It’s been pretty obvious that the Biden administration and their supporters have wanted the southern border to be substantially open. But for some reason, they don’t seem to have extended this idea to other ways of entering the US: airports and seaports. I haven’t seen any proposal to eliminate the customs & immigration facilities at international airports, or at passenger-handing seaports.
Why not? It would certainly be more convenient for all international travelers, and especially for those who want to migrate to the US: no traveling through deserts, jungles and swamps, no need to fear robbery, murder, and rape on the way, no need to pay off the drug cartels. Just buy an airline ticket: surely much more affordable than the other path, as well as more convenient, considering the high extortion payments demanded by the cartels.
What would be the reason why open-borders advocates do not push for this logical extension of their ideas?
One hypothesis might be that the people who buy airline tickets would include a higher mix of financially-better-off people than those who are willing to make the grueling trip across the southern border…and those people would be (a) less-likely to vote for Democratic candidates, and (b) more likely to compete for jobs held by members of key groups within the Democratic constituency.
Any other theories?
Because it would utterly destroy the illusion that the TSA (“Theater by Security A$$holes”) is actually doing anything positive?
Because the Progressive Way is to punish the normals and coddle the lawbreakers.
TSA is a Democratic Party jobs program, patronage in the modern age. As well as a key part of the modern surveillance state. Southern border is just icky Texans, New Mexico and Arizona (which really should be Mexico anyhow) and Tijuana, fun place! Why mess with a good thing?
Well as you say, it would be more affordable to buy an airline ticket than to pay the cartels.
Let’s be clear, the millions of people pouring across the southern border and spreading throughout the country are for the most part not “illegal” I’m not adopting Leftist cant because with Biden eliminating “Remain in Mexico” where these people would have to had their asylum cases adjudicated before they were allowed in, now when they are “encountered” at the border they are processed, assigned some immigration court date years in the future, and then released. All nice and legal, a crisis by design, It’s all a big game and the smuggling cartels actually encourage these people to seek out the Border Patrol to surrender themselves as it helps get them into the interior. The only ones who are “illegal” are those who are “gotaways” and they should scare us because we can only imagine with the sweet asylum deals being offered, what sort of people want to sneak across.
My hypothesis is that even for open-borderites, removing screening at airports would be a step too far given that passengers for international air and sea travel are screened before they embark for both security and travel documents. You need some sort of paperwork (passport, visa) to get on the plane and given that international airports are not actual US ports of entry, those seeking asylum could not file their claims there.
The Left is still pushing the fiction that these millions of “asylum seekers” showing up at the border is akin to a weather pattern, something that is “happening to us” and that we have to deal with. That fiction melts away if they push active measures to allow anyone, say Osama Bin Laden’s little brother, to claim asylum and get on a plane as easily as swimming the Rio Grande. Not that I would put it past them to try but it would bring international air travel to a halt
Those who come by plane or boat are in fact of a higher socio-economic class, and therefore are far more likely [albeit not guaranteed] to be productive members of our society and contribute to the welfare of our nation. Encouraging a literal invasion by the least productive [and more violent] foreigners whose highest ambition [which is being granted] is lifetime welfare at the expense of the productive on the other hand weakens us as a nation and culture. Which is exactly what the Left wants.
Subotai Bahadur [yeah, and I expect to get some heat for this.]
The elite travel by plane and boat. If they encouraged illegal immigrants to come in those ways they’d be rubbing elbows with the immigrants themselves.
TSA and Customs & Immigration are two different things. You could do all the security screening you want and still let everyone in as long as they pass that 10-second TSA check.
To expand the line of reasoning — Why do Our Betters do everything they can to encourage the illegal immigration of unknown individuals with possibly anti-social motives … and at the same time continue to make legal immigration slow, complex, and expensive?
The answer is probably that the aliens (legal or illegal) are merely tokens in Our Betters schemes to enrich themselves. Many lawyers get wealthy serving the needs of legal immigrants — and make big donations to the Democrat Party to ensure the money keeps flowing their way. Similarly, many NGO-types are doing very nicely thank you from spending taxpayer money on illegal aliens, and helping out their UniParty enablers in return. The actual consequences for us peons of making it tough for future Elon Musks to come to the US — or making it easy for future terrorists — does not figure into their calculations at all.
Because they want to destabilize the ‘red’ center of the US, not have immigrants pile up at ‘blue’ ports of entry. Most of the incomers are quite happy to squat on the nearest piece of ‘magic dirt’.
Plausible deniability.
“Plausible deniability”
I really like that, very pithy. Would make a great title for a book on the Left’s immigration policies
First: Some non zero proportion of “asylum seekers” do arrive by air as tourists, students or other travelers and walk off the plane and either claim asylum immediately or just disappear. Even more avoid the long walk by flying to Mexico, or increasingly, especially for Chinese, Canada.
Trump was able to curtail the border crossers by transferring the pain to Mexico. He let the trucks back up at the border while each and every one was thoroughly examined for contraband. Suddenly, Mexico discovered that it had an immigration problem and closed off its southern border instead of directing them north. The policy of making asylum seekers wait in Mexico for their case to be adjudicated also made them Mexico’s problem and suddenly the problem became manageable.
At this point, any foreign entity that doesn’t have as large a contingent as they desire infiltrated into the country simply doesn’t want one. The only real question is how many have availed themselves of the opportunity and what they have in mind. I put the odds that this shoe will drop before the election very high. I’m sure the recent attempt to lay the open border off on the Republicans won’t be the last. When the bodies start to pile up faster than one or two a week, apportioning blame will be job 1.
I had forgotten about CBP One app which brushes right up with David’s original post https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2900755/biden-secretly-dumped-320000-inadmissible-illegal-immigrants-us-cities/
“Upon receiving authorization from Washington, they buy air passage to U.S. international airports where CBP personnel process them for release in short order. All are said to be responsible for paying for their own airfare”
I remember when this program was originally instituted a year or so ago as a way of facilitating asylum applications without people actually having to show up at the border because that might deter people from applying for asylum; using that logic of facilitation we can see where this will go to…. eventually the public paying for flights to eventually Uber service to and from the airport ( I jest but just a little)
So the estimate of the number admitted under the program is in the hundreds of thousands. I didn’t see any info on the CIS web site of what percentage of the CBP One applicants are rejected or is this just an open-gate policy,
If you get to a place by land, you are thought to have a right to stay there and possibly even take it over. If you get to a place by water, you don’t.
This distinction might have been invented in order to provide an excuse for Russia’s colonial empire in Siberia.