Biden's flagging economy: Despite warning signs following excessive federal government pandemic-era spending, a recession never materialized. Inflation has been partly tamed (though at the cost of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve). The jobless rate is good, wage growth is decent, and yet still, voters just don't feel like the economy has improved much for them. People who want to buy houses that better fit their needs feel locked into place by the previous era of low interest rates, and they can't afford new places due to the high interest rates that will most likely stick around for a while. Groceries are expensive. Car and home insurance prices have skyrocketed.
What's an incumbent president to do, when running for reelection, if voters are dissatisfied with the economy he's presided over?
Well, if you're Joe Biden, the answer looks a little bit like: distract voters by cracking down on immigration.
Back in February, Gallup reported that immigration had surged to the top spot on voters' lists of priorities for the first time in five years. Meanwhile, Pew Research Center data from the same rough time period conflicts with that finding a bit, ranking the economy as voters' top priority (with the border crisis not far behind it). It's not a stretch to say Biden is worried about his polling numbers and isn't sure how to bring the economic relief to which voters might respond positively (nor on the timeline required to get his credit at the ballot box).
So immigration it is.
"The entry of any noncitizen into the United States across the southern border is hereby suspended and limited," reads Biden's latest executive order, issued yesterday. "When border encounters between ports of entry hit an average of 2,500 per day over a seven-day period, migrants will no longer be allowed to seek asylum unless they qualify for a narrow exception or request an appointment at a port of entry through an app (a process that has been glitchy and cumbersome)," writes Reason's Fiona Harrigan.
After a sustained period of fewer people attempting to come in via ports of entry (1,500 people or fewer per day on average over the course of a week, for two weeks), asylum seeking will be reopened. Right now, that daily number is hovering around 3,500, having been closer to 3,800 for much of last month (and 8,000 daily crossings for much of December).
Biden's right that there's a massive problem with the administrative capacity to process these asylum seekers: "The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service affirmative asylum backlog is now over 1 million cases and growing, with over 300,000 applications filed prior to 2021 still pending," reads Biden's executive order. "Pending cases [in immigration courts] more than doubled from the end of Fiscal Year 2016 to the end of Fiscal Year 2020 and doubled again between that time and the end of Fiscal Year 2023."
Generally speaking, when a migrant crosses into this country and claims asylum, they stay in the U.S. as they await their court appearance where they will then argue their case. Backlogs in the courts means, in essence, that they might stay in the country for years, caught in a sort of legal limbo. Without work authorization—something under the jurisdiction of the federal government—it can be very hard for them to actually begin to build lives for themselves versus being reliant on handouts (like those provided in New York City, at significant cost to lawful-resident taxpayers).
After Biden's long legacy of attacking Donald Trump's immigration policies, including restrictions on asylum seekers, this looks a bit like hypocrisy—or like an effort to curry favor with Trump voters and fence-sitters concerned by the influx at the southern border. Biden's accidentally letting not only his self-interest show but also his deep yearning for reelection.
Scenes from New York: Don't mess with me, NYPD!
("The crusade against smoking is only the currently most virulent example of one of the most malignant forces in American life: left neo-Puritanism," wrote Murray Rothbard back in the '90s. "Puritanism was famously defined by my favorite writer, H.L. Mencken, as 'the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.'")
QUICK HITS
- "Decolonization is a word that's become as common these days as social justice. But what does it mean?" asks Ayaan Hirsi Ali at The Free Press. "Gal Beckerman of The Atlantic has written about the Marxist origins of this concept and one of its chief proponents, Frantz Fanon. Fanon, Beckerman writes, is 'the patron saint of political violence,' and his 'concepts have provided intellectual ballast and moral justification for actions that most people would simply describe as terror.'"
- How a family business in disarray became the Birkenstock empire, courtesy of Bloomberg.
- On surfing and draft dodging and roofing and true legend Jock Sutherland, by my favorite writer, The New Yorker's William Finnegan (author of Barbarian Days).
- "I endorse Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden. Get in loser, we are stopping Joe Biden," says the Libertarian Party Chairwoman, Angela McArdle, who says "Donald Trump…said he's a libertarian. He has basically endorsed us." Listen to the whole convoluted monologue here, including the part where she dons a literal clown nose.
- Throwback:
- AI world developments:
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