Please help us bring legal and moral clarity to the border.
Joe Biden often seems confused. And his confusion has real-life consequences. We see them at America’s border, and increasingly in every major American city. We see them in the broken budget of New York City; in the tent cities springing up throughout Los Angeles and California towns; in the nearly 100,000 overdose deaths, many of them due to fentanyl trafficked over our southern border. We see the consequence of his confusion when the president apologizes to the alleged murderer of Laken Riley for the sin of referring to him as an “illegal” — which he was and is. Joe Biden is confused about the distinctions between American citizens and everyone else.
National Review has never been confused about America’s border. We have never been confused by words like “undocumented.” We know the difference between legal and illegal entry. And we have never given up on the defense of the American people’s right to choose who joins them as citizens in the future.
That’s why we’re able to give you clear coverage. And we are asking if you will please help us continue to bring legal and moral clarity to the border — and much more, of course — by donating to our webathon.
Mark Krikorian will tell you that the Senate’s compromise border bill would only maintain the status quo of a compromised border. Our editor in chief, Rich Lowry, grasps and conveys how Democrats have fallen prey to a warped morality that it is somehow illegitimate to enforce the laws that exist in this country. Rich and the rest of us know that the current border crisis is the fault of the Biden administration, which used its first weeks in power to undo the Trump administration’s executive orders and to institute its own on the border. It was in February 2021 that Biden pioneered his signature approach to immigration: using parole to let more migrants join family members in the United States, issuing them distant court dates for asylum hearings that nobody expects to happen.
The neglect of our laws creates the conditions whereby the world’s most desperate people put their lives and their children’s lives into the hands of the most loathsome and exploitative traffickers. We will never stop calling out the Biden administration for a policy that is not just bad for Americans, but a humanitarian disaster for migrants themselves.
Once the Biden regime began building tunnels underneath American immigration law, the resulting stampede of migration from all over the world began trampling down the very geographic features that had protected the U.S. from mass migration from South America. Human and drug traffickers, and a massive wave of humanity, have now beaten a path through the previously unpassable Darien Gap, which separates the two continents. Now tens of thousands of migrants from China, Haiti, and even Russia take advantage of lax South American visa policies and this dangerous runway to make their run for our border.
Unlike some others on the left and even the right, National Review understands that America is not just an economic opportunity zone. If it were, then merely the desire or the incentive to work would qualify everyone for entry. America is something more precious. That’s why we ask people who legally travel here to have a visa and sign our guestbook. Those who wish to join us as citizens have to take an oath of allegiance, abjuring all other allegiances and fidelity “to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty.” They swear their allegiance to our Constitution and our laws. That is only fitting.
We will not stop fighting until America has a sane immigration policy, one that is enforced vigorously and fairly at the border. That is the only policy that is fair to Americans, and it’s the only truly humane policy for migrants.
So please, join us in this critical mission today. There are two ways to do so. One is to give directly to National Review, a for-profit enterprise (theoretically) that engages in political advocacy. Contributions to NR magazine and our website are not tax deductible, but they are vital to our work and greatly appreciated. The other way is to make a tax-deductible gift to National Review Institute, the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit think tank our founder, William F. Buckley Jr., created to support NR’s mission. And if you can’t decide, by all means, feel free to give, in any amount, to both.
America is a nation. It’s our home. And we at National Review will never stop protecting it as one. Thank you for your support.