George W. Bush, 43rd president of the U.S., has long been known as a booster of open borders on behalf of his big business cronies. In retirement, he is upping his game through the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative headquartered in Dallas. On February 4, the director of that institute, Laura Collins, published an op-ed in the El Paso Times calling for the elimination of the CDC’s Title 42 protocols, which have been the single greatest factor in mitigating the onslaught of illegal migrants over the past year.
Title 42, specifically Section 262 of U.S. Code Title 42, prohibits entry into the United States of individuals where “there is a serious danger to the introduction of [a communicable] disease.” Put into place during the Trump years early in the Covid pandemic, Title 42 allows the immediate expulsion of illegal border crossers back to Mexico. It has been, in the words of ImmigrationReform.com, “perhaps the only thing stopping the border crisis from turning into an international catastrophe.”
Consequently, Joe Biden, being Joe Biden, has wanted to abolish it. Unfortunately for him, his devotion to SCIENCE! has gotten in the way: the CDC has wanted to keep it.
So, although failing to eliminate the order, he has instead diminished its enforcement. According to CIS.org, in April 2020, just after the first CDC order, fully 91 percent of illegals were being expelled. By December 2021, near the end of Biden’s first year in office, that percentage had dwindled to less than 44 percent.
Still, prominent figures like Bush 43 want the policy ended outright. In Collins’s op ed, she writes:
The Biden Administration should exercise its unilateral power to . . . remove the arbitrary and harmful border policies under Title 42. The United States shouldn’t deny vulnerable migrants our protection under the guise of containing an infectious disease. . . . .
But then she has to admit:
Make no mistake, reopening ports of entry and reverting to normal processing of border crossers under immigration law will cause initial capacity constraints. Pent-up demand for asylum may temporarily increase the numbers of migrants. [emphasis added]
She says the Biden administration, however, “has effective tools to manage this [increase]”, and she appears quite confident they will do so.
Riiiiight.
Ms. Collins and her boss will no doubt be encouraged to learn that their ideological fellow traveler Charles Schumer, Senate majority leader, along with dozens of his Democratic colleagues, agrees. In a letter to Biden posted just yesterday, February 16, he wrote:
It is time to undo the United States’ draconian immigration policies, particularly policies introduced under the Trump Administration, such as the use of Title 42, that circumvent our humanitarian obligations.
At first glance, Bush and Schumer only look like strange bedfellows. Under the covers, they’re all the same.