Congress established Temporary Protected Status (TPS) more than 30 years ago to address exactly the sort of situation that is playing out in Ukraine today. An estimated 30,000 Ukrainian citizens are believed to be in the United States on some sort of temporary visa, or here illegally. A percentage of those Ukrainians may want to get home right now to join the resistance to Russia’s military invasion and subjugation of their homeland, or to be with their families in a time of crisis.
Congress established Temporary Protected Status (TPS) more than 30 years ago to address exactly the sort of situation that is playing out in Ukraine today. An estimated 30,000 Ukrainian citizens are believed to be in the United States on some sort of temporary visa, or here illegally. A percentage of those Ukrainians may want to get home right now to join the resistance to Russia’s military invasion and subjugation of their homeland, or to be with their families in a time of crisis.
The time many have feared has finally arrived. President Joe Biden, in concert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), announced that Title 42 is coming to an end.
This decision sets the stage for the worsening of the existing border crisis and will lay bare the broken nature of our immigration system for the whole world to see.
A new report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates that the illegal alien population has increased to approximately 15.5 million as of the end of 2021, up from 14.5 million in 2020. The report also estimates that this population now costs American taxpayers a net of at least $143.1 billion annually – an increase of $9.4 billion from last year.
Since taking office, the Biden administration has made a point of not just rolling back everything that former President Donald Trump did to secure the southern border and deter illegal immigration, but also dismantle nearly all immigration enforcement measures on the books. This undermining of immigration enforcement ranges from protecting nearly all illegal aliens (including most serious criminals) from deportation to reinstating the Obama-era practice of catch-and-release.
The human cost of the Biden administration’s disastrous immigration policy was once again on full display after a young national guardsman drowned trying to save migrants in the Rio Grande. National Guard Specialist Bishop E. Evans was a 22-year-old from Arlington who joined the Texas National Guard in 2019 and served in Iraq and Kuwait. His heroic actions must never be forgotten.
Shortly after Mr. Evans’ body was found last week, a troubling detail emerged: The two migrants who Mr. Evans tried to rescue turned out to be drug smugglers. This unfortunate episode emphasizes the broader inhumanity and insanity of President Biden’s self-created border crisis.
The current political environment is terrible for Democrats — and that is putting it mildly. Poll after poll shows that Americans disapprove of President Biden’s performance. On two key issues, Mr. Biden is so far underwater that he needs scuba gear. His handling of the economy has an approval rating of just 29%, with 69% disapproving. Likewise on immigration, only 37% of Americans think he is doing a good job, compared with 60% who disapprove.
Not surprisingly, polls show that the GOP has a 3.5-point advantage in the 2022 generic congressional ballot. With the border crisis raging and prices rising, and little being done to address either, it is all but certain that Republicans will take control of one or both chambers in November.
The Biden administration has created an unprecedented border crisis affecting our entire nation. This has galvanized public opposition, creating a united front of state and local governments, former immigration officials, and public interest groups demanding that the administration stop its sabotage of border and interior immigration enforcement.
Amid a full-blown border crisis that threatens national security and public health — for which the Biden administration is wholly responsible — a bipartisan group of lawmakers has decided this might be a good time to fast-track citizenship for around 76,000 Afghan nationals who were lucky enough to force their way onto the last planes out of Kabul a year ago.
Former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has already been declared unlawful by a federal judge in Texas — a decision that is likely to be upheld later this year by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In fact, Mr. Obama admitted, on 22 occasions, that he lacked the authority to grant across-the-board protections to illegal aliens before he succumbed to pressure from his political base and created DACA in 2012.
With the turn of the calendar and the unofficial start of the 2024 campaign cycle, President Biden took two steps designed to quell the growing furor over his handling of the raging, self-inflicted border crisis.