Open Borders Radicals See a Bad Moon Rising. Let’s Hope They’re Right

Joe Biden will not take the oath of office for more than another month, but the open borders/mass immigration, fire-breathing advocates on the Democratic Party’s far left flank are already getting nervous. According to reports by National Public Radio and Newsweek, they are reading the tea leaves leaking out of the Biden transition team, and they are not happy with what they are seeing.

To be clear, no one will mistake Joe Biden for Donald Trump when it comes to immigration policy. At the very least, the Biden immigration policy will look a lot like the Obama immigration policy: minimal border and interior enforcement, and executive actions to protect, a la DACA, as many illegal aliens as he can get away with. But these bad policies aren’t good enough for the radicals.

“We need advocates and people who wake up every day thinking about how they’re going to fix the system so that people like myself and people like my family and others who are seeking refuge here have the ability to have a better life,” said Erika Andiola, advocacy director for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES). “We say it loud and clear: DACA IS THE FLOOR NOT THE CEILING,” tweeted Greisa Martinez Rosas, director of United We Dream. Abolishing ICE and the Border Patrol and ending deportations is what is above the floor (although even those demands still may not be the ceiling).

Also a source of angst for the immigration radicals is the fact that the Biden transition team does not list immigration as one of its four top priorities upon assuming office. (Coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change, in case you were wondering). All of which lead the open immigration lobby to worry that the first two years of the Biden administration could be a repeat of the first two years of the Obama administration, where immigration took a back burner to other priorities of the incoming president.

The concerns are mutual. Reports indicate that members of Biden’s inner circle are worried that the open borders radicals are too shrill and pushing an agenda that is so extreme that it will make it difficult for the new president to attend to his priorities – particularly addressing the pandemic and getting the economy back on track, the issues that will determine the success or failure of his presidency.

Concerns that outlandish demands and outlandish tactics on the part of the radicals may blow up in their faces are shared even by members of the vast coalition of mass immigration groups. Theresa Cardinal Brown of the Bipartisan Policy Center warns that if Biden ends Trump policies that have held mass border incursions in check for the past two years, he could trigger a politically damaging border crisis.

Dealing with a self-inflicted border crisis at the same time that he is dealing with a pandemic and an economic crisis is the last thing Joe Biden (not to mention the nation) needs as he settles into the Oval Office. The outstanding question is, will he sabotage his own presidency to satisfy the Woke fringe of the coalition that put him in office, or will he focus on the needs and concerns of the vast majority of Americans?

Those who support border enforcement, interior enforcement, and protection of the economic, health, and security concerns of the American public understand that they will not have an ally in the White House under Biden. Let’s hope that the open borders radicals will be equally disappointed.