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Last month, amid growing complaints even among members of his own party about the Biden border crisis, the President announced that all migrants apprehended at the border would be vaccinated before they were released into the interior of the United States. That move appeared to be intended to address growing concerns about the waves of illegal aliens entering the country and the President’s policy of bussing them around and dumping them in other states. It also tied in with Biden’s plans to scrap Title 42, opening the floodgates even further. But at least vaccinating them all would provide some extra measures of protection, at least in terms of the virus, right?
Well, it turns out that the plan didn’t really pan out. Barely a month after it was supposedly launched, the Free Beacon reports that the Biden administration has mostly abandoned it. There are still some migrants being vaccinated, but it’s a scattershot process that depends on where and when the migrants are apprehended. And even those getting a shot aren’t fully vaccinated in most cases.
The Biden administration appears to have abandoned its effort to ensure all migrants apprehended by immigration authorities are inoculated against COVID-19, just a month after the White House said vaccines would be mandatory.
According to several individuals familiar with the matter, some of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly, Border Patrol officials in the Rio Grande Valley are exempting migrants from such countries as Guatemala, Haiti, and Mexico from vaccine mandates. And migrants from Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela must only receive one dose of the vaccine before they are released into the U.S. interior.
DHS in March issued a directive that some migrants in seven U.S. regions, including the Rio Grande Valley, must receive COVID-19 vaccinations or be placed into expedited deportation proceedings, the New York Times reported. That policy appears to have been scrapped—or at least modified—in favor of a voluntary vaccination program of one shot.
Stealing a line from a meme that’s been popular on Twitter this week, does anyone remember when we didn’t have $5 billion to build the wall on the southern border but we now have hundreds of billions to spend defending Ukraine’s borders? Good times, my friends. Good times.
One worker at the border said that the question of whether or not any of the detained migrants were being vaccinated, “depends on the shift, to be honest.” On the night shift, almost nobody at one station was being vaccinated and it was seen as an “optional policy.” It certainly didn’t sound optional when the White House first announced it.
Part of the problem had to do with the fact that they simply didn’t have enough doses of vaccine and enough qualified personnel available to administer them. Perhaps that won’t come as a surprise considering the record numbers of illegal aliens making it into the country. But if the resources were not available, why announce the plan in the first place?
This isn’t some unofficial policy, either. They’ve actually generated a list of countries of origin from which migrants being vaccinated will be “optional.” For other countries, assuming they have the resources, a single shot of the vaccine will be sufficient before they are loaded on the buses and planes and sent to your hometown.
Stop and consider that for a moment. As an American citizen, you are still required to not only be vaccinated but “fully vaccinated” to do certain things, including holding down a job in some cases. That means two original shots of Moderna or Pfizer, plus one booster or increasingly two boosters. Otherwise, you are not “fully vaccinated” and your name goes on the naughty list. But someone from Nicaragua who was just dumped off in the Rio Grande by a coyote can have a single shot, receive a pat on the back, and be put on a bus to Boise.
This is all more theater and window dressing intended to disguise the government’s hypocrisy when it comes to many pandemic restrictions and the utter lack of concern the Biden administration has for the border crisis. They have bigger fish to fry now in Ukraine, so we’re apparently all supposed to put this unpleasantness behind us and just move on. We shall see in November how willing the country is to do that.
Source: This post first appeared on HotAir
