The illegal immigration crisis in the United States continues to get worse with every passing day President Biden sits in office. Over 2.42 million encounters have been reported by border patrol just this year, and that is just at ports of entry. We are averaging well over 200,000 encounters per month. By contract, under the last year of Donald Trump, it averaged about 70,000 per month.
It will be a focal point of the upcoming election, and people are eager to toss any and every solution into the mix. One of the more recent immigration ideas was proposed by the Heritage Foundation. In essence, it would allow illegal immigrants who leave the country voluntarily to have a chance at legal immigration. On the flip side, those who do not self-deport would be removed permanently, and banned for life.
On the surface, maybe to some it seems like a logical idea. But it leans heavily on trust, a trust we no longer have left to give at the border. Bob Price of Breitbart says this has no real legs behind it.
"You are just not going to see people voluntarily stepping up to leave the United States after they spend tens of thousands of dollars to get here," he says.
It is essentially a carrot and stick situation that we would dangle before people, and in the end, have no real impact on the immigration flow at all.
Trump has said that if he wins in November, he plants to begin massive deportations, so this idea would be moot altogether. But a massive deportation effort would surely cost millions and millions of dollars, just considering sheer manpower alone.
But really, beyond that, the solution to the problem lies in just being tougher.
"We need a rigorous policy that says if you have any encounter with law enforcement, you are gone," he says. "That will take out many of the worst of them...any contact with the cops, and you are gone."
We all know too that many self-proclaimed sanctuary cities like Chicago and New York have allowed immigrants to run free on their streets. In many cases, especially in New York, many criminals are just let loose onto the street as a piece of ridiculous virtue signaling.
The real solution could begin there as well.
"That is where we need the carrot and stick...the cities get something for cooperating, and get funds revoked if they do not...I think that would go a long way toward moving a lot of the illegals out of the country," he says.