Biden and the Chocolate Overflow

There’s a famous episode of the American comedy “I Love Lucy” called “The Chocolate Factory.” Lucille Ball and her best friend are assigned to a conveyor belt rolling out chocolates that they have to pack rapidly as they roll by in front of them.

The belt starts to speed up and the two comedians are quickly overwhelmed. Not knowing where to put the candies, they fill their mouths and cram their aprons and their hats with them. The scene dates back to 1952, but it’s still just as funny today.

Joe Biden’s policy toward immigrants at the Mexico border makes me think of this scene. The humor less so. Full of humanitarian goodwill, the new president has sent out the message that new arrivals — the undocumented, whoever turns up at the border — will be given a decent welcome.

The decision eases his predecessor’s policy and relieves the discomfort of seeing refugees crammed, one on top of another, on the Mexican side of the border, or put in giant cages when they’re nabbed on the American side.

Except that, as with Lucille Ball and her chocolates, the border agents have begun by sheltering the new arrivals — particularly the thousands of children traveling alone — in small rooms, then in larger and larger centers before, in recent days, allowing them entry into the United States, overwhelmed by their numbers.

Immigration, the Quintessential Controversy

Few questions tear apart so many Americans as immigration. Over the last decade, it has fueled a political movement that has, among other things, contributed to Donald Trump becoming president. I recall, in 2008, having attended the first tea party movement rallies in Nevada. All sorts of ideas were put forth, but more than once, in different forms, the participants whom I questioned were trying to determine if the organizers were going to “do something about the border.”

Trump, during his four years in the White House, did “something”: He spent a fortune building an imperfect wall, agreed that Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans would stay in their corner of the continent, and made Mexican authorities agree to keep asylum seekers and other wretches who had come knocking at the door of one of the richest countries on the planet on their side of the border.

The Not-So-Wide-Open Arms

The billionaire’s policies have generated outrage and the promise of a complete shake-up has been central to Biden’s plans. It is clear, however, that the outrage was not as widespread as the Democratic candidate believed.

A Morning Consult poll of 2,000 voters shows that the presidential decree that he signed increasing the number of refugees accepted into the country from 10,000 to 125,000 is the most unpopular of all of those that he has signed. In fact, five of the seven least well-received decisions relate to immigration policy.

Historically, the influx of immigrants reaches its peak over the next three months. Biden risks rapidly finding himself caught up in a spiral every bit as bad as the one in which Lucille Ball found herself.