The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is one of the few institutions in Washington nowadays that is not poisoned by petty partisan bickering. The CBO is nonpartisan and has managed to stay that way. It does not take positions on important policy matters; rather it analyzes data, presents facts and leaves it up to Congress to decide how to use that information.
True to form, a new CBO analysis, “The Foreign-Born Population and Its Effects on the U.S. Economy and the Federal Budget — An Overview,” presents an easy-to-digest picture of the impact of current U.S. immigration policies on the economy. It’s not a pretty one.
While the 2020 election result is not yet final due to pending litigation and recounts, most signs point to an eventual defeat for President Donald Trump.
If he is defeated, then many things likely contributed to the president’s 2020 loss. But one thing is clear: his views on immigration along with the very policies his administration implemented have nothing to do with it.
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.
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.
“President Biden last week introduced his administration’s major immigration bill, after issuing an executive order on Feb. 2 to address the root causes of migration from Central America to the United States and, during his campaign, pledging to spend at least $4 billion to reduce “endemic corruption, violence and poverty” in the region.”
Of course many in the Biden administration were perplexed by Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance during her recent trip to Guatemala and Mexico. They must have been watching the same NBC News interview the rest of the nation watched, in which a clearly frustrated Lester Holt pressed the vice president on why she was visiting Guatemala without having been to this nation’s southern border, which is ground zero of the border crisis.
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.
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.
To kick off the “Home Curfew” initiative, immigration authorities will immediately place 100-200 illegal aliens under house arrest in Houston and Baltimore with the goal of enrolling another 400,000 this year. Enrollees will generally be required to remain at home from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m., with the exception for those with work authorization or extraordinary circumstances.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) simply does not have the bandwidth to ensure that illegal aliens are complying with the program. It only has about 6,000 agents—many of whom are already assigned to different missions and responsibilities. Having every one of those agents (the best-case scenario) monitoring the whereabouts of potentially 400,000 illegal aliens is not only impossible, but downright dangerous.