Sanctuary City Tactic: The Longer You’re Here the More Likely You Get to Stay
Open-border politicians who welcome illegal aliens and later advocate for mass amnesty, understand perfectly the concept, “the-longer-they’re-here-the-less-likely-they’ll-ever-leave.” Pushing yet another tactic designed to this end, 40 mayors and county executives from across America recently sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary (DHS) Alejandro Mayorkas, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur Jaddou, demanding extensions for existing migrant work permits. If put in place, it would further lengthen the inordinate amount of time millions of migrants are already permitted to remain in the country while awaiting official determination of their lawful status, and here’s why.
Aliens entering the country have one year in which to apply for asylum, after which they must wait 150 days to apply for work authorization, and cannot receive an Employment Authorization Document (EADs until 180 days after the filing of an asylum application.
Once granted, a work permit is valid for up to five years.
So, for our running tally, that’s five and a half years in which the migrant becomes firmly rooted in the U.S., despite the high likelihood his lawful status remains in question because the case will never be heard due to backlogged courts, or despite the fact his application is probably fraudulent and will be denied. (Judges granted asylum in only 14 percent of cases in 2022.)
When the EAD finally expires, federal law stipulates the migrant has an additional 180-day grace period to reapply.
Still with us on the math? Now we’re at six years.
But even that’s not enough time, so say those 40 mayors and county executives who claim they need the “workers,” i.e., exploitable labor. They’re advocating instead for a 540-day grace period…which would add another entire year, thus representing a grand prize, a total time of seven years allowed in the U.S. for those who, remember, are awaiting adjudication of their cases which, again, are probably predicated on highly dubious claims.
Seven years. And that’s before the next push by special interests concocting ways to extend times which, of course, they’ll justify by the mounting pressure of 1.6 million backlogged asylum applications, growing daily under Biden’s Border Crisis. This, of course, could be cured by closing the border, closing asylum loopholes, stopping catch and release, and hiring more judges.
It’s notable that almost all of the mayors and county executives who signed the letter demanding extended work permits for illegal aliens preside over sanctuary jurisdictions, ignorant of, or perhaps simply unwilling to acknowledge their own culpability in the migrant mess. (Super-Sanctuary Mayor Eric Adams of New York and Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago — two municipalities now teetering on financial collapse -are the first two signatories.)
Instead of renouncing and reversing their own policies that incentivize illegal immigration and demanding enforcement from the Biden administration, they have cynically attempted to exploit a crisis by adding time to the clock — deliberately trying to “mainstream” — millions of migrants who remain here under false pretenses.