Too busy to go to the border?

By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Yes, he is too busy to go to the border. President Biden, who keeps a very light agenda during the week, has more important things to do.

This is the story:

President Biden said Tuesday he won't visit the US-Mexico border during a day trip to Arizona because he has "more important things" to handle — despite the record-smashing surge of people illegally crossing into the US.

"Why go to a border state and not visit the border?" a reporter asked Biden on the White House lawn as he departed for Arizona.

The president replied, "Because there are more important things going on. They are going to invest billions of dollars in a new enterprise in the state."

Biden is visiting Phoenix to promote this year's bipartisan CHIPS Act subsidizing US technology companies that make computer chips domestically.

The visit comes after an all-time record was reached for illegal border crossings, with more than 2.3 million people detained after crossing illegally into the US in fiscal 2022, which ended Sept. 30 — an increase from 1.7 million in fiscal 2021, fewer than 500,000 in fiscal 2020 and nearly 1 million in fiscal 2019.

So he flew back to the White House. The president is back in Washington, and the border is as open as ever.

How does he get away with this? It helps that most of the White House reporters, minus Peter Doocey, are not interested in asking questions about the border crisis, either. They were happy to hear that Mr. Biden already visited the border, even if it was years ago, when he was running for president in 2008. Yes, 2008! Giving him credit for coming here 14 years ago. What are you complaining about?

Another problem is that the Senate is considering some kind of an immigration package — namely, about DACA or a pathway to citizenship for two million of the dreamers. How do you even debate this proposal without resolving the matter of the border first? I would have expected the president to understand that a DACA deal without some realistic resolution to the border crisis is a non-starter.

It would have been a lot smarter to make a visit to the border and show your support for law enforcement, at the very least. Unfortunately, he is too busy these days taking long weekends in Delaware.

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