Funny how it costs more to open a border than build a wall

Back in the old days, when President Trump sought a piddly couple of billion to build a border wall, Democrats bellowed that it was too costly and America couldn’t afford it.

My, my, how things have changed.

These days we learn that if shutting down an open border with a wall is costly, prising open a border wider for all illegal comers is even more costly, and I’m not talking about the lifetime of taxpayer-paid “services” illegal border crossers are going to be requiring once they get in.

Right now, Joe Biden is calling for $14 billion to “protect” the border, and blaming the GOP-controlled Congress for not giving it to him.

Congress has resisted all right, and Byron York has pointed out an interesting reason for that which hasn’t gotten much attention:

Joe Biden has already been spending a lot of money on so-called border control.

According to York, in a Washington Examiner column:

In fiscal 2021, according to the report, Congress appropriated $4.869 billion for Border Patrol operations and southwest border surge funding. In fiscal 2022, that figure grew to $6.235 billion. In fiscal 2023, it grew to $7.153 billion. Altogether, that is a 47% increase in funding for the border during the Biden years. During that same time, the report notes, monthly encounters with illegal crossers at the border have grown from 163,043 in fiscal 2021 to 230,549 in fiscal 2022 to 266,762 in fiscal 2023. That is a 63% increase. And so far, in fiscal 2024, the number has jumped again, to 308,933.

So they’ve handed Biden billions after billions, raising the Border Patrol’s budget by 47% in Biden’s three years, but somehow ended up with a 63% increase in illegal border crossings through 2022 and probably more in 2023. More money, more illegal crossings, and it’s not a one-to-one-ratio, it’s exponentially higher on the migrant side the more cash that gets shoveled in.

We’ve seen this dynamic elsewhere — the more money that gets spent on schools, the lower their outcomes in test scores and literacy. We’ve also seen that the more money that gets spent on homeless programs, the more homeless a city has. Economist Thomas Sowell has described that as having all the poverty you’d like to pay for, and this border crisis spending would definitely would go into that category.

After all, if Joe Biden had wanted to invest his own money on something with this kind of a return, he’d have a outperforming portfolio.

More money equals more illegal border crossings, basically because Joe spends that money on speedier migrant “processing,” the way opening more checkout lines in a supermarket contributes to higher turnover.

York attributes it to the baseline of the problem which is policy:

 The current catastrophe resulted from one act: Upon taking office, Biden signaled to the world that if you enter the United States illegally, you will be allowed to stay. Since then, millions have come — lowest estimate 6 million, and perhaps many more than that — and only a small portion has been turned away. That has created an enormous magnet to draw immigrants, nearly all of whom do not have a legitimate claim of asylum. It is a problem entirely of Biden’s creation.

Biden blames much of the influx on poverty. Yes, lots of people in the poorer parts of the world would like to come to the U.S. for more money and a better life. But that has been true for a long time. What changed in January 2021 was that Biden opened the door — come, and you can stay.

Migrant satisfaction comes first. Actual border security contradicts the first purpose, so no border security.

So handing Joe $14 billion to secure the border, is in fact handing him $14 billion to open the border. That’s seven times what President Trump asked for for the construction of a border wall, which actually would have secured the border

Is it too much to say that giving Joe Biden twice the money for border contol which is what he is asking for, might just double or triple the illegal border crossings now seen going on in the states? 

It doesn’t seem as though there could be any other outcome.

York notes that Republicans are onto this, which is a good thing.

Now, Johnson and his fellow House Republicans have prepared a report on how much money has already been spent on the border during the Biden years. The spending has been going up, up, up, and it just brings more illegal border crossers. “Congress has appropriated more funds, always beyond President Biden’s budget requests, and seen record crossings at the border,” the report says.

Now it’s time for Republicans to get the word out about this disastrous spending to the voters.

Image: Bruce de Torres, via Flickr // public domain