EDITORIAL: NYC Mayor Adams slams Biden’s open border policies

President Joe Biden’s border policy is so bad that even some prominent Democratic officials are roasting him.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is far from a conservative. But he’s a Democrat who’s willing to be honest about what unchecked illegal immigration has done to his city. The Big Apple is currently housing around 35,000 asylum seekers. Over the past year, it has helped shelter more than 56,000 individuals.

“The city is being destroyed by the migrant crisis,” Mr. Adams said this month. He continued, “Every service in this city is going to be impacted by the asylum seeker crisis.” The mayor has directed city agencies to reduce their budgets by $4 billion over the next few years to deal with the costs. Mr. Adams also wants additional federal financial aid to offset what the city’s costs.

Turns out being a “sanctuary city” isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. But we digress.

This is just a small taste of what towns and cities in the Southwest have been experiencing since the start of the Biden administration. Consider El Paso, Texas. At around 700,000 residents, it has fewer than 10 percent of the population of Gotham. But it’s experiencing almost 1,500 illegal border crossings a day. Mr. Adams and New York City are getting a small taste of what El Paso and other border towns have had to deal with for years.

There’s more. Around 40,000 would-be illegal immigrants have amassed across the El Paso border. They’re waiting for the end of Title 42, a pandemic rule that allowed officials to quickly expel asylum seekers. That’s set to happen on May 11.

In an attempt to stem the tide, the Biden administration is rolling out new proposals to punish people who improperly come to the border. This plan seeks to quickly remove asylum seekers who don’t qualify and bar re-entry for five years. It also wants to open new processing centers in other countries. Those places would help people find legal ways to come here, discouraging them from coming to the border unannounced. Much of this proposal sounds positively Trumpian.

Immigration, properly managed, is vital to American prosperity and a boon to the economy. Yet policies that essentially create open borders are a recipe for chaos and fiscal disaster. Americans prefer a common-sense approach to the border, one that recognizes the importance of security while creating a reasonable path for those who seek to come here and be productive citizens.

Too many Republicans and Democrats have for too long catered to their extremist demagogues on immigration. Mass deportations and harsh limits on legal immigration would be destructive, as would erasing the border and opening it to any and all comers. Perhaps Mr. Adams’ honest concerns can help push this administration and Congress to find common ground and take this issue seriously.