The next border crisis

Government policy caused the border crisis of 2014. Not the 2008 law granting special protections to unaccompanied minors from countries other than Mexico, an ex post facto explanation meant to blame George W. Bush. It was after Obama’s 2012 authorization of deferred action and work permits for illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children that such migration spiked. This blatant political move, as well as the president’s repeated pledge to amnesty the rest of the illegal migrant population, spurred the uptick in border crossings. The humanitarian tragedy followed.

Now Obama wants to repeat history. Indeed, he wants to expand the 2012 program so that it encompasses not hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants but millions of them. As first reported by Fox News, the president may soon announce a ten-point plan that legalizes some 4.5 million illegal immigrants, offers 500,000 tech workers and their spouses (and later, their extended families) a path to citizenship, and increases opportunities for illegal immigrants to become naturalized by joining the military. A pay raise for immigration-enforcement officers and token border-security measures are also under consideration.

Not only would a presidential declaration of such measures insult legal immigrants as well as the voters who repudiated the president, his policies, and his party on November 4. Not only would it very likely provoke a constitutional crisis. The executive order would establish the incentives for the next wave of families to show up on an unprotected and unprepared southern border.