The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in response to the attacks of 9/11. Among its critical responsibilities is to secure the nation’s borders, enforce its immigration laws and protect the interests of Americans and migrants. But none of those priorities is likely to be achieved under the leadership of Alejandro Mayorkas, the man President-elect Joe Biden has nominated to serve as the next DHS secretary.
Late last week, in the middle of high-stakes COVID-19 relief negotiations, the Senate quietly attempted to bypass the normal legislative process and ram through a dangerous immigration giveaway. You heard that right—yet another immigration bill without the best interests of the American people in mind.
The bill, known as the Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act and already approved by the House, is a well-intentioned effort aimed at responding to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) increasingly repressive efforts to snuff out any remaining freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents. Fortunately, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took a bold stand and blocked the bill, stopping it in its tracks for now. Unfortunately, the legislation will likely return in the 117th Congress.
The times they will be changing, come January 20. Joe Biden will bring a change in style, a change in tone and a change in temperament when he assumes office next month. And like any new president, he will bring a change in policies. Perhaps none will be more notable than his handling of immigration policy.
For the past four years, Donald Trump has approached immigration policy from the standpoint that, like any other public policy, its primary purpose was to serve the greater good of the American people. In pursuit of that objective, his administration made good faith efforts to secure our borders, cut down on asylum and other sorts of fraud, end abuses in guest worker programs that undermine the interests of U.S. workers (especially after the pandemic struck) and to ensure that people who immigrate legally have the wherewithal to be self-sufficient.
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.
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.
In a Jan. 22 speech, President Joe Biden not-so-boldly declared, “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”
Biden was selling himself short. On at least one front, America’s southern border, the administration has moved to elevate, not flatten, the COVID-19 infection curve.
In an effort to build stronger relations with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries, the Biden administration recently announced that it would spent $310 million in the region to help address the so-called “root-causes” of illegal migration. While this figure may look impressive on paper, it does not effectively address the Biden Border Crisis that is negatively affecting countries in the region. Officials from this region continue to denounce the Biden administration’s immigration approach, and so it must put a halt to its border crisis before relations become even more fractured.
Don’t for one second believe the spin from the Biden White House about the immigration crisis at our southern border that is being parroted by its pious corporate media cronies. There is absolutely nothing “normal” or “seasonal” about the border crisis and the unprecedented wave of migrants who are streaming into our country.