Misplaced Priorities?

As Americans cut back on their lifestyles due to continuing inflation (caused by reckless government spending), the Biden administration wants to spend more money.

On Sunday, Breitbart reported the following:

President Joe Biden’s deputies are asking the House GOP majority to fund new travel and housing programs for more economic migrants who are being encouraged to take opportunities needed by ordinary Americans.

The August 10 request for $3.3 billion funding “is not all designed to promote more illegal immigration, but most of it seems to be,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, adding:

Which is why there’s resistance among a lot of Republicans to increased funding for [the department of] Homeland Security (DHS). If DHS was using the money to actually stop the flow of illegal aliens, Republicans will be falling all over themselves to vote for it. But that’s not what this administration wants to with the do extra money for DHS — they want to use it to speed up the arrival of people who have no right to be here.

The “border guard is turned into a Walmart greeter,” he said.

The article concludes:

The request also asks for $1.5 billion to help speed up the flow of migrants through U.S. borders:

Of the amounts provided, $203 million would support border management operations by CBP, including for soft-sided facilities, migrant transportation, and medical care requirements. This request also includes $606 million for CBP to reimburse the Department of Defense for border security support along the Southwest border … This request would provide $759 million to the Operations and Support account within the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau in the Department of Homeland Security. Of this amount, $714 million would be used to respond to migration surges along the Southwest border and related activities.

The document also asks for $800 million to counter the flow of drugs that are being delivered by the cartels.

If the Republicans ever want to gain majorities in Congress, they should veto this additional spending. Notice that the illegal aliens are now being referred to as ‘economic migrants.’ At the rate things are happening, these migrants are going to have to go somewhere else to find prosperity. The Biden administration is killing prosperity in America.

The Potential Consequences Of An Open Border

On Wednesday, Breitbart posted an article about one of the people that has been released into the United States as a result of President Biden’s immigration policies.

The article reports:

An illegal alien, now wanted for allegedly funding terrorism, is among an estimated 1.4 million border crossers and illegal aliens who have been released into the United States through President Joe Biden’s parole pipeline.

In April 2021, the Venezuelan illegal alien crossed the United States–Mexico border near San Luis, Arizona. He was briefly detained by Border Patrol agents, deemed inadmissible, and given a Notice to Appear (NTA) in federal immigration court.

…Only a few months later, in August 2021, a criminal court in Valencia, Venezuela, issued an arrest warrant for the illegal alien for charges related to fraud, money laundering, association with organized crime, and funding terrorism.

The article concludes:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested the illegal alien on August 8 and he will remain in federal custody pending deportation proceedings.

The illegal alien is among an estimated 1.4 million border crossers and illegal aliens, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, who have been released into American communities specifically through Biden’s parole pipeline. This is a foreign population the size of the population of Hawaii.

Hundreds of thousands of others, as well as known got-aways, have entered the United States interior since Biden took office.

In February 2023, NBC News reported:

Nearly 600,000 migrants who crossed the U.S. border since March 2021 have been released into the U.S. without being charged or given a date to appear in court, according to data obtained by NBC News, and thousands have even been dropped from the program that was supposed to track them.

When immigrants are given a notice to appear in court, how long do they have to wait for their court date and what is the likelihood that they will show up? Our entire immigration system is a mess. We need to make it easy for people to come here legally if they are willing to work and more difficult for people who want to take advantage of our social safety net. People who immigrate to America should be denied any government assistance for the first five years or so that they are here. That would make it clear that coming to America means becoming part of the workforce and assimilating into the culture.

One Consequence Of An Open Border

Texas has been the state that seems to be most effected by America’s porous southern border. A recent report posted by the Center for Immigration Studies show the negative impact of that open border on the
State of Texas.

This is the summary of the report:

Activists and academics have been misusing data from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in studies claiming that illegal immigrants have relatively low crime rates. These studies do not appreciate that it can take years for Texas to identify convicts as illegal immigrants while they are in custody. As a result, the studies misclassify as native-born a significant number of offenders who are later identified as illegal immigrants.

Facts About the DPS Data:

    • Due to delays in identification, the number of illegal immigrants arrested or incarcerated in Texas is undercounted at any given time.
    • Recently convicted illegal immigrants are the most likely to be undercounted.
    • Conversely, Texas is more likely to ascertain the immigration status of offenders who have served long prison terms for serious crimes.
    • The illegal immigrant conviction rate for “any crime” — which would be dominated by offenses requiring little or no prison time — is not meaningful due to undercount.

Properly interpreted, the DPS data suggests that illegal immigrants in Texas are convicted of homicide and sexual assault at higher rates than the state average. Significant uncertainties remain, however, especially regarding lesser offenses.

The report includes the following chart:

As illegal immigrants are being shipped around the country, these statistics are coming to your town. If you want the border closed, you need to vote for conservatives in November. Democrats and Country-Club Republicans will not close the border. If either party currently serving in Congress wanted the border closed, it would have been closed by now.

The Real Cost Of Importing Lots Of Foreign Workers

On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the views of President Biden’s choice for Secretary of Labor on increasing the number of foreign workers being brought into America.

The article reports:

The Democrat party’s pick for Secretary of Labor says CEOs are being victimized by a shortage of immigrant workers.

Companies want to hire another 11 million people, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh told Fox News on September 2, adding:

If those 11 million jobs had to be filled tomorrow, we certainly don’t have enough people in the United States to fill those jobs … the issue of workers has to be addressed and the only way [emphasis added] you can do it is through immigration.

The article includes an opposing opinion:

But Walsh “doesn’t seem to know what’s going on in the U.S. labor market in terms of real wages for the less-educated, or the labor force participation,” responded Steve Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

“There are two main things that you could do [to get Americans into those jobs] — make it more attractive to work and make it less attractive to sit on your ass,” he said:

Could you ever get teenagers to work like they did in the 70s? No, but could you get a million more teenagers to work? Yeah. Could you ever get men to have the labor force participation rate of 96 percent — say non-college men 25 to 54 — that we had in 1964? No, but could you get it up to 88 percent instead of 84 percent or 83 percent? Yes.

The government should try to fill jobs with some of the roughly 60 million adults not working by allowing wages to rise, he said.

The 60 million number includes 5.5 million people who said they want a job but are not part of the unemployment numbers because they have not looked for jobs in the last four weeks.

So who benefits by increasing the number of foreign workers?

The article notes:

The government’s policy of pumping foreign labor into the U.S. economy has distorted the incentives for the nation’s CEOs, investors, and political leaders Camarota said.

Immigration “allows them to both be empathetic and indifferent at the same time,” he said.

The article concludes:

This economic strategy (extraction migration) is enthusiastically pushed by progressives who wish to transform the U.S. from a society governed by European-origin civic culture into an economic empire of jealous identity groups overseen by progressive hall monitors. “We’re trying to become the first multiracial, multi-ethnic superpower in the world,” Rep. Rohit Khanna (D-CA) told the New York Times in March 2022. “It will be an extraordinary achievement. … We will ultimately triumph,” he boasted.

But the progressives’ colonialism-like economic strategy kills many migrants. It exploits the poverty of migrants and splits foreign families as it extracts human resources from poor home countries to serve wealthy U.S. investors.

Progressives hide this extraction migration economic policy behind a wide variety of noble-sounding narratives and theatrical border security programs. Progressives claim the U.S. is a “Nation of Immigrants,” that migration helps migrants, and that the state must renew itself by replacing populations.

Similarly, establishment Republicans, media businesses, and major GOP donors hide the skew towards investors by ignoring the pocketbook impact and by touting border chaos, welfare spending, migrant crime, and drug smuggling.

Many polls show the public wants to welcome some immigration. But the polls also show deep and broad public opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs needed by young U.S. graduates.

This “Third Rail” opposition is growinganti-establishment, multiracialcross-sexnon-racistclass-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity that American citizens owe to one another.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The uni-party supports open borders, and Americans need to withdraw their support from the uni-party.

 

 

Importing Foreign Workers To Compete For American Jobs

On June 12th, Breitbart posted an article about a recent statement by President Biden.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden is bragging about the “record” number of foreign visa workers his administration has brought to the United States to compete for working and middle class jobs against unemployed Americans.

During a press conference with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Biden bragged that his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has created a steady flow to the U.S. of foreign workers on agricultural H-2A and nonagricultural H-2B visas.

…Biden’s inflating the U.S. labor market with millions of foreign workers comes as millions of working-age Americans remain on the labor market sidelines.

“There are approximately 11.5 million job openings in the United States right now, and 14.73 million employable Americans,” a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) notes. “This means that there are 3.23 million more workers in the country than open jobs.”

Similarly, the Center for Immigration Studies finds that the number of native-born Americans who are now out of the labor force has increased in all 50 states tremendously in the last two decades. This is particularly true of working class Americans who are the most likely to compete against foreign workers for U.S. jobs.

The article concludes:

From 2000 to 2022, the share of non-college-educated Americans in the labor force declined in every state, and in 24 of those states, the decline was seven or more percentage points. The decline was nearly five percent on average for non-college-educated Americans in their “prime working age” during this 22-year period.

Annually, the U.S. gives out green cards to about 1.2 million foreign nationals and another 1.5 million temporary work visas. This is in addition to the millions of illegal aliens who are added to the U.S. population every year.

The President is not required to give every American a job; however, it does seem to me that a President would want to create the conditions for Americans to be employed. The Democrat party seems to have a desire to make every American dependent on the government for their income. That is a sure way to sink the American economy. At this point many of us are wondering if sinking the American economy is the goal of the Biden administration.

The Real Numbers

On Monday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the crisis at America’s southern border.

The article reports:

Newly revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement data show that deportations have dropped 90% under the Biden administration, noted for its open-border policies and red tape tying the hands of immigration agents.

What’s more, removals of illegal immigrants convicted of murder, rape, and arson have experienced a dramatic drop from pre-pandemic policies put in place by the Trump administration, which put a high priority on them.

The new data were unveiled today by the Center for Immigration Studies and policy director Jessica M. Vaughan, known for her ties to ICE and Border Patrol officials. She told us that President Joe Biden’s “deliberate refusal to enforce immigration laws is one of the most clueless and egregious acts of negligence in modern government history.”

It is no surprise that deportations are down, though the level is shocking, she said in her report. When Biden came to the Oval Office, he moved swiftly to dismantle former President Donald Trump’s border policies, which had greatly slowed the flow of illegal migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes a chart showing the drop in the number of deportations and the report by the Center for Immigration Studies. It makes no sense to stop deporting illegal aliens who have committed crimes in America. If the liberals in Congress and some of our states are so determined to empty out our prisons, it seems as if they might actually want to send dangerous criminals back to where they came from.

Ending Policies That Work

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about one of the Trump administration  policies that has been eliminated by the Biden administration.

The article reports:

President Trump gave an unprecedented voice to victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, creating an office in ICE to highlight their plight.

The Biden administration on Friday announced a new policy to expand the office’s purview in a way that victims say drowns out their voice.

What Mr. Trump dubbed the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE) is now being changed to the Victims Engagement and Services Line, and it will handle calls from anyone who claims to be a victim, no matter what their immigration status or the status of the perpetrator.

And it will specialize in helping illegal immigrants who say they are victims of crimes get special visas to stay in the country.

The article also reports:

In addition to helping immigrants get U and T visas, which give legal status to illegal immigrant victims of certain crimes and human trafficking, respectively, the new office also will serve as a hotline for immigrants in detention to complain of their treatment.

The office also will serve as a notification system for immigration court cases.

Don Rosenberg, whose son was killed in a traffic collision by an illegal immigrant, said the lack of any focus on crimes committed by illegal immigrants was “conspicuous.”

“It is not ICE or the Department of Homeland Security’s function to ‘help’ illegal aliens,” Mr. Rosenberg, who is president of Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime, told The Washington Times. “This new office is another outrageous violation of our immigration laws and another ‘service’ to allow illegal aliens to remain in America.”

Mr. Trump gave victims and their relatives like Mr. Rosenberg an unprecedented voice in public policy. First as a candidate and then as president, Mr. Trump repeatedly met with them, invited them on stage at events and gave them a platform to highlight an often untold side of the immigration debate.

The article concludes:

Jon Feere, who served as chief of staff at ICE during the Trump administration, said the VOICE office was able to provide information about illegal immigrant perpetrators to victims. He said that’s important for victims trying to follow court cases and make sure people are brought to justice.

He said it’s not clear whether ICE will continue that service under the new VESL system.

“It was a well-functioning, apolitical, victim-centered office that did a lot of good in providing a needed resource,” Mr. Feere said. “This is a completely unnecessary change that trashes years of branding and outreach by career officials. If the Biden administration cared about victims, it would not have done this.”

Mr. Feere, now director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies, said with more criminal immigrants being released rather than deported by the Biden administration, there’s a pressing need for the work the VOICE office does.

Who is the Biden administration working for?

When Americans Won’t Vote For You, Simply Import New Americans

Yesterday Trending Politics posted an article about how the Biden administration is handling to flood of illegal immigrants currently pouring into America. The crisis at the border is rapidly spreading to all areas of the country. There is no way the number of people crossing into our country illegally are going to remain in one small area.

The article reports:

Biden’s border crisis is spreading nationwide, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies. The new administration is pursuing an immigration policy dubbed “catch-and-bus” with the aim of establishing undocumented immigrants in states in the interior of the United States.

The Biden “smuggling routes” have gone largely unreported by media outlets that are fixated on the disastrous border crisis, where children are being kept in unsanitary conditions within detention facilities that violate COVID protocols.

According to an original investigation by CIS, a veritable “conveyor belt” of busesfrom Texas, Arizona and California are transporting “thousands” of undocumented immigrants into America’s heartland.

…“As best as the Center for Immigration Studies can determine from interviews and scattered media reporting, the buses are leaving regularly from Del Rio, the Texas Rio Grande Valley communities, and Laredo, but the busing also appears to be going on in Arizona, as well as in California,” the report continued.

“Where are the buses going?” the CIS rhetorically asked. “They often drop their Haitian, Venezuelan, and Cuban passengers in Florida and New Jersey. Those from Nicaragua and other Central American nations have been delivered to Tennessee, Massachusetts, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and to large cities in Texas such as Dallas and Houston.”

The estimates square with other Border Patrol estimates, The Blaze corroborates.

The article concludes:

“One Nicaraguan migrant showed CIS a DHS document titled ‘Interim Notice Authorizing Parole’, which grants him a renewable one-year term to live legally inside the country,” the report went on, adding, “Most will likely use their time to apply for asylum, a lengthy, back-logged process that allows for work authorization and Social Security cards during an adjudication process that can drag on for years.”

The Biden “catch-and-bus” policy is an escalation of the Democratic Party’s open borders policy. Even if a state is not on the southern border, an illegal migrant can walk across it and get a free bus ride from the Biden administration to any place it chooses.

Has anyone given any thought to the people who have been waiting in line to come to America legally? Admittedly our immigration policies need to change to eliminate a lot of the expense and red tape, but open borders are not the answer!

Let’s project this a year or two down the road. The people who came here illegally are given a renewable one-year term to live in America. Some of the immigrants will renew; others will simply vanish somewhere inside the country. Eventually a Democrat congressman will say that like the dreamers, they have been here long enough so that they should automatically be given citizenship. At that point they should be allowed to vote. Voila! You have changed to voting demographic of America. Do you think the Democrats would close the borders if they thought the people coming across would eventually become Republican voters?

The New Way Forward Act

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about The New Way Forward Act which was referred to the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship on January 30, 2020.

The article lists some of the highlights of the bill:

The bill, among many things, calls for the decriminalization of illegal immigration, would make it more difficult to deport convicted criminal aliens, empower immigration judges to nullify deportation orders, and also calls for the return of previously deported illegal aliens.

…The decriminalization of illegal immigration was already becoming a more mainstream position with the Democratic Party. In fact, before the introduction of the bill, Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both came out in support of the proposal. Sanders, a clear frontrunner in the nomination contest, has also voiced support for virtually ceasing all deportations.

The New Way Forward, however, takes these positions even farther.

Under the auspices of the bill, minimum prison sentences that require deportation would rise from one year to five years. This could mean that illegal aliens who are convicted of crimes such as car theft, weapons offenses and fraud — all crimes that carry average sentences of less than five years, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics — would not be required to be removed from the country.

The article concludes:

The president, during his address, also touted a GOP bill in the Senate that would allow victims of illegal alien crime to sue states that released the alien in defiance of an ICE detainer.

“Democrats in the House have prioritized open borders over the safety of citizens and legal law abiding immigrants,” Marguerite Telford, a spokeswoman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based immigration think tank, said in a statement to the DCNF.

Like the president, Telford also compared Democratic immigration priories with that of GOP lawmakers

“Contrast that with most Republicans who are worried about safety and focus on sanctuary jurisdictions, driver’s license laws, knowing who is crossing our border … and the rule of law in general,” she continued. “For example, Rep. Gosar has the Criminal Alien Removal Clarification Act which stands in stark contrast to the New Way bill.”

I guess the question is whether it is more important to protect the rights of American citizens or the ‘rights’ of those who are here illegally.

Common Sense In Immigration Policy

On Monday CNBC posted an article about a Supreme Court decision regarding President Trump’s immigration policy.

The article reports:

The Supreme Court said Monday that it will allow the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule to take effect after the immigration policy had been blocked by lower courts.

The 5-4 vote was divided along partisan lines, with the court’s four Democratic appointees indicating that they would not have allowed the policy to be enforced.

The court’s five conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts, formed the majority siding with the administration. The decision came as Roberts was presiding over President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate.

The rule, which was proposed in August, will make it more difficult for immigrants to obtain permanent residency, or green cards, if they have used or are likely to use public benefits like food stamps and Medicaid.

Under previous federal rules, a more narrow universe of public benefits, such as cash assistance and long-term hospitalization, were considered in determining whether an immigrant was likely to become a “public charge.”

The following statistics are from the Center for Immigration Studies:

  • No single program explains non-citizens’ higher overall welfare use. For example, not counting school lunch and breakfast, welfare use is still 61 percent for non-citizen households compared to 33 percent for natives. Not counting Medicaid, welfare use is 55 percent for immigrants compared to 30 percent for natives.
  • Welfare use tends to be high for both newer arrivals and long-time residents. Of households headed by non-citizens in the United States for fewer than 10 years, 50 percent use one or more welfare programs; for those here more than 10 years, the rate is 70 percent.
  • Welfare receipt by working households is very common. Of non-citizen households receiving welfare, 93 percent have at least one worker, as do 76 percent of native households receiving welfare. In fact, non-citizen households are more likely overall to have a worker than are native households.1
  • The primary reason welfare use is so high among non-citizens is that a much larger share of non-citizens have modest levels of education and, as a result, they often earn low wages and qualify for welfare at higher rates than natives.
  • Of all non-citizen households, 58 percent are headed by immigrants who have no more than a high school education, compared to 36 percent of native households.
  • Of households headed by non-citizens with no more than a high school education, 81 percent access one or more welfare programs. In contrast, 28 percent of non-citizen households headed by a college graduate use one or more welfare programs.
  • Like non-citizens, welfare use also varies significantly for natives by educational attainment, with the least educated having much higher welfare use than the most educated.
  • Using education levels and likely future income to determine the probability of welfare use among new green card applicants — and denying permanent residency to those likely to utilize such programs — would almost certainly reduce welfare use among future permanent residents.
  • Of households headed by naturalized immigrants (U.S. citizens), 50 percent used one or more welfare programs. Naturalized-citizen households tend to have lower welfare use than non-citizen households for most types of programs, but higher use rates than native households for virtually every major program.
  • Welfare use is significantly higher for non-citizens than for natives in all four top immigrant-receiving states. In California, 72 percent of non-citizen-headed households use one or more welfare programs, compared to 35 percent for native-headed households. In Texas, the figures are 69 percent vs. 35 percent; in New York they are 53 percent vs. 38 percent; and in Florida, 56 percent of non-citizen-headed households use at least welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native households.

At this point I need to say that I am not against helping people in need, but we do need to get our priorities in order. Our Veterans’ Administration health system is horrible. It is underfunded and does not have the facilities necessary to meet the needs of our returning veterans. We have been at war for eighteen years, and we have broken faith with those who have fought those wars. Shouldn’t taking care of those veterans be a higher priority than taking care of people who are not American citizens? Look at the budget deficits we are running–we can’t afford to do both.

I applaud the Supreme Court for upholding a common-sense approach to immigration.

Fixing A Broken Law

The Daily Signal posted an article yesterday about the State Department’s beginning to look into what to do about ‘birth tourism.’

The article reports:

“Birth tourism” has become big business. Today, hundreds of companies advertise to pregnant women—particularly upper-middle-class women from China, Nigeria, Russia, and Turkey—offering assistance to get visas that would allow them to visit the U.S. during the time they expect to give birth.

The U.S. hosts tens of thousands of “birth tourists” every year. In 2015, the Center for Immigration Studies pegged the number at 35,000. The Qianzhan Industry Research Institute reported that, in 2016, as many as 80,000 birth tourists came to the U.S. Whatever the total number, it appears to be growing.

What draws these women to our shores isn’t U.S. obstetric or natal care. It’s automatic U.S. citizenship for their babies.

The 14th Amendment declares: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, [emphasis added] are citizens of the United States … .” The government currently interprets this as meaning that anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen, regardless of the parent’s nationality or immigration status. Essentially, this reading ignores the qualifying phrase italicized above.

The article lists some of the reasons behind the growth of ‘birth tourism’:

U.S. citizenship makes a child eligible for free public education and loan programs, government food assistance, Medicaid, and other welfare programs. Costs can run into the billions. Furthermore, when birth-tourist babies become adults, they may then apply for immigrant visas (green cards) for their family members, increasing chain migration.

The wealth of benefits offered by the U.S. are a major selling point for the birth tourism industry. Last January, the Justice Department unsealed indictments for 19 people involved in Chinese birth tourism schemes.

The indictments revealed that the “birthing house” operators told pregnant women that they could seek U.S. visas to obtain the “most attractive nationality,” “priority for jobs in U.S. government,” “free education from junior high to public high school,” and “senior supplement benefits when the parent is living overseas.”

After paying a fee—which ranged from $15,000 to $50,000—each client received coaching on how to pass visa interviews; overstay visas once in the U.S.; and apply for federal benefits.

This kind of fraudulent behavior not only undermines the integrity of our immigration system, it generates national security concerns, as well.

The article concludes:

President Donald Trump has heard the call of those clamoring for an end to birthright citizenship and has pledged to end the policy. Since the 14th Amendment does not require universal birthright citizenship, a constitutional amendment is not necessary to change current policy. All that’s needed is a new policy.

And that’s exactly what the State Department is issuing—a final rule designed to combat birth tourism in the United States.

Specifically, the rule amends the State Department’s regulation on temporary visitors seeking a “B” (business or pleasure) nonimmigrant visa. It stipulates that such visas are granted to accommodate temporary visits for pleasure and not visits taken for the primary purpose of giving birth in this country.

It also states that, if a consular officer has reason to believe that a visa applicant would give birth while in the U.S., he or she may presume that the primary purpose is to gain citizenship for the unborn child. Unless the applicant is able to rebut that presumption, she would be ineligible for the visa.

Ending birthright citizenship would restore order to our immigration system, decrease welfare costs, and improve national security. The State Department’s new rule to combat birth tourism is a good first step.

This is definitely a move in the right direction.

The Overlooked Impact Of Illegal Immigration

Breitbart posted an article yesterday about an aspect of illegal immigration that is often overlooked.

The article reports:

Research by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler finds that annual illegal and legal immigration to the U.S. will redistribute political power in the form of 26 House seats away from a number of red states and towards massively populated blue states like California and New York.

“To put this number in perspective, changing the party of 21 members of the current Congress would flip the majority in the U.S. House,” Camarota and Zeigler note.

Ohio, a swing state that voted for President Trump in 2016, will get three fewer congressional seats in 2020 due to mass immigration in other states. Michigan and Pennsylvania, also states that voted for Trump in 2016, will each have two fewer congressional seats. Wisconsin, a Trump-supporting swing state, will have its congressional seats cut by at least one.

Red states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia, Camarota and Zeigler predict, will all get one less congressional seat in 2020. Smaller blue states such as Minnesota and Rhode Island will each receive one less congressional seat.

Those seats cut from mostly red states will be redistributed to California, the most immigration-inundated state in the country. California, by 2020, is set to gain 11 congressional seats solely due to the fact that noncitizens, rather than just American citizens, are counted in congressional apportionment.

Likewise, New York — where nearly 40 percent of residents are foreign-born — is set to gain four more congressional seats and New Jersey, with a more than 22 percent foreign-born population, will also take an additional two congressional seats.

Texas, which has become increasingly blue due to immigration and out-of-state young people, will gain another four congressional seats, as will the swing state of Florida with its foreign-born population of 4.1 million.

The deeply blue states of Illinois and Massachusetts, both of which went 55 to 60 percent for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, will each gain one congressional seat.

What this is saying is that the influx of non-citizens into blue states will lessen the impact of voters in red states. This is a glaring example of the reason only citizens should be counted when allotting seats in the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives is supposed to represent American citizens. Americans are leaving California and New York in droves. These two states should be losing representatives–not gaining them.

Protecting The Pocketbooks Of Taxpayers

Yesterday Breitbart reported that President Trump signed a presidential proclamation on Friday that will prevent American taxpayers from being forced to subsidize the healthcare costs of legal immigrants wanting to permanently resettle in the United States. Keep in mind that the government in itself has no money and no income–any money it has it has taken from the people who earned it.

The article reports:

In a new rule, beginning November 3, foreign nationals applying for visas — not including refugees, asylees, or those on nonimmigrant visas — will have to prove that they will have either employer-based health insurance before arriving in the U.S. or a non-subsidized private health insurance plan.

The proclamation reads:

While our healthcare system grapples with the challenges caused by uncompensated care, the United States Government is making the problem worse by admitting thousands of aliens who have not demonstrated any ability to pay for their healthcare costs. Notably, data show that lawful immigrants are about three times more likely than United States citizens to lack health insurance. Immigrants who enter this country should not further saddle our healthcare system, and subsequently American taxpayers, with higher costs.

The article further reports:

Research by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has found that immigrant households, currently, are 44 percent more likely to be on Medicaid than households headed by native-born Americans. While about 23 percent of native-born American households are on Medicaid, about 50 percent of immigrant households consume Medicaid.

The article concludes:

Currently, there is an estimated record high of 44.5 million foreign-born residents living in the U.S. This is nearly quadruple the immigrant population in 2000. The vast majority of those arriving in the country every year are low-skilled legal immigrants who compete against working and middle-class Americans for jobs.

We need to revisit our immigration policies. For those who claim that America has always welcomed immigrants, that is true. However, we welcomed immigrants who came to this country to prosper and support themselves. We never supported the idea of Americans paying the expenses of an unlimited number of immigrants. That is national suicide.

The Cost Of Congressional Inaction

America has needed a reasonable approach to immigration for years. Congress has chosen not to meet this need. So what is the cost of their inaction? Today’s Washington Examiner has some of the numbers.

The Washington Examiner reports:

Federal arrests of noncitizens have jumped over 200% in the last 20 years and now account for 64% of those arrested, according to the Justice Department.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics said that federal arrests of non-Americans rose 234% from 1998-2018. For U.S. citizens, the percentage rose just 10% over those 20 years.

The newly released statistics feed the Trump administration’s narrative that an increase in immigration, especially illegal immigration, has fed a spike in crime.

The article concludes:

Also over that period, illegal immigration has surged off and on and the bureau said that immigration crimes account for the bulk of arrests. In the past, Department of Homeland Security authorities have accounted for a majority of the arrests.

“20 years, 95% of the increase in federal arrests was due to immigration crimes. From 1998 to 2018, federal immigration arrests increased 5-fold (from 20,942 to 108,667), rising more than 50,000 in one year from 2017 to 2018,” said the Justice Department.

Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, said that the statistics and types of crimes disprove claims by pro-immigration advocates that illegal immigrants aren’t involved in crimes.

“Opponents of immigration enforcement are obsessed with trying to establish that illegal aliens and legal immigrants commit fewer crimes than Americans, and so, as their narrative goes, local law enforcement agencies should not cooperate with ICE and should adopt sanctuary policies. This is first of all not true, but is off-point and a dangerous conclusion. What these numbers show is that there are certain types of crime that are disproportionately associated with illegal aliens: drug trafficking, certain gang crimes, and identity theft and document fraud,” she told Secrets.

I can’t even imagine how much this is costing our federal government. It would seem that with budget deficits as far as the eye can see, Congress might be willing to look at fixing the immigration problem as one positive step toward reducing government spending, Nope–the political issue is worth more than the solution. Also, is Congress willing to take responsibility for the Americans who have been harmed by illegal immigration?

A Common Sense Approach To Saving Taxpayer Money

Welfare was meant to be a safety net–not a career choice. Unfortunately we have lost the war on poverty started by President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960’s. According to the social work degree center website, in the 1960’s, 22 percent of Americans lived below the poverty line. In 2014, 14.8 percent of Americans lived below the poverty line. In January 2016, The Daily Signal reported:

First, the War on Poverty has failed to achieve Johnson’s goal: to “strike at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty.” Since he declared “unconditional war,” poverty has thumbed its nose at its would-be conquerors.

The official poverty rate has hovered between ten and fifteen percent for 50 years. But that is only a part of the story. Since the 1960s, the institutions that contribute to self-sufficiency—namely, marriage and work—have declined. Today, more than 40 percent of children are born outside marriage; in 1964, only 7 percent were.

…Robert Rector, senior research fellow in domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, writes that “taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s war. Adjusted for inflation, that’s three times the cost of all military wars since the American Revolution.” It’s time to change course. We need a new strategy against poverty.

The changes in our culture are part of the problem, but there is another increasing problem–people who come to this country to take advantage of our generous welfare system.

Breitbart posted an article today stating:

President Trump is set to save American taxpayers billions of dollars as his administration announces a new rule on Monday that will essentially ban welfare-dependent legal immigrants from permanently resettling in the United States.

A new regulation set to be published by the Trump administration will ensure that legal immigrants would be less likely to secure a permanent residency in the U.S. if they have used any forms of welfare in the past, including using subsidized healthcare services, food stamps, and public housing.

Below is a chart of current welfare expenditures:

I have no problem with having a safety net, but it seems that our priorities are out of order. The first group of people that we should be helping are our veterans. Too many of them come home and need help to get on their feet when they separate from the military. I would like to see that as our first priority in welfare spending.

The article at Breitbart concludes:

Currently, there is an estimated record high of 44.5 million foreign-born residents living in the U.S. This is nearly quadruple the immigrant population in 2000. The vast majority of those arriving in the country every year are low-skilled legal immigrants who compete against working and middle-class Americans for jobs.

If we don’t get a handle on immigration, we are going to bankrupt America.

Is There A Problem?

President Trump made a very generous offer to the Democrats in the House of Representatives today regarding border security on our southern border. Unfortunately it is a pretty safe bet that they will turn down the offer. So exactly what is at stake?

On January 7th Christopher Holton posted an article at The Center For Security Policy about the security threat on our southern border. It is a rather detailed article, and I suggest that you follow the link above and read the entire article.

Here are some of the highlights:

For instance in May 2001, former Mexican National security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, reported, that ‘Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge.’

There is no way to estimate how many jihadists may already have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico. But the time to play politics with the border issue is long past. The shallow sloganeering and race-baiting that have dominated the national debate about border controls should be recognized as what they are: hindrances to sane and sensible national defense measures.

…Mexicans trying to enter the U.S. illegally are often simply processed at the border and sent back. But Mexico won’t allow us to send citizens from other countries back through Mexico, and under U.S. law, they’re entitled to a formal deportation hearing. The immigration service lacks beds to hold them, so the vast majority of OTMs are released from custody and asked to voluntarily return for their court date.

For instance, in 2005 alone, there were estimated to be 71,000 such OTM fugitives.

…The intrepid Todd Bensman of the excellent Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has provided the highlights of that report’s findings:

• The recent migrant caravans originating in Central America have included “several SIAs (Special Interest Aliens), and potentially” known or suspected terrorists traveling toward the U.S. border.

• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security continues to prioritize the SIA threat as one of the top threats to the homeland because of the consistently “large number” of individuals from special interest countries that travel to the Western Hemisphere using illicit pathways.

• Written ISIS materials and publications have encouraged ISIS followers to cross the U.S. Southwest Border.

• DHS Border Patrol Agents “routinely” encounter SIAs at the border using routes controlled by transnational criminal organizations.

• Statistics on the number of known or suspected terrorists on routes to the border are often classified, but the threat posed by “the existence of illicit pathways into the United States” highlights that “border security is national security” as terrorist groups seek to exploit vulnerabilities among neighboring countries to fund, support, and commit attacks against the homeland.

• The report lists five open-source, unclassified cases representing the types of individuals and threats associated with illicit routes to the homeland. (CIS recently compiled and published a list of 15.) A number of heavily redacted cases are included in which biometric enrollment information uncovered suspected terrorists in 2013, 2015, and 2018.

• The frequency of international flights from special interest regions into Latin America and the Caribbean continues to increase due to economic and governance challenges in those countries that create an attractive environment for illicit SIA travel to the U.S. border.

• ICE Homeland Security Investigations is deeply enmeshed in investigations and operations throughout Central America to counter human smuggling organizations that move SIAs in Panama, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Brazil.

• The United States-Canada border “is also susceptible to exploitation by SIAs.”

It’s time for the politicians in Washington to stop fooling around and secure the border. The next terrorist attack in America will be on their hands.

Taking A Stand For America

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about a successful policy President Trump has instituted to deal with the problem of illegal immigrants.

The article reports:

Sierra Leone for years had thumbed its nose at U.S. officials, slow-walking deportations so badly that it earned its way onto Homeland Security’s “recalcitrant country” naughty list. Over the last two years of the Obama administration, Sierra Leone took back just 21 deportees.

President Trump took office vowing action, and one of his first executive orders instructed his administration to stop issuing visas to the worst-offending countries. The Sierra Leone government was targeted with sanctions in August 2017, and the change came quickly, with 44 deportees sent back that year, and 79 shipped back in fiscal 2018.

While much of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda remains tied up in the federal courts or stalemated in Congress, he has made extraordinary progress on recalcitrant countries like Sierra Leone, cutting the number of deadbeat countries from a peak of 23 in 2015 down to just nine as of last month.

The number of countries on the at-risk list, or close to recalcitrant, also has been slashed, from 62 to just 24 as of May.

Long-time deadbeats such as Cuba, China and Vietnam are taking back hundreds more people, even though they remain on the naughty list.

Guinea earned its way off the list by increasing its acceptance of deportees by more than 1,200 percent from 2016 to 2018, while Eritrea went from 13 deportees in Mr. Obama’s final year to 62 last year. Myanmar rose from three to 40.

This is what protecting America looks like.

The article states:

Under Mr. Trump, six countries have already been slapped with deportee-related sanctions.

In each of those cases, the U.S. government said it would no longer issue business or tourist visas to government officials and their families — and warned that even broader sanctions could follow.

That got the attention of diplomats in the target countries, and elsewhere.

“Now these countries understand that the party is over and they — government officials in particular — will face consequences for blocking deportations,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies. “The sanctions work.”

Even still, a massive backlog has built up of people waiting to be deported. China is the worst offender with more than 40,000 in the deportation queue, followed by Cuba with nearly 38,000.

More troubling is that almost all of them have been set free into U.S. communities, thanks to a 2001 Supreme Court ruling limiting detention to just six months in cases when the government doesn’t appear likely to be able to get the other countries to take them back.

That means convicted criminals are often released, including more than 30,000 of the Cubans, nearly 8,000 Vietnamese, nearly 4,000 Laotians and more than 2,000 Chinese.

Ms. Waldman called that a “remarkable public safety risk” that requires action by Congress.

Illegal aliens do not add to our country’s economy. We do need to change the immigration laws to make legal immigration to America more accessible to those people who want to come her and contribute to the American economy. We don’t need to have an open door for people who want to come here and take advantage of our generosity.

Common Sense Begins

The Washington Times reported yesterday that President Trump plans to make a major change in immigration rules. The new rule would require immigrants to show they aren’t a public burden if they want to extend their visas or get on the path to citizenship. That sounds like common sense to me. America is struggling to take care of her veterans, and struggling to provide assistance to the people already here. Why would we bring in more people from other countries to drain our welfare system further?

The article reports:

The president’s backers said they expect Mr. Trump and his team to finalize the proposal. If anything, they said, it doesn’t go far enough to crack down on what appears to be rampant welfare use by noncitizens and their children.

“I think they’re going to implement them as is or with some tweaks. This is the kind of thing he was elected for,” said Steven A. Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies. “While there might be advocacy groups that object to that idea, the fact is most Americans think immigrants should be self-sufficient, so I think they’re on pretty strong ground.”

The center released a study this month calculating that a staggering 63 percent of households led by noncitizens use at least one welfare program. The rate for households led by native-born Americans is just 35 percent.

It would also be a good idea to begin to put a time limit on welfare programs. For instance, a person could not get housing assistance for more than 10 years or food stamps for more than 5 years unless they showed proof of at least part-time employment or job training. We cannot afford to continue to take money away from people who earn it and give it to people who didn’t earn it and think they are entitled to it.

Politics Before National Security

The decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did not uphold the law. This is the law as it is written:

The Executive Order issued by President Trump did not stop immigration from the seven countries listed–it put a 90-day pause in effect on refugees from these countries. The idea was to allow time for us to find a way to vet them so as to ensure the safety of Americans. The Executive Order also included a 120-day pause in admitting refugees. Again, this would give us time to examine our policies so that we could improve our procedures. Most of what the news is reporting on this Executive Order is simply not true. It is my hope that another Executive Order regarding refugees will be written more carefully and will stand.

However, there is more to the story. On Thursday, The Washington Times reported the following:

The State Department has more than doubled the rate of refugees from Iraq, Syria and other suspect countries in the week since a federal judge’s reprieve, in what analysts said appears to be a push to admit as many people as possible before another court puts the program back on ice.

A staggering 77 percent of the 1,100 refugees let in since Judge James L. Robart’s Feb. 3 order have been from the seven suspect countries. Nearly a third are from Syria alone — a country that President Trump has ordered be banned altogether from the refugee program. Another 21 percent are from Iraq. By contrast, in the two weeks before Judge Robart’s order, just 9 percent of refugees were from Syria and 6 percent were from Iraq.

“There’s no doubt in my mind they would be doing whatever they could to get people in before something changes because, from their perspective, their motivation is to resettle these folks. It would not be the first time that State Department officials have prioritized facilitating someone’s entry to the United States over security concerns,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

This is an example of the need to fire the majority of employees left over from the previous administration.

There are some things we need to remember in this discussion. Vetting of refugees from these countries is very difficult–in some cases we are dealing with failed states that cannot check records, and in other cases we are dealing with states that promote terrorism. ISIS has already stated that it is including terrorists with the refugees. Do we need to import terrorists? We also need to remember who ISIS is–they are the Sunni Baathists who were in charge of Iraq under Saddam Hussein. They were ruthless in ruling Iraq, and they are ruthless as ISIS. We really do not want to allow them into America.

What we are seeing is the Washington establishment trying to destroy an outsider who is a threat to their power. We need to understand that as we view the events around us. The Ninth Circuit and (unfortunately) the State Department are not concerned with the safety or security of Americans–they are concerned only with their political views and their power. Our Founding Fathers would be appalled.

 

The Price Of A Porous Border

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about the cost of young people illegally entering America every day.

The article quotes Center for Immigration Studies Policy Director Jessica Vaughan:

“An average of 255 illegal alien youths were taken into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) every day this month, according to the latest figures the agency provided to Congress. This is the largest number of illegal alien children ever in the care of the federal government. To pay for it, the agency says it will need an additional one or two billion dollars for the next year – above and beyond the $1.2 billion spent in 2016 and proposed for 2017 – depending on how many more arrive. For now, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where ORR resides, is diverting $167 million from other programs to cover the cost of services for these new illegal arrivals through December 9, when the current continuing resolution expires.”

So, what are the other programs? A total of $167 million will be coming from other federal programs. This includes $14 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration, including $4.5 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and $2 million from the Maternal and Child Health program. I have a question. If (according to the Democrats in Congress) it is impossible to cut the federal budget, how can you cut these programs? Are you denying Americans what they need to accommodate people who entered the country illegally? Wouldn’t it be cheaper simply to send the youths home?

Let’s hope that the new Congress follows its obligation to approve a budget and stick to it. This is ridiculous.

A Difficult Balance

Tonight I had the privilege of hearing two very knowledgeable speakers on the subject of immigration in America–Jim Robb, Vice President of Operations at Numbers USA and Ron Woodard, Director of NC Listen. It was a very informative evening, but I left with a realization that at some point in the near future, America was going to have to balance the interests of Americans with the desire to help immigrants. Right now we are not balancing those two things–our current immigration and refugee programs (or lack of them) are hurting Americans and need to be reevaluated.

One aspect of this problem is illustrated by two graphs at the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies website:

centerforimmigrationThere is something seriously wrong with this picture.So what is going on? There are two groups who are happy with the current situation–for very different reasons. Democratic politicians want to create a permanent dependent class that will continue to elect Democrats in order to get government handouts. It was President Lyndon B. Johnson who stated as he worked to pass his expansive ‘Great Society‘ program, “”I’ll have those n—–s voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” The other group is the Chamber of Commerce. This group has put the idea of cheap labor above the welfare of Americans. Businessmen who support excessive immigration in order to pay workers less (both legal and illegal immigrants) in order to make a bigger profit are not ethical and do not have the best interests of American workers in mind. I think both the Democratic Party and the Chamber of Commerce have lost their way.

Sane immigration policy is possible. It begins with closing the borders to all but legal immigrants who have passed thorough background checks, tracking people who have overstayed their visas (a group that would include the 911 hijackers), and deporting anyone who is arrested, caught driving under the influence, or commits any illegal act. Sane immigration would also include the U.S. Government determining who immigrates to the United States–not the United Nations. Right now the United Nations totally controls the American refugee program. We need to reclaim our sovereignty and our country’s borders.

Following The Law Has Become Optional

On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the number of illegal work permits that have been issued by the Obama Administration since 2009

The article reports:

…it has come to light that the Obama administration has been handing out illegal work permits for years. The Center for Immigration Studies has received documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request that indicate millions of such illegal work permits have been issued since 2009.

The Center for Immigration Studies report is posted at Power Line. Follow the link above the view the entire report.

Some highlights of the report:

Government data reveal that more than 7.4 million work permits (formally known as Employment Authorization Documents) were issued to aliens from 2009 to 2014. Because neither lawful permanent residents (green card holders) nor temporary work visa holders need a work permit, this amounts to a huge parallel immigrant work authorization system outside the numerical limits and categories set by Congress. …

Approximately 2.1 million work permits were issued to aliens with temporary visas or who entered under the Visa Waiver Program. Of these, about 1.4 million (66 percent) had a visa status for which employment is generally prohibited under the law, except in what are supposed to be rare cases. For example, more than 548,000 work permits were issued to aliens on tourist visas and 593,000 were issued to foreign students. More than 213,000 were issued to dependents of students and guestworkers — all categories in which the law prohibits employment except in rare circumstances. …

More than 2.2 million work permits were issued over this time period to illegal aliens or aliens unqualified for admission. Nearly all of these (2.1 million) were illegal aliens who crossed the border illegally (Entered Without Inspection). Inexplicably, 2,860 work permits were issued to aliens who were denied asylum, were suspected of using fraudulent documents, were stowaways, or were refused at a port of entry….

A huge number of work permits, 1.9 million, were issued to aliens whose status was unknown, not recorded by the adjudicator, or not disclosed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that processes the applications.

How many Americans have left the work force because they could not find job? How many of the people with these illegal work permits are working at jobs that Americans would love to do? This is only a small taste of the damage President Obama’s illegal amnesty will do.

 

The President’s “Get Out Of Jail Free” Card

On Monday The Washington Times reported that in 2013 immigration officers released 36,000 immigrants from custody.

The article describes these immigrants:

Among the 36,000 immigrants whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released from custody last year there were 116 with convictions for homicide, 43 for negligent manslaughter, 14 for voluntary manslaughter and one with a conviction classified by ICE as “homicide-willful kill-public official-gun.”

The immigrants were in deportation proceedings, meaning ICE was trying to remove them from the country and could have held them in detention but released them anyway, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which published the numbers Monday. The Washington Times also obtained the data.

…The 36,007 criminal aliens counted in the data had more than 87,000 convictions among them: 15,635 for drunken driving, 9,187 for what ICE labeled “dangerous drugs,” 2,691 for assault, 1,724 for weapons offenses and 303 for “flight escape” — a category that would seem to make them bad candidates for release.

I will admit that I am having trouble figuring out the rationale behind releasing them rather than deporting them. Releasing these prisoners puts the safety of American citizens at risk. They should have been deported.

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I Really Don’t Think This Is Helpful

The Hill is reporting today that the Obama Administration’s claims that they have been tough on illegal immigrants with criminal records does not agree with the facts.

The article reports:

An internal Department of Homeland Security document compiling statistics on arrests and deportations in 2013 showed that ICE agents encountered 193,357 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions but issued charging documents for only 125,478. More than 67,800 were released.

The data came from an end-of-year “Weekly Departures and Detention Report.”

The Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that favors stricter enforcement of immigration laws, estimates ICE agents released more than a third of illegal immigrants with criminal records they detained.

“ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers. The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies,” Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote in a memo summarizing the DHS document.

ICE classifies illegal immigrants as criminal if they have been convicted of a crime, not including traffic offense, Vaughn noted.

Until current immigration laws are enforced and convicted criminals are deported, I think any discussion of amnesty for illegal aliens should be put on hold. We desperately need to change our immigration policies–people who want to come here legally and want to assimilate should be encouraged to come here–their applications should be quickly processed. People who are here illegally should go to the end of the line, but their applications should also be reviewed quickly. Illegals should be denied access to welfare and health insurance until they go through the process of becoming American citizens. New American citizens should be prohibited from welfare programs until they have been here for at least five years–anyone can temporarily be in need, but we don’t need to encourage people to come here strictly to go on welfare and live at everyone else’s expense.

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Understanding The Immigration Bill

First of all, I am not at all sure it is possible to understand the immigration bill–when it was introduced, it was 844 pages long; it has now grown to 867 pages.

Last night, I was able to attend a presentation explaining the Immigration Bill at the Northborough Public Library. The presentation was put on by the Northborough Tea Party. The speaker was Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies.

Jessica Vaughan posted an article at the Center for Immigration Studies website on May 2 which explains the problems with the current immigration bill.

The article lists several problems with the current bill, these are only a few:

  • The bill allows the legalization of aliens who have been convicted of up to three misdemeanors on separate occasions, excluding “minor” traffic offenses. This provision will allow the legalization of those with multiple offenses for drunk driving, vehicular homicide, domestic violence, certain sex offenses, theft, identity theft, and other misdemeanors.
  • It requires immigration agencies to ignore convictions under state laws on alien smuggling, human trafficking, and harboring illegal aliens altogether.
  • It waives criminal offenses for anyone under 18 (as opposed to 16 under current law), no matter the seriousness of the offense, and even if the offender was tried as an adult. This provision will be most helpful to convicted gang members aged 16-18.
  • It eliminates all enhancements and punishments for aggravated felons that allow for these individuals to be barred from re-entry or punished if they do. It permits aggravated felons to be placed in “soft” detention such as group homes and electronic monitoring.
  • The bill forces the government to justify the detention of aliens charged with being deportable — and whose detention is mandatory by law due to the severity of the offense, such as aggravated felons — and guarantees aliens a hearing on the detention every 90 days.
  • For the first time in history, the Attorney General would be required by law to provide lawyers to certain aliens in deportation proceedings at taxpayer expense.
  • The bill provides sweeping new standards of judicial review for aliens denied benefits. It expands review into the federal district courts as well as circuit courts of appeal, and encourages class action suits against DHS.

We need immigration reform. However, we need immigration reform that works and borders that prevent further illegal aliens from entering the country. Until the border is secure, there really is no point in doing immigration reform–the number of illegal aliens involved would simply overwhelm the social welfare systems of America and collapse the current safety net.

One of the things that Ms. Vaughan pointed out was the fact that the immigration bill says that the citizens legalized in the immigration bill would be ineligible for federal assistance for ten years. However, it is the states who are in charge of government assistance and would determine someone’s eligibility–so that portion of the bill is simply nice words that mean nothing.

Yesterday The Hill reported the following:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a central member of the Senate Gang of Eight, expressed disappointment Tuesday after senators rejected a proposal to strengthen the system for tracking visa holders entering and exiting the country.

The panel rejected a Republican amendment to require a biometric entry and exit system at ports of entry before granting permanent legal status to 11 million illegal immigrants.

In 1986, President Reagan and Congress promised America a bill that would solve the immigration problem once and for all. That bill would secure the border, enforce immigration laws, and wipe the slate clean so that those here illegally at that time could become citizens. At the present time, the border is not secure, the immigration laws were enforced between 2007 and 2009, but now we are back to our old ways, and many of those here illegally have no desire to become citizens so they have not.

We have two choices–we can believe Congress when they tell us that this time they really will enforce immigration laws and seal the border, or we can fight this bill with everything we have to make sure it does not become law. Frankly, I choose the latter.

We need immigration reform. That can be done slowly in sections so that Americans can read and understand the laws being considered, and so that Congress can understand both the problems we face if we continue our current immigration program and the need to pass a bill that will actually solve our current and future problems. I also strongly suggest that Congress actually take the time to read the bill. We need to find out what is in the bill before it is passed–not the other way around.

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