How Biden’s Border Crisis is Affecting Every One of Us

June 5, 2023

By Dale Wilcox

In Joe Biden’s America, every town is a border town, and every citizen is affected by the ongoing crisis at our U.S. southern border.

Since Biden took office over two years ago, millions of illegal aliens have crossed the border, and many more are on the way. This unprecedented surge of foreign nationals has touched every facet of American life, even for people who live far away from where the illegal entries are occurring.

Most Americans look at what’s happening at the border and despair, but many don’t prioritize the issue in their daily lives. Those who live far away from the border tend to discount the effect that it will have on them, but that is a mistake. Just ask the mother of Kayla Hamilton, a 20-year-old autistic woman who was allegedly murdered earlier this year by an MS-13 gang member in Maryland.

“This could have been anyone’s daughter,” Hamilton’s mother Tammy Nobles said in recent testimony before Congress.  I don’t want any other parents to live the nightmare that I am living.”

Hamilton’s alleged killer was released into the U.S. by the Biden Administration as an unaccompanied minor. Her death can be directly traced to the anti-border policies coming from this administration. Unfortunately, Hamilton’s family is far from alone in dealing with this kind of anguish. In the last month, there have been high-profile illegal alien arrests in Alabama, Florida, North Dakota, and Maryland, all states far away from the southern border. The alleged crimes include first-degree rape, negligently operating a motor vehicle and causing serious injury or death.

There is still much we don’t know about these incidents, but we do know that one of the alleged perpetrators was released into the U.S. by Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and another was previously released into the country by the Obama Administration. Yet again, American lives have been destroyed because the federal government released unvetted illegal aliens into the country. Even Americans who are not directly victimized by criminal illegal aliens are still paying a price for America’s border crisis.

Illegal immigration and mass immigration more generally strain social services, reduce wages, and increase costs for American citizens. As Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) pointed out recently, a surge in rent prices over the past quarter century correlates with the surge of illegal immigration we have seen during that time period.

There are millions of illegal aliens currently living in the country, and many of them are competing for housing in cities that already have high costs of living. Americans making five-figure incomes have largely been priced out of the housing market in many American cities, and mass immigration has exacerbated this issue.

While most sanctuary cities are located far away from the southern border, the anti-border policies emanating from those cities have had devastating costs for working-class and poor citizens and legal residents.

New York City, America’s most dangerous sanctuary city, is expected to spend billions of dollars on services for illegal aliens over the next two years. New York has been filling up its hotels with illegal aliens for months, upending the plans of Americans, including a couple who had reserved a hotel in Orange County for their wedding. New York City has also been housing illegal aliens in school gyms, disrupting the education of the city’s children, and outraging parents, many of whom likely never imagined the border crisis would affect them so directly.

Chicago, another major sanctuary city, is also facing a revolt from residents over its plans to house illegal immigrants on the city’s Southside. Residents of these cities are beginning to wake up and realize that illegal immigration is not just an abstract concept, but is in fact a major threat to their way of life.

Every state and city in the country has been touched by illegal immigration in one form or another. Americans who don’t believe the illegal immigration crisis will ultimately come for them are in for a rude awakening.

Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.

Also published at The Association of Mature American Citizens, June 5, 2023.