President Donald Trump has lost no time keeping his promises to secure the border, curtail illegal immigration, and enforce our immigration laws. He has signed a series of executive orders, appointed an experienced Cabinet and White House team for immigration policy, and undone Joe Biden’s open border policies like mass release, mass parole, blanket “protection” programs, and visas that evade immigration caps set by Congress.
Now, the Trump administration has ordered all foreign nationals who are in the United States illegally to register with the Department of Homeland Security.
Cue the protests from activists who support illegal immigration.
But how does such a policy not make sense?
Don’t you insist on knowing who is in your house at all times? Don’t companies, schools, and organizations want to know who is in their buildings? The United States is not a train station, where anyone can wander in and out at will—we are a nation of laws, and we get to decide who comes in and how.
The Alien Registration Act of 1940, later incorporated into the current Immigration and Nationality Act, requires all aliens without a visa who have been in the U.S. longer than 30 days to “register” with the federal government and give their fingerprints if they are over age 14.
This is hardly an onerous burden in the information age. Everyone in the U.S. legally already has an official record somewhere. For U.S. citizens, it might be your birth certificate, passport, driver’s license, or Social Security card—it’s nearly impossible to function in our society without at least one of these. We accept this necessity, and we hold the governments that keep this information accountable for keeping it safe.
Meanwhile, your email service, your employer, and every store or service provider you have ever used has some information on you—which they tend to sell to others. That’s why you get so many targeted spam advertisements and have to “unsubscribe” every so often from the growing pile of junk emails you get thanks to the marketing of your personal data.
All whom the Left euphemistically calls “noncitizens” (which the law calls “aliens”) who are here legally should already be on record. Foreign visitors, students, workers, and others here for a short time have visas. To get one, they need to share personal information with the U.S. government, first through the State Department’s visa system but then throughout the law enforcement community. Visa applicants must submit not just their names, dates of birth, education, family members’ names, and work history, but also their photos and fingerprints.
Even those who were stopped as they entered the country illegally at the border and were then released under Biden with a Notice to Appear in immigration court had to give the Department of Homeland Security their personal information—which is mostly unverifiable—and also their fingerprints and photo, which are hard to fake.
Biometrics can be confirmed when they later apply for protection against deportation (for example, claiming the need for asylum), or if they are picked up by law enforcement for other reasons.
The same goes for the million and a half inadmissible aliens who Biden allowed to fly into the country or show up at a port of entry before he paroled them into the United States instead of turning them around and kicking them out. The information these aliens provided could be bogus, and we can’t check their criminal records back home, but at least they had to give their fingerprints and a photo before being released.
So, who does that leave that we still have to register?
First, the “gotaways” who snuck into the country without encountering the Border Patrol, through what DHS calls “entry without inspection.” Some of these aliens have U.S. criminal records that cause them to want to avoid detection.
Second, there might be foreign nationals who arrived on visas years ago but overstayed past their visa expiration and slipped through the administrative cracks. Back in 1996, Congress ordered an entry-exit recording system for every alien entering the U.S. by land, air, or sea port, but nearly 30 years later, we still don’t have records that are complete.
Some of the “gotaway” and visa-overstay populations will have claimed asylum or applied for some other immigration benefit, so they will have DHS records. Remember, the (lame) excuse Biden’s DHS gave for paroling and releasing millions of people over the last four years was that they were legitimate refugees and could claim asylum.
This leaves the remainder: people who arrived here or overstayed illegally and haven’t made any attempt to apply for protection against deportation or any immigration benefit. The only logical reason they would want to remain incognito is because they are here for economic reasons only (being poor in your home country is not a valid asylum claim) and did not comply with our laws to get in or stay in.
Trump’s new registration order asks for far less information than legal immigrants provide, and even less information than is asked of inadmissible aliens who were caught and then paroled into the United States.
Failure to register is already a misdemeanor punishable by a fine, imprisonment, or both. All Trump is doing is, once again, enforcing a law already on the books but that is usually ignored.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
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