How important is it to you to see rising wages and more opportunities for American workers?
Many Americans hear that the economy is booming, unemployment is at all-time low and that it’s an employee’s market. Our job market is the tightest it has been in decades.
So why would we ruin these gains by bringing in thousands of cheap guest workers?
When news recently broke that the Montgomery County, MD police department was selecting an illegal alien to accompany them in “ride alongs,” it set off quite a kerfuffle among local police. But it’s not until you dig a little further into the article that you learn that in addition to being in the country illegally, this unidentified Clarksburg, Md. resident also has an active federal arrest warrant against him – for failing to show up in immigration court.
Ringing in the New Year with a bang, nearly 200 swamp-dwellers on Capitol Hill wrote a letter to the Trump administration begging for more foreign workers.
Both political parties deserve blame for perpetuating an immigration system that favors special interest groups over hardworking American taxpayers. However, no branch of government has done more to create and bolster a dysfunctional immigration system than the federal judiciary – which is ostensibly free of partisan politics.
Since the chaos along our southern border peaked last May, there has been a precipitous decline in the flow of Central American economic migrants posing as asylum seekers entering the country illegally. Construction of additional border fencing and stepped up enforcement by Mexico at its own southern border have certainly played a significant role in alleviating the crisis, but it is another program implemented by the Trump administration that has had the greatest impact.
The Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), first rolled out in January 2019, require migrants who want to seek asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico pending their immigration court hearing in the U.S.
On March 10, the United States confirmed that there are now over 1,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus.
On March 10, the United States confirmed that there are now over 1,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, commonly known as the coronavirus. Multiple members of Congress announced they were remaining home to self-quarantine. Separately, the administration may force hundreds of thousands of federal employees to work from home. President Trump declared the virus a national emergency and cities across the country closed public places and banned large gatherings of people to stem the spread of the virus.
This is all to say that the United States is starting to take the coronavirus very seriously. This is not a partisan issue – Democrats and Republicans both claim to understand the severity of this global outbreak now present in 120 countries.
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.
Check out what Preston wrote for the Daily Caller.
House Democrats recently voted to strip the president of one of the most important tools at his disposal to protect America from foreign threats: the ability to suspend travel to the United States. The Democrats voted 233-183 to pass the NO BAN Act. Had this bill been law in early 2020, President Trump would have been unable to ban travel from China and Europe, which saved American lives according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Under current law, the president can react in real time to national security threats by restricting the entry of aliens under the authority laid out in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
2020 was an odd year. But 2021 may be even odder as Joe Biden will likely have to support a foreign guest worker freeze — an unimaginable concept that has now become a reality.
Last week, President Trump extended Proclamation 10052, an executive order suspending temporary foreign guest worker programs — including the H-1B and H-2B — as well as some green cards, through March.
Editor’s note: We endeavor to bring you the top voices on current events representing a range of perspectives. Below is a column arguing that amnesty for illegal immigrants is a bad idea. You can find a counterpoint here, where Charles Kolb, former Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy under George H.W. Bush, argues that Republicans need to embrace amnesty.
Granting amnesty – and, eventually, U.S. citizenship – to almost 15 million illegal aliens will be a win-win for everybody, argue the policy’s cheerleaders. Former illegal aliens will “come out of the shadows,” and Americans will become a more compassionate and richer society, both economically and culturally. We are expected to believe that there will be no significant costs, losers, or trade-offs. That is a rosy vision indeed, but, unfortunately, amnesty is unlikely to lessen socio-economic inequality – a problem President Biden said he wants to remedy. It may, in fact, lead to increased class and ethnic tensions.