As 2019 began, newly empaneled Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi vowed, “There’s not going to be any wall money,” referring to legislation needed to fund the government.
Pelosi’s Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, was even clearer about Democratic leadership’s view of the border wall. “Democrats are against the wall,” Schumer stated with uncharacteristic brevity. Thankfully, the president still managed to secure nearly 100 miles of wall construction and border fencing over the last three years by using Department of Defense money dedicated to related purposes.
As 2019 began, newly empaneled Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi vowed, “There’s not going to be any wall money,” referring to legislation needed to fund the government.
Pelosi’s Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, was even clearer about Democratic leadership’s view of the border wall. “Democrats are against the wall,” Schumer stated with uncharacteristic brevity. Thankfully, the president still managed to secure nearly 100 miles of wall construction and border fencing over the last three years by using Department of Defense money dedicated to related purposes.
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.
For the seventh month in a row, apprehensions of illegal aliens along America’s southwest border dropped, a trend that six months ago would have been unthinkable. Illegal alien apprehensions for December dipped to roughly 40,000, a far cry from the 144,000 illegal aliens who were detained trying to enter their way into the U.S. in May. Apprehensions have been falling ever since.
Catch and release, a phenomenon that has haunted administrations since George W. Bush was in office and contributed to the surge of migrants arriving at the southern border, is nearly a thing of the past. So what gives?
Recently, Dr. Anthony Fauci discussed the impact of COVID-19 at the southern border and the role of Title 42 — a public health order that allows for quick removal of illegal aliens from the country during disease outbreaks.
Rather than admit that COVID-19 remains a public health threat at the southern border and acknowledge that Title 42 remains necessary as illegal migration continues to reach historic levels, Dr. Fauci dismissed these realities.
ICE headquarters is still there on 12th St. S.W. in Washington, D.C. Dozens of field offices around the country remain. The 10,000 employees of the agency still collect paychecks. But as a result of two memos issued by Mayorkas, the agency’s immigration enforcement functions have virtually ceased to exist. To be clear, ICE wasn’t doing much even before Mayorkas issued his edicts – ICE agents were averaging one arrest every two and a half months – but now it’s official: ICE has been ordered to stand down.
Tucked away near the end of his long, rambling State of the Union address, President Joe Biden spoke of the “need to secure the border” and added a few vague remarks about “fix[ing] the immigration system.” It is probably a topic he would have preferred to avoid altogether, because talking about it only reminded the American public (momentarily distracted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and raging inflation) of how disastrous his border and immigration policies have been.
The $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill that will fund the federal government through the end of the fiscal year was approved with bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress and then signed by President Joe Biden. With a war raging in Europe and inflation raging at home, the American public can take some reassurance in the fact that Democrats and Republicans managed to approve the spending package without even the threat of a government shutdown.