Last week, I went to Springfield, Ohio, to see for myself this town that has symbolized the raging debate about mass illegal migration, which remains a top concern of voters.
Above the noise and distraction, my conclusion was that Springfield symbolizes two main issues.
First, you can’t have open borders and a welfare state.
Second, you can’t have a functioning nation if you don’t follow the rule of law. Congress has the duty and authority to legislate the process for immigration into the U.S. That includes who comes in, how, from where, under what conditions, and how long they can stay. Previous presidents have tested the limits of their executive authority in trying to push this envelope. But Joe Biden and his “border czar,” Kamala Harris, have ripped up the envelope entirely.
My first stop in Springfield was the Clark County Department of Job and Family Services. Outside, the signs were in Spanish, Haitian Creole, and English—in that order.
The drop box for documents had an additional handwritten sign in Creole and Spanish.
Inside, I saw a waiting room filled with people, a line outside the door, and more people arriving regularly. I spoke to several in French (which many Haitians speak or understand, as their Creole is a derivative of French). One family told me they had been living in Brazil for eight years but decided to come to America instead as it was closer to Haiti and culturally more comfortable for them.
The fact that they were safely settled outside Haiti in Brazil would make them ineligible for asylum in the U.S., but as with thousands like them, the Biden administration pretends they are asylum-seekers, not asylum shoppers. In other words, that they were actually fleeing persecution in their home country rather than simply looking for better economic opportunities.
I estimated that the majority of applicants in the office that morning were Haitian.
The Haitians are here thanks to a mix of dubious schemes perpetrated by this administration and possibly the illegal use of the president’s executive authority: parole, catch-and-release, Temporary Protected Status—I wrote more about these mass-migration facilitating fudges here.
In brief, the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security either allows inadmissible aliens to enter the U.S. on the assumption they will claim asylum or grants them an indefinite delay from deportation proceedings. Then, the federal government gives money—at least a billion........