US border crisis a consequence of Joe Biden’s migrant signal on first day in office

US Border Patrol agents keep watch over migrants that just turned themselves in after crossing over from Mexico as they wait for a bus to take them to a processing center in Fronton, Texas on May 12.

With 10,000 illegal immigrants caught crossing the Mexican border into the US on Monday and Tuesday last week, reports that New York City, 3500km away, is planning to “create migrant tent shelters in Central Park” are no surprise. Nor is a new Washington Post/ABC (America) poll showing that two weeks into his campaign for re-election Joe Biden’s approval rating is at 36 per cent, the lowest of his presidency.

The migrant crisis that has followed Mr Biden’s termination last week of Title 42 migrant entry restrictions, introduced as an emergency measure by Donald Trump in 2020 to block arrivals from areas with high levels of Covid-19, is taking its toll. The crisis has combined with Mr Biden’s standoff with Republicans in congress over raising the nation’s debt ceiling, which is under threat of a crippling default on June 1. As Adam Creighton wrote on Saturday, Mr Biden faces the sort of political pain Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard endured when hundreds of boats descended on Australia’s north. He is paying a high price for his foolish decision, on the day he was sworn in on January 20, 2021, to dismantle the framework for strict migration control Mr Trump had set up.

Migrants waiting along the border wall to surrender to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) border patrol agents for immigration and asylum claim processing after crossing the Rio Grande River into the United States.

The signal Mr Biden sent out was that the border was essentially open. Migrants and their facilitators were led to believe if they crossed and claimed US asylum, even though they had been apprehended, they would be able to remain in the US. Soaring numbers show the ensuing disaster. Last year, an average 6000 migrants a day were apprehended after illegally crossing. In the first three months of this year that was 7000 a day. It has now grown further and does not include hundreds of thousands of aliens who have evaded apprehension and entered US society – an estimated 600,000 in 2022 and 300,000 in the first three months of 2023.

From the day he took office, Mr Biden has been seen as a “soft touch” on migration. The expiry of Title 42 prompted the latest surge through Mexico of not just would-be migrants from Latin America but across the world. His new migration rules, known as Title 8, are in many ways far tougher than Mr Trump’s Title 42 rules, paradoxically. But the horse has long bolted when it comes to migration policy and the profound political damage it is causing the President and his hapless Vice-President, Kamala Harris. She was given responsibility to find solutions but has visited the border only once. As Mr Biden prepares to visit Sydney for the Quad summit, other nations have much to learn from his mistakes.