During an interview aired on Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week,” Steve Rattner, who served as counselor to the Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, stated that President Joe Biden “conveyed a sense that we wanted people to come here back from the first day of his Inauguration, and the result is you have 3 million people a year now crossing the southern border and going through our crazy, convoluted system.”
Rattner said, “We take in a million a year legally, and if you just want to maintain our population, given our fertility rate, you have to take in 4 million a year, or else our population will start to decline. So, we need these people. We have a 3.7% unemployment rate. They are not going to take away American jobs. But it is the most divisive political issue. And frankly, President Biden didn’t say open borders, but he conveyed a sense that we wanted people to come here back from the first day of his Inauguration, and the result is you have 3 million people a year now crossing the southern border and going through our crazy, convoluted system. And the Republicans, therefore, have no political incentive really to solve this problem. Biden owns it. The country, including Democrats, are very unhappy with our immigration policy. And there could be a deal in Congress. I think they’re going to announce something this week, but I’m not that optimistic it’s going to get passed.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
