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 Joe Biden and his administration continue to peddle the public relations snake oil that spending money in the Northern Triangle countries will help regain control of the southern border and reduce illegal immigration. The administration plans to spend $4 billion as part of its strategy to look like they’re trying to control the border, provide more than $300 million in emergency aid and has contemplated granting direct cash payments to migrants.
The United States, under President Joe Biden, is sailing into uncharted waters. Democrats, for much of the past half century, have leaned in the direction of moving the United States toward the Scandinavian model of the “nanny state,” in which citizens surrender some of their freedoms and significant chunks of their paychecks in exchange for cradle-to-grave security.
Two weeks ago in this space, FAIR boldly claimed that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had effectively abolished the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
We now must confess that we were premature in that declaration. Mayorkas was not finished. He still had more to do to make sure that our immigration laws are never enforced.
Open borders non-governmental organizations (NGOs) significantly influence the Biden administration’s immigration policies and priorities.
Recently, top administration officials met with dozens of immigration activists who have ties to NGOs such as Pueblo Sin Fronteras — a group that orchestrated the several thousand-person caravans in 2018 and 2019.
Operation Allies Welcome — the Biden administration’s airlift of some 90,000 Afghans into the U.S. — is looking more like Operation All Welcome.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week backed off earlier assurances that evacuees had been properly vetted before entering this country. Testifying at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mayorkas admitted that he doesn’t know how many had been screened.
Grizzled political veterans like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have learned that the best way to sell unpopular policies is to convince us that everyone else is as unhappy about it as we are. In the sometimes surreal world that exists inside the Beltway, a good piece of legislation is one that leaves everyone feeling like they got a raw deal.
Occasionally, on matters where public opinion is pretty evenly divided, a compromise that gives everyone a little of what they want in exchange for a little of what they don’t want has some merit.
Last month, President Biden requested $13.6 billion in emergency funding to deal with record levels of illegal immigration. There is no disputing that the situation at the border constitutes a national emergency, but it is an emergency almost entirely created by the president’s own policies. As such, giving the Biden administration more money, without conditioning it on radically altering the policies that created the emergency, would only exacerbate the border crisis while plunging the nation $13.6 billion deeper into debt.