Biden's Border Calculation

Recent weeks have brought indications that there are strains in the remaining Democrat coalition. Both Illinois Gov Pritzker and New York Gov Hochul have complained that the migrant incursions on the southern border are too big to handle, since once they cross, the migrants often head to New York or Chicago, where they stay and consume government services.

While neither Pritzker nor Hochul has pointed specifically to the de facto open border itself, both complain that there's no federal coordination in relocating the migrants, no policy that will allow the migrants to work, and no federal aid for the cities providing services to the migrants. On Monday, Pritzker outlined the problems in a letter to Biden:

On top of the 15,000 that have arrived in Chicago and Illinois over the last 13 months, we are now seeing busloads more migrants at increasingly higher rates being sent specifically to Chicago each day. Our state government has been forced to dedicate over $330 million to provide humanitarian aid — and that amount is increasing each day. . . . Though we have found temporary housing in existing buildings for a majority of the refugees, we are challenged to find additional housing for the continuous flow of people who keep coming and are now forced to sleep in police stations and on sidewalks. This situation is untenable and requires your immediate help beyond the coming work authorizations for some of the asylum seekers.

. . . First and foremost, I recommend that there be one person in the federal government who works directly for you in the White House who can lead the oversight of our nation’s efforts at the border. Right now, we have too many different federal department contacts — who are uncoordinated with one another — that handle various programs related to this humanitarian crisis. A single office with an identified leader must be assigned to work for the cities and states across the silos of government to manage the challenges we all face.

Surely Gov Pritzker is aware that Joe has already appointed a single person in the White House to handle the border crisis, Vice President Harris, who has never displayed much enthusiasm for the job. Part of the problem is that Harris hlds her position as representing the urban black faction of the Democrat coalition, but that community is the one directly affected by the open border influx in several ways. No matter, the white Democrats have never had blacks' interests in mind.

First, the inflow of refugees to New York and Chicago adds to the demand for basic social services in their inner cities. As both Pritzker and Hochul point out, the federal government isn't reimbursing the cities for increased use of police, public housing, and welfare services the migrants cause -- more deamnd for the same-size pie. This in turn directly decreases the level of services available to the existing black inner city residents.

Second, the lack of coordinated federal action is yielding control of the southern border to Mexican drug cartels. Per NewsNation earlier this year:

Drug cartels are controlling operations at the southern border as they force migrants across the Rio Grande at gunpoint and hold asylum seekers in stash houses, Border Patrol reports.

The cartel sees what is happening on the US side and takes advantage of the lack of resources, pushing people and drugs through the holes while border patrol is busy processing, according to Vice President of National Border Patrol Council, Art Del Cueto.

Per the New York Post,

Drug cartels are besieging the border by deliberately sending thousands of migrants a day to hand themselves over to Border Patrol officers in different US border towns, sources revealed to The Post.

The tactic is meant to tie up already overworked border agents so Mexico’s cartels can carry on their drug and human smuggling operations undisturbed in less populated areas, law enforcement officials explained.

. . . The mass give-ups are being fueled by cartel lies including about the Biden administration’s CBP One app to schedule immigration appointments, multiple law enforcement sources told The Post.

“They’re circulating false information that anyone waiting for a CBP One appointment can turn themselves in and get asylum,” one source revealed.

This facilitates the cartels' importing larger quantities of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine, which in turn reach black inner city areas in places like New York and Chicago at lower prices, putting more strains on the population there.

My question continues to be who benefits. Among those who almost certainly don't are the migrants themselves, who are sustained in often inhumane conditions for indefinite periods. The poor and working class in the northern cities don't, since the new migrants demand government services that had previously gone to their communities. To the extent that the migrants work, normally off the books, they take existing jobs from existing residents.

The non-profits who collect government payments to address migrant and homeless problems without ever solving them benefit, and they often benefit local politicians via family and other connections. Beyond that, the big beneficiaries have got to be the cartels who bring the drugs across the border and the gangs who transport them across the US and distribute them in the cities. But that in turn suggests to me that there are payoffs and kickbacks at all levels to keep the system in place, which go to politicians as well.

What Govs Pritzker and Hochul are pointing out is an essential conflict within the current Democrat coalition whereby an existing and long-standing political establishment continues to have the cards loaded against urban blacks, to the establishment's immense ongoing profit. The black politicians, especially the mayors of New York and Chicago, are making a mistake to trust their white Democrat governors to look after their interests.

For the time being, Joe is showing no interest in making any changes to the system he's created. I've got to assume he's making money out of things as they stand.