The Left's Latest Demand: Open Borders via Visa Overstay
The latest outrage on the Left is over a man who overstayed a 90-day visa issued 16 years ago.
For four years, the Democrats alternated between denying and defending the fact that our southern border was open, allowing 15 million illegal aliens to pour into our country throughout President Biden’s term. The border was opened by design, as even the New York Times now admits. It stemmed from the Democrats’ new conviction that crossing the border illegally should not be a crime but at worst a “civil offense” if anything.
This wasn’t just talk. On Day 1 in office, President Biden undid every one of President Trump’s highly effective border security measures. Chaos—alternately denied and defended—ensued.
All that was instantly memory-holed when President Trump won the 2024 election on the strength of a promise of mass deportations. The American people were fed up with the open border and fed up with the enormous cost of competing with tens of millions of illegal aliens for wages, housing, and health care.
When President Trump took office, he, too, made good on his promise. He immediately secured the border, getting illegal border crossings down from 5,000 a day to zero.
So the Democrats changed tack. They knew that Biden’s open border was a losing issue at the polls, but they were still committed to the concept of open borders. What they needed was a way to sound like they opposed it while actually undermining any method of enforcing our borders. What they did was deny that they had ever supported the open border (though nearly every Democratic candidate in 2020 promised to decriminalize illegal border crossing). You started hearing things on CNN like, “Of course, no one supports an open border!” and “Of course, we have a right to enforce our immigration laws!” It wasn’t enforcing the border that was the problem, they now began to insist; it was that Trump was deporting people who had managed to cross the border illegally during the Biden years. They must be allowed to stay.
You can’t deport 11 million people!
Of course, the only way to enforce our immigration laws is for there to be consequences for people who break them. It doesn’t really work just to ask people nicely not to come, as our erstwhile Border Czar and Vice President Kamala Harris quickly found out. Allowing anyone to stay who makes it illegally across the border is basically a big neon welcome sign to the cartels, something the American people understand, which is why most continue to support Trump’s deportation agenda.
And when it became clear that actually, the American people do support deporting people who crossed the border illegally—which is a crime in this country—the Left changed tack again. This time, they would pretend not to support open borders by agreeing that some tiny amount of people could be deported—but only the absolute worst of the worst. You started to hear Democrats say, “Well of course, we support deporting violent criminals”—just not the other kind of criminals, the kind who steal your identity, or traffic in child pornography, or the kind who commit immigration fraud.
This is not how people who think we have a right to enforce our immigration laws talk. It’s how people who support an open border but don’t want you to know they do talk.
Their latest position seems to be that they will begrudgingly concede you can arrest and deport criminals, but not anyone who came here illegally, violated our immigration laws, but committed no crimes since, and certainly not anyone who comes here on a visa and overstays its terms. They must be gifted the right to stay forever.
Hence the latest case causing outrage on the Left, the story of Seamus Culleton, an Irish national who entered the U.S. in 2009 under the Visa Waiver Program, which allows you to stay in the U.S. for 90 days. But Culleton stayed on—and on, for 16 more years. He finally got around to applying for a green card last year after getting married, during which process he was issued a work permit. But he was arrested by ICE and issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on September 10 on the grounds that he violated the terms of the Visa Waiver Program. Beneficiaries of the program crucially waive any right to contest their removal other than on the grounds of asylum, which Culleton isn’t claiming. (“This waiver is the linchpin of the program; it allows VWP participants to enter the country expeditiously while streamlining their removal,” as the case law explains.)
It’s a pretty cut and dry case.
Not to hear the Left talk about it.
The liberal punditry is absolutely up in arms over this story. Appalling! Kafkaesque! The man didn’t even have a parking ticket! How dare ICE detain this man for five months! Stories of his suffering in detention are making the rounds on Twitter.
I am sure ICE detention is no picnic. But Culleton’s detention is entirely voluntary. He can leave at any time—and go home to Ireland. Indeed, according to DHS, Culleton was offered the chance to instantly leave ICE detention—the Trump administration offers illegal aliens $2,600 to self deport and a free flight home—but Culleton chose to stay in ICE custody, citing an attachment to his plastering business in Boston and his wife, who is a U.S. citizen.
He is the Left’s new poster child for Trump’s inhumane immigration agenda.
But think for a minute about what the Left is arguing: Because he got away with breaking our laws for 16 years, we have forfeited the right to enforce them.
It’s open borders via visa overstay. Open borders for anyone who managed to get here illegally. Once you’re in, you will have the full force of the Democratic Party and their satrapies in the mainstream media defending your right to stay—so long as you don’t murder someone.
Folks: If there’s no accountability for breaking our laws, we are not a nation of laws. If there are no consequences for flouting our rules, we don’t have them. This is just an open border by another name.
Batya, you likely don’t realize this, but you are legendary in the Fifth Column chat. We’re glad you’ve joined substack, keep it up!
One of the things that amazes me most about the Left is they have absolutely no respect or regard for the rule of law. They truly believe their emotions should trump the laws democratically passed by Congress under the Constitution.