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31 December, 2023

Undocumented immigrants will qualify for free health care in California on Jan. 1

Cash-strapped California will ring in the new year by offering free health care to all undocumented immigrants who qualify for the state’s government-run health insurance program.

The state, which faces a $68 billion deficit in the next fiscal year, has been steadily expanding access to its Medi-Cal health insurance program for low-income residents, allowing undocumented children to qualify for the taxpayer-funded program in 2015, then expanding it under Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to cover undocumented adults between the ages of 19-25 and those over 50.

On Jan. 1, California will become the first state to offer free health care to all qualifying individuals — regardless of immigration status or age.

In May, Democrats in the California Legislature celebrated the budget deal struck by Newsom and state lawmakers that led to the latest Medi-Cal expansion, which will see some 700,000 undocumented immigrants, ages 26-49, obtain full coverage under the program.

“This historic investment speaks to California’s commitment to health care as a human right,” state Sen. María Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) said at the time.

“This is a game-changer,” said Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles).“It’s one of the most important pieces of legislation that’s gonna go through this house because the ability to give health care means the ability to live life without pain.”

However, some health care experts worry that expanding the program is unwise given unprecedented state revenue shortfalls and health care shortages.

“The expansion was a bad idea when the state’s coffers were flush. Now that California is struggling to make ends meet, using taxpayer money to cover non-citizens is simply irresponsible,” Sally Pipes, a health care policy expert and the president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, a California-based think tank, told The Post.

“Many on Medi-Cal are already having a hard time finding doctors to treat them because of low reimbursement rates these doctors receive from the government,” Pipes added. “If those on Medi-Cal can find a doctor, they are facing very long waits for care.”

Simon Hankinson, a border security and immigration expert with the Heritage Foundation, said in a social media post that he expects the federal government to eventually bail out the program.

“No surprise [California], despite budget deficit, will give illegal immigrants subsidized health care,” Hankinson wrote on X. “The question is how and when they’ll get the federal taxpayer to bail them out. NY, IL, and MA want to know.”

The California Senate Republican Caucus has also criticized the expansion of the health plan.

“Medi-Cal is already strained by serving 14.6 million Californians – more than a third of the state’s population. Adding 764,000 more individuals to the system will certainly exacerbate current provider access problems,” the caucus wrote in response to Newsom’s budget proposal last year.

The latest Medi-Cal expansion will come at a cost of $2.6 billion per year.

https://nypost.com/2023/12/29/news/undocumented-immigrants-qualify-for-free-health-care-in-california/

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28 December, 2023

Texas Comes Out Swinging in Fight to Restore States’ Role in Curbing Illegal Immigration

Texas has begun the campaign to restore the role of states, especially border states, in combating illegal immigration.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday signed into law SB No. 4, which authorizes state authorities to arrest and order illegal aliens to return to the foreign nation from which they entered.

State authorities may do so without involving federal law enforcement or the labyrinthine federal process for adjudicating immigration claims.

But in the era of lawfare, bicameral legislative support and the signature of the state’s chief executive is not enough. Laws like Texas’ must receive the blessing of the federal courts. Although that is normally an obstacle to be avoided, here, Texas may hope that the federal courts hear a challenge to the law.

Current Supreme Court precedent stands in the way of Texas’ designs, but that obstacle will not be removed without a challenge like the one posed by the Lone Star State’s new law.

Since 2012, conservatives have been wandering in search of a legislative response to the problem of unchecked illegal migration across the southern border. That year, in one of his least creditable displays of legal reasoning, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a five-justice majority, held that an Arizona law criminalizing illegal presence under state law violated the U.S. Constitution. How so? In the since-retired Kennedy’s estimation, Arizona’s effort to deter illegal migration in its territory might impinge on federal “policy choices that bear on this nation’s international relations.”

Thus, Kennedy conjectured that Congress had removed from the states any authority to legislate in the field of immigration enforcement.

Since the decision in Arizona v. U.S., state efforts to address mass illegal migration have been trapped in a series of arcane legal debates.

Is the mass movement of millions of self-styled asylum-seekers; economic-migrants; single, military-aged males; criminals; and terrorism threats from more than 160 countries, including our adversaries, an invasion within the meaning of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution? Do executive-branch policies like President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or President Joe Biden’s en masse parole violate the president’s constitutional duty to “take care that the Law be faithfully executed”?

Do states even have a legal right to sue the federal government when it announces enforcement standards contravening the plain text of federal law? To date, none of these questions has been resolved in a way remotely favorable to stemming the tide of illegal migration.

The answer ought to be a good deal more straightforward: States, as sovereigns, have “the inherent power to exclude persons from its territory, subject only to those limitations expressed in the Constitution or constitutionally imposed by Congress.”

That was the answer then-Justice Antonin Scalia gave in his dissenting opinion in Arizona v. U.S. But it’s the answer the majority foreclosed. And wrongfully so, because, as Scalia explained, “the power to exclude” is at the “core of state sovereignty.”

A political community that has lost the ability to expel those with no lawful right to be within its territory is not meaningfully sovereign. Thus, it cannot be presumed that Congress has extinguished that power. Then, as now, Congress has not enacted a law expressly negating that state power. Kennedy merely inferred that negation.

For much of the 20th century, the Supreme Court relied on penumbras and emanations to hallucinate protection for entirely novel individual rights, for instance, the constitutional right to contraception. With equal verve, the court used constitutional shadows—the supposed negative implications of features such as the commerce clause—to restrict the traditionally broad ambit of state sovereignty and defeat core exercises of that authority.

Yet that approach cannot continue indefinitely.

The ever-increasing demands of the human rights regime cannot always prevail against the older tradition of sovereign rights, which ultimately protect the citizens constituting that sovereignty.

Nowhere is a shift more necessary than in the field of immigration. The unconcealable anarchy at our southern border is a direct consequence of the court’s ruling in Arizona.

Executive branch authority is at its peak in matters of international relations and foreign affairs. By placing the issue of illegal immigration under these headings, Kennedy not only transferred sole authority over immigration enforcement to the federal government, he gave it primarily (and, in practice, almost exclusively) to the executive branch.

The executive branch, which ought to be implementing Congress’ legislative judgments on immigration policy, has instead developed the habit of resorting to its prosecutorial discretion and contriving its own policies that disregard restrictions on illegal entry and the necessity to deport certain classes of aliens. Thus, the preemption that Kennedy found allowed the executive branch to convert that field of policymaking into a near-total void of enforcement.

Some Texas lawmakers have stated that the SB No. 4 complies with Arizona v. U.S. and that they have no need to challenge that decision. Whether Texas lawmakers believe that or not, the Biden administration is going to take a more jaundiced view of the matter. And under current Supreme Court precedent, one can expect the federal government’s view to prevail in the lower courts.

The problem of mass illegal migration long predated Arizona v. U.S. Still, the Supreme Court made the situation materially worse by depriving the states of their rightful, historic ability to deal with the problem insofar as it came within their borders.

For that specific aspect of the problem, the court bears responsibility. But Kennedy is no longer on the court, nor are Justices Stephen Breyer or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both of whom joined Kennedy’s majority opinion. Thus, in addition to persuading Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who dissented in Arizona, Texas would need to gain the votes of all three Trump-appointed justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Alternatively, Texas could lose one of those votes if they persuade Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted with Kennedy, to reconsider the reasoning in Arizona.

The court, as a whole, has good reasons to reconsider Arizona’s rationale. As a purely legal matter, Kennedy’s opinion ignored both the original understanding of state sovereignty, as well as the long-standing interpretive rule that core attributes of state sovereignty cannot be destroyed by implication.

Scalia described both in his dissent. The justices will also have an opportunity to survey the wreckage, so to speak, and appreciate that making immigration control an exclusively federal prerogative has produced domestic chaos and little of the international stability that Kennedy thought so desirable. Thus, if it comes, when it comes, the court should take its opportunity to right the wrong and overrule Arizona v. U.S.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/22/texas-comes-out-swinging-in-fight-to-restore-states-role-in-curbing-illegal-immigration

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27 December, 2023

Leprosy, Polio, Malaria, TB, Measles … and Massive Unscreened Illegal Immigration

Successful public health campaigns and medical advances have enabled the United States to conquer a range of disfiguring and damaging diseases. Polio, which paralyzed thousands of Americans annually, was wiped out by widespread vaccinations. In 1999 the nation’s last hospital for lepers closed its doors in Louisiana. A global campaign eradicated smallpox, while lethal tuberculosis, the “consumption” that stalked characters in decades of literature, seemed beaten by antibiotics. Measles outbreaks still occur from time to time, but they are small, local, and easily contained.

Recently, however, some of these forgotten but still formidable infectious diseases have begun to reappear in the U.S. For two years running, polio has been detected in some New York water samples, and this fall, leprosy re-emerged in Florida, where cases of malaria have also been recorded.

Health officials say they are not sure why these and other infectious diseases are resurfacing. One distinct possibility, which officials are loath to discuss, is that the millions of migrants who have crossed into the country in recent years could be bringing the scourges with them, since many are from countries where such rare diseases persist and vaccination programs are not robust.

“The recent polio and leprosy cases are almost certainly imports to the U.S.,” said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and scientist at Stanford University, one of the most outspoken critics of official COVID-19 narratives in the last pandemic that later proved flawed.

And the Biden administration, an aggressive promoter of often mandatory vaccination last time, now is offering little public comment on the connection between disease and the porous borders with which its immigration policy has become widely identified.

Neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the Department of Homeland Security would discuss the issue with RealClearInvestigations. Legal immigrants are required to receive vaccinations for a host of diseases, but the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged it does not have vaccination records for the millions who have entered the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed border controls upon taking office in January 2021.

“It’s not like there is some Typhoid Mary out there, but this is something people are seeing and thinking about, even if they don’t want to discuss it publicly,” said Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes the Biden administration’s border policies.

The reticence of federal agencies has not stopped some local officials, however, from raising public health alarms over massive immigration. New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan warned in April that at least half of the migrants who have poured into the city had not been vaccinated against polio. The potentially paralyzing and life-threatening virus remains endemic in two countries in the world, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the World Health Organization. Since President Biden ordered what proved to be a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, an estimated 90,000 Afghans have come to the U.S. under the terms of Operation Allies Welcome.

It is not clear if those migrants met the polio vaccination requirement. DHS did not respond to a question about whether medical histories were reviewed in the fast-tracked entry of Afghans who got out of their country before the Taliban reimposed its control.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/12/27/leprosy_polio_malaria_tb_measles__and_massive_unscreened_illegal_immigration_1000817.html

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24 December, 2023

Chicago Residents Erupt During City Council Meeting Over Migrant Crisis: 'Trump, Come Clean This Up'

Chicago residents are desperately suffering from President Joe Biden's immigration policies that have caused cities to use all of their resources on illegal aliens rather than on their own residents.

This week, a prominent Black activist gave a passionate speech during an all-Democrat city council meeting, calling on officials to handle immediately hand the immigrant crisis by "sending them all back."

George Blakemore condemned Biden's unwillingness to secure the border, urging former President Trump to "come in here and clean up this mess" as some of the poorest neighborhoods suffer from a lack of funding and city services due to the migrant crisis.

The Chicago resident called it "un-American" and "disgraceful" to see illegal aliens come into the United States and reap the same benefits, if not better, than hard-working American taxpayers.

Who made these rules? Who voted for these rules? When did people have time to participate in making these rules? And one of y'all came over to me and said, 'Well, Mr. Blakemore, we've got children.' Well, what about the Black children in the ghetto? I'm strictly advocating for Black people. Call ICE on them! Trump, come in here, clean this mess up! The most corrupt city in the United States is the City of Chicago! I am an anti-illegal immigrant. Send them all back across the Rio Grande. We are the only people in America who were enslaved. We didn't come over waiting and looking for something. When we came, we built this country on free labor.

Blakemore called Chicago the most corrupt city in the United States.

His remarks come after the city announced plans to spend $300 million to deal with the more than 24,000 illegal migrants who have arrived in Chicago after crossing the southern border since August of last year.

On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX.) flew more than 120 illegal aliens to sanctuary cities, with the first flight from El Paso arriving in Chicago.

More than 26,000 illegal aliens have arrived in Chicago since last year, with nearly 1,200 migrants camping out at the city's O'Hare Airport as well as several police stations.

Chicago has earmarked nearly $24 million to winterize tents to shelter thousands of illegal migrants who have arrived in the city during the cold months

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/12/22/chicago-residents-erupt-during-city-council-meeting-over-migrant-crisis-trump-come-clean-this-up-n2632766

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21 December, 2023

Wasted meals: another example of NYC’s ever-expanding migrant-industrial complex

Mayor Adams warned this week of tax hikes and “extremely painful” cuts to city services to offset taxpayers’ money going to shelter and feed migrants.

But even worse is how that money is being wasted.

Migrants complain the prepared meals delivered to them three times a day — including chicken Alfredo, beef enchiladas and even special halal meals for Muslims — aren’t to their liking or aren’t hot enough.

They’re throwing the food away.

Tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of meals are landing in dumpsters every day.

It’s an insult to every family that scrimps to afford groceries.

Worse, taxpayers are paying rip-off prices for these meals, eaten or not.

The only winners are those in the ever-expanding migrant-industrial complex — the advocates posing as do-gooders while they profiteer off a crisis.

DocGo, a company with a no-bid contract to shelter and care for migrants, is allowed to bill the city up to $11 per meal or $33 a day per migrant.

That adds up to $3,960 a month for a migrant family of four.

That’s four times the maximum a needy American family of four gets under Uncle Sam’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Is it because migrants’ meals are prepared? No.

Prepared meals for airline passengers — supplied by companies like Flying Food Group and Gategroup — cost about $4 for economy class, less than half the cost of migrants’ meals.

Charging $11 is price gouging.

After a 1981 court-enforced agreement between New York City and advocates for the homeless, the city adopted and amended policies that now say it must provide every homeless person with shelter and “access to three nutritional meals a day.”

Applying this to people who arrive on the city’s doorstep from other countries is absurd and should be challenged.

Until then, complying with city rules does not require providing plates of meat and potatoes served up hot.

The city’s policy allows it to give migrants vouchers or debit cards to pay bodegas, fast-food outlets and street vendors.

Migrants staying at the Roosevelt Hotel can be seen bringing in bags of food after they’ve trashed the city-provided meals. Or the city should rely on major institutional meal providers.

The current meal service is a scam draining the city’s resources while enriching the burgeoning migrant-care industry.

Long before the migrant crisis, shelter operators were already taking New York taxpayers for a ride.

In 2021, the New York Post detailed how the CEO of CORE Services Group, a nonprofit with multimillion-dollar contracts with the city, made more than $1 million a year for himself under the veneer of running a charity.

He set up for-profit subsidiaries to provide food, security services and building maintenance, which paid him and his family members hefty salaries.

The migrant crisis gives profiteers an opportunity to go in for the kill.

At a March City Council hearing, an Adams administration official was asked why meals for migrants cost so more than meals provided to homeless New Yorkers.

The slick answer: “Emergencies are going to cost more.”

It costs $394 per day to shelter and feed a migrant, compared with $254 for homeless New Yorkers under the care of the Department of Homeless Services.

More than 50% greater than already-inflated costs.

Migrants complain about rotten food. The worst rot is inside the Adams administration’s handling of this emergency.

Who is going to fix this? Not the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander.

He suggests more of the money spent on contracts should go to “minority and women-owned business enterprises.” Spreading out the spoils.

Look to federal law enforcement.

In October, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York charged the CEO of a nonprofit — Childrens Community Services — and his business associate of operating a $50 million network of “fly-by-night companies” that bought meals, furniture and other goods from vendors, marked them up and made a killing at taxpayers’ expense.

That was under the previous mayor’s watch.

Now the stakes are higher, as thousands of migrants arrive weekly.

Instead of making “extremely painful cuts” to the services all New Yorkers rely on, Adams should take a hatchet to the profiteering migrant-industrial complex.

If Adams won’t, the feds should move in.

https://nypost.com/2023/12/19/opinion/wasted-meals-another-example-of-nycs-ever-expanding-migrant-industrial-complex/

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20 December, 2023

Abbott Signs 'Historic' Border Security Bill Making Illegal Immigration a State Crime

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday signed “historic” legislation giving state law enforcement authority to prosecute illegal border crossers.

“Four years ago, the United States had the fewest illegal border crossings in decades,” Abbott said. “It was because of four policies put in place by the Trump Administration that led to such a low number of illegal crossings. President Biden has eliminated all of those policies and done nothing to halt illegal immigration.”

Abbott Republican said Biden’s “deliberate inaction” has left his state to “fend for itself," but in doing so, it is likely kicking off a legal battle with the federal government, which is responsible for immigration enforcement.

“The goal of Senate Bill 4 is to stop the tidal wave of illegal entry into Texas,” he said during a signing ceremony in Brownsville. “It creates a criminal offense for illegal entry into Texas from a foreign nation for repeat offenders, that creates the events of illegal reentry with a potential prison sentence term of up to 20 years.”

“The bill provides a mechanism to order an illegal immigrant to return to the foreign nation from which they entered,” he added.

Senate Bill 4 from Special Session #4 (Perry/Spiller) creates a criminal offense for illegal entry into this state from a foreign nation. The law cracks down on repeated attempts to enter Texas by creating the offense of illegal reentry and penalizes offenders with up to 20 years in prison. It also provides the mechanism to order an offender to return to the foreign nation from which the person entered or attempted to enter this state. The law provides civil immunity and indemnification for local and state government officials, employees, and contractors for lawsuits resulting from the enforcement of these provisions. (Governor's Office)

Abbott signed two additional border security bills on Monday as well.

Senate Bill 4 from Special Session #3 (Flores/Guillen) creates a mandatory ten-year minimum prison sentence for smuggling of persons and continuous smuggling of persons. Passed with bipartisan support, the law enhances the criminal penalties for the operation of a stash house and creates a mandatory five-year minimum prison sentence. It also further enhances criminal penalties for victim-related offenses that occurred during the commission of smuggling, such as assault and burglary.
 
Senate Bill 3 from Special Session #4 (Huffman/Jetton) appropriates $1.54 billion in general revenue to the Trusteed Programs within the Office of the Governor for border security operations and the construction, operation, and maintenance of border barrier infrastructure. (Governor's Office)

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/12/19/texas-abbott-signs-historic-border-security-legislation-n2632604

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19 December, 2023

Phone Calls and Social Media Posts Drive Record High Illegal Immigration, Top Border Patrol Officials Report

 The modern flow of information is driving illegal immigration, according to multiple Border Patrol sector chiefs. If released into the interior of the U.S., some illegal aliens allegedly share their success on social media, or call home and encourage family or friends to cross the border and join them in America, furthering a cycle of illegal border crossings.  

Illegal aliens cross into the “Del Rio Sector in large part because of the message that is transmitted among the migrant population,” Jason Owens told staff members of the House Homeland Security Committee during an interview in May and shared with The Daily Signal Thursday. Owens, who has since been promoted to Border Patrol chief, was serving as chief patrol agent of the Del Rio Sector at the time of the interview with House Homeland Security staff.  

“When you have folks that make the trip and they come across, they’re in communication with the folks that are back in their home country or their families who may also be thinking about making that journey,” Owens said. “And if they perceive it to be safer or more expedient, they give recommendations, and they do that by phone, they do that on social media outlets.”  

The Del Rio Sector in Texas is one of nine border sectors along America’s border with Mexico, and tends to be one of the higher trafficked areas of the border. In fiscal year 2023, which ended Sept. 30, Customs and Border Protection encountered 393,226 illegal aliens in the Del Rio Sector.  

“I believe that the migrants communicate the entirety of their experience to their friends and family back home, and that would include what their experience was with whatever processing pathway they were put into,” Owens said.  

The “processing pathways” Owens references include the Biden administration’s “lawful pathways,” which have allowed for the release of illegal aliens into the interior of the U.S.  

In October, the House Judiciary Committee released findings that at least 3.8 million illegal aliens either have been released into the nation’s interior or successfully evaded the Border Patrol to enter the country since President Joe Biden took office Jan. 20, 2021.   

Owens’ observations regarding the communication flow between migrants is not unique to the Del Rio Sector, according to comments made by other sector chiefs during a series of interviews with House Homeland Security staffers conducted between the beginning of May and end of September.  

When asked what factors draw migrants to cross the border into the U.S., Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez said, “It would be families that are already in the United States pulling their relatives, you know, encouraging their relatives to come out.”  

Other pull factors include “companies or organizations that are hiring these individuals in the United States that others have told them, ‘Hey, you can get a job here,’ type thing. I think it’s the feedback that people that are here already provide them to encourage them to come,” Chavez said.  

During an interview with Laredo Sector Chief Patrol Agent Joel Martinez, a Homeland Security staffer asked whether illegal aliens would still come to the U.S. even after being informed that the journey was hard and long if they knew they would be released into the U.S.  

“Yes,” Martinez answered.  

“How else do they find out about information?” the staffer pressed. “It’s not just the cartel, right? Family that’s already come, do they call back?”

“Yes,” the agent said.  

“And some people … wait in Mexico to see if the people they were with are successful before they cross?”  

“Yes,” he said.  

“Do you think that that has a large influence on whether a person decides to cross into the United States?” the Homeland Security staff member asked.   

“Yes,” Martinez responded.  

The widespread use of social media has also made it easy for migrants and “smuggling outfits” to use platforms like TikTok to share how and where to cross the border illegally, Yuma Sector Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Dustin Caudle said during his interview with representatives from the House Homeland Security Committee.  

TikTok videos show migrant’s “firsthand accounts of which trails to take, where the border wall ended, which gap to exploit, you know, where to stay, all of those things,” Caudle said.  

The information dissemination has changed the patterns of illegal immigration, according to El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Good and Tucson Sector Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin.

If an illegal alien is released from Customs and Border Protection, Good says, “then that person that was released will get on social media and say, ‘Hey, look at me, I’ve been released.’ And then that creates a draw specifically to that area,” he said. “So, if it happens in El Paso and they post that on social media, that will create a draw to El Paso, same for any other sector.”

Modlin told Homeland Security Committee staff members that when he started his career, “immigration flows took months to change, and now it seemingly can change overnight because people are livestreaming themselves crossing the border. They’re sending it back to—their families are seeing it. People in the area they come from see it.”  

The Tucson Sector chief added that “there’s not the air of mystery to the border that there used to be, because people can leave their country and then, however long it takes them, a couple weeks to get here, and then they’re inside the United States, and then they’re in Kansas City, or they’re wherever their destination is, they’re there and they’re in communication with their families.”  

CBP encountered a record 2.4 million illegal aliens at the southern border in fiscal year 2023, and over 6.6 million illegal aliens have been encountered at the U.S. border with Mexico since the start of the Biden administration.  

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/18/exclusive-phone-calls-and-social-media-posts-drive-record-high-illegal-immigration-top-border-patrol-officials-report/

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18 December, 2023

Canada Cuts Back on Alien Students by Doubling the Cash Needed for Visa

The announcement by Canada’s Immigration Minister, Mark Miller, (Liberal, Quebec) raised the cash needed for incoming alien students from the earlier CAD$10,000 (equal to about US$7,400) to CAD$20,635 (US$15,267).

This sum is in addition to the requirement that the new student pay some fees to the government, pay inward airfare, and pay for the first term’s tuition.

The new requirements are both stiffer than America’s and they are also more specific. The U.S. tells future F-1 students that they must have adequate funds for their education here, but does not set a number (though a website suggests a minimum of US$10,000).

As to the low standards of some private Canadian universities — “puppy mills” in the lingo north of the border — we run into the same situation as in America: Admission of alien students is handled by the national government, but the regulation of universities is primarily a provincial decision. Minister Miller threatened to limit foreign student admissions in certain provinces if those provinces did not crack down on the puppy mills.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has never made such a threat; its regulatory agency, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP, part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement), plays a totally passive role in this regard, trusting either states or recognized credentialing organizations to make such decisions.

On the other hand, despite grumbling about the prospect of undergraduates working 40-hour jobs, the minister allowed this to happen until April 30, 2024, on a temporary basis. The U.S. lets undergraduates work only 20 hours a week, in their first year, but allows foreign grad students to work full-time.

Meanwhile, earlier this month the United Kingdom, in a different kind of restrictive move, ruled that incoming graduate students come the new year will no longer be allowed to bring relatives with them.

https://cis.org/North/Canada-Cuts-Back-Alien-Students-Doubling-Cash-Needed-Visa

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17 December, 2023

Mayorkas Opens the Border Again, Now to Ecuadorians

Congress continues to do nothing to restrict the main tool enabling Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s unlawful overreach: his abuse of the “humanitarian parole” authority to admit foreigners under a narrow exception in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The INA allows the president to admit selected foreigners who cannot obtain a visa but have a pressing need to enter the U.S., such as to receive medical treatment or take part in a court matter. Mayorkas has seized this authority as dynamite to blast open our national borders.

Earlier this year, Mayorkas used humanitarian parole as the pretext to invent immigration programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (called “CHNV”) that permit 30,000 “legal” monthly admissions from those countries. Under the sketchy CHNV rules that Mayorkas created by diktat, the parolees from these four countries can self-select themselves; basically the sole requirements are having a sponsor and not being on a U.S. watchlist.  

Mayorkas’s sleight of hand has also invented something he calls “Family Reunification Parole” (FRP), yet another scheme for speeding up the entry of those favored nationals he wants to let in now.

Under FRP, foreigners on the processing list for family-reunification immigrant visas (commonly called “chain migrants”) are no longer required to await their legal turn to be interviewed, medically examined, and vetted in their home countries. FRP will now permit Ecuadorians, who will join the special club of Colombians, El Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans (plus Haitians and Cubans, who are covered by both programs) to simply ignore the waiting times required by American law and come directly into the U.S. as “parolees.”

Mayorkas’s improvisation again throws out the INA’s worldwide immigrant quota and vetting system, which in many cases would require these foreigners to wait years for their lawful chance to be processed as visa applicants. The fact that they are facing waiting periods, as is the case with some 4 million would-be chain migrants around the globe, does not mean the INA is treating them “unfairly,” nor is it a “broken” immigration system. Confronted by millions who want to come here, the law is working exactly as it was designed, restricting the number of immigrants each year to the quotas Congress approved.

Yet the current system, which is already overly generous in admitting annually more than a million legal immigrants, is not good enough for the Biden administration. In its announcement on Ecuadorians, DHS posted this paragraph:

The Family Reunification Parole process promotes family unity consistent with our laws and our values,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “Establishing this process for certain Ecuadorian nationals will ensure more families can access lawful pathways rather than placing themselves at the mercy of smugglers to make the dangerous journey. Those who do not avail themselves of family reunification parole or other lawful, safe, and orderly pathways and attempt to enter the United States unlawfully will continue to face tough consequences.

Note that the announcement does not even threaten those Ecuadorians who “refuse to avail themselves of FRP” with deportation. When Mayorkas makes reference to “our values,” he is blatantly ignoring that those values are already clearly anchored in existing U.S. law. It is in fact fundamentally un-American to replace the rule of law by diktat; it is an incredible power grab and a national outrage even by modern Washington standards.

In favoring certain nationalities, Mayorkas is ignoring INA language that directly forbids it. The law asserts: “… no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person's race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence” (emphasis added) §1152(a)(1)(A).

While the parolees are technically entering the U.S. without a visa, they are still being clearly favored in immigration because of who they are and where they come from. By any fair reading of the law, this action is a direct violation of the non-favoritism standard established in the INA.

What is going on with the DHS General Counsel’s office? Is there a DHS Inspector General’s investigation underway on Mayorkas’s abuses?  Most importantly, was this unlawful conduct not worthy of a House impeachment vote against Mayorkas?

Reckless with his unchecked power, Mayorkas is likely to announce next that Ecuadorians already illegally in the United States will be granted “Temporary Protected Status.” TPS was first enacted by a gullible Congress as a measure to allow foreign nationals to remain in the U.S. if their country was beset by armed conflict or national catastrophe. Democrat administrations have wildly stretched TPS into a backdoor to allow illegal migrants to remain indefinitely in the United States.  

As with parole, Congress desperately needs to take back this abused TPS authority, which currently allows nationals from 16 countries, most with dubious claims of being in crisis, to remain in the United States. Despite a history of Democrat presidents expanding this backdoor open-border measure, Ecuador, so far, has been denied TPS. Even the Barack Obama administration refused in 2016 to cave to Ecuadorian pressure for TPS.

Of course, the government of Ecuador continues to lobby for its illegals to stay in the U.S., and it is probably only a matter of time before President Biden, urged on by Antony Blinken’s State Department, placates Quito by granting TPS.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/mayorkas-opens-the-border-again-now-to-ecuadorians/

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14 December, 2023

Trump v. Biden on the Border

By Andrew R. Arthur on December 14, 2023

In a recent post, I analyzed the latest Wall Street Journal poll, focusing on the significant importance respondents claimed they would be placing on candidates’ immigration policies in the upcoming 2024 elections. What I didn’t mention was what that poll had to say about how the worsening border crisis would influence their votes for president, assuming current frontrunners Joe Biden and Donald Trump win their respective parties’ nominations. Let’s just say it’s no wonder Trump is returning to what was a winning issue for him during his successful 2016 presidential run. Congressional Democrats, locked into negotiations with their GOP colleagues over border reforms, may want to take note.

The poll was conducted between November 29 and December 4 by research group Fabrizio Lee and surveyed 1,500 registered voters.

A Quick Recap

To briefly recap, 13 percent of respondents identified “immigration” as their most important issue when casting their ballots in November, making it the second most common “most important issue” in that poll out of 35 different choices (and trailing economic issues by only 8 points).

That represents a 2-point climb in importance for this issue since August, but more importantly it’s more than twice as many respondents who stated that immigration would be their key issue when voting compared to the Journal’s April poll, when just 6 percent of respondents stated that immigration would be the foremost concern on their minds when voting.

The significance of that increase in voters’ concerns about immigration is most apparent when you consider that when the April poll was taken, border security was trending as an issue because Title 42 was set to end the next month, with a migrant surge expected to follow. Concerns about the administration’s immigration policies have clearly morphed into anxiety among many in the electorate.

That poll also revealed that not only is immigration a leading issue for a significant number of voters, but that a large percentage of them (again, 13 percent) claim they’ll refuse to support any candidate who does not share their immigration views. Thus, more than 1 in 8 voters will cast their ballot — or not vote at all — based on what a candidate has to say about this key topic.

Approval of Biden’s Handling of Border Security

That poll also reveals that just 27 percent of voters approve of the job Joe Biden is doing in securing the border, and even then, a mere 7 percent of them “strongly” approve. If you aren’t happy with what’s occurring at the U.S.-Mexico line, rest assured you’re not alone.

By contrast, 64 percent of those polled disapproved of Biden’s handling of the border, with half — 50 percent — stating that they “strongly” disapproved. Given all this, one wonders what ideological thrall the White House has fallen into for it to keep pushing its migrant “catch-and-release” policies.

Biden’s approval on border security is down 2 points from August and 6 points from April. Disapproval of the president’s handling of the border has consequently risen 5 points since April, with those “strongly disapproving” jumping 2 points. Approval of Biden’s efforts to secure the border is his lowest out of six performance areas polled. By comparison, Biden’s second-worst issue is “handling inflation and rising costs”, where he receives 30 percent approval for his performance (and 13 percent “strong approval”, nearly double his border-security score).

Biden v. Trump on Securing the Border

Finally, the Journal asked respondents: “Between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who in your opinion is BEST ABLE” to secure the border.

More than half — 54 percent — chose Trump, while just 24 percent said it was Biden (2 percent stated “both equally” and a truly pessimistic 15 percent said “neither”).

The Journal has not previously polled on this specific matchup, so unfortunately there’s no way to track the trend. As far back as November 2021, however, the Journal performed a similar survey in which respondents trusted “Republicans in Congress” much more strongly than their Democratic counterparts to secure the border, by a 52 to 16 percent split. Maybe border security is simply a GOP strongpoint.

That said, a July 2018 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed that just 41 percent of respondents approved of then-President Trump’s handling of border security and immigration, while 51 percent disapproved, so the most recent poll likely reveals a newfound appreciation of the former chief executive’s efforts in these areas. To quote 1960s folksinger Joni Mitchell: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”.

Border security is Trump’s strongest suit in a head-to-head matchup with the incumbent, though he also has the edge over Biden by a 52 to 35 margin when it comes to rebuilding the economy, 51 points to 30 with respect to “getting inflation under control”, and a 47 to 30 margin in his favor with respect to reducing crime.

Trump knows border security is Biden’s biggest vulnerability, which as I‘ve explained is why the former president sought the endorsement of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republicans’ face on the issue. Whether congressional Democrats, currently taking a hard line on GOP demands for border reform, realize Biden’s immigration policies could them weigh down in November, too, is the question.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Trump-v-Biden-Border

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13 December, 2023

The Border Has Americans in a Really Bad Mood

“My staff will tell you, if it was under 1,000 apprehensions the day before, that was a relatively good number. If it was above 1,000, it was a relatively bad number and I was going to be in a bad mood all day.” So said former Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson back in 2019, who added that 1,000 daily crossings “overwhelms the system” and is a “crisis.” It’s Johnson’s good fortune that he’s no longer DHS secretary, because he’d be blowing a gasket these days.

One would have to believe, based on the evidence, that the influx of illegal immigrants from all over the world has to be intentional, as if we had no border at all. Last Tuesday it was reported that there were more than 10,000 apprehensions at the border — this out of a total of more than 12,000 “migrant encounters,” which means about 2,000 got away. It’s become so bad at the out-of-the-way border crossing in Lukeville, Arizona, that authorities have had to close the local port of entry to accommodate a huge influx of young male “asylum seekers,” mainly from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

“I love you Joe Biden. Thank you for everything, Joe Biden!” exclaimed one African illegal who entered at Lukeville and will presumably be given a chance to go someplace in America to seek work or government assistance or both.

Unfortunately for him, the feeling isn’t mutual among those who have to use the port of entry. “It was a lose-lose,” said Congressman Juan Ciscomani, who represents that area. “There is zero upside to closing that Lukeville port. Trade has stopped. Tourism has stopped. Businesses on the U.S. side are seeing a 50 to 70% decrease in their sales.” The closure meant a three-hour detour to the next closest port of entry in Nogales, Arizona.

And then we have the increased crime and budgetary woes this invasion brings. “As indicated on the Department of Homeland Security websites, at least 2.6 million inadmissible aliens have been let loose into the United States since Biden took office,” writes Elaine Mallon at The Federalist. One culprit: the Biden administration’s CBP One mobile app, which has essentially become a “get out of jail free” card for illegal immigrants.

According to Fox News: “Lawmakers have also been told there is an average of 5,000 illegal immigrants released each day to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who provide migrants with assistance and will sometimes help them get to their destinations. If that pace holds throughout the entire year that would be over 1.8 million illegal entrants in that timeframe.”

That number doesn’t even count the estimated 670,000 “gotaways,” meaning there are close to 2.5 million illegal immigrants now entering the country each year — that we know of. In other words, every year we gain a new Chicago’s worth of low-skilled foreign workers with who-knows-what intentions and health problems.

Based on that information, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a report, based on the latest Current Population Survey from the Census Bureau, that makes a significant claim about the number of foreign-born people now in the U.S.

Focusing on the period after President Biden took office in January 2021 shows an increase of 4.5 million. The increase during Biden’s first 34 months is unprecedented. What is so striking about the recent run-up in the number of immigrants is that the increase represents a net change, not merely new inflow. The foreign-born population can only grow when immigrants arrive from abroad, but these new arrivals are always offset by emigration and mortality among the existing immigrant population. All births to immigrants in the United States, by definition, can add only to the native-born population. This means that significantly more than 4.5 million people had to have arrived from abroad for it to grow this much.

As it stands, CIS says the share of foreign-born people in the U.S. right now is the highest ever, beating out the peak immigration years between the War Between the States and World War I, when millions (including this writer’s ancestors) arrived here to start a new life as Americans. While much of the current wave is also looking to work and improve themselves, they don’t seem to want to assimilate and become non-hyphenated Americans as much as the ancestors of our native-born did.

But since Joe Biden has clearly encouraged this invasion from the beginning, and since a divided Congress can only fight over funding to address it, we’re consigned to watching this slow-motion train wreck for a little while longer — and becoming even more angry.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/102805-the-border-has-americans-in-a-really-bad-mood-2023-12-12

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12 December, 2023

Biden Prefers to Put Your Safety at Risk and Play Recidivism Roulette With Criminal Aliens

Thanks to President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, every American is forced to play a game of “recidivist roulette” with criminal aliens. In addition to installing a virtual revolving door at the border, the Biden administration has spiked immigration law enforcement in the interior of the country, putting the lie to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’ oft-repeated whopper that “our border is not open, that crossing irregularly is against the law, and that those who are not eligible for relief will be quickly returned [to their home countries].”

More than two years ago—before the Biden administration started mass releases and parole of illegal aliens caught at the southern border—there were already over 400,000 convicted criminal foreigners walking free throughout the United States. That’s 400,000 convicted criminals out of around 5 million illegal aliens on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket,” meaning all the aliens involved in deportation proceedings who, under U.S. law, should be detained while awaiting their hearings but are not.

With today’s social media, facial recognition, and amazing data tools, a lot of the 400,000 could be found, but ICE officers are so constrained by their political bosses that they are barely able to arrest anyone. The Biden administration has given ICE the paltry target of deporting just under 30,000 criminal aliens this fiscal year and the same for next year.

Roughly 4 million illegal aliens have been allowed into the U.S. since Biden took office, at least an estimated 1.8 million of whom were “gotaways”—those thought to have entered the U.S. but not identified or arrested. Given the number, age, and origin of all the illegal aliens entering the country, it’s certain that a percentage of them have criminal records and that Biden is thus adding more convicts per year to our population than ICE is subtracting.

Over 70% of U.S. state prisoners (both citizens and foreigners) are re-arrested within five years of release. It’s a fair bet that released or paroled aliens with foreign criminal records (that are undiscoverable or unknown to the Department of Homeland Security), re-offend at similar rates. And logically, it would be even higher for the gotaways who deliberately avoid detection.

The costs of recidivism, or re-offending, by criminal aliens are borne by Americans, including physical and financial harm to victims, diverted law enforcement resources, and burdens on the entire criminal justice system.

Just a few of the many examples of preventable crimes resulting from Biden’s border policies will illustrate the risk we all put up with.

In August 2018, Jose Gonzalez-Flores, an illegal alien from Guatemala, rear-ended a family van near Chesterfield, Virginia, killing 4-year-old Elias Camacho. He was drunk—at 5 in the afternoon—and fled the scene of the accident. For that “involuntary manslaughter,” Gonzalez-Flores served 3 1/2 years in prison, after which ICE deported him back to Guatemala. A year later, he was back in the U.S. as a gotaway.

The Biden administration’s deliberate decision to divert all possible staff and money to processing illegal aliens at the border (to let them into the U.S. rather than turning them away) has allowed gotaway numbers to rise from the decade-long average of about 125,000 a year to at least 600,000 now.

Recidivist criminals like Gonzalez-Flores, and the cartels that smuggle them in, know that. So that their U.S. criminal records are not discovered, they avoid ports of entry and easily evade a Border Patrol thinned out by re-assignments off the border. ICE eventually found Gonzalez-Flores and re-arrested him in Virginia. He was charged with unlawful re-entry after deportation. After serving his latest 4-year sentence, he should be deported again.

On Nov. 24 of this year, ICE deported Cesar Antiono Rafael Lopez, an illegal alien wanted in Guatemala for rape. Border Patrol encountered him in Arizona in 2019 and was able to deport him a few days later under an expedited removal process created in 1996.

That process was intended to limit the release of illegal aliens into the U.S. at the border and to allow them to be more quickly deported. However, illegal aliens claiming that they have a “credible fear” of returning to their home countries for fear that they would face violence or government persecution can avoid removal and apply for asylum in the U.S. There is a very low bar for aliens to claim credible fear and avoid this quick process, and around 75% pass the test to enter the U.S. and the years-long asylum process.

Lopez illegally came back three more times, on June 3, June 8, and June 12, 2021. He was removed each time—most likely to only over the border to Mexico, given the speed of his re-entries. On his fourth try, he made it back as a gotaway. There had been no consequences for his earlier fails, although the government should have prosecuted him for the crime of illegal reentry.

Lopez remained in the U.S. for two years until this September, when he was arrested in Michigan on unspecified “local charges.” As often happens, local jail officials didn’t honor the detainer ICE had lodged with them. Detainers are a law enforcement courtesy where ICE asks state authorities to let it take custody of prisoners before they are released, so that the government can enforce federal immigration law. Probably due to local “sanctuary city” policies, the jail failed to inform ICE before it released Lopez, but ICE found and arrested him in October. A month later, Lopez was deported to Guatemala.

In September, Honduran illegal alien Kevin Castro-Garcia was charged with two murders in Nashville. Authorities found the burned body of victim Brandon Rivas-Noriega inside a torched car and the decomposing body of a second victim, Elmer Nahum Miranda-Martinez, in the trunk of a different car. Castro-Garcia is a member of Sur 13, a transnational criminal organization. He had already been deported from the U.S. twice before, in 2010 and again in 2018, but for him and other dangerous aliens, re-entering the U.S. illegally as a gotaway has never been easier.

In July, a 25-year old Haitian gotaway was released with a Notice to Appear before an immigration judge in Boston to explain why he should not be deported. But there are 55,000 asylum cases pending in Boston. The average wait there from court filing (assuming he bothered to file for asylum) to asylum hearing is about four years and growing. He didn’t make it that far, as on Oct. 3, police in Massachusetts arrested him for assaulting someone in his own household.

DHS knows it is releasing potential human time bombs into American communities every day. U.S. citizens only learn the risk when it’s too late. Unless we get control of our border by ending the flow of migrants making fraudulent asylum claims, enforcing immigration law in the interior, and getting Border Patrol back on the border, thousands of high-risk illegal aliens like those mentioned above will keep coming. Under Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security is failing at its “one job”—securing the American people from preventable threats.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/07/borderline-biden-prefers-put-your-safety-risk-play-recidivism-roulette-criminal-aliens/

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NYC Trying to Register Illegal Immigrants to Vote, Republican Rep Says

Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said this week that she has a “smoking gun” that officials in New York City are helping illegal immigrants register to vote.

According to Fox News, Malliotakis announced on Sunday that she’d obtained a copy of a contract between NYC’s Department of Social Services and Homes for the Homeless, which is a nonprofit organization that was contracted to build shelters for the influx of illegal immigrants (via Fox News):

In an appendix of that contract, a copy of which was obtained by Fox News Digital, the city appears to require contractors to provide copies of voter registration forms for migrants at their shelters, Malliotakis said.

"This is the smoking gun that proves what we've been saying all along, that the city intends to register noncitizens to vote, and even those who are residing in these migrant shelters for just 30 days," Malliotakis said at a press conference in Staten Island. "It is extremely concerning. It should be concerning to every citizen."

[...]

A section of the appendix states that contractors who have "regular contact with the public in the daily administration of its business" must "provide and distribute voter registration forms to all persons together with written applications for services, renewal, or recertification for services and change of address relating to such services."

"Such voter registration forms shall be provided to the Contractor by the City. The Contractor should be prepared to provide forms written in Spanish or Chinese, and shall obtain a sufficient supply of such forms from the City," the file stated.

(1) NYC Migrant shelter contracts require voter registration forms to be distributed to “all persons” NOT “citizens”

(2) NYC is appealing after we WON & STOPPED law allowing non-citizens residing in NYC for just 30 days to vote.

Reportedly, the city denied that it requires migrant shelters to provide voter registration information to the illegal immigrants. And, another section reportedly forbids shelter staff from inquiring about immigration status.

In a statement to Fox News, a spokesperson for the NYC Department of Social Services claimed that the allegations are “false and baseless.”

“DHS is legally required to include language around voter registration in shelter contracts and this guidance applies only to eligible clients who are citizens, and would clearly not apply to asylum seekers in shelter," the spokesperson claimed.

“As our teams continue to provide vital case-management services to connect asylum seekers to supports to help them move out of shelter, we strongly caution against lending any credence to such dangerous misrepresentations of the City’s response to this humanitarian crisis,” he said.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/12/09/nicole-malliotakis-illegal-immigrants-voting-n2632016

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10 December, 2023

Biden's Border Crisis Is Encouraging Record Crime from Illegal Aliens, Mexican Drug Cartels

President Joe Biden's open border has continuously worsened, with no end in sight. The only thing that will save this country and protect Americans again is to elect a Republican in office who will come in and shut down the border on day one.

So, let's look at the havoc Biden's open border policies have caused for the United States.

During a House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Management and Technology hearing this week, a Long Island, New York official sounded the alarm on how illegal migrants are having to commit crimes to pay back dangerous Mexican drug cartels.

Republican Bruce Blakeman said that law enforcement is facing the heavy impacts of illegal immigration and that they can't keep up with the massive amount of crime migrants are committing daily.

The New York official suggested the reason illegal aliens are committing crimes at such a fierce rate is so that they can pay back Mexican drug cartels that helped smuggle them into the U.S. to begin with.

Blakeman details more below:

We have seen an increase in crime, basically because you have these organized gangs that are part of the drug cartels from Mexico and other countries who have come to the metropolitan area. They're residing primarily in New York City, and they do cross-border crime … I think common sense people realize that the problem is that we don't know who's coming in. We can't control the numbers, and they are committing crimes. They are also creating burdens on our young people that are devastating. In the United States, over 65,000 young people have overdosed on fentanyl. Where is it coming from? It's coming from south of the border, and many of it is coming from Chinese nationals. I read today that there were 24,000 Chinese nationals that were detained at the border. Those are the ones that were detained. How many got through? We need to secure our borders to make sure that we know who is in this country … this is taking away resources that we desperately need to take care of our own citizens.

Blakeman explained how illegal migrants come to the U.S. owing cartels a large sum of money after being transported over the border by them. He said that if they don't pay back their debt, the migrant's "families would be seriously harmed if not killed in their native country."

As a result, illegal migrants engage in crimes such as burglary and shoplifting, burdening the local police departments.

According to data, cartels have made a record amount of money over the last two years. In 2021, deadly cartels raked in an estimated $13 billion just from human trafficking and smuggling alone.

Biden's Leftist policies have encouraged tens of millions of illegal aliens to travel across the southern border, offering a lucrative business venture for cartels who make thousands of dollars on every person they smuggle into the U.S.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/12/08/officials-sound-alarm-on-illegal-aliens-committing-crimes-in-order-to-pay-back-mexican-drug-cartels-n2632194

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7 December, 2023

Heritage Action President Calls on House Speaker to Prioritize Border Security in Spending Fight

Heritage Action for America President Kevin Roberts called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to prioritize securing the border and reject additional spending for Ukraine without a “plan that defines the end goal in Ukraine,” in a letter released Tuesday.

A $106 billion supplemental spending bill proposed by the White House in October includes around $61 billion to help Ukraine, as well as funding for Israel, those affected by the war in Gaza, and border measures.

“We agree emphatically with Speaker [Mike] Johnson that the hill to die on … is border security,” said Heritage Action’s Roberts in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “The House with a slim majority has already passed HR 2.” (Heritage Action for America is an independent, nonprofit organization affiliated with The Heritage Foundation, which is the parent organization of The Daily Signal.)

In the letter addressed to Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, Roberts called HR 2 the “most significant border security legislation in American history.” He added:

The provisions of HR 2 are no more than what is required to regain control of the border and stem the deadly influx of terrorists, criminals, and drugs into this nation. The bill removes the four tools the Biden administration uses to achieve its open border agenda: asylum fraud, mass immigration parole, unaccompanied alien children, and [nongovernmental organization] money. Almost every Republican senator is on the record supporting HR 2. There is no good reason to pass a bill in the name of border security that falls short of its provisions.

Roberts also criticized the proposed border spending in the supplement package, writing that Biden’s “clear purpose is not to stop the worst border crisis in American history, but to speed the processing and release of illegal aliens into the United States and provide grants to sanctuary cities overwhelmed with the consequences of President [Joe] Biden’s decision to open the borders when he took office.”

The letters comes amid debate on Capitol Hill over Biden’s proposed supplemental package. On Monday, Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote to congressional leaders that funds for Ukraine were about to run out.

“We are out of money to support Ukraine in this fight. This isn’t a next-year problem. The time to help a democratic Ukraine fight against Russian aggression is right now. It is time for Congress to act,” Young wrote.

Roberts called on European Union nations to contribute more to Ukraine, and wrote that “aid for Ukraine should not be provided until the administration provides a plan that defines the end goal in Ukraine, describes the expected U.S. commitment to achieve that goal, addresses the effects of the presidential drawdown authority on U.S. capabilities, and assures further commitments from our European partners.”

In remarks Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Republicans for not supporting Ukraine aid.

“If funding for Ukraine fails, it will not be a bipartisan failure,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said, per CBS News. “It will be a failure solely caused by the Republican Party and the Republican leadership because it was a decision of that Republican leadership, pushed by the hard right, many of whom want Ukraine to fail, to make border [aid] a precondition to supporting Ukraine.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/05/heritage-action-calls-speaker-johnson-prioritize-border-security/

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6 December, 2023

Biden’s Border Crisis Hits Chicago Hard, by Invitation

CHICAGO—“Right-wing extremism” in America has targeted cities run by Democrats such as himself, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said last week.

“And quite frankly,” Johnson added Tuesday, conservative extremists “have been quite intentional about going after Democratically ran [sic] cities that are led by people of color.”

Johnson’s claim is absurd on its face, but to address it we’d like to share the findings of The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project in an on-the-ground investigation in Chicago of what amounts to an invasion of illegal aliens by invitation

Our main goal was to investigate the local effects in Chicago of the crisis at the nation’s southern border under President Joe Biden.

We didn’t even have to venture outside the airport to spot the issue firsthand, and we didn’t have to continue to look hard to see other effects. In fact, we couldn’t avoid some of these effects between landing and takeoff.

Historic Airport Waypoint for Illegal Aliens

Chicago O’Hare International Airport, a historic transportation hub, has become a makeshift shelter and waypoint for illegal aliens.

Illegal aliens are scattered all over the hallways of O’Hare’s bus terminal, which essentially has been turned into a migration checkpoint for illegal immigrants who arrive there.

Half of the bus terminal was blocked off by black pipe and drape, and makeshift beds were there for migrants.

The nonprofit workers we approached refused to identify which immigration-related organization they work for.

We later found out this was a consistent strategy on the part of the nonprofits and the city of Chicago.  

Two airport engineers who refused to be identified told us that over 600 illegal migrants come through the terminal each day, many with diseases and illnesses, particularly scabies.

Those we saw were predominantly military-age males of varying nationalities. Notably, the airport reeked and was an unsightly scene.

Workers at an airport facility for migrants refused to give us any information about who operates it. They pointed out a notice that included the name and email address of a woman, Mary May, for media inquiries.

This same notice was posted on all the other facilities for illegal aliens that we visited in Chicago.

We witnessed several family units of migrants housed in one prime location. Local residents informed us that it used to be a “destination” location because it was prime real estate.  

‘It’s a Voting Replacement’

We met up with two local leaders—David Lowery Jr., co-pastor of Fernwood Community Outreach Church, and Brian Mullins, co-founder of the Black American Voters Project—for a visit to what used to be the South Shore High School building.

This perfectly functional school was shut down recently, and the city of Chicago is trying to turn it into a “migrant respite center.”  

Lowery and Mullins explained how the illegal immigration crisis on Chicago’s South Side is being used as a way to replace black voters who have left. Lowery said:

That’s why the illegals are so imported, was because they wanted to replace the black community. A lot of blacks are moving out of the state. They’re moving in different areas. And so now you bring these guys in, they’re giving them houses, they’re giving them the money to buy homes and to get cars and all of that, man …

They’re really trying to bust the black community up, so that there is no black stronghold in any major cities anymore. And that’s why they brought them to the black community in the first place.

“It’s a replacement,” Mullins said. “It’s a voting replacement.”

Lowery and Mullins said the school-turned-migrant shelter on the South Side is the site of disputes and fights between the new arrivals and senior citizens who live across the street.

We also visited the Wadsworth campus, a migrant shelter in the Woodlawn neighborhood that used to be a STEM elementary school focused on science, technology, engineering, and math.

“The longer you stay around, if you walk around you see people hanging out there,” Lowery said of the Wadsworth shelter. “They try to do a good job during the daytime, they may be out. But if you come out around 5 or 6 o’clock, it’s just a hangout, a party. They’ve gotten into fights with the seniors in this building right here.”

Lowery and Mullins told us that the elementary school has been used as a long-term shelter to house the influx of illegal immigrants bused to Chicago from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, in response to the border crisis created by Biden and his administration.

Wadsworth STEM Elementary was another perfectly functioning school in a historically black neighborhood that officials repurposed as a migrant shelter.  

At a playground for the former elementary school, we spoke with some illegal aliens.

They told us that they are sending money they make back to their home countries. They recounted the dangers they faced when crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into America.

Some said they had been in the shelter for over a year

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/04/bidens-border-crisis-hits-chicago-hard-by-invitation/

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5 December, 2023

Illegal Immigrants in One Blue City Feel ‘Abandoned’ by Biden

Illegal immigrants in Chicago are reportedly “begging” the Biden administration to extend them work permits as migrants continue to enter the city at an unprecedented rate.

According to a report from The Chicago Tribune, many illegal immigrants who are new to the Windy City can now apply for job permits, especially if the migrants came from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba or Haiti.

However, illegal immigrants from countries like Mexico do not have work permits. One named Juana Arreguin, who opened an ice cream shop, has helped some of the illegal immigrants who are new to the city.

“I wish I could help them, I know how it is to start from zero,” Arreguin said.

Arreguin and her husband reportedly came to the states nearly 30 years ago. They used all their savings from working without job permits in the Chicago area to open the ice cream shop. Now, she said she feels “abandoned” as the Biden administration offered work permits to some “immigrant groups” and not hers.

“Please don’t forget about us. We need job permits too,” she told the outlet (via the Chicago Tribune):

She’s joining the voices of thousands of other immigrants who live in Chicago without legal authorization and are demanding the Biden administration give them the opportunity to work legally as well. Bipartisan advocates leading the “Work Permits for All” campaign say Biden could change the lives of workers like Arreguin through the existing federal parole program that he used to provide work authorization for the newly arrived migrants.

Thousands of workers without permanent legal status — mostly from Mexico — traveled to Washington, D.C., last month along with community organizers, political leaders and even employers to push for the executive order. Though Arreguin couldn’t go, she said she shared her story with the Tribune to empower other immigrants to speak up and bolster the movement that could materialize work permits for the estimated 7.8 million workers in the U.S. without legal permission.

The work authorization, advocates say, would allow those immigrants to step out from the shadows and improve their lives exponentially. They would receive workplace protections and legally set wages that they may be too afraid to demand under the current circumstances.

And they could visit their home countries without sacrificing the lives they have built in the United States. Many living in the country illegally go the rest of their lives without seeing family because they would be barred from reentering the U.S. if they left.

Reportedly, in Illinois there are more than 300,000 workers without permanent legal status. Most of them are Mexican and in “mixed-status” families.

Another illegal immigrant, Consuelo Martinez, told the Tribune that she is “being forgotten.”

“Biden, listen to us, we want to work without fear, like our Venezuelan brothers and sisters,” she said.

https://townhall.com//tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/12/04/chicago-migrants-n2631962

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4 December, 2023

NYC: Mayor Adams’ hotel-for-migrants money pit

Want to solve the budget crisis, Mayor Adams? Stop out-of-control migrant spending

Even as he slashes public services, Mayor Adams is ramping up spending on migrants: This year alone, city taxpayers will spend $4.3 billion to shelter and provide other services to recent arrivals, a 48% increase from the spring estimate.

But what are we getting for all this spending?

The city has finally, begrudgingly handed over its contract for the Roosevelt Hotel, after months of delay — and the document offers more questions than answers.

The Roosevelt Hotel, smack in Midtown, is Adams’ flagship migrant facility.

Open as a welcome center and shelter since May, it’s supposed to demonstrate how heroically the mayor is handling everything, even if President Biden won’t pick up the tab.

Instead, it’s become a physical blight, with graffiti scrawled all over the back, dozens of illegal mopeds strewn every which way, metal grates everywhere, trash overflowing two giant containers placed smack in the street, blacked-out windows.  

There’s no evidence Adams ever sends a top deputy over to see what’s going on; the city’s security contractors run the place.

It’s really simple to assess how this mayor is doing. Take a walk over there, and ask yourself: Would Mayor Mike Bloomberg have allowed the Roosevelt, under city control, to fall into this mess? Would Rudy Giuliani? Would even Bill de Blasio?

It’s also a financial blight.  

The city didn’t have its homeless-services department sign the contract, even though it is, basically, a homeless shelter now.

Instead, the city did the no-bid deal through its Health and Hospitals Corp., which, though funded and controlled by the city, isn’t a city agency but a separate company.  

This sleight of hand means the city can avoid sending the contract to the comptroller’s office for review, a basic checks-and-balances procedure.

So what is the city paying for the Roosevelt’s 1,025 rooms?

The document HHC finally provided, after months of delay, blacks out the “per room per day” amount, citing the Roosevelt’s “trade secrets.”  

Such information, HHC says, “if disclosed, would cause substantial injury to the competitive position of the subject enterprise.”

For the same reason, HHC won’t even disclose how many rooms the city has contracted.

This is absurd: To attract customers in normal circumstances, hotels routinely list their room rates publicly, both on their own websites and on travel-booking sites; customers freely compare the prices to get the best rate.

Furthermore, the Roosevelt has no other hotel property in the city.

There is no possibility a potential large customer, such as a convention, can use the city’s data to argue for a similar price for a competing facility.

The Roosevelt has no trade secrets to protect in its room rates.  

The only reason to black out the amount is the city doesn’t want to be embarrassed by any difference between what it’s paying the Roosevelt and what the hotel charged in 2019 — often well below $200 a night, according to colleagues who stayed there for work trips.

The city’s secrecy is particularly bizarre when the Pakistani press has reported the room rates: $200 the first year, $205 the second and $210 the third. (The Pakistani government owns the Roosevelt.)

Presumably, Pakistani reporters got this information from their own government, not from New York City — meaning Pakistan, which doesn’t have a free press, has been more forthcoming with basic information than the Adams administration.  

https://nypost.com/2023/12/03/opinion/mayor-adams-hotel-for-migrants-money-pit/

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3 December, 2023

Marriage Fraud: In Search of a Green Card

This week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy delves into the issue of marriage fraud, an arrangement where individuals enter into marriages solely for the purpose of securing a green card. David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, joins host and executive director of the Center, Mark Krikorian, to discuss the prevalence and need to curb fraudulent marriage-based green cards.

Marriage-based green cards, whether fraudulent or legitimate, make up a large portion of the legal immigration system in the U.S. One in six new legal immigrants in 2022 gained their status by marrying either a U.S. citizen or a green card holder. This visa category does not have a numerical cap, making it an attractive way to become a legal permanent resident with work authority and a path to citizenship.

North explores different facets of marriage fraud, highlighting how the U.S. immigration system inadvertently provides opportunities for deception. The legal landscape favors the alien and presents challenges in policing individual cases, although USCIS has had recent successes in dismantling criminal rings that facilitate illegal green card marriages.

The discussion covers the often-overlooked perspective of victims of marriage fraud, where the citizen partner, often misled into believing in a genuine relationship, faces unexpected consequences post-divorce, including extended alimony payments. North also highlights how a provision in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which allows aliens to self-petition to obtain their green cards if they are married to an abusive spouse, encourages aliens to falsely accuse the American citizen spouse of abuse. North and Krikorian offer insights into preventive measures, drawing attention to Canada’s educational approach, which involves a mandatory marriage fraud video session. They emphasize the need for a proactive stance by authorities to curb marriage fraud, urging a shift from the role of a “stupid Cupid” to a more vigilant approach.

https://cis.org/Parsing-Immigration-Policy/Marriage-Fraud-Search-Green-Card

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1 December, 2023

A Gathering Migration Storm South of the Border

 The appetite in Latin America and the Caribbean for the entry of migrants into the United States is insatiable. National leaders south of the border are now trumpeting the “right to migrate,” insisting that “destination countries”—that is, the U.S.—adopt even more extreme open-border policies to accommodate the region’s ceaseless pressure for economic migration. Since Latin America and the Caribbean have more than 80 million people in extreme poverty, even Biden officials must feel daunted.

The Biden administration has already allowed the admission of some 2–3 million border jumpers, mostly from these two vast zones. In addition, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has invented “legal” programs to permit the yearly arrival of at least another 360,000 from four countries in the region. Every year, “normal” chain migration and the diversity visa program bring in another 175,000 immigrants from the same region. On top of that, hundreds of thousands overstay their temporary visas each year, working on the black market with no fear of deportation.

Yet these numbers and extravagant open-border policies are evidently not enough. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) recently summoned national leaders from across Latin America and the Caribbean to a diplomatic gathering designed to coerce even more admissions out of the U.S.

Meeting in a “migration summit” in Palenque, Mexico, AMLO orchestrated the political chiefs from Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela in delivering a sweeping call for more migration. They issued the “Palenque Declaration,” which proclaims that migrating across national borders is a basic human right. They called on “destination countries” to accommodate “irregular” migrants, offering them visas and work opportunities.

AMLO and his guests, several of whom are Marxists, are promoting an extreme and aggressive migration diplomacy. Their tactic is to expand radically old international law concepts, originally designed to protect refugees and asylum-seekers, into a universal human-rights agenda that allows all economic migrants to pack up and go wherever they choose. The Palenque summit’s pronouncements perfectly illustrate why a future conservative U.S. president must find allies in Europe and elsewhere to overturn the current radical multilateral order on migration.

Bedecked in guayabera shirts as they strolled among Mayan ruins in Palenque, the summiteers predictably found little time to examine their own profound complicity in the hemisphere’s migration chaos. The public record shows little deliberation about the shortcomings in their own governments that push migrants towards el Norte. Instead, they blamed uncontrollable “structural changes” and “climate change,” with only perfunctory reference to the endemic corruption and rule of law failures that contribute massively to their citizens’ persistent poverty and desperation to leave.

But the Palenque summiteers did have time to celebrate the caudillos from the broken-down Marxist states of Cuba and Venezuela, countries that are already sending many hundreds of thousands of migrants to the U.S. with millions more waiting to follow them. With an utter lack of irony, AMLO gave dictator Miguel Diaz Canel the usual warm abrazo, faulting el bloqueo yanqui, not the island’s corrupt and dysfunctional Marxist system, as the main cause for the ceaseless mass exodus of Cubans.

The masses fleeing Cuba never stop. Just in the last two years, some 300,000 have abandoned the island to enter the United States. Compare that number with Fidel Castro’s infamous Mariel boat lift in 1980, which brought “only” around 125,000 Cubans to the U.S., of whom 20,000 had criminal records and several thousand had been in psychiatric institutions. For the Havana-born DHS Secretary Mayorkas, facilitating the arrival of Cubans is one of his highest priorities. But the Palenque summiteers want even more.

Those concerned about Cuba’s future might wonder whether the hollowing out of human capital on the island will ever end. The Biden administration is clueless and appeases the Cuban dictatorship at every turn. Even our anti-communist Cuban-American friends must be asking themselves: Who is going to stay to resist Diaz Canal and perhaps one day rescue this forlorn country?

With its 28 million inhabitants, much more than twice as populous as Cuba, Venezuela is just getting started with its own diaspora strategy. Already some 500,000 Venezuelans have entered the U.S. in the past three years by crossing our southern border or overstaying visas. Millions more continue to leave, with vast numbers still seeking to enter the United States. By way of comparison, pre-Biden, the U.S. accepted yearly a total of around 2,000–3,000 legal Venezuelan immigrants.  

At the Palenque summit, the strongman Nicolas Maduro gave a rambling statement, claiming that if Washington just removed economic pressure, “within a year” most of his countrymen would return home. In reality, of course, Maduro does not want any of these Venezuelans back; he wants them all to stay in el Norte, earn American dollars, and send them back as remittances. This is the economic model communists in Cuba have perfected; remittances account for almost 25 percent of the island’s GDP.

The flow of remittances to Venezuela is already the second largest source of foreign earnings after the country’s oil revenues. Given the number of Venezuelans that Maduro has already driven away, and the number that Biden has admitted, and with both categories slated to grow massively, the regime is on its way to a golden age of remittances, as the country continues to implode.

Central America also continues to bleed migrants who mainly see their economic future in el Norte. Most understand if they can just get there, the gringos will let them stay. Between October 2019 and March 2023, nationals from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua accounted for almost two million encounters at the southern border. Census data indicate that over 3.8 million Central Americans currently reside in the United States, and that number likely undercounts the real total.

Ecuador continues to increase its migrant numbers entering the United States. In the past year, U.S. border authorities encountered some 100,000 trying to cross our southern frontier. There are now over 480,000 Ecuadorians in el Norte, with at least half of those illegally present.

But all of these numbers serve only to whet appetites. Among the Palenque summiteers, Colombia’s Marxist president, Gustavo Petro, was perhaps the most foreboding. Petro said that el Norte, by which he meant both the United States and Europe, was just getting a foretaste of the massive immigration waves to come. With dramatic effect, Petro said the summit in Palenque rejected “building walls on the borders and concentration camps where—without any [migrant] ever having committed a crime—women, children and men, are imprisoned.” For Petro, to keep illegal migrants out is to put them in “concentration camps.”

This right-to-migrate propaganda is clearly out of control in the Western hemisphere. The Palenque summiteers are engaging in rhetorical blackmail, designed in part to keep the pressure on their American fellow travelers who run Biden’s appeasement-based immigration policy.  But they are also messaging this dangerous nonsense to millions of their own low-information citizens who want to go north.

To these would-be migrants, the Palenque summiteers portray the United States as something other than a regular nation with the right to protect its borders. By their lights, el Norte is not really a country at all, but a mere geographic zone, a vast marketplace where the world’s ethnic groups are entitled to seek economic betterment. When they get in, some will work hard and send back remittances; others will find the gringo authorities, amazingly, give them money for just being there.

As the American Republic stumbles towards the 2024 presidential elections, it is over-the-top diplomatic roadshows like the circus at Palenque that remind us how urgently the United States needs enlightened political leadership that will proclaim that migration into our country is not a human right. America needs to broadcast that we will protect our borders, deport illegal foreigners, and make our own immigration laws. We have the right to be a normal sovereign nation and not the world’s doormat “destination country.”

Of course, the Biden administration is uniquely accountable for this unprecedented, out-of-control immigration train wreck through its own reckless messaging that borders mean nothing, that the U.S. offers endless “humane pathways,” and that we rarely deport anybody.

Meanwhile, diplomatic summits are fashionable. Radical Colombian President Petro has called for an immigration summit in Bogota “early next year” to continue beating the drums. Even more troubling is that the hapless White House yesterday hosted its own summit to “address the hemisphere’s growing immigration struggles.”  

It is time to batten down the hatches and close the gates. Things are likely to get worse.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-gathering-migration-storm-south-of-the-border/

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