Tag Archives: DACA

The Damage To Our Economy That Is Still Possible

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President Biden will spend the last five months of his presidency as a lame duck. That is if he is not forced out by the 25th Amendment (which I consider highly unlikely). Because he remains as President, he can still do considerable financial damage to America by promoting certain policies.

On July 15th, The Federalist posted an article about the Biden administration’s latest healthcare proposal. The Biden administration proposal would extend a “temporary” increase in Obamacare subsidies, create new federal spending and undermine the current healthcare system. The higher subsidies were part of the Democrats’ partisan “stimulus” bill in early 2021. These subsidies were then extended for three years in 2022. These subsidies will expire at the same time the Trump tax relief package expires.

The Congressional Budge Office (CBO) reports that this increase in subsides would result in a “3.5 million decrease in enrollment in employment-based coverage.” The budget office explained that “the decline in employment-based coverage would be larger under a permanent [subsidy] extension,” because “more employers would change their offers of health insurance if the policy became permanent.” In other words, if you like your plan, tough luck — your employer could cancel it for you.

The article at The Federalist also notes the although extending the subsides would increase the number of insured Americans by 3.4 million, under the proposal 3.5 million Americans would lose employer-based coverage.

The article further notes that from the Exchanges’ launch in 2014 through 2021, only households with incomes under four times the poverty level ($124,800 for a family of four this year) qualified for subsidies.This year that 750 percent-of-poverty threshold stands at $112,950 for an individual, and $234,000 for a family of four.

The administration has also allowed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to qualify for subsidies. You don’t even have to be an American to get money from the government! The DACA policy will cost $9 billion in the coming decade plus $1.6 billion in interest costs.

Congress needs to say “NO” to any Biden administration proposals that increase the deficit. Any members of Congress that agree to spending more money during the end of this lame duck presidency need to be voted out of office.

Upholding The Constitution

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On Wednesday, The Epoch Times reported that a Federal Appeals Court has ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is illegal.

The DACA program protects eligible immigrants who came to the United States when they were children from deportation. DACA gives undocumented immigrants: 1) protection from deportation, and 2) a work permit. The program requires that the DACA status and work permit be renewed every two years.

The article reports:

The ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday (pdf) affirms a decision in July 2021 by a Texas federal judge—U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen—who declared the DACA program illegal and blocked new applications but kept the policy intact for current beneficiaries. The appeals court similarly left the DACA program intact for current beneficiaries, which means current DACA recipients can continue to file renewal applications.

The appeals court on Wednesday also sent the case back to Hanen to have him review a revised set of rules that the Biden administration announced in August, to determine its legality.

The Biden administration’s new final rule to “preserve and fortify” DACA codifies the existing policy, with limited changes, into federal regulation. It was subject to public comments as part of a formal rule-making process intended to improve its chances of surviving lawsuits challenging it. It’s set to be effective Oct. 31 to replace the 2012 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memorandum that had created DACA.

The article explains the reason for the ruling:

Hanen, in his decision in July declaring DACA illegal, had stated that DACA goes against the Constitution given that Congress never provided the executive branch authorization to grant deportation reprieves to illegal immigrants in the United States.

Chief Judge Priscilla Richman of the 5th Circuit of Appeals wrote in the opinion on Wednesday: “The district court’s excellent opinion correctly identified fundamental substantive defects in the program. The DACA memorandum contracts significant parts of the [Immigration and Naturalization Act].”

She added: “DACA creates a new class of otherwise removable aliens who may obtain lawful presence, work authorization, and associated benefits. Congress determined which aliens can receive these benefits, and it did not include DACA recipients among them.

“We agree with the district court’s reasoning and its conclusions that the DACA Memorandum contravenes comprehensive statutory schemes for removal, allocation of lawful presence, and allocation of work authorization.”

Children (now adults) who were brought here illegally as young children may not have an understanding of what is actually their native language or understand their native culture. To send them back would be cruel. Let’s not add to the program, but let’s have compassion on those who have been here for ten years or more.

Sending Mixed Messages To Everyone Involved

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I am very confused by actions vs. words regarding the Biden administration’s border policy. The Vice-President says that she has been to the border. I must have missed that. The President says the border is closed. I guess I  missed that also. Meanwhile, the current spoken message of the Vice-President is, “Don’t come.” However, the actions of the Biden administration tell a different story.

Yesterday The American Thinker posted an article about the difference between what the Biden administration is saying about the border and what the Biden administration is doing to encourage illegal immigration.

The article quotes a USA Today article:

Vice President Kamala Harris will host a roundtable Tuesday with a group of female immigrants [sic] who have temporary protection from deportation as the administration looks to revive a bipartisan push to grant them legal status through a pair of bills that have languished in the Senate. 

…The vice president will use the meeting to call on the Senate to pass two bills that cleared the House with bipartisan support earlier this year: the American Dream and Promise Act,  which would give DACA recipients the ability to live and work in the U.S, as well as the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would enable more than 1 million undocumented farm workers to apply for legal status. 

Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, who will also be in attendance, said the meeting ties the importance of immigration reform to economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic by highlighting immigrants who work as care professionals. 

The article concludes with a statement about the prospects of getting a bipartisan immigration bill through Congress:

It’s a coming failure.

The softest of these bipartisan senators on immigration — Sens. Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and others — have all said a deal is dead in the water until the border surge is controlled.  Politico has that story dating from March here.

Anyone see Kamala Harris at the border to halt the border surge, which would seem to be her job as border czar as well as a boon to help win Republicans in Congress over to her side?  I haven’t.  The surge hasn’t even peaked yet, as I wrote about here, and some 180,000 or so rolled in from countries well beyond Central America just last month.  More are expected in June.

Harris was presumably chosen by Joe to be his vice president because of all her congressional ties and capacities to cut compromises across party lines.  Yet right now, her failure to go to the border, or more importantly even halt the border surge, is precisely what’s keeping her from hammering out a deal with Republicans.

What we see now is the tiny light at the end of a tunnel…of an oncoming train.  She’s going to be defeated on this, too, same as she was in her pathetic bid for diplomacy.  But as for illegal border surgers, they’re hearing her message loud and clear, to keep coming.

Her lips say “no, no,” but her hands say “yes, yes.”  No wonder Willie Brown found her irresistible.

The Biden administration is not capable of solving the border crisis without going back to the policies of the Trump administration–something they will never do.

When Did We Give Judges This Kind Of Power?

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Yesterday Just the News reported that a federal judge has reinstated DACA. DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that would provide people brought into America illegally as children a path to citizenship. DACA was put in place by an executive order by President Obama. When President Trump tried to undo that executive order, which supposedly he is allowed to do, the courts got involved. It went to the Supreme Court, and they told President Trump he was doing it wrong. So we are essentially back at square one.

The article reports:

The DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) saga continues its long and winding road through all branches of government, as a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on Friday that these undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children can once again apply to remain in this country legally.

This goes back to the Obama administration, who said repeatedly that “I am president, I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself. We have a system of government that requires the Congress to work with the executive branch to make it happen,” and words to that effect.  

But finally he gave up on Congress and in June of 2012, he signed DACA into law as an executive directive and said that it was “a temporary stopgap measure.”

President Trump had planned to end it, and then offered it as part of a grand bargain to get a wall built and to end chain migration. The Democrats did not accept his offer. Finally he attempted to rescind the Obama directive and end the program, but the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against him in June of this year on the basis that he hadn’t properly used the Administrative Procedure Act, not on the merits or the constitutionality of the case.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis fully restored the Obama-era program. He ordered the Department of Homeland Security to begin accepting new applications on Monday.

The Trump administration can now go back to court. I do have compassion for the children who were brought here with no say in the matter. However, DACA as it is currently set up is an invitation to fraud. We have MS-13 gang members lying about their age to get into the country. We have no real handle on how many people this will impact. What do you say when you see a person who has waiting years to immigrate to America, doing it the right way and paying the cost and they watch someone who came illegally step in front of them in line? This whole program needs to go back to the drawing board along with our existing immigration policies.

I Am Hoping This Will Never Happen

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Yesterday The Blaze posted an article about former Vice-President Joe Biden’s plans for executive orders should he become President.

The article reports:

Former Vice President Joe Biden plans to roll out at least four executive orders should he ultimately be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, undoing the work of President Donald Trump, his campaign said this week.

A spokesperson for the Biden campaign on Monday told Fox News that the former vice president plans to rejoin both the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization and also plans to reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — or DACA — and repeal the president’s so-called travel ban on certain Muslim countries.

Biden has also previously vowed to repeal Trump’s tax cuts and reverse the Mexico City Policy, which bans foreign aid from going to nongovernmental organizations that promote or pay for abortions.

“Other abortion-related policies and those weakening the Affordable Care Act will likely be on the chopping block in a Biden-Harris administration as well,” the outlet noted.

All of these policies will not help America move forward. Repealing the tax cuts will slow economic growth, ending the travel ban will make Americans less safe, and rejoining the Paris climate agreement will cripple the American economy while not impacting economic rival China. Just for the record, America has cut its carbon emissions despite not being part of the agreement; China continues to build coal-generated electric plants, increasing its carbon emissions. It is also unfortunate that the Democrats are so beholden to their Planned Parenthood donors that they find it necessary to use taxpayer dollars to fund abortions overseas.

A Biden administration will be a continuation of the anemic growth we experienced in the Obama administration.