Young decries Democrats' sanctuary cities and "open border" policies
Analyzing the article
The Hill
Our Analysis: 2 Fallacies
1 President Biden has extended Democrats' sanctuary city policies to the southern border. It's not complicated; the two are connected.
Combined, Democrats have created a self-reinforcing crisis that is beyond their willingness to control. Instead, they are desperately trying to find someone else to solve what their 2 leftist extremists won't let them fix.
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Current Washington negotiations are really about getting President Biden to simply do his job. America has been reduced to the point of having to haggle with its president over something he is supposed to be doing in the first place: Protect the border.
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1 There is a direct line from Democrats' policies to America's current illegal immigration crisis. This line started with so-called "sanctuary cities." According to World Population Review, these cities feature laws that "obstruct immigration enforcement and people from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)"...
1 Obviously, such "sanctuary" actions are an incentive to illegal immigration. However, there was always a deterrent that limited the impact of these sanctuary offers: illegal immigrants had to reach them first. Effectively, these jurisdictions were writing checks that they would never (or rarely) have to cash. That is until Biden took office.
1 As soon as the Biden-Harris administration was sworn in, it took numerous actions that reduced the deterrent... halting border wall construction, suspending new enrollments in the "Remain in Mexico" program, ending the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with several Central America nations and more. The administration's message was as clear as a welcome mat.
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...it is clear Democrats will not take action -- at either the local or the federal levels -- beyond the actions they have already taken, and which have created America's illegal immigration crisis. They will not because 2 they are beholden to extreme leftist elitists to whom these actions are not a revelation but a validation of their open border principles.
- Causal oversimplification • This argument implies that sanctuary city policies were not previously causing major issues with illegal immigration only because immigrants had difficulty reaching the sanctuary areas. But it then suggests that once Biden removed some federal border security measures, it enabled the sanctuary city "checks to be cashed", unleashing a flood of immigrants to those areas as an inevitable consequence. This oversimplifies the relationship between sanctuary city policies, Biden's border enforcement and the immigration crisis by suggesting a direct and inevitable causal link between them. It implies that the existence of sanctuary city policies combined with certain changes in border enforcement are alone responsible for the surge in illegal immigration, without adequately considering other contributing factors such as economic conditions, political instability and conflict, climate change and environmental factors, demographic trends, advances in communication and transportation technologies, and policies of foreign governments.
- Straw man • The text implies Democrats uniformly want open borders and refuse to enforce immigration laws. In reality, sanctuary city policies still cooperate with federal enforcement on serious criminals - they simply don't proactively question immigration status in local matters. Criticizing the administration for "removing deterrents" also misrepresents the Democratic approach, which can oppose certain strict enforcement tactics on humanitarian grounds while still supporting comprehensive enforcement/reform. Claiming Democrats are "beholden to extreme leftist elitists" who see the current situation as a "validation of their open border principles" is likely a distortion not grounded in most mainstream Democratic views. In these ways the text seems to set up and then knock down extreme "open borders" arguments that do not accurately reflect the stated policy goals and values that drive the mainstream Democratic position.
References
- J.T. Young (2024, Feb 7). Democrats are rushing to fix their failed sanctuary city and open border schemes.
https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4451085-democrats-are-rushing-to-fix-their-failed-sanctuary-city-and-open-border-schemes/
Disclaimer
Note that there being one or more apparent fallacies in the arguments presented in this article does not mean that every argument the arguer made was fallacious, nor does it mean there are not other arguments in existence for the same or similar position that are logically valid. Also note that checking for fallacies is not the same as verification of the premises the arguer starts from, such as facts that the arguer asserts or principles that the arguer assumes as the foundation for constructing arguments. For more about this, see our 'What is Fallacy Checking?'
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