It’s been said time and time again: The United States is the global leader in science and technology. However, if we want to retain our position at the head of the pack, we need to rapidly rethink some of our immigration policies. Since the advent of the current tech boom in the mid-1990s, U.S. employers have been begging the federal government to subsidize their business activities by increasing their access to cheap, compliant foreign labor.
You read that correctly. High-tech employers are now trying to cut their labor costs using the very same technique that has become infamous in the agricultural, construction and hospitality industries: massive infusions of foreign guest workers.
Americans woke up to dual headlines last Thursday: 4.4 million Americans filed first-time unemployment claims, bringing the five-week job loss total to 26 million, and President Trump signed an Executive Order temporarily halting immigration to the United States.
One headline was true, while the other one wasn’t. Sadly, the epic job losses resulting from the coronavirus crisis continues unabated. And, regrettably, the Executive Order that President Trump signed late Wednesday which, in the president’s words, is intended to “ensure that American workers of all backgrounds will be first in line for jobs as our economy reopens,” does nothing of the kind.
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.
Check out what Mark Morgan wrote in the Daily Caller:
Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” By that definition, President Biden’s approach to ‘solving’ America’s long-standing problem of illegal immigration, by granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens clearly qualifies as an act of insanity.
Few national policy issues have the long-term impact that immigration does. It determines our future: Quality of our schools, livability of our communities, solvency of our government, integrity of our civic culture, cohesion of our traditions and understandings, size of our carbon footprint, health of our infrastructure, equity in our labor force, the viability of the rule of law, and just about anything else of importance to the American people. Immigration levels determine whether we can achieve population stability, or race toward an unstoppable one billion by the end of the century.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is projecting that some 117,000 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) could end up at our southern border this year.
February figures were the largest for the group and month in history. These alarming numbers are not what the Biden administration should want — especially this early in the term and amidst a global pandemic.
He might as well have stood on the U.S.-Mexico border and waved the green flag.
From the moment he stepped onto the stage during the Democratic debates, Joe Biden made it crystal clear: The comprehensive border and interior immigration deterrent systems that were put in place during the Trump administration — that had resulted in illegal immigration being reduced to record low levels — were coming down as soon as he was elected.
And he didn’t mince his words. During the presidential debates in 2019, Biden told the world’s would-be immigrants and those fleeing some form of persecution that “you should come.” And he didn’t stop there. He proudly proclaimed that on the legal immigration front, America “could afford to take in a heartbeat another two million people [per year].”
Candidate Joe Biden was harshly critical of Donald Trump’s handling of immigration policy and border enforcement. He was even critical and apologetic about the Obama administration’s record on immigration, in which he served as vice president, even though President Obama’s supposed toughness on immigration was vastly hyped.
Rather than address any element of the ongoing Biden border crisis, House Democrats spent their time moving legislation that only worsens the already grave situation at our southern border. The NO BAN Act jeopardizes our national security and public health, while the Access to Counsel Act further overwhelms our immigration courts and creates unnecessary burdens to already strained immigration authorities. Passage of both bills reveal how detached House Democrats are from properly addressing the nation’s most pressing immigration matters.