America last: Biden goes full Oprah, considers $450K payments to illegal migrants separated at border

“You get a car! And you get a car! And you get a car!”  

We all remember Oprah Winfrey’s most famous line during her reign as the queen of daytime TV. It was a nice moment for all the folks who were on the receiving end and for the rest of us to witness on our television screens. 

The Me You Can See: Me giving away cars. For over 17 years, that famous episode of me shouting “You get a car!” deserving people in my studio audience has followed me. Videos, gifs, memes—you name it, I’ve seen it. pic.twitter.com/nMA79JYnQY

— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) May 22, 2021

Now a different giveaway reportedly is being seriously considered by the Biden administration: paying many of those who entered the country illegally and were separated under the Trump administration enough money — as much as $450,000 each, or close to $1 million per family — to put them in the richest 1 percent. 

Per The Wall Street Journal, “The U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are considering payments that could amount to close to $1 million a family, though the final numbers could shift, the people familiar with the matter said.”

“Most of the families that crossed the border illegally from Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S. included one parent and one child, the people said. Many families would likely get smaller payouts, depending on their circumstances, the people said,” the bombshell report added. 

The U.S. is in talks to offer immigrant families separated at the border in 2018 about $450,000 a person in compensation, people familiar with the matter say https://t.co/mmY60OIfHy

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 28, 2021

The report goes on to say that “discussions about the payouts have taken place over the past few months” between dozens of private lawyers representing illegal migrant families and U.S. government lawyers.  

If it comes to fruition and anything remotely resembling these payments are made, imagine the impact it will have on those in Central America, Haiti and other parts of the world who are thinking of coming to the U.S. and need a little more incentive to make the long, dangerous trek: a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, along with the ability to live in America permanently. It might as well be called the Caravan Incentive Project. 

It’s hard to imagine how the Biden administration could more thoroughly mishandle the catastrophe at the border — and Americans know it, despite the major networks and most cable news channels largely ignoring the story. The data says it all: The U.S. is on pace to take more than 2.3 million people into the country this year. That’s more than the populations of Boston, Washington, D.C., and Denver combined. And the numbers just keep going up, not down, despite Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying with a straight face that the border is closed.

Vice President Harris was named “border czar” many months ago. So far, she has barely spoken about her primary job, provided no updates or progress reports about stemming the tide of those crossing, and held just one press conference on the crisis.

Perhaps as a result, Biden-Harris is polling at 23 percent approval on its handling of the border. Numbers like this are alarming to left-leaning editorial boards that know that these sorts of policies — along with inflation, worker shortages, supply chain crises, rising urban crime, education controversies and the Afghanistan pullout fiasco — could easily hand the House and Senate back to the GOP in 2022.  

“In its apparent desperation to fashion an immigration strategy that will impose order on increasingly out-of-control migration, the Biden administration has unleashed a torrent of words and goals untethered to specific policies and timetables,” The Washington Post’s editorial board — which has never endorsed a Republican presidential nominee in its history — warned on Aug. 8.  

“To date, on immigration, officials have effectively reversed and rolled back some of the Trump administration’s most pernicious policies, but without a clear road map to address the immediate crisis — a decades-high surge in illegal border-crossing — or the long-term challenge driving migration: dysfunction, disorder and decay in Central America,” the editorial continued before concluding, “They have driven a policy whose incoherence has yielded pressure at the border that may cost the Democrats control of one or both houses of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. So far, there is nothing in the administration’s short- or long-term strategizing that is likely to shift that dynamic.”

So, just how much is the $450,000 that some migrants could receive? 

It’s more than some families of those murdered on 9/11 received.  

“If a U.S. service member is killed in the line of duty, their next-of-kin gets an insurance payment of $400,000,” according to Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), an Afghan war veteran who lost an eye in combat. 

And, during the height of COVID-19, many Americans who lost their jobs or businesses received a fraction of that sum in compensation. 

Gas prices are up more than 40 percent since this time last year. Core inflation is at a 30-year high. Home heating costs are projected to rise more than 50 percent this winter. And the cost of food has jumped so much that this will be the most expensive Thanksgiving ever, per MSNBC. 

MSNBC says that Thanksgiving is “shaping up to be the most expensive meal in the history of the holiday.” pic.twitter.com/kqsZSh5bVU

— The First (@TheFirstonTV) October 26, 2021

But, sure, let’s pay $450,000 or even more to those who cut in line and came here illegally. 

This is pure insanity. The president should have to answer for this.  

But with the president not holding a solo press conference in 100 days and going nearly 10 weeks without doing a challenging sit-down interview, the White House plan apparently is for him to take no questions beyond those from extremely friendly news outlets

Playing it safe worked during the 2020 campaign. It worked for the first few months of Biden’s presidency too. But now, with reports like these coming from The Wall Street Journal, running and hiding is no longer an option. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist for The Hill.