photo by: Contributed

Froma Harrop

There were fewer arrests at the Southern border in July than in the last month of the Trump presidency. Shelters have seen a massive drop in migrants. And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is having a hard time finding enough recent arrivals to fill buses headed north.

The reason for this development is President Joe Biden’s new border policy, which basically stopped migrants from asking for asylum if they crossed the border illegally. Vice President Kamala Harris just called for even tighter restrictions.

Still the specter of uncontrolled immigration, even when that’s no longer the case, continues to haunt much of the voting public. And Donald Trump polls better on the issue than Biden’s vice president.

Is this fair? Perhaps not, but it’s understandable. Biden spent much of his early presidency watching “caravans” of migrants march over the border, claim asylum and then be given dates for asylum hearings years in the future. What took him so long to stop that easy entry remains a mystery, including to his supporters.

Biden did champion that bipartisan immigration bill, the strongest border enforcement measure in decades. Seeing calm at the border a threat to his campaign, Trump then had Republicans kill it. In February, he called the legislation “a death wish for the Republican Party.” Trump needed a chaotic border for personal reasons and cowed Republican lawmakers into providing him one.

When the border became quieter than when he left office, Trump switched to racist attacks on the migrants themselves. For those more attuned to his sabotage of a genuine fix, he invented a fraudulent reason for killing the bill. It was the provision that would have shut the border once encounters reached a seven-day average of 5,000.

That relied on confusing the public — and many legislators — about the definition of “encounters.” To quote Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson at the time, “Apparently, we’re concocting some sort of deal to allow the president to shut down the border after 5,000 people break the law … that’d be a million more illegals into our country every year before we take remedial measures.”

That was untrue.

Encounters are not green lights into the country. An encounter may be with someone who attempts to enter the country illegally or is otherwise deemed inadmissible. Trying to sneak in is not the same as succeeding. Some may be processed for further immigration review, but most are detained or sent back. And a single person who repeatedly gets caught can represent several encounters.

Harris says she would tighten the border further, adding 1,500 Border Patrol agents, 4,300 asylum officers and 100 immigration judges. A shortage of such authorities enabled much of the mess. And she vows as president to sign that serious immigration bill.

Back to the bottom line: Migration at the border, measured by encounters, is lower than it was during Trump. Do voters want as president a big mouth who tanked the tough immigration bill and now — with the facts no longer in his favor — has resorted to clown talk about migrants eating pets? Or do they want the vice president whose administration went far in getting the job done and who promises even more controls if elected?

Republican-leaning voters should strongly consider whether a Republican nominee who came right out and said that an effective immigration bill would have been “a death wish” for his party should lead the country. There’s a thing called the national interest and another thing called Donald Trump’s interest. They’re not the same thing.

Hats off to the growing number of prominent Republicans who recognize the difference. And extra kudos to those who are publicly supporting Harris for the good of the country.

— Froma Harrop is a syndicated columnist with Creators.