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President Biden has, in the last two years, taken lot cheap shots from right-wingers on immigration. And most of the charges are untrue, unfair and uncalled for. After all, when it comes to immigration, where Biden really deserves the harshest criticism is from his supporters and former supporters on the left.
Biden is the perfect embodiment of how Democrats approach immigration. He’s both tough and deceitful. He’s hard on immigrants, having voted well in the Senate for stronger border control measures, like secure fencing and the rapid expulsion of the undocumented. Now as president, he’s adopted several of the same Trump border enforcement policies that he once promised to end.
But Biden is also, after spending 50 years in politics, unusually skilled at lying about what he’s doing to make it seem as if Republicans made him do it, or that his approach is somehow kinder and gentler than what Trump did in office, or would do again if reelected. Add it all up, and when it comes to Latinos and other immigration advocates, Biden has a lot to apologize for.
In 2020, Biden became the fifteenth straight Democratic nominee for president, basically every Democrat who has applied for the job dating back to 1962 won a majority of [the] Latino vote, but in Biden’s case it was a slim majority. He only got 61%. Now, a recent poll by the New York Times [and] Siena College shows Biden trailing Trump with Latino voters badly, in fact, with just 40% to Trump’s 46%. The Latino vote was Biden’s to lose, and boy did he lose it.
It doesn’t help the Biden has a habit of sticking his foot in his mouth when it comes to a sensitive issue like immigration where he wants to be both tough and compassionate. Good luck with that, Mr. President. Democrats do their best to defend or paper over anything that winds up on Biden’s blooper reel. Just look at what’s happening now, with one of Biden’s latest blunders. See during the recent State of the Union, which was otherwise strong and widely praised, Biden allowed part of his speech to be hijacked by the likes of representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The Georgia Republican heckled Biden from the cheap seats until the leader of the free world said out loud the name of Lakin Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University who was killed in February while jogging near the University of Georgia.
Riley’s alleged assailant is Jose Antonio Ybarra a 26-year-old undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, who has been arrested and charged with felony murder, false imprisonment and kidnapping. Conservatives are shamelessly exploiting the tragic death of this young woman to advance their false narrative that Biden is somehow proceeding over a quote, open border. And incredibly, Biden is playing along. He’s playing their game; he glibly told the nation in his State of the Union that Riley had been killed by quote “an illegal.”
See, it’s bad for him to use that adjective as a noun. It’s true of most adjectives that are typically used to describe a person, a human being. You shouldn’t say the blacks or the gays drop in a subject for crying out loud. When someone calls someone else in illegal, it sounds like something you’d hear from an 81-year-old white guy who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, before the advent of television, around blue-collar workers in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
MSNBC, Jonathan Capehart. Try to save Biden by throwing him a lifeline and asking him about using the word illegal. The President said he regretted using the word and he conceded he should have said quote undocumented immigrants. But he didn’t apologize like some of the left claim he did. If Republicans want to accuse Biden of opening the border, let them it’s a bum rap. What Biden really needs to be held accountable for are the sins that he and his administration have committed against immigrants. And those of us who believe that this country is better off because of them.
