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.
The United States is now two months into a nearly nationwide shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The lives of every American have been changed to some degree, with tens of millions working from home in an effort to help “flatten the curve.” Millions of others are out of work completely, leading to record-high unemployment claims.
Government policies have not been immune to change either, especially in the immigration world. In fact, as one of the first actions the United States took in order to slow the spread of COVID-19, President Trump issued an executive order limiting travel from hard-hit nations.
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.
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.
During the last big wave of unaccompanied alien minors (UAMs) in 2019, a Border Patrol agent said something to me that shook me to my core. He said that he was “sick and tired of having to administer rape kits to nine-year olds.”
Get ready—the next great legislative battle of the 117th Congress finally may be here. In yet another radical move, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) formally inquired whether Democrats could use something called budget reconciliation to pass Joe Biden’s $2 trillion “infrastructure” bill.
President Joe Biden has done just about everything he can do to eliminate any vestiges of border and immigration enforcement (although he still may have a few tricks left up his sleeve). But the Holy Grail of full amnesty and a pathway to citizenship for just about every illegal alien in the United States is now tantalizingly just beyond the reach of the president and his allies in Congress. More specifically, an unelected parliamentarian is the only thing that stands between the Democratic leadership’s dream of a nation without borders or limits on immigration.