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30 April, 2023

Court Backlogs Allow Migrants to Live and Work for 10 Years in U.S.

U.S. immigration offices have become so overwhelmed with processing migrants for court that some some asylum-seekers who crossed the border at Mexico may be waiting a decade before they even get a date to see a judge.

The backlog stems from a change made two months after President Joe Biden took office, when Border Patrol agents began now-defunct practice of quickly releasing immigrants on parole. They were given instructions to report to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at their final destination to be processed for court — work previously done by the Border Patrol.

The change prevented the kind of massive overcrowding of holding cells in 2019, when some migrants stood on toilets for room to breathe. But the cost became evident as ICE officers tasked with issuing court papers couldn’t keep pace.

Offices in some cities are now telling migrants to come back years from now, and the extra work has strained ICE’s capacity for its traditional work of enforcing immigration laws in the U.S. interior.

“We’re being stretched to the limit,” said Jamison Matuszewski, director of enforcement and removal operations in San Diego.

As for migrants, waits to get a court date vary. In New York, ICE told asylum-seekers this month to return in March 2033, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, said at a recent hearing. In nine other cities — San Antonio; Miramar, Florida; Los Angeles; Jacksonville, Florida; Milwaukee; Chicago; Washington; Denver; and Mount Laurel, New Jersey — the wait is until March 2027.

Until then, the migrants in question won’t even get an initial court appearance on the books, though they can live and work in the U.S. After that, their case will work its way through the U.S. immigrant courts — a process that takes about four years amid a backlog that reached 2.1 million cases in January, up from about 600,000 in 2017.

“The asylum system is in dire need of reform from top to bottom,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters last week when asked about the waits for a court notice.

Tae Johnson, ICE’s acting director, told lawmakers the agency wants to use online interviews to help cut the 10-year waits and that he wants congressional authority to issue court orders electronically. He also said more funding would go a long way toward “quickly eliminating” the backlog.

Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people show up at ICE offices seeking answers. A recent Government Accountability Office report mentioned one office — city unnamed — that saw 300 to 500 recent immigrants appear some days, mostly without appointments.

“The lines outside the building are just massive,” said Camille Mackler, executive director of Immigrant ARC, a coalition of legal service providers in New York. “People are lining up the night before. It’s been chaos.”

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-courts-wait-54bb5f7c18c4c37c6ca7f28231ff0edf

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28 April, 2023

Border Crisis Milestone: 2 Million Illegals Released into U.S.

A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals that the number of illegal migrants released into the United States by the Biden administration’s catch-and-release policies has now passed the 2 million mark.

The milestone of 2 million illegal-immigrant releases is calculated from publicly available data and is a conservative figure. A complete accounting of the number of releases would include certain data which the administration has hidden from the public, such as the number of migrants released by CBP’s Office of Field Operations after June 30, 2022, or aliens transferred by CBP at the Southwest border to ICE and released after that date.

An additional 1.4 million aliens have illegally entered the country after having been detected, but not apprehended, by the Border Patrol, so-called “got-aways”.

These policies have not only allowed these illegal migrants to enter the United States, but have also encouraged an untold number of additional migrants to make the dangerous journey to the Southwest border.

Andrew Arthur, the Center’s resident fellow in law and policy and author of the posting, notes that “the United States is now in unchartered waters, allowing entry to more illegal aliens than legal immigrants; in all of FY 2021 and FY2022, DHS gave out only about 1.76 million new green cards to lawful immigrants.”

Arthur continued, “As Barbara Jordan, civil rights icon and former chairwoman of President Clinton’s bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, said in 1994, ‘If we cannot control illegal immigration, we cannot sustain our national interest in legal immigration. Those who come here illegally, and those who hire them, will destroy the credibility of our immigration policies and their implementation. In the course of that, I fear, they will destroy our commitment to immigration itself.’ That’s exactly what’s happening in the United States today.”

President Biden’s refusal to disclose total figures on migrant releases at the Southwest border makes it difficult to get a full accounting of the number of illegal migrants who have been released into the United States. Most of the publicly available information on Biden administration’s migrant releases comes from a court order in Texas v. Biden, a case filed by the states of Texas and Missouri in April 2021 to force DHS to re-implement the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP better known as Remain in Mexico).

The judge in that case required DHS to file monthly reports with the court disclosing the total number of migrants released by DHS at the Southwest border. After that order was lifted, the Biden administration refused to voluntarily disclose information on the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants released by OFO and ICE, although Border Patrol does publish monthly statistics on its Southwest border releases.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Bidens-Released-Least-2020522-Southwest-Border-Migrants

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27 April, 2023

UK: Thousands of Afghan refugees to be evicted from Home Office hotels with no offer of housing

Thousands of Afghan refugees brought to the UK during the Kabul evacuation will be evicted from their Home Office hotels with no offer of housing, the government has revealed.

A Home Office letter, seen by The Independent, has been sent to Afghans living in government hotels telling them that they need to start searching for private rented accommodation as existing support will end from 2 May.

Around 8,000 Afghans are living in hotels in the UK after fleeing the Taliban in August 2021. The government announced plans to evict them in March, saying the refugees would be given a few months’ notice. But initial reports said all refugees would be offered a property to live in.

Now, the Home Office has said that only “some Afghan families will receive one option of housing from the government”. A government factsheet on the changes says: “Most families will not receive an offer of accommodation from the Home Office”.

The letter, sent to Afghans in hotels, continues: “From 2 May 2023, the existing matching process will cease to exist ... It is likely that most people will not receive an allocation through the new process, and we encourage you to find your own accommodation wherever possible”.

The new plan applies to Afghans who have arrived in the UK under two resettlement schemes: the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), and the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap).

In the letter, the Home Office said it would offer support for refugees to find their own private rentals.

It reads: “We will provide as much support as we can to help you make your own accommodation arrangements. This includes support through the existing Find Your Own Accommodation (FYOA) scheme in the private rental sector.”

Unlike other asylum seekers, Afghans on these two resettlement schemes have the right to work.

However, Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council, said it was “entirely unreasonable to expect Afghan refugees to suddenly move out of hotels without offering suitable alternatives when the reality is that finding affordable housing on the market is a real challenge”.

He continued: “We are deeply concerned about the approach taken by the Home Office, which is likely to lead to Afghans being left homeless and destitute on our streets.

“This is not how those who fled the Taliban and were promised a warm welcome in the UK should be treated.”

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said: “Although it is right that Afghan families have access to permanent homes, the government must guarantee today that these refugees who have fled danger will not be made homeless.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/afghan-refugees-hotels-eviction-home-office-b2327022.html

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26 April, 2023

Airport in Panama Could Be Used for Repatriation Flights

The Center’s Todd Bensman recently noted that the only sure way to reduce the flow of illegal aliens through eastern Panama’s treacherous Darien Gap is to fly them home.

That would require Panama to stop its participation in what is termed “controlled flow”. The idea dates back to 2015, whereby the governments of Panama and Costa Rica transport migrants who survive the perilous journey through the Darien Gap through their countries to the next closest to the United States. Panama arranges for the aliens to be bused to the Costa Rican border, then Costa Rica makes sure they get to the Nicaraguan border. This assistance merely encourages more illegal migration.

The answer to how to replace “controlled flow” of illegal immigrants with air repatriation lies in the small Panamanian town of Rio Hato: Scarlett Martinez International Airport.

In 1938, 64 miles beyond what was then the western edge of the Panama Canal Zone, the U.S. Army Air Force opened an air base in Rio Hato to support the defense of the canal. The base operated through 1948, when the United States returned it to the Republic of Panama, though it continued to serve as an auxiliary landing field until 1990 for Howard Air Force Base.

Prior to the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, Rio Hato was nominally a Panamanian Air Force Base under the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF). With the disbandment of the PDF in 1990 in favor of rigidly overseen national police, the base became home to the national police and other law enforcement agencies; there was little need to maintain the “military” airport at Rio Hato.

In 2011, in the aftermath of the great recession, then-President Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal’s modernization plans for Panama included expanding Tocumen International Airport – Panama’s primary one – to focus on business flights and those connecting elsewhere in the Americas, while renovating the airport at Rio Hato (renamed Scarlett Martinez International Airport) to accept commercial passenger air traffic, especially foreign tourists headed to the nearby Pacific beaches.

The problem is that while Martinelli built Scarlett Martinez, the tourists aren’t coming, at least not in any significant numbers. Currently, the airport is only serviced by four airlines; two Panamanian domestic carriers and two Canadian carriers, which only do so seasonally. As of the writing of this post, there have only been 37 arrivals in the past 30 days.

However, the lack of passengers at Rio Hato, its near equidistance between the Costa Rica-Panama border and where the Inter-American Highway terminates at the Darien, and its 8,038-foot runway make the airport a natural departure point for repatriation flights for the nearly 700 migrants per day who exit the jungle on the Panamanian side of the Darien Gap (and a hub for deportation flights from the United States that don’t occur aboard commercial airlines). Such flights are operated by contracted Boeing 737, 767, and 777s to countries around the world.

While Martinelli has declared his candidacy for a second (non-consecutive term) for president, Americans shouldn’t have to wait to see how the 2024 elections – in both countries – play out to pursue the use of Scarlett Martinez to deter migrants from coming from South America and beyond through Panama to our Southwest border.

https://cis.org/Celler/Airport-Panama-Could-Be-Used-Repatriation-Flights

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25 April, 2023

Biden's Open Borders Bringing Diseases to Your Neighborhood

Ready for another pandemic? New York City's health commissioner announced last week that the influx of migrants from the southern border -- more than 50,000 to New York City alone in the past year -- is delivering contagious diseases, including tuberculosis and polio, to our neighborhoods.

The same disease threats are also endangering other migrant destinations, including California, Texas and Florida.

In a letter to physicians and health care administrators citywide, Commissioner Ashwan Vasan explained that "many people who recently arrived in NYC have lived in or traveled through countries with high rates of TB."

TB, short for tuberculosis, is a bacterial infection. It is treatable with antibiotics, but it generally takes six to nine months of medication to recover. Not a walk in the park.

TB spreads through the air, like flu or a cold. Stand next to someone with TB for a long subway ride or sit next to them every day at school and you can catch it.

New York City's TB rate, at 6.1 cases per 100,000, is more than double the national rate. Close to 9 out of 10 (88%) of these TB cases are people born outside the United States. Every neighborhood in the city has had at least one case.

Vasan's letter called on New York to pull out all the stops providing health care, food and legal services to migrants. Not a word about protecting the people who already live here.

Open borders import disease. Immigrants who lawfully apply for a visa must undergo health screenings and show they are vaccinated, and refugees are screened for TB before entering the U.S. Not so for those wading across the Rio Grande.

Nationwide, 6,009 of the 8,300 people with TB in 2022 were foreign-born, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Florida was slammed with a 21% increase in TB since 2020. Texas border counties have a TB rate triple the national average.

At least TB is treatable. Polio, on the other hand, can paralyze you for life.

Time will tell how big a threat the return of polio is. In the 1940s and early 1950s, thousands of Americans were permanently paralyzed by it, but vaccines ended that nightmare.

New York's last confirmed case was in 1990. That is until last summer, when an unvaccinated Rockland County man became paralyzed by polio. His disease likely originated in another country.

Vasan warns that only 50% of the migrants streaming into the Big Apple are vaccinated. But an even bigger issue is the type of vaccine used in many poorer countries, which can actually spread polio.

The U.S. uses only injectable polio vaccines made with dead virus that cannot spread the disease. But many other countries use a less safe oral vaccine that contains live virus and is sometimes shed in the vaccinated person's feces. It can then spread in sewage or on unclean hands, causing vaccine-derived cases of polio. That's a problem in 25 countries.

The polio found in New York sewage matches the strains of polio caused by oral vaccines. And health authorities have matched the Rockland County man's polio to these strains.

The Rockland County man had not traveled outside the U.S., but he attended a gathering where he picked up the disease several days before his symptoms appeared.

He may have shook hands or touched contaminated water and was exposed to the virus.

Most unsettling, Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert, Rockland County health commissioner, cautions that "when we see one case of paralytic polio, that means there are probably hundreds and hundreds of cases that are out there in the community but not diagnosed, because 75% of the cases are asymptomatic."

Looking at the presence of polio in wastewater in most parts of the state, Health Commissioner Mary Bassett warns that "the danger of polio is present in New York today."

Gov. Kathy Hochul temporarily declared a state of emergency. But Democratic politicians won't talk about why this emergency threat to our health is happening. You can thank the Biden administration's open border policies.

Tell Democrats in Washington that one pandemic was enough.

https://townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2023/04/19/bidens-open-borders-bringing-diseases-to-your-neighborhood-n2622113



24 April, 2023

UK to ignore European judges on small boat deportations as Rishi Sunak caves to right-wing Tory rebels

Rishi Sunak has caved in to pressure from right-wing Tory rebels and agreed to toughen his controversial small boats bill by allowing ministers to ignore the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Tory rebels say they have reached a deal with the government to amend the Illegal Migration Bill – aimed at removing people who arrive in the UK on small boats – after threatening to revolt over the legislation.

The government has reportedly agreed to give the home secretary Suella Braverman powers to disregard injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights – so-called rule 39 orders – in some instances.

Sources indicated a second amendment will also be introduced tightening the rules around injunctions, so British judges would have to believe deportation would cause “serious and irreversible harm” in order to block it.

But Lord Thomas, a former top judge and cross-bench peer, has warned that any move to ignore ECHR deportation orders would undermine the rule of law – and could still be thwarted in the Lords.

The Independent understands that Ms Braverman was central in landing a compromise deal during “grow-up discussions” with the Tory right to stop fresh rebel amendments going in before a Friday deadline.

The right-wing rebels are understood to be pushing the government to go further – keen to add something to the bill that would enforce medical checks to try to verify migrants’ stated ages.

MP Danny Kruger, leading the push to ignore European court injunctions, told the i the group were “grateful to the home secretary and prime minister for their work to secure ... most of the changes we asked for”.

The right-winger said the British public were “fed up with London lawyers and Strasbourg judges”, adding that he was “hopeful that the government will be able to deliver the prompt removals to Rwanda and other safe countries”.

The small boats bill has been at the centre of controversy, with critics warning the proposed legislation leaves the UK foul of its international obligations and opposition parties dismissing it as unworkable.

The apparent compromise comes after Mr Sunak failed to guarantee he could achieve his promise to “stop the boats” by the next election and said it “won’t happen overnight”.

However, Mr Sunak has been told that it would be “symbolic of a breach of the rule of law” to ignore human rights injunctions – and warned that the latest changes could lead to the bill being defeated in the Lords.

Lord Thomas – a former Lord Chief Justice – told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think it is a very serious step for the government to be contemplating putting into force.”

Defending the principle of the ECHR, which oversees the European Convention of Human Rights, Lord Thomas said that ignoring the court would “set an extraordinarily bad example”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/small-boats-rishi-sunak-braverman-tories-b2323270.html

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23 April, 2023

Where Did All the Biden Illegal Immigrants Go? Hard-Up Sanctuary Cities Like New York Are Only Part of the Answer

In New York City, if the newcomers aren't put up at the luxury cruise terminal that served the QE2, they could get $700-a-night midtown hotel accommodations with iconic Manhattan views. In Chicago, they found themselves whisked to suburban lodgings. In Denver, officials refer to them discreetly as “guests” and you needn’t bother inquiring about their inns or addresses.  

The people enjoying these free digs aren’t privacy-conscious jet-setters, but the secrecy surrounding them might be comparable: They’re some of the millions of migrants who have illegally crossed into the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed most border controls. 

No one knows exactly how many people have poured across the southwestern U.S. border since President Biden took office, or where they’ve gone since. The official number of encounters by Customs and Border Patrol stands at 5.2 million people, logged over the last two full federal fiscal years and fiscal 2023 through March. But that number is imprecise because it includes repeat encounters with the same people and omits the many who slipped into the country unnoticed by border agents.  

Under President Biden, the U.S. smashed past the 200,000 monthly encounters mark for the first time in July 2021 and it has repeatedly topped that record in the months since. By comparison, in fiscal 2020, which ended a month before Biden’s defeat of President Trump, the U.S. averaged 38,174 monthly encounters at the border, according to CBP figures.  

Earlier: Why Hasn't the GOP Impeached Mayorkas Yet?
Because of an official lack of transparency, all those people and the circumstances by which they have arrived and remained have made it hard to take stock of the historic influx. Through midnight flights and buses from the border to far-flung locales, the administration has made it difficult to identify where the migrants are now living and receiving services. Also unclear are the costs associated with the arrivals.  

But flares have been sent up – especially over immigrant sanctuary cities like New York, Denver and Chicago, which have long promised to house migrants. While those cities are providing housing and other services for a small fraction of the recent migrants, the costs are significant for these budget-strapped metropolises.

Denver plans to spend $20 million in the first six months of this year to provide housing to migrants. Officials say this works out to between $800 and $1,000 per week per person.   

In January the state of Illinois turned down Chicago’s request for more funds, saying it had already spent close to $120 million on its “asylum seeker emergency response” – or roughly $33,000 per migrant.   

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has asked for more than $500 million in federal aid, while pegging the city’s spending at between $2 billion and $3 billion.     

Other data points of the opaque costs of Biden-era illegal immigration include Massachusetts’ estimate that it will need $28 million to launch a program to provide driver’s licenses to undocumented residents. The state is seeking a share of the omnibus spending bill passed by Democrats in December 2022 when they controlled both houses of Congress, which included $800 million for cities grappling with the influx.  

These numbers are incomplete in part because it is hard to separate the added cost of recent migrants from costs for the millions of undocumented immigrants who were in the country before the recent surge.   

A March study by the conservative  Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that, after accounting for taxes paid by undocumented migrants, they cost taxpayers over $150 billion per year – a 30% increase since 2017.  

Yet FAIR acknowledges the problem of fixing costs has become more difficult, given the record-breaking numbers of illegal crossers in the past two and a half years and efforts by some government agencies to mask their spending.  

“We often had to grapple with a paucity of easily accessible official data,” the report notes. “Many state and federal entities do not publish detailed data that they collect, making it difficult to reliably separate illegal aliens from citizens of lawful immigrants. We have also encountered cases where the current administration has revoked or restricted documents published by previous administrations in order to reduce the visibility of data which shines a negative light on their immigration policy agenda.”   

Those totals also involve far more than simple food and board. To arrive at its staggering sum, FAIR includes estimates of the costs in education, health care and law enforcement.   

“The irony is not only are these sanctuary jurisdictions turning to Washington with their hands out, but that they still refuse to join with governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis in demanding that the federal government take decisive steps to stanch the influx of new migrants,” FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman told RealClearInvestigations, referring to the Republican chief executives of Texas and Florida, respectively. “The obvious hypocrisy of declaring yourself a sanctuary jurisdiction while complaining about the costs and burdens associated with it are undeniable.”   

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/04/20/where_did_all_the_biden_illegal_immigrants_go_hard-up_sanctuary_cities_like_new_york_are_only_part_of_the_answer_894505.html

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21 April, 2023

Immigration: Why Australia can never build enough homes

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Wednesday released capital city population data for the 2020-21 financial year, which revealed that the number of people living in capital cities increased by 2.5 million (17%) between 2011 and 2021.

Melbourne had the largest increase (806,800), followed by Sydney (650,815) and Brisbane (421,491):

10-year population change

Over the past 20 years, Australia’s combined capital cities grew by 4.7 million people, led by Melbourne (1.48 million), Sydney (1.16 million), Brisbane (875,000) and Perth (737,000):

20-year population change

If anybody wants to know why Australia never builds enough homes, the above data provides the answer.

Australia’s immigration intake was increased substantially in the early-2000s, which drove a massive increase in population growth into our major cities:

Net overseas migration

This extreme immigration policy is projected to continue for decades to come, with the Intergenerational Report (IGR) projecting 235,000 annual net overseas migration into eternity, which is 20,000 more than the extreme immigration experienced in the 15 years leading up to the pandemic.

In turn, the IGR projected that Australia’s population would swell by 13.1 million people (roughly 50%) by 2061, which is the equivalent to adding a combined Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Australia’s current population.

Already, net overseas migration has rebounded faster than the IGR projected, with nearly 400,000 net migrants landing in 2022, which drove record population growth:

Australian population change

The long-term population projections from the ABS are instructive. While they were released in 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic hit, they show the type of population deluge that will hit our major cities.

First, the ABS’ Household and Family Projections showed that the number of households across our capital cities would grow by 50% between 2016 and 2041, led by Melbourne:

Increase in households

In number terms, Melbourne was projected to add 1.09 million households over that period, whereas Sydney would add 882,000 and Brisbane 445,000:

Household projections

The ABS’ Population Projections released in 2018 projected that Melbourne and Sydney would each roughly double in size to around 10 million people, whereas Brisbane would grow to Melbourne’s size currently:

Capital city population projects

In turn, by 2066 both Sydney and Melbourne would have larger populations than Australia’s total population in 1950, with both approaching Australia’s total population in 1960.

While these projections will have changed following COVID, they do illustrate the extent of the population-housing problem.

Policy makers and developers can bang on all they like about increasing supply, but Australia will never build enough homes as long as it continues to grow its population like a science experiment via mass immigration.

That is the inconvenient truth.

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/04/why-australia-can-never-build-enough-homes/

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20 April, 2023

Thousands of migrants still flooding over border from banned countries despite US warning

In January the administration announced citizens of Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua would have to “request to come to the United States in a safe and orderly way” by applying from another country and obtaining entry documents before flying into the US.

President Biden said at the time: “If your application is denied or you attempt to cross into the United States unlawfully, you will not be allowed to enter.”

However, migrants from those countries are still being admitted over the border to claim asylum. In El Paso alone — one of the 71 checkpoints operated by Customs and Border Protection on the southern border — an average of 300 migrants were released into the community daily over the last week, the city’s dashboard shows.

Venezuelan migrants interviewed by The Post this week admitted they had previously been turned away from the border before being let in at a later attempt. One person in a shelter put migrants’ chances at “50-50” of making it through.

Under pandemic-era measure Title 42, illegal border crossers from many Central and South American countries can be quickly expelled back into Mexico, as a way for the Biden administration to try and get a handle on surging border crossings.

Thousands of migrants are processed and then expelled in this way, but the pandemic-era measure ends on May 11 and border sources fear the situation will get much worse and are expecting a tidal wave of migrants.

The Opportunity Center shelter in downtown El Paso is among those already overburdened, with director John Martin saying they are dealing with “staggering numbers” of migrants.

The Opportunity Center shelter in downtown El Paso is among those currently overburdened by the ongoing influx, with director John Martin saying they are dealing with “staggering numbers” of migrants.

Currently, the shelter is running at 130% capacity with 110 people, despite there only being room for 85.

“We’re trying to prepare ourselves for the worst come May 11, when Title 42 is lifted. We anticipate the numbers are going to be staggering,” Martin told The Post, confirming our earlier reports there are between 20,000 to 40,000 people already waiting to cross over from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Backing up those fears, the governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua said after visiting Juarez this week there were 35,000 migrants camped and waiting to cross, according to Border Report.

Martin said El Paso can cater to 500 migrants per night, shared between four different shelters. The city is also said Tuesday is it currently processing over 5,000 people to be ejected back over the border, who are temporarily held at a processing center and a tent facility erected by the federal government.

“But if you even have 500 coming on a daily basis, we’ll be inundated. We’re working with the city of El Paso to see if they’re going to stand up a shelter. I think that is desperately needed,” Martin said.

The Post witnessed hundreds of migrants lining up at a border crossing gate in El Paso Wednesday, at an area where those seeking asylum have taken to regularly surrendering to US Border Patrol agents.

Those who are admitted to the US are granted the opportunity to stay in the country until their cases have been adjudicated — which can sometimes take years.

Those who hand themselves in at the border are willing to risk being immediately expelled under Title 42, which comes with no penalty, rather than wait for an appointment through the CBP One app — the way Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans are supposed to apply to enter the country.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/migrants-still-flooding-over-border-despite-biden-ban/

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19 April, 2023

Australia swamped with asylum claims as would-be refugees fly in and fight to stay there

The monthly number of people attempting to stay in Australia by claiming to be refugees despite having arrived by plane on student, work, or holiday visas has nearly doubled since last year.

The growing number of applications is flooding courts and tribunals with applications that are found to be bogus more than 85 per cent of the time, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

Yet despite Department of Home Affairs figures showing that there are now nearly 102,000 people awaiting either deportation or a ruling on their refugee status, the government only managed to kick out 14 failed asylum seekers in March, with eight of those leaving the country voluntarily.

According to the latest Home Affairs report on asylum claims, 1,786 people who had arrived by plane on other visas as students, tourists, or workers later applied for onsore protection visas in March, 2023.

This was nearly double the 938 such claims made in the same period the previous year.

The greatest number of claimants in March came from India (190), followed by mainland China (158), Vietnam (117), and Malaysia and Pakistan (88 each).

By far the largest demographic category was males aged 25-34, with 404 claims made by this group.

Some 53 Ukrainians also claimed asylum, likely seeking protection from Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of their homeland.

Plane speaking

1786: Asylum seeker claims made by people who arrived by plane in March 2023

938: Claims in March 2022

14,645: Claims since Labor took office

85+%: Rejection rate, June-December 2022

14: Total deportations of rejected claimants, March 2023

Top countries for claims: India, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Pakistan

Home Affairs figures also show that 14,645 jet arrivals have claimed asylum since Labor took office last May.

In June, 2022, 1,040 people claimed to be refugees, but in just six months that figure had jumped to 1,633 per month.

While the number of claimants has increased, data released by Home Affairs in response to Senate committee hearings also showed that the percentage of applicants receiving permanent protection visas granted to refugee claimants has been climbing.

In 2022, 14.2 per cent of those claiming refugee status had their applications upheld, up from 11.2 per cent the previous year.

However, that 14.2 per cent represented just 995 claims, or a tiny fraction of the cases awaiting determination, leaving thousands more cases clogging up the legal system.

Individuals familiar with the process say that claims of persecution are often used by people trying to stay in the country and their cases can take years as they work their way through the process.

The Department of Home Affairs noted in its 2022 annual report that a “proportion” of applicants claim refugee status out of “genuine fear”, many apply for another purpose including “to prolong their stay to access the Australian labour market.”

In March, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ruled on the case of an individual living in Parramatta known only as AYT22 who arrived in Australia in 2008 from India on a student visa and made a claim for refugee status in 2016 on the basis that he was a practising Christian who feared persecution if he returned home.

The Tribunal rejected the man’s claims of persecution, as well as his claims that he would “face economic difficulties” if forced to return to India, but it is understood he is now appealing to stay in the federal court.

Home Affairs documents show that Indians have among the lowest “grant rates” of protection visas, with just 1.74 per cent of claimants from that country having their applications approved last month.

By contrast, all six Afghanis who had their claims decided in March received protection visas.

“Since Labor was elected 14,645 asylum seekers have arrived by plane and Labor have no plan to deal with this problem,” said shadow immigration minister Dan Tehan, who added that Labor had campaigned hard on the issue of asylum seekers arriving by plane but had done little about the problem.

“There are now more than 101,000 asylum seekers who arrived by plane in Australia. In opposition, Labor said the government needed to address asylum seekers arriving by plane so where is their plan?”

“Labor were happy to use asylum seekers to score points against the Coalition but their lack of action in government demonstrates they never really cared,” he said.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/australia-swamped-with-asylum-claims-as-wouldbe-refugees-fly-in-and-fight-to-stay-here/news-story/f1b6e880850ee0861f9a795d1d28ecb0

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18 April, 2023

Biden's CBP One App Approves 99% of Migrants Seeking Title 42 Exceptions: 'Welcome Mat for Illegals'

The high amount of illegal migrants entering the U.S. through the recently-expanded CBP One app has President Joe Biden's southern border taking another detrimental hit.

Since the app's expansion in January, it has approved over 99 percent of migrants seeking exceptions to the COVID-era Title 42 public health order that allows border officials to expel migrants from the United States quickly.

The Biden app allows illegal migrants to upload their information and a photo and schedule an appointment at a port of entry to seek an exception to the order due to end next month.

According to the Biden Administration, the app has created a safe and humane process at the southern border, discouraging illegal immigration between the ports.

"The CBP One app is an innovative solution we are using to facilitate the safe and orderly arrival of non-citizens who believe they meet certain vulnerability criteria and are requesting a humanitarian exception to the CDC's Title 42 Order," Mayorkas said in January. "When Title 42 eventually lifts, this new feature will join one of the many tools and processes this Administration provides for individuals to seek protection in a safe, orderly, and humane manner and to strengthen the security of our borders."

However, the app has received backlash from Republicans and Democrats and has faced several tech issues since being rolled out.

Former Trump DHS official Robert Law believes the app was designed to make it look like the Biden Administration is doing something to ease border numbers. Still, the app has just caused more issues and confusion for migrants.

"It's almost like this app was designed to fail, to give the appearance that they're trying to discourage illegal aliens from exploiting the asylum system," Law told Fox News Digital. "But it's more like a wink and a nod, and they'll just continue to allow record numbers to exploit and abuse the system and be allowed into American communities."

Describing the app as a "welcome mat" for illegal migrants to enter the U.S., Law said the app would not stop anyone from coming into the country despite what Biden wants you to believe.

Meanwhile, 35 Democrats called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to "take immediate steps to resolve the serious equity and accessibility issues migrants face" when using the app.

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) urged the DHS to "shelve the CBP One app immediately."

Fewer than one percent of migrants using the app have been rejected. Once approved, they are released into the U.S. with a notice to appear and placed into the Title 8 removal process, which has a longer processing time than Title 42. In return, illegal migrants can live in the U.S. freely until further notice.

https://townhall.com//tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/04/15/bidens-cbp-one-app-approved-99-of-migrants-seeking-title-42-exceptions-news-n2622006

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17 April, 2023

Yet Another Study Shows How Migrants Transplant Their Culture

Among Hispanics, it is a culture that supports Fascism of various sorts in their countries of origin

In his recent book The Culture Transplant, economist Garett Jones argues that “migrants make the economies they move to a lot like the ones they left.” This economic change is part of a broader cultural shift that occurs when immigrants transmit their Old Country values to their descendants in the new land. For example, the countries of Northern Europe have generally higher levels of social trust and community attachment than Southern Europe, and that pattern is replicated in the U.S. among Americans with ancestries from those countries.

Now a new study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics has added to the transplant literature. It examines how Southern-born whites who moved to other parts of the U.S. influenced the culture in their new homes. As the authors explain, the post-1900 “Great Migration” of Southern blacks to Northern industrial cities is well known, but the outmigration of Southern whites was numerically larger. Unlike their black counterparts, these white migrants shunned the Northeastern cities and instead tended to move west:

Remarkably, a non-Southern county’s percentage of migrant white Southerners in 1940 is a strong predictor of the county’s culture in modern times. For example, as a county’s 1940 percentage of white Southern migrants increases, that county is more likely to support Donald Trump, oppose abortion, build evangelical churches, listen to country music, and even favor barbecue chicken over pizza. The study’s authors argue that this spread of white Southern culture outside of the South helped form a national “New Right” coalition by melding the South’s traditional views on race and religion with the small-government and anti-Communist interests of Northern Republicans.

Clearly, Southern migrants were not assimilated into the pre-existing culture of their new homes outside the South. Instead, they transplanted their own culture, sharing it with non-Southern neighbors and transmitting it to the next generation.

Although cultural persistence is well known, this new paper will put some left-leaning immigration advocates in an awkward position. On one hand, they have a generally unfavorable view of conservative Southerners and may be quick to blame them for spreading what they see as an undesirable culture. On the other hand, some of the same advocates argue that fear of immigrants changing the culture of the U.S. is completely unfounded. They can’t have it both ways.

https://cis.org/Richwine/Yet-Another-Study-Shows-How-Migrants-Transplant-Their-Culture

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16 April, 2023

Canada's immigration system is broken, and Luz's ordeal proves it

Immigration departments worldwide are bureaucratic nightmares

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is only partly right when he says “everything feels broken.” When it comes to Canada’s immigration system, everything IS broken .

Last week I got a call from a dear friend who was in tears. Her name is Luz. She, along with her hard-working, resourceful husband, is a refugee from Colombia. We met them at church four years ago and they’ve become a cherished part of our family. They’re not just good people, they are among the best people we have ever known.

The story of why they had to flee Colombia would make a great Hollywood blockbuster, but to write their story could endanger their lives, so for now it must remain under wraps.

Through her tears, Luz explained her predicament. Ten months ago she applied for a refugee travel permit to allow her to leave Canada for Mexico where an old university friend wants to hire Luz, who is an acclaimed architect and talented interior designer.

Her husband’s travel documents arrived 23 days after he applied, but Luz kept waiting. She repeatedly phoned the Immigration Canada telephone number, which is little more than an exercise in futility and frustration. Eventually, she made an emergency travel document application on Feb. 27 because she had a non-refundable flight with WestJet scheduled for Cancun, Mexico, on April 6 to begin this job. Still she has heard nothing.

Her entire family and her husband’s all flew to Cancun to see the couple for the first time in four years, but Luz had to stay in Calgary, her heart broken.

When she finally manages to get someone on the line after dozens of attempts, she is told her application is “being processed.”

“I really need this work,” said Luz, 36, who is studying to improve her English at school and had her background checked before being declared a permanent resident. “I feel like my life is on hold. I almost feel as though this is personal, as though someone has flagged my file to cause me pain.”

On Monday, Luz and I drove to the Harry Hays federal government building in downtown Calgary, something she has done on several occasions, even though nothing ever comes of it.

A staff member at information told us to go over there. That was wrong. The people over there told us to go upstairs. That was wrong. When we got there they told us to go to immigration but that you need an appointment and won’t get to see anyone.

Finally. The correct information but infuriating nonetheless. When we got there we were greeted by a glass wall with an intercom.

I explained through the intercom what was going on and was told by the voice crackling through the plastic slats that if we want to see someone, we need to make an appointment first via telephone — something Luz has tried many times to no avail. Can’t we please just meet with someone, I asked. We’re here now.

No, you have to call Ottawa to make an appointment to see someone in Calgary. How does this make sense?

We call the number, as directed, off the plaque on the wall. Luz has it on speed dial on her cellphone.

We follow all the prompts, punch in her unique client identifier number, then we dial five and are told via a recorded message: “We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls and are unable to transfer you to an agent. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.” It takes five minutes and 35 seconds to get to that message.

“It’s been like this every day for the last five months,” says Luz. Service and help is an illusion.

Several people at the Harry Hays building recommend that we go to the immigration office at Calgary’s international airport (something Luz had already tried). After the frustration at the intercom and on the phone, we drive there. We meet nice people, namely a burly immigration officer who tells us he can’t provide documents and to call that same number to make an appointment.

Unable to help and clearly wanting to, he suggests Luz go to the Colombian consulate and apply to get a Colombian passport. Luz tries to hide the shock that clearly spreads across her face. “I’m a refugee from Colombia,” she declares. “I cannot go there.”

But it’s telling, isn’t it? A Canadian immigration officer telling a desperate person to go to the office of a developing country to get speedy service because he knows you can’t get it here.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/travel/news/corbella-canada-s-immigration-system-is-broken-and-luz-s-ordeal-proves-it/ar-AA19SmYA

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14 April, 2023

Up to 40,000 migrants amass at border as end of Title 42 looms

Up to 40,000 migrants have amassed on the Mexican side of the border waiting to cross into the US and officials are worried about the chaos they could cause when Title 42 ends next month, law enforcement sources tell The Post.

Migrants in Juarez, Mexico, are getting tired of waiting or being duped by internet scams into thinking they will be given asylum in the US and hundreds a day are again crossing into El Paso and surrendering to border agents.

“We have intel that there’s between 10,000 and 40,000 people waiting to cross over,” a police official who did not want to be named told The Post of the swelling number of migrants amassed directly across the border.

“We know something is coming, and we’re always preparing for what if a couple thousand of those people waiting there just get antsy or they’re like, ‘Today is the day.'”

Over 750 migrants surrendered to Border Patrol agents in one massive group Wednesday afternoon, the US Border Patrol told The Post.

Additional migrant surrenders continued Thursday, with hundreds more people surrendering to border patrol — making the tasks of processing and ejecting them an enormous job for Border Patrol.

Migrant groups as large as 1,000 people have been turning themselves in to officials in Texas’ sixth largest city since late March, fueled by fake information spread on social media by drug cartels, who would prefer them to pay to be smuggled over the border.

“The cartels don’t make any money by migrants sitting around waiting for the CBP One appointment,” another source told The Post, explaining that the CBP One app is the legal way for migrants to claim asylum.

US border officials have also launched a social media campaign to set the record straight.

The Border Patrol has been flying migrants out of West Texas to other immigration facilities across the country.
Border Patrol has been flying migrants out of West Texas to other immigration facilities across the southern border.
USBP

“Large groups continue to turn themselves in at the border,” tweeted El Paso Border Patrol Chief Anthony Scott Good on Wednesday.

“We want to remind migrants that coming into the US between the ports of entry is illegal and those who do are subject to expulsion or removal.”

When hundreds of people cross over onto American soil at a time, the process of processing and then expelling them takes a few days, during which time they have to be housed and fed.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/13/up-to-40000-migrants-amass-at-border-as-end-of-title-42-nears/

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13 April, 2023

Parole with Benefits

Summary

The Biden administration has granted parole to over one million aliens in just over two years, including over 800,000 inadmissible aliens the administration invited into the U.S. or apprehended at the border and released – and it’s just getting started.

These Biden parolees will become “qualified aliens” with respect to eligibility for major federal welfare programs after one year in parole status. While in some cases they will become eligible to receive benefits as soon as they become “qualified”, in most cases, they will become eligible after five years as parolees. This privileged status is equivalent to that of lawful permanent residents for purposes of welfare eligibility.

Because of severe backlogs in our immigration courts and because the Biden administration has released hundreds of thousands of aliens apprehended at the border without even bothering to issue them notices to appear in court, many of Biden’s parolees will still be in parole status after five years (and, for many, far beyond that). Once the five-year “parole payday” arrives, the cost to American taxpayers will reach about $3 billion per year per million parolees.
Congress should seriously consider amending federal law to deny Biden’s parolees privileged access to federal welfare programs, leaving them eligible only for those welfare benefits available to illegal aliens.

Introduction

Milton Friedman famously postulated that “It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” President Biden is aiming to prove Friedman wrong.

In the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), Congress dramatically curtailed the federal means-tested benefits (read: welfare) available to noncitizens and set forth a “national policy with respect to welfare and immigration”, stating in part that “the availability of public benefits [should] not constitute an incentive for immigration to the United States” and “[i]t is a compelling government interest to remove the incentive for illegal immigration provided by the availability of public benefits.”

PRWORA, however, contains a gaping vulnerability that will in a few short years result in a multi-billion-dollar bill to American taxpayers. The vulnerability? PRWORA grants parolees in such status for at least a year eligibility for major federal welfare programs on the same basis as it does lawful permanent residents. This is not really a big issue in those rare instances in which the Department of Homeland Security grants parole in circumstances contemplated by Congress. But it becomes a huge issue in the context of the Biden administration’s abuse of the parole program. Team Biden has already — in little more than two years — paroled in excess of one million aliens, including those whom DHS released on parole after they were apprehended along the border and those that DHS invited into the U.S. as parolees despite their not being admissible under the duly-enacted laws of the United States. After five years of presence in the U.S., Biden’s parolees will become eligible (per PRWORA) for billions of dollars a year in federal welfare benefits. And they are likely to spend many years, if not decades, in the U.S., and give birth to many U.S. citizen children. As Sen. Everett Dirksen is reputed to have said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.”

https://cis.org/Report/Parole-Benefits



12 April, 2023

Immigration’s Impact on Social Security and Medicare

A new analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies examines the impact of immigration policy on the solvency of the Social Security and Medicare programs. Rather than offer dollar estimates for the future, the new report instead explains conceptually the differing effects of different immigration policies.

The recently released 2023 Trustees Report on the projected financial status of the programs has lawmakers considering actions that might extend the life of the program and avoid substantial benefit cuts. Although immigration is often suggested as a boost to the programs’ finances, the reality is more complicated. Toleration of illegal immigration, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and increased legal immigration are distinct policy choices that should not be conflated because that have very different effects on the trust funds.

Although some of these choices have positive impacts, they are still no substitute for hard-headed fiscal reforms. Jason Richwine, the Center’s resident scholar and author of the report, said, “Rather than looking to immigration as an outside fix for the fiscal imbalances faced by Social Security and Medicare, policymakers should acknowledge that any practical solution will primarily involve a combination of tax increases and benefit reductions that encourage Americans to live within their means.”

Key points:

Illegal immigration unambiguously benefits the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, but amnesty (legalization) would reverse those gains and add extra costs.

The impact of legal immigration depends largely on age of arrival and income. Immigrants who arrive young and have high earnings will be net contributors to the trust funds, while later-arriving and lower-earning immigrants will be net drains.

Recent declines in fertility imply that legal immigrants who are net drains in their own lifetimes will not have enough children to make up the difference in the next generation.

A continuous inflow of working-age immigrants could appear to have a positive effect on the trust funds even as the immigrants are lifetime net drains. However, this Ponzi-style funding strategy would be difficult to sustain.

https://cis.org/Report/Impact-Immigration-Social-Security-and-Medicare-Conceptual-Primer

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11 April, 2023

Afghan refugees rescued and brought to US were racist and sexist towards those tasked with helping them, and turned their noses up at accommodation they were offered

Muslim arrogance

Afghan refugees who were rescued and brought back to the US have been accused of being racist and sexist towards those helping them, a bombshell report has found.

Some of them are said to have launched verbal abuse at staff and even turned their noses up at accommodation they were given.

The claims emerged in a State Department report that looked at the resettlement of around 73,000 Afghan evacuees brought in last year and in 2021.

It found agencies were battered by an influx of challenges including the speed of arrivals, the pandemic as well as housing, staffing and cultural orientation.

'[Resettlement agency] officials told OIG that the [Afghan Placement and Assistance Program] involved some of the most significant challenges that they had ever faced,' the report, as seen by Fox News, stated.

The agencies also identified 'inappropriate behavior' from some, which they attributed to a lack of cultural awareness.

'For example, some RA staff reported experiencing racism and sexism from Afghan clients unaccustomed to the norms of U.S. society,' the report explained. Some also refused to work case managers if they were women or those from minority groups.

'A few local offices had issues of verbal abuse from Afghans, mostly those who were upset or frustrated by the process,' one agency reported,

'Many parolees had very high expectations and did not understand the role of local affiliates and would become frustrated with services and housing,' the report detailed.

Some of them also appeared to have 'unrealistic expectations over how the resettlement process might work.

For example, some groups had been told they would receive 'welcome money' when they arrived on U.S. soil.

Others also had unrealistic expectations over housing and would reject offers of homes that they deemed insufficient or of inferior quality.

Some who had good jobs working as professionals in Afghanistan or had advanced degrees from the country 'often believed that they would be set up in positions within their chosen field.'

The agencies have recommended various measures, including 'standardized minimum requirements for cultural orientation that emphasize self-sufficiency, manage expectations, and convey U.S. societal expectations for behavior regarding gender, race, and sexual issues.'

The report noted that the resettlement was 'an unprecedented and demanding effort that presented substantial challenges for the nine nine resettlement agencies that implemented the program.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11955155/Afghan-refugees-rescued-brought-accused-racist-sexist-tasked-helping.html



10 April, 2023

New York Democrats Push for Federally Funded Health Care for Illegal Aliens

A number of high-profile Democratic lawmakers in New York are pressuring Governor Hochul to extend health care coverage to immigrants in the country illegally, and they have a novel selling point: New Yorkers won’t have to pay the tab, as taxpayers elsewhere in the country would be picking up the bill.

Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent a letter to Ms. Hochul this week asking her to develop a plan that would allow the federal government to cover undocumented workers in the state. “We believe that healthcare is a human right, regardless of immigration status,” the two members of Congress wrote.

The campaign to get these immigrants federally subsidized health care, the “Coverage for All” movement, says Ms. Hochul can request federal dollars from the Biden administration for the initiative. Washington state and Colorado received such waivers, which allow them to use Medicaid funds to insure immigrants, and the subsequent federal funds last year.

Before Mr. Nadler and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Mayor Adams also called on Ms. Hochul to develop such a proposal. In a letter to the governor, Mr. Adams said coverage of these immigrants would help drive down costs because they would no longer have to use emergency services and drain hospital resources. Statewide, there are about 400,000 illegal immigrants who do not have health insurance, according to immigrants-rights groups.

In his letter, Mr. Adams blamed the lack of action on the proposal on “structural barriers, rooted in racism and bias, that perpetuate disparate health outcomes in immigrant communities.”

The deadline for Ms. Hochul’s budget proposal was April 1, but she has yet to deliver. She has said that she would not include a proposal for a health care expansion for immigrants, though these politicians are hoping to slide it in at the last moment.

The campaign marks the latest steps in Democrats’ long march to the left in the hopes of appeasing immigration advocates. The party failed to get immigration reform near the top of President Obama’s agenda in 2009 during his first term, and once the Tea Party was swept into office in 2010, there was little hope of revisiting the issue.

The remaining years of the Obama administration saw stalled negotiations with members of Congress, leading him to issue a 2012 executive order called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which established new protections for illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

Following President Trump’s immigration and border policies, many Democrats moved even further toward establishing legal protections and benefits for illegal immigrants. In a 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate, when asked if they would decriminalize crossing the southern border, two-thirds of the candidates raised their hands in support of the idea.

During the first two years of the Biden administration, immigration advocates say little progress has been made. According to a study from the Migration Policy Institute, the courts and events in Latin and Central America have made it harder to control the flow of illegal immigrants.

Between 2021 and 2022, deportations increased to 72,100 from 59,000. That is still far lower than during both the Obama and Trump administrations, which saw average annual deportation levels at 344,000 and 233,000 respectively.

https://www.nysun.com/article/new-york-democrats-push-for-federally-funded-health-care-for-illegal-aliens

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9 April, 2023

The Welcome Corps: A ‘Private’ Sponsorship Program for Refugees

Summary: The Welcome Corps initiative, billed as a private sponsorship program for refugees, hands over the control of most of the resettlement process to refugee advocates in the United States and allows them to select their own refugees, who are future American citizens. Far from being purely privately funded, U.S. taxpayer funds will be used to resettle refugees through this program.

* * *

Two years into the Biden presidency, the State Department announced the launch of a private sponsorship program for refugees within the U.S. resettlement program, the Welcome Corps, which “empowers everyday Americans to play a leading role in welcoming refugees arriving through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and supporting their resettlement and integration as they build new lives in the United States.”

Under this new program, refugees will be selected for resettlement into the United States and then assisted during their first few months here by private individuals. These prerogatives were, until now, those of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and nine religious or community-based organizations called “resettlement agencies”. UNHCR was entrusted with the selection and referral of refugees for resettlement into the United States, while resettlement agencies were funded by the Department of State to assist refugees upon arrival.

This will no longer exclusively be the case with the launching of the Welcome Corps. This doesn’t mean that refugees will stop being selected for resettlement by UNHCR and assisted upon arrival by resettlement agencies. The U.S. resettlement program is just expanding by allowing private individuals (backed by various humanitarian organizations) to take on the primary responsibility of selecting, welcoming, and providing initial support to refugees. It will not replace, but is complementary to, the traditional resettlement process led by UNHCR and resettlement agencies.

This new private sponsorship program designed by the Biden administration is being presented as historic. According to the State Department Office of the Spokesperson, “The Welcome Corps is the boldest innovation in refugee resettlement in four decades.” (Emphasis in original.) Sasha Chanoff, founder of the nonprofit organization RefugePoint, told Reuters that this could very well be “one of the most significant developments for the U.S. refugee program since it began in 1980”.

This initiative is indeed game-changing, it hands over the control of most of the resettlement process to refugee advocates in the United States (whether private individuals or organizations) and allows them to select their own refugees and future American citizens. American taxpayer funds (and not just private ones as widely publicized) will be used to resettle “privately-sponsored” refugees through this program. Could this fast and privileged access to U.S. protection and citizenship be an invitation for preferential treatment and potential fraud?

I will be following-up on this program and its impacts as it unfolds. For now, this report sheds some light on numerous issues at stake here: the Welcome Corps modus operandi, its numerous key actors and power strings, its funding sources, and its ultimate “fairness” and goal.

https://cis.org/Report/Welcome-Corps-Private-Sponsorship-Program-Refugees

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7 April, 2023

Florida Grand Jury Charges Biden Administration ‘Facilitating’ Trafficking Of Child Refugees

A Florida Grand Jury has accused the Biden caliphate of facilitating child traffickers, many of whom end up as sex workers. This resulted from a five-month investigation requested by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

The panel issued a damning report, singling out the Department of Homeland Security and the health and Human Resources agencies.

They cited those two groups, encouraging unaccompanied minors to make the dangerous trip from Central America to our border where many were abandoned and subjected to physical and sexual abuse.

Evidently, the Biden administration does not really do any due diligence when it comes to the minors they encourage to come. One specific case is where Orr (Office of Refugee Resettlement), part of the HHS shipped over 100 minors to a single House in Texas.

An ORR employee reported the case to her superiors, and when they ignored her, she reported it to a government hotline. As a reward for her diligence, she was promptly fired. This is not the type of employee Sebelius or Biden wants working for them.

The report stated:

“In reality, ORR is facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children, and some of our fellow Florida residents are (in some cases unwittingly) funding and incentivizing it for primarily economic reasons. If any resident of Florida exposed U.S.-born children to this process, they would be justifiably arrested for child neglect or worse.”

“This process exposes children to horrifying health conditions, constant criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, rape, and other experiences not done justice by mere words.”

The report also stated that members of the grand jury were repulsed and horrified by testimony and video documenting the treatment of foreign children.

It is not yet known who testified before the grand jury, but it is known that the HHS and NGOs working with ORR went out of their way to hide information from the grand jury because they did not want to incriminate themselves. And of course, because they can get away with it in Biden’s America.

From The Daily Wire:

“We received, instead, a response from the organizations that they would be purposely ignoring some of those requests under orders from ORR, with whom they have a contractual relationship,” the report stated.

One NGO official reportedly told the panel their organization would rather operate an unlicensed an illegal child placement facility than risk losing ORR’s funding, the report asserts.

ORR actively discouraged its employees from questioning the process even internally, even firing some, according to the report.

The report also slammed HHS, noting that at the beginning of the investigation, accusing the agency of blocking its requests for routine information.

“HHS slow-walked productions and eventually provided the information in unusable or difficult-to-use formats, causing unacceptable and obstructive delays,” the reported states. “HHS also redacted vital tracking numbers from the hard copy documents, meaning that staff were unable to link related SIRs [Significant Incident Reports] together, or to link SIRs to any other ORR response.”

DeSantis called for the grand jury investigation amid reports the ORR was flying in illegal immigrants detained at the border. The panel determined it was occurring on a massive scale, and largely in secret.

“We learned that the very clandestine nature of ORR’s process was what first attracted the attention of some in our state; during a six-month period in 2021, more than 70 [large commercial passenger jets] landed at the international airport in Jacksonville,” the report stated. “These flights arrived in the night time often after midnight, and landed not at the passenger terminal, but instead at an out-of-the-way commercial terminal used normally for shipping freight, away from police facilities and miles from the passenger terminal.”

Once in the Sunshine State, the passengers were whisked away on private buses to unknown locations.

 https://billingsreport.com/florida-grand-jury-charges-biden-administration-facilitating-trafficking-of-child-refugees/

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6 April, 2023

USCIS’s Fee Rule Inappropriately Transfers the Cost of the Broken Asylum System to U.S. Employers

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) submitted a public comment on Monday, March 16, 2023, in response to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s proposal to update the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) fee schedule, titled “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fee Schedule and Changes to Certain Other Immigration Benefit Request Requirements”. USCIS’s fee schedule sets the rates the agency charges applicants and petitioners who are requesting immigration benefit services from the agency.

In our comment, CIS opposed DHS’s plan to transfer the cost of the border crisis to U.S. businesses that petition for foreign workers. CIS also encouraged USCIS to incorporate the beneficiary-pays principle, which asks beneficiaries to pay for the costs of the services they are provided, when determining how much applicants and petitioners should be paying for immigration benefit services administered by the agency.

Specifically, CIS recommended that USCIS set its fee levels to recover the costs of adjudication for most immigration benefit services (excluding certain humanitarian or statutorily exempt categories), limit fee waiver eligibility where inappropriate or unnecessary, and maintain its discount for online filing, which will increase government efficiency and transparency in the long run. In 2020, USCIS estimated that the agency’s current fee waiver policies would result in USCIS forgoing almost $1.5 billion dollars in revenue annually. USCIS relies on fee-paying applicants and petitioners to pay inflated fees to make up for this loss.

Additionally, CIS urged DHS to make reforms to deter illegal immigration and close loopholes in the asylum system in order to reduce costs associated with administering USCIS’s asylum program as an alternative to its plan to impose a new “Asylum Program Fee”, which would be paid for exclusively by U.S. employers (of any size) to subsidize the border crisis. CIS also recommended that USCIS impose a fee for the Form I-589, Application for Asylum and Withholding of Removal, and provide a fee waiver application for low-income applicants to avoid conflicts with the United States’ nonrefoulement obligations. Currently, USCIS imposes no fees to cover the costs of credible fear screenings, reasonable fear screenings, or asylum applications.

Finally, CIS explained that DHS must also terminate DACA and USCIS’s unlawful parole programs. The unauthorized programs violate federal immigration law and divert USCIS resources from legitimate visa programs.

USCIS is required to conduct a biennial review of the fee schedule to determine whether current immigration benefit fees generate sufficient revenue to fund the agency’s anticipated operating costs. The agency is primarily funded by immigration benefit request fees charged to both applicants and petitioners.

USCIS reported that without an adjustment to its fee schedule, the agency would be subject to an average annual deficit of $560 million. These costs do not include limited appropriations provided by Congress at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. USCIS published its last fee schedule in 2020 following its fiscal year 2019/2020 review. At that time, DHS increased USCIS’s fees by a weighted average of 20 percent, which was slightly less than the average weighted increase imposed by the 2016 fee rule issued by the Obama administration (21 percent).

The 2020 fee rule, which was scheduled to become effective on October 2, 2020, was preliminarily enjoined and, consequently, never implemented by the agency. The Biden administration’s proposed fee rule, published on January 4, 2023, is intended to replace the 2020 fee rule entirely — albeit retaining many changes included in 2020 fee rule to the proposed fee schedule.

In the time since the 2020 fee rule has been issued, however, USCIS has endured serious fiscal challenges that have threatened the agency’s ability to conduct operations and efficiently adjudicate immigration benefits. Most severely, international travel restrictions and fears related to the Covid-19 pandemic stunted USCIS’s ability to collect fees and efficiently process immigration benefit requests. The historic crisis along the southern border has also imposed unsustainable strains to USCIS, which has received record numbers of credible fear claims since 2021.

https://cis.org/Jacobs/USCISs-Fee-Rule-Inappropriately-Transfers-Cost-Broken-Asylum-System-US-Employers

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5 April, 2023

House Republicans Demand Hidden Statistics on Secretive Biden Border “CBP-One” Admittance Program

As senior Biden administration officials run victory laps over seemingly sharply declining Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal alien Southwest Border crossings, no one has bothered to wheel out the one stumbling block that would face-plant those politicians: statistical data the administration has hidden away somewhere.

The illegal land border crossings for both January and February were in the 128,000 range, compared to the 200,000-220, 000 range throughout much of 2022 sounded really great to anyone who didn’t understand a politically accounting scheme that is underway.

Left out of the illegal crossings data is another dataset that would reveal how much of that apparent decline is counted elsewhere as part of a legally challenged admittance scheme the Biden DHS vastly expanded in mid-January to issue “humanitarian exceptions” for legalized escorted crossings of foreign nationals who were going to jump the border.

This scheme’s objective, as I have previously revealed, is to entice those intending border crossers, while they are still south of it, to petition Biden’s DHS for “humanitarian parole” on a telephone/computer app called CBP-One before they cross. Those approved then get flown into America from unknown foreign airports or escorted overland, with permission, at unrevealed land ports of entry, sight unseen, given work authorization – and counted somewhere that is not fully public. Texas and 19 other states have sued over the administration’s mass use of humanitarian parole.

In the absence of any full accounting of those entries or court resolution to their legality, the administration has enjoyed a Houdini-esque illusion of sharply declining entries of foreign nationals into America when the total number of entries may prove as high or even higher than all prior entrance peaks.

But what few if anyone seemed to realize while The Washington Post and other major media organizations uncritically enabled the Biden government victory laps is that the number of those rechanneled out of the illegal entry statistics,  had the Biden administration not stashed them out of public sight, would provide the full picture of how many foreign nationals in total are still crossing the southern border, one way or another.

That is a number the American people absolutely deserve, in granularity, so that citizens living in a Democracy can see and weigh the true consequences of government policies, especially when the government behind such policies seems determined to hide them.

Remarkably, no one appeared to be asking for the statistics, until March 24, when eight House Republicans marshaled by Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany sent a demand letter to DHS Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas.

Eight House Republicans spearheaded by Rep. Tiffany have penned a letter to DHS Secretary Mayorkas demanding all the data that would tell the public just how many humanitarian exceptions the administration is granting, to whom, and where and how their recipients are entering.

“As we wait for the courts to continue to strike down your irresponsible interpretation of immigration laws, our country continues to endure the financial hardship caused by allowing millions of people in – a hardship that will be endured by every taxpayer in the United States,” the letter states. “As you focus your energy on finding novel ways to undermine the laws of this country – instead of enforcing them – we continue to see unprecedented illegal immigration into our country.”

The other Member signatories include Andy Biggs, Jeff Duncan, Tom McClintock, Laurel Lee and Troy Nehls. They want the data by April 4 “to further our oversight mission, as we determine budgetary requirements, and other matters.”

Until the administration complies, analysts like the Center for Immigration Studies’ Andrew R. Arthur have had no choice but to extrapolate what they could from some humanitarian parole CBP-One grant data that is public for a few nationalities, such as Venezuelans (12,300 in February), Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Cubans (23,100). These show, at the least, that the numbers being counted elsewhere other than as illegal crossings are in the tens of thousands per month.

But the evidence is overwhelming that the administration is granting humanitarian parole through CBP-One to a great many other nationalities that neither the administration nor national media or think tanks ever acknowledge, I have found in my own reporting south of the border. These other nationalities include regular Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans as well as a wide diversity of other surprising nationalities such as Afghans, Somalis, Russian Chechens, Tajikisanis, and Uzbeks, to name a few. The activist journalist Ben Bergquam of Real America’s Voice recently found Mexicans waiting on their CBP-One applications in a Reynosa, Mexico camp full of applicants.

The Republicans are demanding information that will fill out not just the totality of the Biden humanitarian parole giveaway program to all nationalities but also exactly where and how they are entering America by air and land. They also demand to know the extent to which the Biden administration denies and approves these applicants.

https://townhall.com/columnists/toddbensman/2023/03/27/house-republicans-demand-hidden-statistics-on-secretive-biden-border-cbp-one-admittance-program-n2621169

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4 April, 2023

Impact of Immigration on U.S. Population Growth

A new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Center for Immigration Studies examines immigration’s impact on U.S. population growth over the last 20 years. The report finds that immigration accounts for an increasing share of population growth in recent years, primarily due to very high levels of immigration coupled with a decline in natural increase among U.S. residents.

Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of research and co-author of the report, said, “Legal and illegal immigration have added roughly 15 million people to the U.S. population in the last decade. This clearly has important implications for issues Americans care about, like the environment and congestion. The key question for policymakers and the public is whether this should be allowed to continue at this pace.”

Among the findings:

Over the last two decades, immigration’s share of population growth has tended to increase.

The net migration of immigrants (legal and illegal) plus births to immigrants once in the United States added 6.7 million to the U.S. population between 2016 and 2021.

The 6.7 million immigrants added to the country between 2016 and 2021 was equal to three-fourths of the total increase in the population over this time period.

Partly as a result of the ongoing border crisis between 2021 and 2022, net international migration by itself accounted for 80 percent of U.S. population growth, based on Census Bureau estimates.

Immigration’s growing role in population growth is due to very high levels of immigration coupled with a decline in natural increase – births minus deaths among U.S. residents.

The decline in natural increase is due in part to a long-term increase in mortality from “deaths of despair” (e.g. suicide and overdoses), rising obesity, and population aging. Covid, and its associated social disruptions, also caused a further steep rise in 2021 and 2022 of roughly 600,000 each year.

The long-term decline in natural increase is also attributable to a significant falloff in births among both the U.S.-born and immigrants since the Great Recession in 2008. The U.S. has seemingly entered a period of lower fertility, at least for the foreseeable future.

Births may rise somewhat in 2023 — they did some in 2022 — as uncertainty associated with Covid recedes. Deaths should also fall with the ending of the pandemic.

Despite the expected upturn in natural increase, immigration will continue to drive U.S. population in the future absent a change in policy.

https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/inbox/id/AQMkADAwATExAGI4Ny00YzNlLWM2YjYtMDACLTAwCgBGAAADBlztJEBXQEKBICXGPmvRRAcAxaofnc0caU6chqRJ%2BKcifAAAAgEMAAAAxaofnc0caU6chqRJ%2BKcifAAGWRO5wAAAAA%3D%3D

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3 April, 2023

Crisis by Design: Canadian Border Sees Overwhelming Flood Of Illegal Immigrants

Internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos obtained by the Washington Free Beacon reveal a significant spike in illegal border crossings from Canada into the United States during this fiscal year, with over 3,200 illegal immigrants apprehended since October 2022.

This record-breaking influx has strained law enforcement resources already overwhelmed by the southern border crisis.

According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, there were 2,238 migrant encounters on the US-Canadian border in the entire 2022 fiscal year and 916 the year before.

Every month of the 2023 fiscal year has broken records for illegal entries from the northern border, with no signs of slowing down.

In response, the White House has directed two dozen CBP staff, some previously stationed at the southern border, to stations near the Canadian border.

This move follows reports of migrants traveling to Canada from Mexico to more easily illegally cross into the United States.

A senior DHS official, speaking anonymously, stated, “The situation at the southern border has spilled across all borders.”

The most vulnerable section of the northern border is the Swanton Sector, encompassing Vermont and parts of New York and New Hampshire that border Canada.

DHS estimates show a more than 2,000% increase in illegal border crossings in this sector since the start of the fiscal year, accounting for over 60% of all such crossings from Canada.

With only about 2,000 Border Patrol agents stationed at the Canadian border and roughly 450 on duty at any given time, resources such as drones and fencing available in Texas and Arizona are lacking.

As the northern border situation worsens, Border Patrol struggles to respond.

House Republicans held a hearing on northern border security, during which immigration experts and the Border Patrol union president testified that cartels and smugglers are exploiting the lack of attention on the Canada-US border.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Penn.) highlighted a nearly 600% increase in drug smuggling seizure weight, excluding marijuana, along the northern border between fiscal years 2021 and 2022.

Last year, authorities seized 14 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill over 3 million people. In the 2021 fiscal year, more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, mostly attributable to fentanyl.

Under President Joe Biden, more than 5.5 million migrant encounters have been recorded at both northern and southern borders, marking the highest number in US history, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Additionally, at least 1.2 million “got aways” were reported by CBP, referring to illegal immigrants detected but ultimately not detained.

Brandon Judd, president of the Border Patrol union, testified before the House, calling for increased agency funding to secure the northern border.

With only about 450 agents on duty at any one time to patrol the nearly 5,500-mile US-Canada land and water border, Judd argued that the current situation is “absolutely unsustainable.”

The White House has falsely claimed there are at least 23,000 agents patrolling the nation’s borders.

Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz oversees roughly 19,000 agents and has called for funding to hire at least 3,000 more.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/crisis-design-northern-border-sees-overwhelming-flood-illegal-immigrants-law-enforcement-strained

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2 April, 2023

Mayorkas Makes Stunning Admission On Border Crisis

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refuses to admit that the southern border is facing a damaging crisis for the U.S.

During an interview on "60 Minutes," Mayorkas was asked if he thought the ongoing issue at the border was a crisis.

In response, the Biden official refused to use the word "crisis," admitting that it would indicate a "withdrawal from our mission."

"I view it as a significant challenge…and a crisis speaks to me of a withdrawal from our mission. We are only putting more force and more energy into it," Mayorkas said about that border, which saw more than 1.7 million migrant encounters in FY 2021 and 2.3 million in FY 2022.

Since President Joe Biden has taken office, over 5 million migrants have entered the country illegally.

When asked why he would not use the word "crisis," Mayorkas said it was because "I have tremendous faith in the people of the Department of Homeland Security."

During congressional testimony on Wednesday, Mayorkas was hammered by Republicans on the current state of the border, which he reluctantly refused to give straight answers to.

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Tx) asked the Biden official, "with a total of 6 million encounters along the southwest border, do you still maintain today that our border is secure?"

Mayorkas dodged the question, giving a lengthy response but never giving a straight "yes or no" answer. Instead, he stood by his tried and true response, saying, "maximizing the resources we have to deliver the most effective results."

Mayorkas' testimony contradicted Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, who used the word "crisis" when describing the situation at the border.

"The migration flow represents challenges and, in some areas, a crisis situation," Ortiz said.

Mayorkas was then asked if he agreed with Ortiz, saying, "I think that we face a very serious challenge in parts of the border."

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/04/01/mayorkas-reveals-why-he-refuses-to-admit-bidens-border-is-a-crisis-n2621431

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