With rare bluntness, the editor of Germany’s largest newspaper, Bild Zeitung, called out the Chinese government not only for its cover-up of the coronavirus crisis that is endangering public health and crashing economies around the world, but for a host of other misdeeds. In an April 17 editorial, in the form of an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, Bild-Zeitung editor Julian Reichelt makes it clear that the Chinese government and the ruling Communist Party should be treated as a hostile player on the world stage. “You are endangering the world,” is how Reichelt titled his letter/editorial.
California has gone off the fiscal cliff. The coronavirus crisis nudged the state over the precipice, but the state got right up to the very edge all by itself. According to projections by the state’s Department of Finance, California is facing a budget shortfall of $53.4 billion, which represents a staggering 37 percent of its $147.8 billion budget.
California, like many state and local governments, is looking for an infusion of cash from the federal government, which itself is accruing mind-numbing amounts of new debt. California likely falls under the heading of “too big to fail,” and its fiscal implosion would create an economic black hole that would suck in residents of the other 49 states.
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.
The idea of a merit-based immigration policy originated on the political left. It was first proposed by a blue ribbon panel, chaired by a civil rights movement icon, Barbara Jordan, in the 1990s. The commission’s recommendations for an immigration overhaul were immediately endorsed by President Bill Clinton and other leading Democrats and Republicans of the day and then, just as quickly, mothballed due to objections from ethnic interest advocacy groups and powerful cheap labor business interests.
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.
Joe Biden was elected to be the steady, competent hand to guide the nation through COVID-19 health and economic crises, and perhaps heal social divisions. The president-elect has yet to reveal his plan for getting the pandemic under control, but sources close to him have indicated that it could entail a lengthy national lockdown in addition to other stringent measures.
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.
The White House has released its 66-page section-by-section summary of its immigration overhaul legislation it calls the U.S. Citizenship Act. If you’re thinking that any piece of legislation that requires 66 pages to summarize is probably filled with goodies for every imaginable special interest, you’re absolutely right.
The bill can actually be summarized in just 39 words: Amnesty for every illegal alien (including criminals) in the United States and for many who have been deported (and any spouses and children they might have outside the country), and lots more visas for workers and extended family members. The rest, as they say, is details.
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.
The Biden administration clearly has no enthusiasm for deterring abuse of our asylum system by requiring migrants with specious claims to wait on the other side of the border until an initial hearing can be held, rather than releasing them into the United States, where they join the burgeoning illegal alien population. The other partner at the altar – the government of Mexico – is equally unenthusiastic about the prospect of having large numbers of migrants waiting on their side of the border for a date before a U.S. magistrate.