Apparently, there's some sort of problem at the border, and Joe Biden would like you to know he's doing something about it.

That would explain his curious rush to make a speech to the American public ahead of his trip to the border, about all the things he's doing to stop the millions of economic migrants he invited in earlier from entering the states illegally now.

White House transcript here.

Yes, there were gaffes, as Fox News noted here.  Yes, there was significant evidence that Joe doesn't understand border laws, as Legal Insurrection noted here.

But mostly, it was about contradictions, several of which stuck out to me.  Before I get to them, it might be useful to look at what the heck Biden was trying to accomplish with this speech.

The speech itself, addressed to the American public, seemed to be about getting his poll numbers up, which is no surprise — by persuading Americans that millions of unvetted migrants from more than 100 countries entering illegally is a good thing, a desirable thing, an American thing, which pretty well puts paid to the idea that his invitation to them to come on over was any sort of problem.

Now for a gander at the contradictions:

He called the current process of millions of unvetted aliens entering the country and claiming asylum perfectly legal.

People come to America for a whole lot of different reasons. To seek new opportunity in what is the strongest economy in the world. Can't blame them wanting to do it. They flee oppression, you know, to the — to the freest nation in the world. They chase their own American Dream in the greatest nation in the world.

And the story of America is the story of so many of your families — including mine, going back to the mid-1800s from Ireland.

Now, there are a number of ways to immigrate to America legally under our existing laws. For example, an American citizen — an American citizen can sponsor an immediate family member from another country. An American company can sponsor an employee from another country. There are visas for students to study in our colleges and other special categories.

And regardless of the legal pathway they pro- — they process — they process them to require everyone be involved in following the law. That's the notion. There are laws to get here legally. That includes another legal way for someone to come to America by seeking asylum because they're fleeing persecution, like a lot of our ancestors did as well.

And for many people, that's what's happening at our southwest border now.

So if it's all legal...why is he making a speech calling it a problem?

The New York Post has an excellent must-read op-ed by attorney George Fishman, who points out all the reasons why the policy is not legal, but, in fact, an abuse of law and power.

After that, Biden announced that he had new measures in place to take in 30,000 migrants with sponsors in the States from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti if they apply through an app instead of cross illegally at the border, an "orderly process," which is one of those buzz phrases voters are said to like.  The idea for him is to get the official border encounters numbers down, even though all was fine and dandy with illegal border crossings enabled by uttering that magic word "asylum."

He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, and expected you not to notice. 

As Biden told it, once the would-be asylum-seekers get that green light from the app that their application is accepted (jackpot to first 30,000 applicants), they will get "parole," which is to say a work permit to enable them to take away another job from an American as recession beckons, supposedly for two years, as their "asylum" claims are adjudicated, but I think we can predict the decades-long outcome of that, given that no one who's been in the country for two years gets deported under Biden's policy.

It's baloney on a lot of fronts, not the least of which is in his tiny numbers.  A 2021 Gallup poll shows that 42 million foreign nationals would like to move to the United States.  Joe's 30,000 slots for those would-be migrants with sponsors won't begin to accommodate that demand.  Do only 30,000 Nicaraguans want to come here to the States?  Do only 30,000 Venezuelans?  Do only 30,000 Cubans?

What happens to the 30,001st applicant, either at the application end or the judicial end?  He gets told no space at the inn on this program and does his own program in place of it — crossing illegally — with little chance of expulsion, or if he is expelled, he tries again, with sanctuary cities to welcome him once he gets in, and cities and states there to pay for his health care, his education, his food, his housing, pretty much any and all of his needs.  Who needs to bother with an app for that?  Right there, Biden's numbers are too small and arbitrary, given the demand from foreigners for U.S. slots.  And for those without sponsors?  The uneducated, dirt-poor, single-mom, and criminals from emptied prisons who are Chavista, Ortega and Aristide voters from their respective countries?  Border's wide open.

It gets worse: Biden attempted to paint the border-surgers as people fleeing "oppression."

What he meant was "socialism," of course, but he didn't want to upset his base.

That may be the case in Cuba, but in the cases of Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua, you can bet there were migrants in those lawless masses who voted in their own oppressors and don't like the results of their own voting choices.  Rather than stay home and fight for clean elections, as someone like, say, Maria Corina Machado has valiantly done in Venezuela, they come here for the better deal, the free stuff, the expectations for more free stuff, the entitlement to it, just as Hugo conditioned them to think, waving their country's flag as they enter illegally, and bringing their Chavista voting ways with them.  That works out just fine for Joe Biden, who assures us of "strict vetting" of these illegal migrants, just as he did of the ten thousand or so he illegally imported from Afghanistan.  We all know how that worked out.

Here's the bigger contradiction: as Joe claims that these people are fleeing "oppression" as a means of persuading the American people that all is fine and dandy with millions of migrants entering the U.S. illegally, the ugly contradiction sitting in the background is that Joe's been enabling these oppressive regimes on the side.  A lot. 

If these regimes are so oppressive, as Biden claims, can Biden explain why he lifted sanctions on Venezuela, enabling its elites to reap new windfall profits from oil production?

Can he explain why just the other day, he "dis-recognized" the government of Venezuela's acting president, Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader legally named by the opposition Legislature to serve as acting president after dictator Maduro was caught cheating at elections?  That was a nasty blow to Venezuela's beleaguered peaceful opposition — and certainly good news for Maduro, who is literally being rewarded for driving huge numbers of his population out of the country for us to take care of.

They're oppressive, all right — but they are also regimes Joe is trying to enable.  The same goes for Cuba, which the Biden team has sought to empower and advance relations with.  This is the same Cuba, after all, that Democrats have been praising for decades for all that free health care.  This is the same Cuba they've been taking vacays with, to enjoy the company of Cuba's elites, dancing, as Beyoncé did, on the Malecón and oohing and ahhing at all the "classic" cars and quaint, but tumbledown, architecture, which is hell to live in if you have to actually live in it.

So Joe would have us think the asylum-seekers are all just fleeing oppression while he canoodles with the oppressors.  Sound like another contradiction?

It sounds like a snow job, a bid to snooker the American people into thinking mass illegal immigration is just Ellis Island all over again, and there's no particular reason millions are trying to cross our borders illegally  now, every migrant coming in with a potentially valid asylum claim to live in our country, clogging our emergency medical rooms, schools, welfare offices, and certainly courts and prisons.

Joe is nothing without a lot of gaslighting to the public, and this time, he's full of a lot of contradictory, gaseous nonsense.  His speech was garbage, and he won't solve any of the border crisis until he gets serious about enacting actual policy that stops illegal immigration.  Gaslighting won't do it.

Image: Screen shot from Fox News video via YouTube.