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.
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.