As 2019 began, newly empaneled Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi vowed, “There’s not going to be any wall money,” referring to legislation needed to fund the government.
Pelosi’s Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, was even clearer about Democratic leadership’s view of the border wall. “Democrats are against the wall,” Schumer stated with uncharacteristic brevity. Thankfully, the president still managed to secure nearly 100 miles of wall construction and border fencing over the last three years by using Department of Defense money dedicated to related purposes.
As 2019 began, newly empaneled Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi vowed, “There’s not going to be any wall money,” referring to legislation needed to fund the government.
Pelosi’s Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, was even clearer about Democratic leadership’s view of the border wall. “Democrats are against the wall,” Schumer stated with uncharacteristic brevity. Thankfully, the president still managed to secure nearly 100 miles of wall construction and border fencing over the last three years by using Department of Defense money dedicated to related purposes.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is one of the few institutions in Washington nowadays that is not poisoned by petty partisan bickering. The CBO is nonpartisan and has managed to stay that way. It does not take positions on important policy matters; rather it analyzes data, presents facts and leaves it up to Congress to decide how to use that information.
True to form, a new CBO analysis, “The Foreign-Born Population and Its Effects on the U.S. Economy and the Federal Budget — An Overview,” presents an easy-to-digest picture of the impact of current U.S. immigration policies on the economy. It’s not a pretty one.
For the seventh month in a row, apprehensions of illegal aliens along America’s southwest border dropped, a trend that six months ago would have been unthinkable. Illegal alien apprehensions for December dipped to roughly 40,000, a far cry from the 144,000 illegal aliens who were detained trying to enter their way into the U.S. in May. Apprehensions have been falling ever since.
Catch and release, a phenomenon that has haunted administrations since George W. Bush was in office and contributed to the surge of migrants arriving at the southern border, is nearly a thing of the past. So what gives?
In 2019, people working outside their homelands sent $554 billion of their earnings back to their native countries. Nearly all of this cash flowed from developed nations to less developed ones. The $554 billion in remittances eclipsed the total of all foreign investment in these receiving nations, and three times the amount these nations received in foreign aid.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. The global health crisis touched off a global economic crisis, resulting in millions of lost jobs and restrictions on travel that make it difficult for foreign workers to get to a job in another country, even if one is available.
Check out what Preston wrote for the Daily Caller.
House Democrats recently voted to strip the president of one of the most important tools at his disposal to protect America from foreign threats: the ability to suspend travel to the United States. The Democrats voted 233-183 to pass the NO BAN Act. Had this bill been law in early 2020, President Trump would have been unable to ban travel from China and Europe, which saved American lives according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Under current law, the president can react in real time to national security threats by restricting the entry of aliens under the authority laid out in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
It’s no secret that the Social Security program faces a very real threat of running out of money. Thanks to impressive advancements in the medical world, the ratio of workers to retirees is now decreasing too quickly, and the future availability of retirement funds for millions of Americans is in serious doubt. Internal agency assessments predict that the program’s trust fund reserves will be completely depleted by 2034 unless significant reforms are enacted before then.
Of course, many open-border advocates use this as an opportunity to call for more mass-immigration, including amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, to immediately boost the number of workers in the United States.
Only in the stagnant swamps of Washington, DC, could a public policy with the word “temporary” in its title gain a sense of permanence, but that is exactly what has happened to Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
TPS was a benevolent policy enacted in 1990 to provide temporary safe haven to those who were visiting or temporarily living in the United States – such as tourists or students – when civil strife or a natural disaster suddenly struck back home, making their immediate return either very difficult or dangerous.
Immigration policy, which was a defining issue in the 2016 campaign, finally got a mention in the final 2020 presidential debate. In that debate, much of the time devoted to discussion of immigration centered on the 545 minors who remain separated from their parents as a result of a 2018 policy intended to discourage people from using their kids to gain entry to the United States.
While the 2020 election result is not yet final due to pending litigation and recounts, most signs point to an eventual defeat for President Donald Trump.
If he is defeated, then many things likely contributed to the president’s 2020 loss. But one thing is clear: his views on immigration along with the very policies his administration implemented have nothing to do with it.