Reports: Biden Eyes Token Border Curbs for 2024 Election

FILE - President Joe Biden walks along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso Texa
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

President Joe Biden’s deputies are planning to keep accepting thousands of illegal migrants per day at the border but also will make a big campaign push about not allowing more than 4,000 migrants per day, according to leaks to multiple media outlets.

“President Biden is planning executive action that would allow him to shut down the US-Mexico border once the number of migrant crossings reaches 4,000 per day, [said] a source close to the White House,” the New York Post reported May 15.

The GOP is scoffing at the rumors. “In a desperate attempt to stabilize his plummeting poll numbers, Biden is reportedly expected to announce an executive action that would allow him to shut down our Southern Border once the number of illegal immigrant crossings reaches 4,000 per day,” said a statement from Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). “Biden’s reported executive action is nothing more than a political stunt,” she added.

The promised curb may be meaningless because the White House has already negotiated a political swap with Mexico’s government that blocks more than 4,000 migrants from getting to the U.S. border, according to BorderReport.com.

“We have committed to the United States to achieve a reduction of the flow to the border, so the number does not exceed 4,000 a day,” Mexico’s foreign minister said on Tuesday. U.S. officials “can manage the crossing of 4,000 people along their border, but no more than 4,000,” Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena said as he announced Mexico’s plan to regulate and direct migration through the region.

Biden’s proposed cap of 4,000 migrants a day was tacitly approved in February by congressional Democrats in back-room negotiations over the giveaway border bill. The bill was blocked by near universal GOP opposition, partly because the 4,000 daily cap adds up to a tacit welcome for 1.4 million illegal migrants per year.

The planned inflow is in addition to the government’s huge inflows of legal, quasi-legal, and temporary migrants, plus the inflow of roughly 1.7 million got-away migrants through the deserts. The combined inflow would likely deliver one migrant for every American birth.

On May 6, NBC News reported Democratic plans for a PR blitz on the issue:

In one potential scenario, Senate Democrats would take the lead by calling up various pieces of [border] legislation, perhaps even parts of the bipartisan deal negotiated by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., James Lankford, R-Okla., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and trying to pass them by a process known as unanimous consent — to which any single senator can object.

“Democrats have made clear that the situation at the border is unacceptable,” Schumer said in a statement. “That’s why we worked in a bipartisan fashion to craft the strongest border security bill in a generation, endorsed by the border patrol union.”

“Biden administration officials are readying to publish a new rule to more rapidly reject some migrants from asylum soon after crossing the border, Axios has learned,” Axios reported on May 8.

His poll ratings are falling as Biden’s huge migration skews the U.S. economy toward older Americans, investors, and real estate owners. So far, he has pulled in roughly 10 million legal, illegal, and quasi-legal migrants.  On May 7, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Young Americans are starting out with more credit-card debt than generations before them. That financial burden can have long-lasting effects.

The rising debt load largely reflects a surge in prices for food and shelter at the start of their careers, coupled with a larger percentage of Gen Z who graduated with student loans. The average credit-card balance for 22- to 24-year-olds was $2,834 in the last quarter of 2023, compared with an average inflation-adjusted balance of $2,248 in the same period in 2013, according to new data from credit-reporting agency TransUnion.

“This is a generation that is feeling financial stress in a more acute way than millennials did a decade ago,” said Charlie Wise, head of global research at TransUnion,” the journal added.

The promised daily cap of 4,000 migrants is a compromise between what the Democrats’ pro-migration coalition can swallow and what Biden needs to help repair his low poll ratings in the 2024 race.

Many Democrats and their advocacy and business allies oppose any significant curbs on migration. The Hill reported:

More than 100 immigration and civil rights organizations are urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to abandon his plans to bring a bipartisan Senate immigration deal to the floor after it was cast aside by the GOP earlier this year.

In a Thursday letter, the groups said the bill “constitutes a deep betrayal of immigrant communities.”

“Among many concerns, this bill would, for the first time ever, allow the U.S. government to deny people the opportunity to apply for asylum at our border simply based on border apprehension numbers,” the groups write in a letter, spearheaded by Humans Rights First.

“I don’t think this is happening right now,” said a tweet from Todd Schulte, the president of the FWD.us advocacy group for West Coast investors. He continued:

2) its illegal 3) even if implemented, it’s wrong approach & wont improve situation at border & in cities 4) instead, there are steps admin can/should take for orderly border & relief for long term undocumented immigrants

Biden’s election-season conversion may have little impact on Americans’ recognition that most Democrats oppose border controls.

“Since day one, Biden and his Administration have worked tirelessly to implement their failed Far Left Democrat open border policies, which have turned every community into a border community and destroyed countless American families,” Stefanik said.

“The burden of illegal immigration on U.S. taxpayers is both staggering and crippling, with the gross cost per taxpayer at $1,156 every year,” she said.

Authored by Neil Munro via Breitbart May 16th 2024