Quinton Lucas and Joe Biden are wrong about ‘lawfully present’ migrants in the US | Opinion

The Star’s recent coverage about Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas’ reckless welcome mat for migrants illegally entering the country has barely touched on the Biden administration’s elastic contortions of immigration law.

The actual law bears closer consideration, since the mayor’s entire idea rests on Biden’s interpretation — and that interpretation, via administrative discretion, disrespects the years of hard work put in by naturalized citizens to earn the honor of United States citizenship.

I am one of those proud citizens. I was born in India, but my dream was to earn a master’s degree in business administration in America. I entered the U.S. legally on a student visa in August 2001 to attend Southeast Missouri State University. One month after moving to Cape Girardeau, I watched in horror on TV as terrorists crashed jets into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on the way to the White House.

Amid the horror of 9/11, I was comforted by the powerful experience of Americans coming together in common cause against terror. This immersion in patriotic unity inspired me to earn my way to U.S. citizenship. The process took me 16 years.

I did it the right way — the legal way. I followed the law in transitioning to a work visa, then to a legal permanent resident status, and only then to proudly taking an oath of allegiance as a naturalized citizen. So this subject is deeply personal to me. But my story is not unusual among immigrants who have earned citizenship, nor is the disdain expressed by those who worked so hard for actual legal status when it comes to the Lucas-Biden notion of effectively open-ended sanctuary.

The mayor has bought into President Joe Biden’s definition of “lawfully present,” which does not convey a legal status when you read the actual law. It is Biden waiving the law to grant people here illegally an unearned, undeserved privilege with an indefinite sunset. The key question is: Did these migrants enter the United States legally or illegally, irrespective of their contrived status endowed by Biden’s order?

The answer is that too many entered illegally, and that fact should frame this discussion, not Lucas and Biden pretending the actual law doesn’t matter. The Kansas City Star Editorial Board recently referenced this fact with a passing, dismissive acknowledgment:

“The permitting system itself is admittedly controversial. Migrants who have applied for asylum can apply for authorization to work after 180 days in the country. If you think the asylum system is too permissive (as many anti-immigrant Republicans do) then the permitting system is also problematic.”

I take issue with The Star editorial characterizing those who feel the Lucas-Biden system is too permissive as “anti-immigrant.” There are many who are pro-legal immigration, but correctly call out cynical shortcuts. The mayor and I each earned law degrees, so we both know that words in law have particular meaning. The meaning that he and Biden want to wring from the law simply doesn’t make sense. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said in 2016: “How can it be lawful to work here but not lawful to be here?”

The Lucas-Biden spin doesn’t change the fact that some these individuals entered the United States illegally and remain illegally under terms of the actual law until their case is individually decided, which can take years. I know this because I put my law degree to work over two decades helping immigrants dedicating themselves to hard work in completing the long legal path to U.S. citizenship.

A Star reporter recently asked me if I believe the mayor is “pushing to accept undocumented immigrants.” I replied that people who are entering the United States illegally are by definition undocumented. The document is given to them under Lucas-Biden’s expansive and questionable amnesty shortcut.

The Star reporter also asked whether I — a naturalized citizen and Missouri’s first non-white statewide officeholder — “believe that some politicians are twisting Lucas’ comments?” I replied (though you never saw it in the newspaper), that I believe quite the opposite.

It is Lucas and Biden who are twisting words with their outrageous expansion of the term “legal presence” to suggest it means “legal status.” That is flat wrong if you start with the basic question, did the migrant enter the United States legally?

Welcoming those who entered the country illegally sends a message around the world that not only is the U.S. southern border open, but so is Kansas City — no need to apply for a visa the right way. Just walk across the border and you can stay. And Missouri taxpayers will foot the bill for law enforcement, health care, education and other public services facing vast new costs.

It is the wrong message for those who actually respect the law.

Vivek Malek is Missouri State Treasurer.