When former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel reprised the Winston Churchill statement “Never let a good crisis go to waste” while recently referring to this nation’s battle with the coronavirus, he was all but signaling the path forward for this nation’s open borders, mass immigration lobby.
Why not use this crisis as a way to attack both immigration enforcement and recent actions by the Trump administration to ensure that immigrants demonstrate self-sufficiency and not rely on public welfare programs?
Year after year, big agriculture tells us they are facing labor shortages on their farms. Their lobbyists bemoan the lack of available labor and claim that Americans won’t do the work, and those who do are too lazy to stay through the full season. They’re even saying this at a time when 22 million American workers are now unemployed due to the coronavirus crisis.
Big agriculture has access to an unlimited number of foreign guestworkers through the H-2A program, but even that is not enough. They still insist on hiring illegal aliens, who make up as much as 70 percent of our country’s farmhands.
Americans woke up to dual headlines last Thursday: 4.4 million Americans filed first-time unemployment claims, bringing the five-week job loss total to 26 million, and President Trump signed an Executive Order temporarily halting immigration to the United States.
One headline was true, while the other one wasn’t. Sadly, the epic job losses resulting from the coronavirus crisis continues unabated. And, regrettably, the Executive Order that President Trump signed late Wednesday which, in the president’s words, is intended to “ensure that American workers of all backgrounds will be first in line for jobs as our economy reopens,” does nothing of the kind.
President Trump announced that he would be implementing a temporary pause on certain types of immigration to help the United States recover from COVID-19. And it only took about 14 hours for his detractors to accuse him of exceeding his authority and violating the separation of powers.
New York Attorney General (AG) Letitia James threatened to sue, in order to protect Congress’ power to “write immigration policy.” And Jerrold Nadler and Zoe Lofgren claimed, “Under our Constitution, Congress writes the laws, and the president must enforce them as written. This executive order turns that bedrock principle of separation of powers on its head.”
Imagine a car salesman selling you a Lamborghini and delivering a go-kart instead. That’s what the last week has felt like.
We were thrilled to see President Trump’s tweet saying he would suspend immigration into the country to protect American workers as the Chinese coronavirus ravages the economy. Not only would such a desperately needed pause on immigration be popular with about 80 percent of the American people, it would also stand on strong legal footing. Keep in mind that the Supreme Court reaffirmed the president’s authority to do such a thing in 2018.
Candidate Joe Biden was harshly critical of Donald Trump’s handling of immigration policy and border enforcement. He was even critical and apologetic about the Obama administration’s record on immigration, in which he served as vice president, even though President Obama’s supposed toughness on immigration was vastly hyped.
Rather than address any element of the ongoing Biden border crisis, House Democrats spent their time moving legislation that only worsens the already grave situation at our southern border. The NO BAN Act jeopardizes our national security and public health, while the Access to Counsel Act further overwhelms our immigration courts and creates unnecessary burdens to already strained immigration authorities. Passage of both bills reveal how detached House Democrats are from properly addressing the nation’s most pressing immigration matters.
It’s official – the Biden administration has set a record for the most border encounters in a fiscal year. The kicker? There are still months to go for this number to go well beyond the two million illegal aliens who have already been encountered, and in many instances, released into the country.
Folks on Capitol Hill spend a lot of time thinking up clever acronyms for their bills. In the case of the Equal Access to Green cards for Legal Employment (EAGLE) Act, the acronym is not only clever, but descriptive. Aside from being the symbol of our nation, the eagle is a predator known for raiding the nests of other birds and making off with their eggs and chicks – which is a perfect metaphor for H.R. 3648, sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).