Very soon, “Catholic” President Biden will address Americans at the 2024 State of the Union.
No matter what spin he puts on things, Americans must know that the state of our nation is gravely imperiled by many of Biden’s failed policies – most especially, his misguided “compassion” regarding immigration that egregiously violates Catholic social teaching at the expense of our nation.
Just recently, 22-year-old Laken Riley became the latest victim to Biden’s radical open border policies. The deans-list nursing student was brutally murdered by an illegal immigrant who’d previously been arrested by ICE and then released. Commonsense border enforcement policies could have prevented Riley’s death.
Instead, the Biden Administration’s shocking refusal to protect America’s borders has allowed the insidious problem to reach nearly every state and nearly every city across America. It has resulted in millions of illegal crossings per year, strained the U.S. economy and infrastructure, and allowed dangerous criminals, gang members, human traffickers, drug mules and even terrorists to cross with practically zero oversight. Even the FBI recently confirmed that the border crisis represented a major national security threat. These concerns were heightened by the reality that 294 illegal aliens on the terrorist watchlist were apprehended at the Southwest border since 2021 alone – and “those are only the individuals Border Patrol agents have caught.”
This inaction not only threatens national security, but it also insults the honest efforts and work of those who respect the law and pursue legal immigration like my wife and me. When we adopted our two daughters from Haiti over 20 years ago, the bureaucratic demands for legal immigration were beyond the pale, even though the orphans we adopted were anything but threats to national security.
But – we believed in America. So, we completed the arduous process out of respect for the obligations that immigrants and their families owe their new homelands. We expected our nation to similarly understand its obligation towards us.
Sadly, our leaders, and even many Catholics, have abandoned their obligation to defend our borders and protect Americans for the sake of the common good. Worse, many believe that this lackluster response is condoned by Catholic social teaching – which couldn’t be further from the truth.
The Church’s guiding principles on immigration require that those with the right to emigrate respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country receiving them, obey its laws, and help with its civic burdens. The Church also teaches that nations are morally obligated to secure their borders and have a responsibility to determine who enters and leaves the country for the sake of national security. This is not extraordinary – every single nation-state, including Vatican City, has limits on immigration as they seek the common good.
Unfortunately, both migrants and governments are failing in their respective responsibilities. Many immigrants are refusing to do the bare minimum – the Department of Homeland Security lost track of over 177k immigrants from 2022 to 2023 – while hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants surge our open borders every month with no willingness to obey U.S. immigration laws or assist in carrying civic burdens.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has ignored, if not encouraged, the dangerous efforts of charitable organizations assisting immigrants. Rather than addressing root causes and encouraging the pursuit of legal pathways to citizenship, many of these organizations have helped develop lawless, often cash-only economies designed to avoid detection, hide income from taxation, and illegally qualify for government benefits.
This system pressures legal immigrant workers and employers seeking to obey the law and “assist in carrying civic burdens” to similarly ignore their obligations. My family felt this pressure firsthand. After our painstaking obedience to the law in adopting, one of our immigrant daughters was later subjected to a bureaucratic nightmare when she applied for a job because the U.S. government lost the paperwork we had carefully accumulated and submitted.
This hellish experience was additionally painful when contrasted with the red carpet the Biden Administration has rolled out for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are invading our nation with zero respect for our laws, their obligations, or the necessity of pursuing legal citizenship.
This is not compassionate. The Biden Administration must stop enabling outright, dangerous lawlessness, and address the root problems driving people from foreign nations en masse. No longer can Biden hide behind the curtain of “compassion” or pervert Catholic social teaching to excuse dangerous policies and downplay the obligations of nations and immigrants.
Sadly, President Biden will likely use the State of the Union address to perpetuate the idea that his deadly border policies are just, necessary, and successful. Or he may suggest that he hasn’t been in charge for three years and claim that President Trump and congressional Republicans are responsible for his shocking failures.
Thankfully, many Americans already see through these lies – and many rank President Biden’s handling of the border as his administration’s biggest failure. And no matter how well Biden spins the immigration apocalypse at the State of the Union, Americans will remember Laken Riley and all the other victims of Biden’s refusal to follow church teachings at the expense of those he’s sworn to protect.
The Honorable Tim Huelskamp, Ph.D. has 30-plus years of campaign, policy, and legislative experience at both the federal and state levels and is a well-known national leader, policymaker, communicator, and campaign advisor. Huelskamp represented the 1st District in Congress for 6 years and is currently a Senior Advisor to both CatholicVote and Bienvenido. Tim and his family are active members at their Catholic parish in Kansas.