How important is it to you to see rising wages and more opportunities for American workers?
Many Americans hear that the economy is booming, unemployment is at all-time low and that it’s an employee’s market. Our job market is the tightest it has been in decades.
So why would we ruin these gains by bringing in thousands of cheap guest workers?
When news recently broke that the Montgomery County, MD police department was selecting an illegal alien to accompany them in “ride alongs,” it set off quite a kerfuffle among local police. But it’s not until you dig a little further into the article that you learn that in addition to being in the country illegally, this unidentified Clarksburg, Md. resident also has an active federal arrest warrant against him – for failing to show up in immigration court.
Ringing in the New Year with a bang, nearly 200 swamp-dwellers on Capitol Hill wrote a letter to the Trump administration begging for more foreign workers.
Both political parties deserve blame for perpetuating an immigration system that favors special interest groups over hardworking American taxpayers. However, no branch of government has done more to create and bolster a dysfunctional immigration system than the federal judiciary – which is ostensibly free of partisan politics.
Since the chaos along our southern border peaked last May, there has been a precipitous decline in the flow of Central American economic migrants posing as asylum seekers entering the country illegally. Construction of additional border fencing and stepped up enforcement by Mexico at its own southern border have certainly played a significant role in alleviating the crisis, but it is another program implemented by the Trump administration that has had the greatest impact.
The Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), first rolled out in January 2019, require migrants who want to seek asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico pending their immigration court hearing in the U.S.
On March 10, the United States confirmed that there are now over 1,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus.
On March 10, the United States confirmed that there are now over 1,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus. Multiple members of Congress announced they were remaining home to self-quarantine. Separately, the administration may force hundreds of thousands of federal employees to work from home. President Trump declared the virus a national emergency and cities across the country closed public places and banned large gatherings of people to stem the spread of the virus.
This is all to say that the United States is starting to take the coronavirus very seriously. This is not a partisan issue – Democrats and Republicans both claim to understand the severity of this global outbreak now present in 120 countries.
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.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in response to the attacks of 9/11. Among its critical responsibilities is to secure the nation’s borders, enforce its immigration laws and protect the interests of Americans and migrants. But none of those priorities is likely to be achieved under the leadership of Alejandro Mayorkas, the man President-elect Joe Biden has nominated to serve as the next DHS secretary.
Late last week, in the middle of high-stakes COVID-19 relief negotiations, the Senate quietly attempted to bypass the normal legislative process and ram through a dangerous immigration giveaway. You heard that right—yet another immigration bill without the best interests of the American people in mind.
The bill, known as the Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act and already approved by the House, is a well-intentioned effort aimed at responding to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) increasingly repressive efforts to snuff out any remaining freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents. Fortunately, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took a bold stand and blocked the bill, stopping it in its tracks for now. Unfortunately, the legislation will likely return in the 117th Congress.
The times they will be changing, come January 20. Joe Biden will bring a change in style, a change in tone and a change in temperament when he assumes office next month. And like any new president, he will bring a change in policies. Perhaps none will be more notable than his handling of immigration policy.
For the past four years, Donald Trump has approached immigration policy from the standpoint that, like any other public policy, its primary purpose was to serve the greater good of the American people. In pursuit of that objective, his administration made good faith efforts to secure our borders, cut down on asylum and other sorts of fraud, end abuses in guest worker programs that undermine the interests of U.S. workers (especially after the pandemic struck) and to ensure that people who immigrate legally have the wherewithal to be self-sufficient.