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 German theologian Martin Niemöller famously summed up how dangerous social pathologies begin incrementally before snowballing into full-blown assaults on the core of civilized societies. Recounting how Nazi doctrine tightened its grip on Germany, he observed, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.” The trade unionists and the Jews were next until finally they came for him, “and there was no on left to speak for me,” he lamented.
The subversion of laws that exist to serve the welfare of society, by those who want to undermine that society, always begins slowly. People have to become inured to the erosion of the society’s foundational principles through relentless campaigns that make the perfect the enemy of the good.
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.
Reckless disregard for homeland security is not just an issue at the border, where Biden administration policies have triggered a resurgence of illegal entries, compounded by the wholesale release of unvetted migrants into the United States. The ongoing border crisis makes for compelling video footage. Still, it is only one facet of the administration’s deliberate sabotage of systems designed to keep Americans safe from attacks in their own country.
Barring a miracle of biblical proportions, the Biden administration’s disastrous record on – well, there are actually too many issues to name – will result in the Democratic Party losing its slim majorities in both chambers of Congress.
By default, Republicans are almost certain to be in charge of the legislative branch of government in 2023 and will have to demonstrate to the American public that they are up to the task of remedying the countless crises wrought by the Biden administration.