Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Mayorkas opines that America’s immigration crisis is an outcome of a “system” that has been broken for thirty years. An honest Mayorkas would take ownership of a crisis three years in the making. He would say that, by leveraging a record-breaking 535 immigration actions, we are giving millions of, at best, loosely vetted, mostly non-English speaking “twilight” immigrants a pathway to citizenship, with no pesky conditions like good moral character, self-reliance, adopting American values, speaking English, or obeying the law. It wasn’t always this way.

It’s true that, from the 1960s through the 1980s, Democrats loosened immigration restrictions to encourage future Democratic voters to enter. However, in the 1990s, the United States stopped bowing to the UN’s dictates on who to accept as refugees. It’s also when Bill Clinton authorized doubling down on protecting the southern border, making it harder to claim asylum and easier to deport illegal aliens, along with changing welfare eligibility for legal immigrants from one day to five years.

Since 2021, though, Mayorkas has been reversing these controls to align US refugee policies more closely with UN dictates that effectively hold Western nations responsible for the poverty, wars, crime, and diseases arising under the despotic regimes of the global south. This includes blocking the construction of the border wall because we are “a nation of immigrants,” making it possible for almost anyone to claim asylum, almost impossible to deport illegal immigrants, and easy for most immigrants to qualify for welfare. These actions help him to fulfill his legacy, “to build safe, lawful, and humane pathways” to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants already here.

Few Americans know about today’s easy entry pathways. The administration has created innumerable exceptions to immigration rules, creating a “Twilight zone” that allows them to stay without fearing deportation.

Image: Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas, back when it all started. YouTube screen grab.

The lack of available information about people flooding the border means the border patrol must accept everyone’s rationale for entering as true. Anyone who arrives at the border can make a claim to live in the United States. Once having made that claim, there is a very good chance the person will be placed in the pending asylum bucket or some other twilight category.

In 2023, pending asylees have increased by more than a million, consistent with Biden’s commitment to leverage the power of the 1980 Refugee Act and uncap asylum limits, currently limited to 135,000. Even as to that, Biden plays games. He pretends he is under quota, knowing that pending asylees are not counted as refugees.

In fact, most entrants are not true asylum seekers, nor do they need protection from the state. Instead, they’ve paid cartels to bring them across the border. In 2021, cartels collected $13 billion from human trafficking. In 2018, it was only $500 million. The estimated cost to American taxpayers from this illegal trafficking is $451 billion.

Once in America under the various twilight statuses, the people pouring into America are technically here legally. They cannot be deported for a year, and many adults get the right to work. Meanwhile, Democrats are planning a pathway to citizenship.

The twilight categories also discharge the government’s responsibility for proper vetting. Technically, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is supposed to vet claimed refugees, but Biden’s southern border skips that. At the border, “there are no basic health screenings,” and cartel agents coach potential asylees on what to say to be waved through. Our government does nothing more than take fingerprints and issue a notice to appear. For some, their court date may not arrive for ten years and, even then, if they don’t qualify under current policy, they won’t be deported.

This non-vetting is a joke and should concern every American because the number of twilight immigrants is staggering. In addition to more than a million pending asylum cases, millions of others are fitted into three jumbo twilight categories. Since 2021, over 1 million (a record) have entered under the “humanitarian parole category.” In fiscal years 2022 and 2023, about 460,000 Cubans (4% of Cuba’s population) entered, most as parolees. The mostly anti-communist Cubans, however, are a fraction of the 4-5 million Spanish speakers encountered at the border since 2021.

After Biden extended Temporary Protection Status (TPS) to 472,000 Venezuelans ( including those kicking and shooting at police in New York City and the man who allegedly murdered a Georgia nursing student), TPS reached over 1 million. Now we’re stuck with the Venezuelans because Venezuela doesn’t want them back.

TPS extends to citizens of sixteen nations, including five that Biden added. Every TPS nation, except Ukraine, has been in disarray for decades (e.g., Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Gaza, and Sudan), with chronic Muslim terrorism. Under TPS, though, they’re waved across the border.

Since 2021, Biden also welcomed more than 400,000 unaccompanied minors (UACs), most aged 16 or 17. This is a con. Single, younger Central Americans show up at the border, either without ID or with fake ID) and claim to be minors. They’re in!

Some have been murderers, while thousands are adults whom the cartels coached. Many UACs are gang members that recruit other UACs to be gang members, but Mayorkas pretends UACs are vulnerable children. Because the UAC program is expensive and vulnerable to fraud and mayhem due to unvetted poor moral character, America is the only nation to offer a UAC-like program.

Some argue that America didn’t vet immigrants until the late 19th century, and it worked out okay. But back then, immigrants had to adopt American values. If they failed to be self-reliant or broke the law, they were deported or jailed.

Today, twilight immigrants don’t have to adopt American values. They can bypass obeying many laws by living in sanctuary cities—and of course, they’re here illegally to begin with. Since 2021, illegal aliens have had a national sanctuary. Self-reliance? Humbug. Even though legal immigrants are required to have sufficient funds to support themselves in America, taxpayers are spending billions to keep illegal aliens housed and fed.

Mayorkas’s claims of a previously broken system are belied by facts. Currently, we have shattered records for fraudulent asylum seekers who are on the terror watch list, traffic in drugs, and beat their partners, or are rapists, gang members, murderers, sexual deviants, human traffickers, and thieves. 

How did things get so bad?

Mayorkas is a megalomaniac who knows that his elderly, forgetful boss will not stop his ambitious efforts to make Americans responsible for the poverty, wars, crime, and diseases of the global south. Both also want to expand the Democrat base.

That expanded Democrat base is a great Democrat success story. Along the way, they marginalized the American values that enabled diverse immigrants to join forces as Americans and build the most prosperous nation on earth, all while lowering working-class wages, raising housing costs, increasing crime, breaking public schools, raising the national debt, and straining an already overtaxed medical system—all while dressing their efforts up as humanitarianism. For this, they should win a Machiavelli Award, not four more years controlling the government.