Candidate Kamala Harris is doing her best to project strength at the border. But it is far too little, too late. The largest border crisis in U.S. history—probably the largest such event in human history—is not the result of incompetence or failure. It was launched in January 2021 on purpose.

Since then, there have been more than ten million “encounters” of inadmissible aliens at our borders, millions of whom have been—and continue to be—unlawfully allowed to enter the United States. This did not happen because the Biden-Harris Administration and its impeached Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, made mistakes or miscalculations. That would have been bad enough. But the ongoing border crisis is the result of principle, not incompetence. 

There are only two ways of looking at the immigration issue overall. Either no one in the world outside the U.S. has the right to move here, but we make certain limited exceptions, or everyone in the world has the right to move here, with certain limited exceptions.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which still technically sets the terms of federal law, is based on the former assumption: no foreigner has a right to move here, and “We the People” decide if there are specific grounds to admit a limited number of people. Maybe they have a relative living here or a job skill that would benefit our country. There are varying opinions about how to manage new entries—what the numbers should be, what the categories should be, and so on—but all of those differences of opinion are based on the same assumption: immigration is a privilege, granted by the American people through laws enacted by their elected representatives.

This administration’s approach to immigration is based on the opposite view: that everyone in the world has a right to move here if they choose to, and the American people have no right to place limits on immigration, apart from those related to basic safety such as keeping out terrorists, violent criminals, or people with highly contagious, deadly diseases. Even those exceptions are highly circumscribed.

Strictly speaking this is not “open borders,” though that description may do as shorthand. Instead, the Biden-Harris approach would be better described as one of “unlimited immigration”: any limits on the level of immigration are taken to be morally indefensible, and circumventing those limits by any means available is considered a moral duty.

The fruit of this ideology, which not only flies in the face of the Constitution but negates America’s very right to exist, is all around us. The most common pretext for subverting the people’s will on wanting limits on immigration is asylum; the chief practical means of achieving unlimited immigration are unlawful releases from detention and unlawful grants of mass, categorical parole.

By law, the president has the power to keep out anyone he thinks should be excluded, but can let in only those he has been specifically authorized by Congress to admit. The Biden-Harris Administration has inverted this principle: They have acted for three and a half years on the belief that the president may let in anyone he wants, but may keep out aliens only for very narrow reasons.

Just one example among many: The CBP One parole scheme seeks to funnel “legal” aliens through ports of entry who would ostensibly otherwise cross the border illegally. When this illegal program was started in May 2023, 1,000 inadmissible aliens were given appointments per day. The next month, that number was increased to 1,250, and then later that month increased again to 1,450 a day, that is, more than half a million a year.

These numbers have no basis in law nor did Congress even authorize the president to come up with a number, as in the case of refugee resettlement. The administration has simply made up numbers for how many inadmissible aliens to admit, based mainly on how quickly they can be processed and released, and changes those numbers at will.

This is illustrative of the Biden-Harris approach to immigration, which might be put this way: “We get to let in anyone we want, in any number, for any reason, and we dare Congress to do anything about it.” Needless to say, all of this flies in the face of Harris’s recent claims that she is the only candidate who can restore integrity to the border. For nearly four years, she has helped to do the opposite, creating the kind of immigration system no self-governing people should accept.