The New York Times Has an Immigration Hot Take

In other breaking news, the Earth revolves around the sun. Andrea Flores, an immigration policy advisor under both Presidents Obama and Biden, is going to tell us how to fix the immigration system. Apparently, letting everyone enter the country with employment authorization is the correct answer to driving down the illegal entries. How would rolling out the red carpet and providing the exact prize (employment authorization) the migrants seek deter them from arriving in ever larger numbers? Just asking that question allows Flores to set the trap. For you cannot have illegal entries if you legalize them. Problem solved.

This, of course, misses the entire point about the reasons the migrant crisis is so debilitating to Americans across the country. Some of our most populated states and cities have already declared states of emergency regarding migrant flows into their territory. They cannot shelter, protect, clothe, feed, and educate all of these individuals, while still carrying out their fundamental duty to provide services and protection for their citizens. It is irrelevant whether an alien is paroled or granted some other status through executive fiat. Unless that status comes with free housing and a guaranteed living-wage job, they still pose the same resource responsibility for state and local governments. The distinction between legal and illegal flows at the border is one without any meaningful difference for local communities. Our immigration intelligentsia need to internalize this simple truth.

Nor is this a revolutionary solution proffered by Flores. In fact, it is the solution President Biden is implementing right now across the border. This has been the basic principle of his entire presidency regarding immigration and border security. The results of these policies speak for themselves. Many are legally insufficient to withstand judicial scrutiny and the facts on the ground of chaos and scarcity of resources are apparent.

So why do Flores and so many other immigration commentators cling to these naive notions? She opens her piece talking about the moral imperative of offering asylum as a justification:

“U.S. asylum laws were designed to protect people fleeing harm. They were enacted in the decades following the Holocaust to ensure that the United States never again turned away people fleeing persecution. But now, many blame these laws for the chaos and inhumanity at the nation’s southern border.”

There is nothing wrong with this sentiment as far as it goes. But just like the attempt to distinguish between hundreds of thousands of illegal entries versus hundreds of thousands of paroled entries, it hides the actual argument being made by the other side. The problem is that most of the aliens claiming asylum at the border do not have a bona fide asylum claim. So, if you want to preserve asylum for actual people fleeing persecution, then you must support stopping frivolous asylum claims that clog up the system and force bona fide victims of persecution to wait years for a decision.

Shockingly, Flores glosses over this in her article, while admitting the Biden parole programs are allowing frivolous asylum seekers to enter the United States:

“While far from perfect, the Biden administration’s parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans could serve as a model for what is possible. This policy provides safer options to people who are unlikely to meet the legal requirements for asylum, but who still have urgent humanitarian reasons to flee their homes.”

This says the quiet part out loud in such a casual way that I’m shocked she included it. If we have a solemn duty to protect asylum seekers, how is paroling in people who do not have a legal claim to asylum aiding in that endeavor? The government has acknowledged that the vast majority of asylum seekers encountered fail to meet the legal standard for asylum. Many do not even bother to show up for their asylum hearings after they are allowed entry into the United States.

Flores believes the solution is to not enforce asylum law rigorously, but rather seek ways to provide benefits to frivolous asylum seekers. All this will do, of course, is provide further incentive to make frivolous claims to receive the benefit. Which has the domino effect of making it harder to grant asylum to bona fide asylum seekers facing persecution. Somehow, Flores believes this is the humane way to meet our asylum obligations.

Her argument is patently absurd. From pretending that paroling migrants into the United States eliminates the resource burdens on communities, to suggesting that the way to uphold our asylum commitments is to provide benefits to frivolous claimants, it is a mess untethered to reality. The wall of reality is impervious to wishful thinking and the Biden Administration and our collective immigration policy elites seem content to bash their heads into it. Unfortunately, they are driving the car with all of us in it while they do it.

JARED CULVER is a Legal Analyst for NumbersUSA