The Fall campaign will be about illegal immigration.
Border Patrol Tactical Unit kills bandit robbing migrants at border
National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd on Border Patrol taking extra measures at the southern border and reacts to Mayorkas' comments on the murder of Laken Riley
"Ellis Island began receiving arriving immigrants on January 1, 1892," the Ellis Island Foundation reports. "Over the next 62 years, more than 12 million immigrants would arrive in the United States via Ellis Island." That’s an average of less than 200,000 immigrants a year entering through the famous gates where the Statue of Liberty continues to act as a welcome sight to travelers arriving in the States even though it’s long been closed as a port of entry for new migrants to our country.
Ellis Island was far from the only port of entry for immigrants over those 62 years, but it is the symbol of America’s welcome to migrants. In the 50 years between 1880 and 1930, 28 million migrants came to America. So in the peak migration years, the United States averaged 560,000 immigrants on an annual basis.
It is impossible to know how many migrants have crossed our southern border since President Joe Biden took office, but it has been far, far more than 560,000 a year. Uninvited migrants crossing that southern border fall into two categories: "encountered" and "got-a-ways."
The former have some contact with a U.S. official. The latter do not. There have been more than 8.5 million "encounters" at the border since Biden took office and some estimates but a fair estimate of the "got-a-ways" is closing in on at least 2 million. No matter how one slices and dices the data, more than 10 million have flooded the country in three years and three months. Some have been deported, and some of those have returned. The chaos at the border prevents any definite data set from being assembled, but none is needed.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
Americans know the scale of the migration and the urgency of the problem sets that vast wave of humans brings. Gallup reports that immigration sailed past "government" as the issue of most concern to Americans in February.
It is unlikely that President Biden will spend much if any time talking about these raw numbers or the polling that results from them in his State of the Union address Thursday. Rather, expect him to blame the GOP for rejecting the "immigration deal" offered by Senate Democrats and the president last month —a deal which did not guarantee that "The Wall" would be built and quickly. Any "deal" without that concession to reality is not going to pass because a healthy majority of Americans want that Wall built.
US BORDER PATROL SHOOTS, KILLS BANDIT ROBBING MIGRANTS IN CALIFORNIA
As the comparisons with "then" and "now" are put side by side, any fair-minded observer has to admit that the United States has entered uncharted territory when it comes to illegal migration.
The impact of this massive influx of new residents is most often glimpsed in its worst way with violent crimes. The upside of the new wave of migration is a positive impact on the numbers of new people in the labor pool. The downsides are the "negative externalities," as economists call them, such as the burdens on emergency rooms, schools, and the general broadcasting to every would-be migrant on the planet that the American border is essentially open to anyone who will make the trek and then live in the economy that employs the undocumented or those awaiting hearings of one sort or another.
This aerial picture taken on September 14, 2023 shows the US-Mexico border fence with camp shelters left by migrants in San Ysidro, California, on September 14, 2023. (SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP via Getty Images)
President Biden, infirm, often incoherent and sometimes difficult to watch move about, will no doubt rest and rehearse and deliver a decent enough speech Thursday to avoid a collapse of his candidacy, though many Democrats are studying the polls and wondering how a switcheroo at the top of the ticket could come to pass between now and November. Vice President Harris isn’t their answer and Democrats know that, but governors like Jared Polis of Colorado and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania would instantly reframe the race if they were at the top of the ticket. They haven’t got anything to do with the border disaster.
But "fantasy politics" like "fantasy baseball" is a diversion from reality not a substitute. The reality is that President Biden is going to be their nominee absent a health crisis, and Biden abandoned border security on Day One of his tenure. No amount of posturing or absurd rhetoric can change the facts. Former President Trump has credibility on the border issue, and he will indeed finish the wall as his team figured out how to expedite construction via reprogramming of funds by the last year of his first term.
Every day the candidates are talking about immigration is a good day for Trump. That holds true for the other two "I" issues: inflation and Israel. While inflation has "cooled" to "only" 3.4%, the devastating impact of Bidenomics on the average American family remains obvious every time someone shops for groceries or fills up the tank, and it’s even more stunning when they look for a home or apartment to rent or buy.
Super Tuesday’s totals tonight will lock in the near-inevitability of a Biden-Trump rematch. But this time Biden is the incumbent carrying the heavy burden of defending what he has done or not done, not Trump bedeviled by a country sick with and scared of COVID.
As Election 2024 comes into focus, you’d have to be more than a little blind to reality to like Joe Biden’s chances. To paraphrase James Carville from 1992: "It’s the border, stupid."
Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and this column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his forty years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT
