Issues & Insights
U.S. Navy photo by Steelworker 1st Class Matthew Tyson

Biden’s COVID Plan: Close The Economy, Open The Border

I&I Editorial

As coronavirus cases spike, Joe Biden is getting increasingly aggressive about containment. He’s pushing all governors to impose statewide mask mandates and other restrictions. His advisers are openly talking about a national lockdown to slow the spread.

“It’s about patriotism,” Biden said on Wednesday. “If you really care about your country, what you want to do is keep your neighbors and your family safe.”

Yet somehow Biden’s patriotic concern for your neighbors and your family dissipates if it means stopping the flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border.

Let’s leave aside the fact that lockdowns have been repeatedly shown to be failures. And as we noted in this space earlier, mask mandates haven’t prevented surges in COVID-19 cases in the 35 states that had implemented them.

Biden’s mantra has been that Trump hasn’t done enough to fight the disease and that he will do more.

Well, the Trump administration has used the health and welfare provisions of Title 42 of the U.S. Code to immediately expel these border crossers, rather than let them hang around in detention centers and then be released into the U.S. This, the administration says, is “in the interest of public health.” Data from the Customs and Border Protection agency show that it sent back nearly 58,000 border jumpers in September alone. Given the surge in coronavirus cases in Mexico and other Latin American countries, this policy is no doubt helping control the spread.

Yet instead of endorsing this public health campaign, or promising to beef it up, Biden appears willing to scrap it altogether. The Biden-Bernie Sanders “unity” document, for example, promises that Biden will “take urgent action to undo the Trump administration’s unilateral executive orders on immigration, including abuses implemented during the pandemic.”

All his campaign will say now is that he “will direct the CDC to review the expulsions policy.”

Instead of expelling illegals to protect U.S. neighbors and families, the Biden-Sanders priority is to make sure that “health coverage is available to everyone for testing, treatment, medical services, rehabilitation, and that vaccines are available free of charge, regardless of immigration or economic status.”

Beyond this, Biden has promised to dismantle Trump policies that had been working to restrain the flow of illegals – sorry, “undocumented people” – across the border.

Wall construction will stop. Biden promises to implement a 100-day freeze on deportations “while his administration issues guidance narrowing who can be arrested by immigration agents,” according to one news account.

He plans to reinstate catch-and-release, which created a massive loophole for illegals who are set free into the country while their asylum claim is adjudicated, never to return for their final hearing.

Trump had effectively closed this loophole with his “Remain in Mexico” program, whereby border crossers caught in the U.S. are returned to Mexico while their asylum claims are considered.

“It is curious, to say the least,” writes Bob Dane, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, “that Biden – who insists ‘we could save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months’ – is so oblivious to the threats at our southern border. Backtracking on enforcement policies in the face of a pandemic will bring even darker days than he fears.”

Curious, indeed. Until you come to realize that Biden and his fellow Democrats care less about controlling the virus than they do about controlling the country. If pointless lockdowns and open borders serve that purpose, containing the coronavirus is irrelevant.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

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I & I Editorial Board

The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.

7 comments

  • Well, it’s really easy to understand. China Joe and his crime family doesn’t care in the least about America or Americans. He lies like he breathes, and he belongs to China, international banking, Soros, Facebook, google and such. Sorry, joe, you fraudulent “president elect”. I’m not paying attention to you, and you’ll have a tough time putting chains on Americans and surviving.

  • “Democrats care less about controlling the virus than they do about controlling the country.”

    It all comes down to this.

    • BradK: Not only do the want to control the country, they want to control every invidual.

  • It has become abundantly clear during this virus mess that hypocrisy and inconsistency abound across the land. Politicians and the public health community (especially celebrity epidemiologists) have for many months generated fear and panic about this virus, engineering a manufactured “crisis”. Their personal behavior is seen to belie their public edicts, and their public statements to be nothing more than meaningless rhetoric. This is apparently a variant of the Lord Acton quotation that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This behavior by the powerful in turn fosters distrust, cynicism, and disdain on the part of the populace. How we all deal with this reality now becomes the ultimate challenge looking ahead, as we contemplate the future of our country and our way of life.

  • Upon arrival they will receive masks, health insurance, SNAP card and voter registration information.

    • That would make a great cartoon. drawing of someone coming over the wall with Biden there ready with a welcome mask, a SNAP card ans voter registration form.

  • Ah, here is the left’s Achilles heel: They are all for opening the border and allowing illegal aliens to flow in, along with drugs, human trafficking, and SICK PEOPLE, maybe even Covid contaminated people. That’s okay! That’s just fine! But make sure YOU stay locked up in your house, are home no later than 10 pm, no family over for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and that your kids stay home from school, BECAUSE YOU ARE DANGEROUS TO YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS. This is what the media and the democrats are standing behind! Does any of this make any sense to you?? If it does, I question your sanity!

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