Ben Mathis-Lilley writes:

Many Americans say they support immigration so long as it’s done legally, by waiting for one’s turn in line, but are alarmed by the idea of people walking into the country through the southwestern desert and going wherever they want. In theory, if you were able to dissuade or disincentivize potential immigrants from massing at the southern border or trying to cross it without authorization, you could gain enough public trust on the issue to expand the number who were allowed to come through the proverbial front door.

It’s not working, though, and to understand why, consider the centerpiece buzzword of the Biden border strategy: “orderly.” The purported goal of orderliness is all over the administration’s thinking on the subject, including the Times’ paraphrase of [Susan] Rice’s position and the statement released this week after the special State Department envoy to Haiti resigned in protest. That individual, Daniel Foote, condemned Biden’s policy toward Haitians as “inhumane” and “counterproductive,” to which State responded that “the United States remains committed to supporting safe, orderly, and humane migration throughout our region.”

Consider this in context. In 1986, Ronald Reagan said a major immigration bill that included a number of enforcement provisions would help establish “a reasonable, fair, orderly, and secure system.” A decade later, Bill Clinton was touting a different enforcement-heavy law that he said would make immigration more “safe and orderly.“ George W. Bush promised to develop “an orderly framework for migration” upon taking office in 2001 but was still saying at the end of his second term that illegal immigration needed to be controlled in order to create a legal system that was “secure, productive, orderly, and fair.” And the Obama administration in which Susan Rice previously worked said when it took power in 2009 that it was working toward an “orderly” expansion of legal immigration, for which it infamously tried to create public support by deporting millions of people. [Continue reading…]