When presidential candidate Joe Biden was on the campaign trail in 2020, he touted that his immigration agenda would “direct enforcement efforts toward threats to public safety and national security, while ensuring that individuals are treated with the due process to which they are entitled and their human rights are protected.”
Ever since the U.S. economy has embarked on a post-COVID-19 recovery, Americans have been told by lobbyists for various mass-immigration vested interests that increasing immigration is the solution for growing inflation and difficulties that employers may be experiencing in finding workers. In a recent study, the Federation for American Immigration Reform challenges the lobby’s misleading, self-serving narrative, demonstrating that cheap-foreign-labor policies that put American workers last are not the answer.
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.
In a recent study, the Federation for American Immigration Reform demonstrated that an estimated 15.5 million illegal aliens and their 5.4 million U.S.-born children cost American taxpayers a net annual sum of $150.7 billion as of the start of 2023. That is a whopping 30% increase since 2017.
The Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of President Obama’s executive quasi-amnesty — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). In essence, Chief Justice Roberts joined the liberal justices, determining that the Trump administration’s decision to rescind DACA supposedly did not offer sufficient explanation. As Justice Thomas pointed out, this effectively binds President Trump to an unlawful Obama policy. However, the court simultaneously ruled that the president can still rescind DACA again, but with a more comprehensive explanation. And the president stated that he intends to do just that.
But regardless of what ultimately happens on the DACA front, it is clear that the program is a bad policy that rewards illegal migration, flouts the rule of law, and is unjust towards American citizens.
I am an immigrant and a naturalized citizen. I came to this country at the age of ten, grew up in a blue-collar immigrant household, was raised around primarily Central-Eastern European and Hispanic working-class immigrants, and ultimately married another immigrant. So, according to the left, I represent a demographic that should support open borders and unchecked mass immigration (both legal and illegal), both out of self-interest and for moral reasons. I see things differently, however, and opt for national sovereignty, secure borders and common-sense immigration policies that benefit the United States and its people.
Granting amnesty – and, eventually, U.S. citizenship – to almost 15 million illegal aliens will be a win-win for everybody, argue the policy’s cheerleaders. Former illegal aliens will “come out of the shadows,” and Americans will become a more compassionate and richer society, both economically and culturally. We are expected to believe that there will be no significant costs, losers, or trade-offs. That is a rosy vision indeed, but, unfortunately, amnesty is unlikely to lessen socio-economic inequality – a problem President Biden said he wants to remedy. It may, in fact, lead to increased class and ethnic tensions.
In March, the Biden-Harris administration restarted the Central American Minors (CAM) program, an Obama-Biden migration scheme that was terminated by the Trump administration. On June 15, in a joint statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the new administration – which is currently facing a border/illegal migration crisis of its own creation – announced that it is expanding CAM.
Anyone following the political and media discussion on Afghanistan right now could probably be forgiven if they came away with the impression that we have only two options: either callously abandon our Afghan allies to the Taliban, or resettle hundreds of thousands of Afghans – without being quite sure who they are, because proper vetting takes too long – to the United States.
The pro-mass-immigration lobby – in the form of the Biden administration and the congressional Democrats, corporate interests, or various pro-illegal alien, pro-amnesty left-wing or ethnic activists – has shown that it is clearly not rooting for Americans. Rather, it derives a smug sense of moral superiority from prioritizing foreign nationals, even when doing so clearly undermines vital interests of large segments of the American public.