[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]

Strange things are happening on the immigration front. The Biden administration is going to build a wall!

Before you start cheering, please note that they’re only going to build a 20-mile section in Starr County along the Rio Grande in Texas. That’s one percent of our two-thousand-mile border, so … yeah.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told us on Thursday that

The United States Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector is an area of high illegal entry. Therefore, I must use my authority … to install additional physical barriers and roads in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

Biden admin admits ‘acute and immediate need’ for border wall—despite campaign vow that ‘not another foot’ would be built, NY Post, October 5, 2023

Today's cover: Biden admin admits ‘acute and immediate need’ for border wall — despite campaign vow that ‘not another foot’ would be built https://t.co/Af1zMTqTb8 pic.twitter.com/oEdXdiklKt

— New York Post (@nypost) October 6, 2023

Hey, that’s great, Mr. Secretary, but … hasn’t there been ”high illegal entry” for, like, coming up to three years now? You only just noticed?

Not content to stun and confuse us with that, the DHS also told us on Thursday that it will start deporting Venezuelan illegals. This, they said ”follows a decision by authorities from Venezuela to accept the return of Venezuelan nationals” [Biden admin says it will start shipping illegal Venezuela migrants back to homeland, NY Post, October 6, 2023].

Biden admin says it will start shipping illegal Venezuela migrants back to homeland https://t.co/ssm6K1Cuum pic.twitter.com/d52gMZDMTS

— New York Post (@nypost) October 5, 2023

Well, isn’t that special. Presumably, we leaned on the Venezuelan government in some way to extract that favor—in some way we were never able to lean on them before.

We, the U.S.A.: a third of a billion people, the world’s greatest commercial, financial, and military power, versus them, Venezuela, a craphole excuse of a country with thirty million people not yet starved to death or murdered, ranked 159th in the world on per capita GDP.

What’s going on here? Has the Democratic National Committee discovered that even Democrat voters are getting wise to the Great Replacement? Did the mayors of big-Blue cities like New York and Chicago vow to commit collective seppuku if Biden didn’t give them a break?

Or has some new universal principle kicked in saying that henceforth every U.S. President, when 68 percent of the way through his first term, must build a few miles of border wall?

After all, this is about the point in Donald Trump’s presidency when he started building wall.

Whatever, it’s delicious to see the Open Borders crowd moaning and squirming.

Here was the response from Mexico front man and U.S. Representative—and, I can’t resist mentioning, recent carjacking victim—Henry Cuellar:

A border wall is a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem. It will not bolster border security in Starr County. I continue to stand against the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars on an ineffective border wall.

The Biden administration says it is using executive power to allow border wall construction in Texas, by Valerie Gonzalez, AP, October 5, 2023

The democrats would have impeached Donald Trump for this and you all know it. https://t.co/UP01laQFVD

— Andrew Wilkow (@WilkowMajority) October 5, 2023

Having some acquaintance with actual history I can, if he likes, tell Rep. Cuellar what an actual 14th century solution to a mass invasion across a nation’s border would have looked like.

He can get in touch with me at VDARE.com [email].

Meanwhile, far from the southern border, a sheriff in Michigan (Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, right) is ringing the alarm on well-organized gangs of illegal aliens from South America coming into the USA to commit burglaries. It’s happening all over, says the sheriff:

Usually, it’s two or three people working together, with one of them stationed outside as a driver … around the country, in some situations, they’ve been caught in areas with no bail anymore, and they get out and then get arrested again. The prosecutor in one case I happen to know about, in Nassau County, New York, said they actually laughed at her as they walked out of court.

Sheriff Sounds Alarm on Gangs of Illegal Aliens Getting into U.S. through Border to Burglarize Americans, by John Binder, October 3, 2023

Nassau County? Hey, that’s the next county to mine! Time to get down to the indoor range for some handgun practice.

But there’s been some more bad news on the legal immigration front. This concerns a program called OPT, that’s Optional Practical Training, a gift to the USA from the Obama administration.

The deal is that foreign students in American colleges can work here in the USA for one year after college on terms hugely advantageous to employers. The employer doesn’t have to pay them any fixed minimum wage. They don’t have to pay them any wage; they can hire them in as unpaid interns. If the foreigner’s degree is in STEM—science, technology, engineering, or math—they can work for three years on these terms.

Of course, employers love this. Did I mention that the employer doesn’t have to pay any Social Security taxes on OPT workers?

What’s in it for the foreign worker? To get the employer to sponsor him for a future real work permit. Then, green card and citizenship. It’s back door immigration.

The colleges love OPT too, of course. Foreign students pay full tuition, see?

So there’s something to like here for everyone—well, everyone except U.S. citizen graduates. Why hire those suckers when you can get an OPT from the Philippines for next to nothing—a worker who’ll be desperate to please you so you’ll sponsor his green card?

OK, here’s the bad news. Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, which represents STEM employees in the U.S., has been challenging the OPT program since 2014 on the grounds that it harms citizen graduates and is anyway illegal, having been created by regulatory fiat by the Department of Homeland Security, not by law passed in Congress.

The litigation eventually got to the U.S. Supreme Court. Monday this week the Court refused to hear the case, so … it’s dead.

Quote from one of the legal websites reporting this:

This is good news for the foreign nationals who highly value the post-graduation programs and companies in the STEM industries who continue to struggle to find enough highly skilled workers.

Litigation Against OPT, STEM OPT Programs Ends With U.S. Supreme Court Denial of Petition to Revie, JDSupra.com, October 5, 2023

Yo, counsellor: Perhaps if STEM graduates could look forward to a job market that is hospitable to them, instead of to one that favors low-paid—or even un-paid—foreigners, those companies would have all the job applications they need from American graduates.

Cast down your bucket where you are!

Listener: Any time you think that illegal immigration is an intractable mess, take a look at the legal variety.

It’s every bit as bad; but in a way that’s less visible, more insidious, and at least as destructive.

John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.

For years he’s been podcasting at Radio Derb, now available at VDARE.com for no charge. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.

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