Biden’s Border Shrug Isn’t Nearly Enough
He’s right that this isn’t a new challenge, but dead wrong to pretend that what’s happening now is business as usual—and to treat immigration first and foremost as a “problem.”
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On the U.S.-Mexico border, as in the never-ending debate over U.S. immigration policy, every day is Groundhog Day.
Our immigration dialogue is stalled. Unlike debates over the death penalty or same-sex marriage, it never seems to evolve or take on fresh nuance. It’s more like the shouting matches about abortion or gun control, where people are cemented in their position and make the same arguments over and over again.
While what’s happening now is, in fact, uniquely intense, Americans aren’t seeing anything on the U.S.-Mexico border that they haven’t seen before or that we won’t see again—and that second point at least came through loud and clear Thursday in President Joe Biden’s first news conference.