‘…it is the elites who benefit from [Biden’s and the Democrat’s] open borders, people whose professional-class jobs would never be threatened by someone who doesn’t speak English. For the American working classes, good jobs are sacrificed on the altar of helping those from other countries.’

Where did millions of migrants get the idea that Biden had invited them in? From Biden himself, naturally. During the 2020 primary debates, then-candidate Biden said that migrants illegally crossing the border should not be detained, and like nearly every other candidate on the debate stage, he said he would decriminalize illegal border crossing. Millions of migrants were listening, along with the human traffickers who extort, torture, rape and kill them.

Back in the ’90s, Barbara Jordan, the first black woman from the South elected to Congress and Democratic chair of the US Commission on Immigration Reform, wrote that the commission found “no national interest in continuing to import lesser skilled and unskilled workers to compete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force.”

The real cruelty of Biden’s open border policy — it hurts low-income Americans

By Batya Ungar-Sargon August 10, 2022

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And Biden has more or less followed through as president. From day one, he stopped construction of a border wall with Mexico, ended former President Donald Trump’s travel ban restricting travel from 14 countries, and dramatically reduced deportations — from more than 267,000 in 2019 to just 59,000 in 2021. The Biden administration also vowed to end Title 42, a Trump-era restriction that allowed migrants to be turned away due to the pandemic, though a federal judge in Louisiana has for now blocked Biden’s attempts to end the policy.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security said this week that it plans to end another effective Trump-era program, Remain in Mexico, which allowed border agents to turn migrants away and have them wait in Mexico until their removal hearings.

What’s most peculiar about all this is how the administration’s de facto open-border policy represents a remarkable U-turn on the left. Until very recently, free-market Republicans were the ones pushing for things like amnesty and easy access to migrant labor, while the Democrats were on the side of limiting immigration.

Back in the ’90s, Barbara Jordan, the first black woman from the South elected to Congress and Democratic chair of the US Commission on Immigration Reform, wrote that the commission found “no national interest in continuing to import lesser skilled and unskilled workers to compete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force.”

…

Why did the Democrats abandon these voters? Many who support mass immigration do so ostensibly because of the overall effect on GDP, which is positive.

But they tend not to ask, positive for whom? As the economist George Borjas has argued, immigration primarily boosts the incomes of the immigrants themselves, while redistributing wealth from the native poor to the native rich. In other words, among Americans, it is the elites who benefit from open borders, people whose professional-class jobs would never be threatened by someone who doesn’t speak English. For the American working classes, good jobs are sacrificed on the altar of helping those from other countries.

…

This is leftist compassion curdled into cruelty. And it’s not Gov. Abbott’s fault — it’s President Biden’s.

Reprinted with permission from unHerd.