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.
The idea of a merit-based immigration policy originated on the political left. It was first proposed by a blue ribbon panel, chaired by a civil rights movement icon, Barbara Jordan, in the 1990s. The commission’s recommendations for an immigration overhaul were immediately endorsed by President Bill Clinton and other leading Democrats and Republicans of the day and then, just as quickly, mothballed due to objections from ethnic interest advocacy groups and powerful cheap labor business interests.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that the nationwide unemployment rate stood at 7.9 percent – double what it was in February before the COVID-19 crisis hit our shores. Stay-at-home orders, government-mandated shutdowns, and delayed reopening of state and local economies continues to derail the ability of our country to recover from the economic and human impact of COVID-19. Worse still, millions of Americans remain unemployed, particularly in the service sector of our economy.
In last Thursday’s debate, former Vice-President Joe Biden promised that, if elected, he will create “a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people.” While most of the pundits focused on how such a massive amnesty would impact America, there is also much disagreement surrounding the question of how many illegal aliens actually reside in the country. So where did Biden get his “11 million [illegal aliens]” figure? And is it accurate?
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.
President Biden should have seen this coming months ago, when he began describing his plans for a mass amnesty coupled with removal of all of the successful impediments to illegal immigration put in place by the Trump administration.
As Biden’s campaign rhetoric zeroed in on a radical immigration agenda last year, caravans began forming in Latin America and apprehensions of illegal migrants began to explode.
Last week, President Biden signed an executive order suspending the national emergency at our southern border. This emergency declaration helped provide funding and resources to help build more than 450 miles of border wall.
With immigration officials reporting record surges of migration as well as successes of the new wall system, the suspension is a significant misstep for the Biden administration and has also drawn legal concerns.