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With its disastrous open-border policy, the Biden administration is putting America’s health and security at terrible risk. Washington’s failure to control illegal immigration also exposes our state and local government treasuries to multiple soaring and uncapped costs. It is a national emergency with financial implications for every statehouse, county courthouse and city hall. 

The Biden open borders disaster concerns me primarily on two fronts. First, as Missouri State Treasurer, I am responsible for conservatively safeguarding my state’s money. The Biden failures on illegal immigration put Missouri and other states at risk of vast new financial exposure gobbling our citizens’ hard-earned tax dollars. Even advocates for Biden’s disastrous policy cannot say how they will pay for its far-reaching effects. 

Second, I am an India-born immigrant and I took the right path – that is, the legal path – to American citizenship. It is a process which took me 16 years of hard work and persistence. As Missouri’s only legal immigrant holding statewide office, this issue is very personal to me. 

Before being sworn in as Missouri’s 48th State Treasurer, I spent 17 years practicing immigration law. I have helped thousands of people from other nations who, like me, fell in love with America and wanted to dedicate everything to becoming a legal citizen. These are some of the most patriotic Americans one could meet. 

To see the Biden administration lift Title 42 limits on immigration, allowing a massive influx of illegals, is not just disheartening to me. It is an insult to my fellow legal immigrants who followed and are following the law to become part of this great nation. 

U.S. Customs reports a record 2.76 million illegal immigrant crossings of the border in the 12 months ending last Sept. 30 – a record that eclipsed the previous year’s crossings, also a record, by more than one million illegals. With the Biden policies, we can only imagine how much the numbers will soar just in coming months. 

Importantly, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General has raised concerns that the available staffing of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is not sustainable, leaving Biden’s porous U.S. border in chaos as thousands of illegal immigrants surge into the United States. 

A Heritage Foundation study of cell phone movement patterns by immigrants shows thousands upon thousands traveling across the border into the deep interior of the U.S., including Missouri. Far from border entry points, this massive influx into America’s heartland puts extra burdens of coping with illegal immigration squarely on state and local governments. 

For example, state and local law enforcement are already dealing with a Fentanyl crisis with the deadly drug coming in from Mexico and China. Biden’s disastrous open border has let drug cartel mules carry

this poison into our nation, carrying an awful toll on public safety and health and demanding ever more state and local taxpayer resources.

Because of Biden’s open-borders disaster, crimes committed by illegal immigrants have soared in number in recent years, according to U.S. Customs records. 

U.S. Customs reported arresting more than 12,000 illegals in 2022 who were convicted on various criminal charges, including 2,239 for drug trafficking and possession, 1,142 for violent crimes including domestic violence and 62 convicted of homicide or manslaughter. Add to these numbers the cases that spilled over to state and local law enforcement, and the impact on victims is staggering, not to mention the huge expense for taxpayers. 

As the Federation for American Immigration Reform declared, Biden’s initiatives are “a massive and illegal scheme designed to accommodate unlimited numbers of migrants.” 

I believe Biden’s border policies are a tragic trampling and chaotic devaluing of legal immigrants’ path to the American dream, by giving illegals incentive to break the rules. Without action to reverse this disaster, it could also break the bank for states and local governments. 

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