The Biden administration has opened the United States’ border, and this has fundamentally threatened America’s national security in ways not felt since the early days of WWII. The implications of this open border are numerous and multifaceted. As should be expected, when a state does not enforce its sovereignty at its border, anyone can enter and do so anonymously. In this population of the many, many millions of people who have illegally crossed the border, there are—with certainty—criminals, agents of foreign powers, which undoubtedly include intelligence agents, potential saboteurs, soldiers, special operators, terrorists, and terrorist sympathizers. Also entering the U.S. are human traffickers and narcotics of every type, including fentanyl and other even more potent synthetic opioids and other drugs. In an era of COVID-19, the mass migration of people inevitably includes diseases, parasites, and potentially the next pandemic that will further stress the hospitals and health systems of the country.
America’s enemies must be thanking their lucky stars that Biden has essentially invited and welcomed into the U.S. anyone who can make it. The Biden administration has given America’s enemies the very tools they need to undermine the U.S. from within. Throughout history, America has fought its major wars with a secure homefront. Even with a population of immigrants, it was difficult for our enemies in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union to infiltrate American society for two reasons: first, because America policed its borders and protected its citizens; and second, because of the inherent patriotism that Americans, even from these very same nations, felt towards their new adopted home. The same cannot be said for today, as we do not know who is in the U.S., nor do we have the same sense of patriotic responsibility as we did a half a century ago. Now, it is reasonable to believe that some of these unvetted aliens may be here to serve as a fifth column.
Americans have not begun to comprehend the costs imposed on their society by the Biden administration’s open border policy. The gravity of the situation is unparalleled; it is, in fact, existential for the United States. The illegal immigrants are a tool of the Biden administration’s effort to forever alter the United States.
The greatest costs are to American citizens and the Constitutional Republic. What the American people are losing is their birthright—what has been bequeathed to them from the American Founders and from previous generations—generations that included millions of patriotic immigrants who aligned their loyalty to the Constitution, not a party. American political ideology, culture, principles, expectations, and institutions are under assault as never before. Indeed, the very idea of the United States is being fundamentally transformed by this policy of open borders. The dominant American ideology of political liberalism is being replaced by a form of communist tyranny. The duty of government, as defined in American political tradition and in U.S. founding documents, is to protect and serve American citizens. Today, the American people have lost the expectation that their government is working for them. That it will provide a commonwealth that will advance their interests, which include life, liberty, happiness, and security for American citizens. Instead, the American people have an administration that is working to destroy what their forebears created: a free and stable country with a free-market economy and a vibrant civil society in a land of unsurpassed natural beauty that was the envy of the world.
The Biden administration’s open border policy is being employed to change the U.S. from a constitutional republic to a tyranny dominated by a single political party, much like in Communist Party-led China.
The administration cannot do this alone. It has received substantial help. Its allies include a compliant and supportive media. Government officials who know laws and procedures are being violated and yet participate in law-breaking. Judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials that turn a blind eye because they support the administration or choose to acquiesce. Big city mayors and other officials of sanctuary cities now must incur the costs of those policies. A Republican Party establishment that is, de facto, controlled opposition and will never actually oppose the Biden administration but is content to walk one or two steps behind them. The entities, including the airlines that transport and house illegal immigrants. International and domestic non-governmental organizations and nonprofits that ensure the machinery of illegal immigration continues without interruption. As this invasion becomes the issue of the 2024 presidential campaign, many more facilitators will be revealed.
The result of this industrial-scale lawlessness is the erosion of the rule of law and the evaporation of the American political contract between the U.S. government and the American people. For so many generations, Americans gave respect and support to their government because they knew it was working to advance American interests, the foremost of which was the common good of the American people.
Biden’s open border policy is an existential national security threat because now tyranny knows that the door is open. Tyranny, even if it has an American face, will follow a sadly familiar trajectory. What will happen in the United States is what has occurred on the path to every tyranny: once the tyrant knows that there is no effective opposition, he will keep pushing until he has absolute control. Today’s open border will segue soon into other issues, compelling the American people to yield. Permanent one-party control will be the result, which will soon elide into tyrannical rule. The American Republic will be lost. What the Biden administration has done is appalling and in hostile opposition to America’s history and American political ideology, culture, values, principles, and traditions. The new Republican leadership in the House of Representatives and state officials, as in Texas, have to employ every measure they can to stop this lawlessness—everything is at stake.
James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are coauthors of the forthcoming Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.