Under Joe Biden, the number of “asylum” seekers living in the U.S. has doubled from approximately 10 million in 2020 to the 20 million estimated today. While those entering at the Mexican border cannot be thoroughly processed given their daily numbers, they must, in theory at least, at some point have their status as refugees [i.e., victims of war, persecution, civil rights violations, etc..] validated in order to stay in the country. As their cases cannot be heard for at least six months, it is likely that many of them will simply disappear never to be heard from again. This is in addition to the myriad of others estimated to have slipped into the U.S. while utterly avoiding the official points of entry.
In a seeming admission of the chaos caused by his policies over the last 4 years, Biden recently changed the rules, allowing border agents to deny entry to asylum seekers when their numbers exceed certain limits. Since 2021, more than 2500 “illegals” per day have sought to enter the U.S. without going through the traditional immigration protocols. Until the onslaught drops to 1500 per day, border agents will simply be allowed to reject those who exceed that number. On Fri., June 7, two days after the new standard took effect, they were deluged with 3100 “refugees” seeking to enter the country.
The problems caused by this unmanageable onslaught are many. The one I should like to focus on here is the massive increase of fentanyl now available in the States due to the fact that Mexican drug dealers have predictably been exploiting the border chaos to their own advantage.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, two Mexican drug cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco, appear to be peddling their poison in all 50 states. Approximately 200 Americans die of fentanyl abuse every day, 38,000 or so in the first 6 months of 2023! Interestingly, those seeking to smuggle that drug into the country don’t necessarily try to circumvent the official points of entry, their feeling clearly being that border agents are far too busy to conduct thorough examinations of their possessions. So while massive amounts of drugs may be surreptitiously smuggled into the States under cover of darkness, border guards at the various official points of entry nevertheless managed to seize 4,800 lbs. of fentanyl in 2020. 2021 saw that number rise to 11,200 lbs.. By 2023, it was approximately 27,000 lbs.! Significantly, that same year, northern immigration officials seized just 2 lbs. of fentanyl at the Canadian border!
While affluent Western Democracies must do whatever they can to assist those being brutalized within their countries of origin, Reason demands they do so in such a way as to not imperil the welfare of their own citizens. Various sanctuary cities in the U.S. are rife with crime, homelessness and financial burdens they cannot possibly manage. The pandemic of fentanyl related deaths is but one of the many negative repercussions of a policy which puts compassion before the mandates of Law and Order and simple common sense. Indeed the very definition of “woke,” it seems to me, is the tendency to act upon one’s feelings with no thought whatsoever of the real world repercussions of those actions. “Wokeness,” that is to say, is by definition irrational.
But while the notion that people all over the world are entitled to invade our Western Democracies is unrealistic if not absurd, the ultimate irony of this “compassionate” Leftist outreach is that what it celebrates as safe-havens for the world’s refugees, are the relentless targets of its neo-Marxist narrative, Nations deemed to be rife with racism, misogyny, homophobia and, of course, the economic “inequities” born of Capitalism. Gee, why would people from neighboring continents be so eager to escape to the ugly dystopias of Western Europe and North America? Is it possible the Left’s socio-economic critique of Western Civilization is ridiculously superficial if not downright stupid? Is it my unconscious White Supremacism that is leading me to ask these questions, or simple Common Sense?