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Republicans, beginning with Donald Trump, are saying that the United States doesn’t need a bipartisan border bill because Joe Biden has all the power he needs to handle the crisis. He can “shut down the border” now if he wants to.
Larry Kudlow makes this argument.
“Joe Biden doesn’t need a bill to fix the border. He just needs to enforce the law. The law, is section 212(f) of the immigration and nationality act, which gives the president authority to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens,” Kudlow wrote on Fox Business.
“Just point blank, that Biden could do this on his own is just not true. There’s simply not enough asylum officers,” said Taylor Levy, a longtime immigration attorney.
That may be true, so why not limit asylum claims? Why not tighten eligibility for asylum so that people who aren’t fleeing oppression but only want a better job are barred from entering the U.S.?
Don’t tell anyone, but that’s exactly what the dead border bill would have done. Oops.
Shutting the border would necessarily lead to tens of billions of dollars lost on both sides.
