Biden won’t go to the US border because of ‘more important things’

President Biden said Tuesday he would not visit the US-Mexico border during a day trip to Arizona because he had “more important things” to attend to — despite the record-breaking spate of people entering the US illegally.

“Why go to a border state and not visit the border?” a reporter asked Biden on the White House lawn as he left for Arizona.

The President replied, “Because there are more important things. They will invest billions of dollars in a new company in the state.”

Biden is visiting Phoenix to promote this year’s bipartisan CHIPS bill, which will subsidize US tech companies that make computer chips domestically.

The visit comes after a record illegal border crossing in fiscal year 2022, which ended September 30, with more than 2.3 million people arrested after entering the U.S. illegally — up from 1.7 million in the fiscal year 2021, less than 500,000 in fiscal 2020 and nearly 1 million in fiscal 2019.

Critics blame Biden’s policies for the border crisis, including relaxing a Trump-era policy to quickly deport border workers under a CDC-COVID-19 rule and ending a policy requiring migrants to remain in Mexico pending a court ruling to wait for their asylum applications.

Republican governors. Abbott and Ron DeSantis of Florida have been bussing or flying thousands of migrants from the US-Mexico border to Democratic bastions like New York City and Washington, DC this year to urge Biden for tougher policies.