Azuaje-Perez brothers from Venezuela is a parable for the Biden border. They were both utterly unqualified for visas because they’d never be able to prove to a consular officer that they’d not work illegally when in the U.S. and then go home when their entry permits ran out. On top of that, I’d wager both had criminal records back home that would have disqualified them on more serious grounds—but DHS had no way to know.

The brothers apparently used DHS’ CBP One phone app to book an appointment to show up at a port of entry and be paroled in. There was no real verification of the information they gave to get that appointment, and none when they showed up at the port. Nearly every one of the over 1,400 people who show up at a port every day via this process—the scale and scope of which is authorized nowhere in U.S. law—gets approved for parole, however sketchy they may seem.

The Azuaje-Perez brothers were released at the border on the assumption that they were going to claim asylum at some point. In the meantime, the risk of them resuming their gang activity was on us.

With no way to screen for gang members, sex offenders, or even terrorist suspects, you might suspect that the Biden-Harris administration would be careful about using CBP One parole. But no—they’re making it even easier. Now, illegal aliens from across the world can apply from anywhere in Mexico (or via a virtual private network—technology that masks your actual computer or smart phone location— pretending to be in Mexico). And “the Mexican government will offer security-escorted bus transport to migrants traveling north for asylum appointments through the CBP One app,” reports Texas Public Radio.

You see, Mexico doesn’t want to take any risks—once again, that’s on us.

Next week, I’ll look at the impacts on public housing and local services to see how heavily burdened some communities are by sudden changes in their demography caused by mass illegal migration.

The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.