Here are two indisputable facts about President Joe Biden’s open borders agenda.
First, Biden, and Biden alone, approved within his administration’s early days the undoing of any enforcement provisions that his predecessor, President Donald Trump, put into effect, including defunding the border wall, a major illegal immigration deterrent.
Biden may have had supportive open borders counseling prior to his inauguration from former President Barack Obama; his then-advisor, Valerie Jarrett; Domestic Policy Council director Susan Rice; or other immigration advocates. Only Biden and a small handful of insiders know for sure who, if anyone, urged him along.
But Biden, with his presidential authority, gave open borders the green light. He could have, at any time, ordered border enforcement restored, but he never did. Impugning Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is misdirected blame. Mayorkas takes his orders directly from Biden.
Second, Biden knew, as any experienced politician with 50-plus years in D.C. would, that once the word got out to all the world’s corners that entering the United States was simply a matter of getting to the border, and surrendering to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a huge illegal immigrant surge would follow.
A new Center for Immigration Studies report written by Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that since Biden’s Jan. 21, 2021, inauguration, the nation’s foreign-born population has increased by 2 million and is, the authors aver, “mostly driven by illegal immigration.”
More precisely, about two-thirds or 1.35 million of the overall increase resulted from illegal immigration.
Based on federal data from the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey, Camarota and Zeigler calculated that the U.S. foreign-born population hit a historic high of 47 million in April, representing 14.3% of today’s total population, the highest percentage since 1910.
Assuming the present open borders agenda continues, and no evidence exists that it will end during Biden’ remaining years in office, the U.S. foreign-born population will reach 14.9% of total U.S. population in September 2023, the highest mark in history.
To underline how dramatic the foreign-born increase is, the authors point out that “for the foreign-born population to grow at all, new arrivals must exceed both emigration and deaths, as all births to immigrants in the United States, by definition, add only to the native-born population.”
The CIS analysis is more than an immigration story; the consequences of such a broad and ill-conceived immigration policy are far-reaching. Through April, the Homeland Security Department released about 1 million illegal immigrants into the interior.
Many aliens received parole, an improperly applied immigration status that should be granted on a case-by-case basis. Once paroled, the illegal immigrants qualify for employment authorization and can compete for jobs with millions of unemployed or under-employed Americans. Biden’s goal is parole for all illegal immigrants.
Few in Congress from either the Republican or Democratic parties will address growth, with the huge, unplanned population spikes that it drives. The United States is unprepared for the inevitable sprawl and its effect on ever-dwindling natural resources that the nation will be forced to cope with as millions enter illegally.
At a minimum, Congress should debate what the proper number of immigrants is that the country can successfully assimilate and integrate.
In Texas, for example, the state has lost 20,000 acres every two months, or about 325 acres daily, of natural habitat and farmland. South Texas is a major entry point for global migrants.
“From Sea to Sprawling Sea,” a NumbersUSA report that studied land loss attributable to population growth, found that during the 15-year period from 2002 to 2017 — the latest Natural Resources Conservation Service data available — 67% of rural land loss was population growth-related.
During that period, about 11,950 square miles of America’s unspoiled rural land were developed to build homes, roads, schools, churches, hospitals and shopping malls to provide for the 37 million more people who lived in the United States in 2017 than resided here in 2002.
Just as Biden’s open borders commitment is indisputable, so is the long-term population growth and urban sprawl that go with it.
By the time the full effect of Biden’s border neglect will come to fruition, about midcentury, his congressional enablers and he will be long gone from Earth. But their legacy of leaving behind an overcrowded, resource-depleted nation will live after them in infamy.
— Joe Guzzardi is an analyst and researcher with Progressives for Immigration Reform who now lives in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com, or follow him on Twitter: @joeguzzardi19. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.