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December 30, 2022
Greg Abbott Has Shipped Nearly 16,000 Illegal Migrants to Sanctuary Cities In 2022
As 2022 comes to a close, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) is looking back at everything he has accomplished this year.
In a Twitter post, Abbott announced that he has shipped nearly 16,000 illegal migrants to sanctuary cities to bring awareness to what President Joe Biden’s open border policies have done to the country.
“Texas has bused over 15,900 migrants to sanctuary cities,” Abbott said in his tweet, adding the four cities that they were sent to.
Almost 9,000 illegal aliens were sent to Washington, D.C., nearly 5,000 were bussed to New York City, over 1,500 illegal migrants made their way to Chicago and 630 were sent to Philadelphia, all of which are Democrat-run cities.
“We’re providing relief to local communities overwhelmed by President Biden’s open border policies,” Abbott added.
On Christmas Eve, three busloads of illegal migrants arrived on the doorsteps of Vice President Kamala Harris’s D.C. home.
After being hit with criticism, Abbott defended his action by calling Biden a “hypocrite-in-chief.”
Renae Eze, a spokesperson for Abbott, hit back at the Biden Administration for criticizing the governor’s move while they have been “flying planeloads of migrants across the country and oftentimes in the cover of night.”
“These migrants willingly chose to go to Washington D.C., having signed a voluntary consent waiver available in multiple languages upon boarding, Eze told Fox News Digital in a statement,” Eze said, adding “and they were processed and released by the federal government, who are dumping them at historic levels in Texas border towns like El Paso, which recently declared a state of emergency because of the Biden-made crisis.”
Democrats continuously attack Abbott for shipping illegal migrants to their cities, claiming that he has “abandoned children on the side of the road in below-freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve.”
White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan called it a "cruel, dangerous, and shameful stunt.”
However, Democrats who allow thousands of migrants to cross over into the U.S. are putting Americans' lives in danger. Fentanyl deaths are up historically, while Biden’s open border policies make migrants more vulnerable to human trafficking.
Biden’s policies have led the southern border to face disastrous proportions at the hands of his carelessness. Yet governors who want to fix the issue are the ones who get criticized.
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/12/28/greg-abbott-has-shipped-nearly-16000-illegal-migrants-to-sanctuary-cities-n2617657
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December 29, 2022
Supreme Court Orders Title 42 Border Rule to Remain in Effect
The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Title 42, the Trump-era immigration and public health order, to remain in place for the time being.
The high court voted (pdf) 5–4 to grant an emergency request from 19 Republican state attorneys general who sought to intervene in defense of the rule, putting on hold a ruling by District of Colombia Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, that allowed the rule to expire last week.
Justices Neil Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson voted against granting the request, while Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voted in favor. Last week, Roberts, the chief justice, paused the plan to give the Supreme Court more time to look into the issue.
“The stay itself does not prevent the federal government from taking any action with respect to that policy,” the short, unsigned order said Tuesday. “The Court’s review on certiorari is limited to the question of intervention. While the underlying merits of the District Court’s summary judgment order are pertinent to that analysis, the Court does not grant review of those merits, which have not yet been addressed by the Court of Appeals.”
A two-page dissent, written by Gorsuch, stated that the District of Columbia Court’s “intervention ruling takes on whatever salience it has only because of its presence in a larger underlying dispute about the Title 42 orders,” adding that it is “unclear what we might accomplish.”
The 19 states had argued that lifting the policy could lead to an increase in already-record border crossings. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, meanwhile, pleaded with the Supreme Court and other courts to keep the rule intact, warning that it would lead to a surge in illegal immigration.
The Title 42 order was first implemented in March 2020 under former President Donald Trump at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. President Joe Biden kept the restrictions in place for more than a year after taking office in 2021 despite promising to shift away from immigration policies adopted by Trump.
U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended a record 2.2 million migrants at the southwest border in the 2022 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, data shows. Close to half of those arrested were rapidly expelled under the Title 42 policy.
In a statement following the Supreme Court decision, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration will comply with the order and prepare for the court’s review.
“At the same time, we are advancing our preparations to manage the border in a secure, orderly, and humane way when Title 42 eventually lifts and will continue expanding legal pathways for immigration,” Jean-Pierre stated.
Arguments
The Biden administration sought to lift Title 42 after U.S. health authorities said in April that the order was no longer needed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but was blocked by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana, in response to a Republican-led legal challenge.
Arguing on behalf of the administration, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the nine justices that the government has recognized that lifting Title 42 would lead “to disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings” but asserted that the immigration problem “cannot be to extend indefinitely a public-health measure that all now acknowledge has outlived its public-health justification.”
The government, she also wrote (pdf), is aiming to put in place “new policies in response to the temporary disruption that is likely to occur whenever the Title 42 orders end.” Prelogar did not go into specifics on what that might entail but stipulated that the federal “government is prepared to do that, including by surging resources and invoking its Title 8 authorities to implement new policies in response to the temporary disruption that is likely to occur whenever the Title 42 orders end.”
GOP state officials, however, asked the high court to intervene and block the White House’s plans to scrap the rule. They said that a significant increase in illegal aliens crossing the U.S.–Mexico border would place undue burdens on their states.
“As the Louisiana court already found, the termination of the Title 42 System will cause the States irreparable harm,” the states wrote (pdf). “The likelihood of irreparable harm to the States,” their petition added, “is underscored by the fact that [the Department of Homeland Security] has requested $3-4 billion in emergency funding to deal with the imminent calamity that the district court’s decision will occasion.”
The Title 42 policy allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials to turn asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants away for health reasons listed under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidelines around COVID-19.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/supreme-court-orders-title-42-border-rule-to-remain-in-effect_4948117.html
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December 28, 2022
Homeland Security Warns Migrants of Dangerous Conditions on Border
The federal government issued a stark warning to migrants seeking to cross America’s southern border over the Christmas weekend: Do so at your own peril because of the dangerously low temperatures.
The Department of Homeland Security warned that it will “fully enforce” the Title 42 rule allowing it to immediately expel many asylum-seekers following a Supreme Court stay on the program issued last week.
The department warned of “dangerously low” temperatures along the border, and encouraged would-be migrants not to “put their lives in the hands of smugglers, or risk life and limb attempting to cross only to be returned.”
On Friday night, the federal government announced a record number of border crossings in November. The Border Patrol reported more than 233,000 encounters with migrants at the border for the month.
Meanwhile, at Washington, the vice president received some unexpected visitors on Christmas Eve, when three buses filled with recent migrants pulled up to the Naval Observatory courtesy of the governor of Texas, Greg Abott.
At the vice president’s residence, more than 100 migrants unloaded — some of whom were wearing only T-shirts in the sub-freezing weather. The Washington Post reported it was the coldest Christmas in the nation’s capital on record.
It’s not just border cities that are struggling to contain the influx of asylum-seekers. Mr. Abbott began bussing migrants out of his state to cities in the northeast in April.
“By busing migrants to Washington, D.C., Texas is sending a clear message: We should not have to bear the burden of the federal government's inaction to secure the border,” Mr Abbott has said.
Mayor Bowser of Washington during the summer first asked the federal government for help with the loads of migrants being bused to her city.
In a July letter to Secretary Austin, Ms. Bowser called the situation at Washington a “humanitarian crisis” that “requires a federal response” before requesting activation of the National Guard.
In August, Mr. Abbott began chartering buses bound for New York as well.
“New York City is the ideal destination for these migrants, who can receive the abundance of city services and housing that Mayor Eric Adams has boasted about within the sanctuary city,” Mr. Abbott said in an August statement.
The cost of providing those services, however, has taken a toll on the city. As of December 18, an estimated 31,000 migrants had arrived at New York City.
A bipartisan group of eight New York City Council members is now asking the president to declare a federal emergency.
The group says that would allow it access to FEMA funding for the cost of providing services to the newcomers. Mr. Adams declared a state of emergency in October in the city and has since requested $1 billion from the federal government to offset expenses from the city’s migrant intake services.
“These services, which have already cost our taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, are only growing as more buses of migrants arrive each day,” Council Member Robert Holden of Queens wrote in a letter to Washington. “We are asking the President to declare the asylum seeker crisis an emergency so that FEMA may reimburse New York City for the entire costs of addressing it.”
https://www.nysun.com/article/homeland-security-warns-migrants-of-dangerous-conditions-on-border
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December 23, 2022
Refugee tide places huge strains on Europe
Over 7.8 million people have fled Ukraine since conflict began
This year European countries have faced the largest refugee crisis since World War II, with the Russia-Ukraine conflict displacing millions of people.
As the conflict continues, more people from Ukraine are expected to leave the country this winter, putting Europe under severe stress and testing its ability to handle the human tide.
By this month more than 7.8 million refugees from Ukraine had settled in various parts of Europe since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out on Feb 24, of which more than 4.8 million were registered for temporary protection or similar national protection schemes, the UN Refugee Agency said.
Neighboring Poland remains the main country of arrival for refugees. Other European countries such as the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Romania have also taken in many.
After returning from a trip to Ukraine this month, Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said he expects another wave of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine over the winter, and he says he fears the humanitarian crisis in Europe will only get worse.
The European Union welcomed Ukrainian refugees soon after the conflict broke out. In early March it adopted an emergency plan allowing them to enter its 27 member countries without visas and granting them the right to live and work in the EU for up to three years. Many Europeans also opened their doors to Ukrainian refugees.
The EU has also adopted regulations to unlock funds that will ensure that member states hosting refugees have sufficient resources to meet the growing needs for housing, education and healthcare.
The EU has also taken measures to allow for greater flexibility in the use of EU cohesion policy funds, for instance by extending the possibility to transfer resources between programs and to obtain 100 percent EU financing, as well as by providing for additional pre-financing of projects to offer member states immediate relief.
Hosting Ukrainian refugees could cost EU countries 43 billion euros ($46 billion) this year, according to estimates by the think tank Bruegel in Brussels.
That cost accounts for about a quarter of the EU's overall budget for this year, which was set at 172 billion euros, and is likely to increase with more refugees entering the bloc.
Tian Dewen, deputy director of the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Ukrainian refugees in Europe are treated differently to refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.
"Accepting Ukrainian refugees in the first place is politically correct for European countries. Moreover, Ukrainian refugees are highly educated, young and white, and are more likely to integrate into local European society in the future, so they are generally welcomed in Europe."
For instance, about 73 percent of Ukrainian refugees who have settled in Germany since Feb 24 have a university degree, SchengenVisaInfo.com reported.
However, as the number of refugees in the continent has increased, European countries that have faced surging energy prices and living costs find it more challenging to help those in need.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202212/23/WS63a50aaaa31057c47eba5d71.html
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December 22, 2022
Sinema: Look, It's a 'No Brainer' for a Certain Someone to Finally Visit the Unsecure Southern Border
Maybe she missed the mendacious White House memo that Biden has, in fact, visited the border "since he took office," which is what Karine Jean Pierre claimed a few weeks ago. It wasn't true, of course. Biden has never visited the US-Mexico border throughout his Vice Presidential and Presidential tenures -- combined. As I've noted before, the best spin Jean-Pierre's predecessor could concoct was to point out that Biden had once driven near the border as a candidate in 2008, nearly a decade-and-a-half ago. Arizona's newly-minted 'independent' US Senator told Fox's Rich Edson that she and some Republican colleagues are planning to head down there early next year, urging the president to do the same:
It's hard to argue with any of that, although Sinema added that while Biden has shirked his duty on border security, neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump did their jobs on that front either. Obama was bad on immigration, but not nearly this bad. Trump had struggles and missteps on the immigration issue, but his administration took security and enforcement much more seriously than either Democratic administration, ultimately crafting and implementing a range of successful policies.
But Biden has been, by far, the worst. There's no comparing his failure's to anyone else's. Sinema is right that the border has never been fully secure in her lifetime, but her current proposed bipartisan solution is not the right answer. It doesn't "meet the moment," as politicos are so fond of saying these days, for reasons I've discussed at some length.
Put aside for the moment that a rational government shouldn’t need to rely on a CDC edict and the falsehood that the coronavirus is still a major public-health emergency to exclude illegal migrants from its borders. Of course, history says that deals like Tillis-Sinema — trading some form of amnesty for the promise of more enforcement and border security — don’t work as advertised.
More fundamentally, there’s no reason to believe that additional funding and authorities would make any difference to the Biden administration, which is ignoring the law now to allow a historic flow of illegal immigrants into the country...If Tillis and Sinema could promise an end to Biden administration lawlessness — driven by its apparent belief that any bogus asylum-seeker should be permitted into the country and never deported — their handiwork might be worth considering; since they can’t, it deserves to be ripped up and thrown away forthwith.
One can appreciate the intentions behind trying to do something to mitigate this Biden-caused catastrophe, but Tillis-Sinema is not the right move. To the extent that they can help draw any serious attention to the problem, which the White House tends to dismiss as 'stunt' work by Republicans, then more power to them. If they can convince the president to go down there to survey the historic, embarrassing, lethal mess he's created, that would be fine. But I fear that any presidential excursion to the southern boundary would end up being a photo-op-minded exercise in useless box-checking.
If Biden is willing to really witness what's going on, without an advance team sanitizing reality and steering him clear of the true damage -- while listening to frontline agents with genuine curiosity an interest -- then a trip might be worth it. Given this crew's track record, I fear the chances of that really happening are slim to none. As things go from historically bad to even worse down there, I'll leave you with the state of Texas doing what it can to stave off the total chaos that the federal government has actively invited:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2022/12/21/sinema-look-its-a-no-brainer-for-this-person-to-finally-visit-the-unsecure-southern-border-n2617393
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21 December, 2022
Top Dem and GOP lawmakers sound off on SCOTUS blocking Biden's immigration moves
Democrat and Republican members of Congress have found bipartisan agreement on Title 42, a pandemic-era immigration policy used to deter over 2.5 million migrants, as the Supreme Court temporarily halted the Biden administration's plans to end the policy.
"There is a security and humanitarian nightmare at our border, and ending Title 42 right now will only make it worse," said Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the former Democrat who switched her party affiliation to Independent earlier this month.
Title 42, implemented under the Trump administration, is a public health rule that allows border agents to swiftly turn away migrants at border. The public health rule was set to expire on Dec. 21, but the Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked Biden's order to lift Title 42.
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema recently announced her departure from the Democratic Party, officially registering as an Independent earlier this month.
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema recently announced her departure from the Democratic Party, officially registering as an Independent earlier this month. (Caitlin O'Hara)
Montana Sen. Jon Tester, considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2024, supported an extension of the Trump-era policy, a spokesperson for the senator's office told Fox.
Republican senators are also vocal about their support of Title 42, which they say is one of the critical tools agents use to secure the border.
"Fentanyl is pouring across the border, driving American overdoses to record highs," said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley. "Authorities are predicting as many 14,000 illegal immigrants every day but the Biden administration refuses to change course."
‘Scourge’ of fentanyl trafficking exacerbated by cartel use of border, U.S. attorney says as Title 42 end loomsVideo
"After years of ignoring the laws at our border and abandoning our border patrol agents, Joe Biden is nixing one of the last defenses to keep his border crisis under control," said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.
Six House representatives responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment on the issue, while some Democrats view Title 42 as an imperfect solution to border issues.
Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, whose border district includes El Paso, referred Fox to a previous statement on the issue. "For too long, members of Congress have championed Title 42 as a ‘solution’ to the challenges we face at the southern border and as a substitute for real and meaningful immigration reform. It is neither," the congresswoman stated.
On the other hand, Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, who represents a large portion of the Texas border with Mexico, said the public health order is one of the few effective tools law enforcement uses.
"While Title 42 was never intended as a permanent solution, it is the last line of defense for law enforcement along the border. Without it, we can expect illegal crossings to double overnight," Gonzales told Fox News.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-gop-politicians-scotus-blocking-bidens-immigration-moves-nightmare-at-our-border
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20 December, 2022
High Court greenlights UK’s plan to deport migrants to Rwanda
The British government says it will send migrants who have crossed the English Channel by boat to Rwanda as soon as it can, after the High Court ruled the deportation policy was legal.
The UK wants to try and bust the people-smuggling gangs sending boatloads of migrants from the north of France to the UK by diverting asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing and resettlement in a plan modelled on Australia’s controversial but successful policy of stopping the flow of immigrants coming by boats.
But the plan has been stymied by legal challenges, including in the European Court of Human Rights which issued a last-minute injunction halting the first-planned flight in June. The injunction remains in force until the conclusion of legal appeals.
The ECHR is separate to the European Union but its ruling has sparked calls by some Conservatives for Britain to quit the Convention.
On Monday, the High Court handed down its judgment and said that the plan was lawful.
“The court has concluded that it is lawful for the government to make arrangements for relocating asylum seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be determined in Rwanda rather than in the United Kingdom,” Lord Justice Lewis said.
“The relocation of asylum seekers to Rwanda is consistent with the Refugee Convention and with the statutory and other legal obligations on the government including the obligations imposed by the Human Rights Act 1998,” Swift said.
But the decision also dealt a blow to the government.
“The Home Secretary has not properly considered the circumstances of the eight individual claimants whose cases we have considered,” Swift ruled.
“For that reason, the decisions in those cases will be set aside and their cases will be referred back to the Home Secretary for her to consider afresh,” Swift said.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said the judgment, although set to be appealed in the Supreme Court, was a vindication of the government’s policy and that the government was determined “to deliver this partnership at scale as soon as possible”.
The sooner it is up and running, the sooner we will break the business model of the evil gangs,” she said.
Braverman said that the British people did not support open borders but had been told these views were “immoral.”
“Even today we see from certain quarters an unhealthy contempt for anyone who wants controlled migration,” she said.
“Such an attitude is unhelpful, moreover, it’s fanciful, we do not have infinite capacity ... we cannot tolerate people coming here illegally.
“It is not legitimate to leave a safe country like France to seek asylum in the United Kingdom,” she said.
But the opposition’s home affairs spokeswoman Yvette Cooper said that Britain deserved better. “Britain is better than this,” she said.
The UK is grappling with the largest-ever number arrivals of migrants on small boats in a single year, with numbers exceeding 44,000 this year.
Yolande Mokolo, a spokeswoman for the Rwandan government said: “We welcome this decision and stand ready to offer asylum seekers and migrants safety and the opportunity to build a new life in Rwanda.”
“This is a positive step in our quest to contribute to innovative, long-term solutions to the global migration crisis,” Mokolo said.
Britain has already paid Rwanda £140 million ($253 million) to house and process asylum seekers at the Hope Hostel in Kigali which has so far remained empty.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/high-court-greenlights-uk-s-plan-to-deport-migrants-to-rwanda-20221220-p5c7lk.html
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19 December, 2022
Tens of Thousands of Illegal Migrants Are Heading for the Border
You ain't seen nuthin yet
The crisis at the southern border is about to get much worse as border states are preparing for an influx of illegal migrants storming the U.S.
A border patrol intelligence alert released a report warning that tens of thousands of illegal migrants are heading for the country.
According to the report from the Customs Board and Protection, more than 40,000 illegal immigrants are said to be staged in the Mexican state of Chiapas along the Mexico/Guatemala border and will soon be knocking on the doors of U.S. states.
The source claims that Chiapas is currently seeking travel documents from the Mexican government that will allow them to trek north and legally leave the Mexican border state.
Additionally, nearly 15,000 illegal migrants from Oaxaca are already on their way to the U.S.
El Paso, Texas, has already encountered more than 7,000 migrants crossing the border this weekend alone, overwhelming border patrol agents.
The situation at the border has become so dire that even CNN is taking note of it.
In a headline titled, "Everyone Can Now Agree, the U.S. Has a Border Crisis," citing what is one of the biggest arguments between Republicans and Democrats, CNN points out that "no one is now doubting the chaos and potential migrant surge that could be triggered by an imminent policy shift next week."
The policy shifts the article states is Title 42, a Trump-era policy set to be lifted on Wednesday.
CNN points out that an already strained border is about to stretch to unforeseeable limits.
Even the most liberal of liberal leaders are acknowledging the problem.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) said that his state does not have the capacity and tools to survive a migrant surge.
"The fact is, what we've got right now is not working, and it's about to break in a post-(Title) 42 world unless we take some responsibility and ownership," he said.
The Biden White House has blatantly ignored the issue, with President Joe Biden saying that there are "more important things" to worry about.
If, and they will, thousands of illegals cross into the U.S. thanks to Biden's ignorance, he will be forced to pay attention, not only by Republicans but by Democrats who are demanding a change.
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18 December, 2022
Is the Southern Border Open or Closed? Here's What Released Migrants Have to Say
EL PASO, Texas — Illegal immigrants who have been processed and released by Border Patrol onto the streets of one of the United States' largest border towns say they believe the southern border is open, contrary to what Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has insisted when pressed about the crisis.
"For us Nicaraguans in the United States, thankfully it is open," Alexandra Malenco told Townhall. "It is open. It is an opportunity for many migrants and people. We want a better quality of life."
"It was open when I crossed on Sunday. I don't know if it is right now, but they were receiving migrants on Sunday. I do not know today. It could be open," said Vicente Rodriguez.
Rodriguez added he is trying to get to Miami but he had no money and no way to communicate with "those who were going to receive me. I am here with God's help."
Ecuadorian Marcela Tierra said the border is open for some nationalities but is closed for others, such as Venezuelans.
"They gave us the paperwork to be in the United States. If not, we would've been extradited to our country."
Title 42 started being applied to Venezuelans in the fall after a significant surge of them began impacting areas like El Paso. That is about to change and Venezuelans will be able to illegally cross the Rio Grande when the public health order is lifted next week. Critics of Title 42 say it violates people's right to claim asylum and it does not secure the border since there is no legal punishment with an expulsion, resulting in some people attempting to cross multiple times.
The Biden administration has claimed they are surging resources and personnel to better absorb the expected influx of illegal immigrants, but those within and outside of U.S. immigration law enforcement say the plan is only to release people at lightening speed, sparking concerns of corners being cut during the vetting process.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2022/12/15/released-migrants-tell-if-they-think-the-border-is-open-or-closed-n2617113
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16 December, 2022
Sheriff Reveals Hidden Benefit of Gov. Ducey’s Makeshift Border Wall
Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s shipping container wall along the U.S.-Mexico border has garnered attention and criticism, but a local sheriff says the makeshift barrier has a positive impact for the community.
Ducey’s border wall project in Arizona’s Cochise County has received attention this week after environmental protests brought construction to a halt, but this is not the first shipping container wall Ducey has built in the state.
Over the summer, Ducey launched a wall-building project in Yuma County in the far western part of the state. Using 130 shipping containers topped with razor wire, Ducey filled 3,820 feet of previously open border. The project is reported to have cost about $6 million.
“The containers were placed in the areas needed due to agricultural concerns impacting local farmers, and to help stop the environmental impacts we were experiencing along the river corridor,” Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told The Daily Signal in an email Tuesday.
“Our local farmers and local constituents asked for help directly (in person) to Secretary [of Homeland Security Alejandro] Mayorkas, Commissioner [of Customs and Border Protection Chris] Magnus, and Sen. [Mark] Kelly,” Wilmot said, going on to describe the negative effect illegal immigration was having on farmers in Yuma County.
All [Mayorkas, Magnus, and Kelly] were informed of the need to secure the river corridor due to immigrants trespassing into the fields causing crops being trampled on, crops being contaminated by litter, and defecation in the fields … there was nothing done by any of them to mitigate these impacts. This left farmers with the inability to harvest the crops for food safety concerns, unfortunately resulting in monetary losses to local farmers—with no way to be reimbursed.
We were also experiencing large amounts of clothing, litter, and pharmaceuticals being left along the lower river corridor. This creates an environmental impact on the wildlife and recreation that used to frequent the area.
The Daily Signal reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Kelly for comment but did not receive a response.
Ducey’s shipping container wall has “moved the mass immigration crisis to a more controlled environment for the federal agents to apprehend,” Wilmot said. “It has also helped lessen the environmental impact that farmers were dealing with, as well as the natural environment along the river.”
More than 370 miles of Arizona land borders Mexico. Former President Donald Trump built sections of border wall in Arizona, but gaps remain.
“Five wide open gaps in the border wall near Yuma neighborhoods and businesses are now closed off,” Ducey said in an Aug. 24 statement. “In just 11 days, Arizona did the job the federal government has failed to do—and we showed them just how quickly and efficiently the border can be made more secure—if you want to.”
Ducey has made the makeshift southern border wall in Yuma and Cochise Counties one of his final missions before he hands the reins over to Democrat Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs on Jan. 5.
“When you look at the amount of fentanyl that’s coming across the border, and the fact that fentanyl overdoses are a leading cause of death among young people in some of our border counties, as well as a growing problem nationally… of course Gov. Ducey is not going to sit by and do nothing while this problem continues to metastasize,” C.J. Karamargin, Ducey’s director of communications, told The Daily Signal during a call Tuesday.
“Governor Ducey takes his responsibility to protect Arizona very seriously, and that is the heart of this issue,” Karamargin said.
Hobbs has not said whether she will remove the shipping containers when she takes over Arizona’s governorship in less than a month. During an interview with Arizona PBS, Hobbs said the shipping containers are “not effective as a barrier,” adding that she thinks Ducey’s actions are a “political stunt that’s not really solving a problem.”
When asked if Hobbs should remove the shipping containers, Wilmot said, “Local farmers are asking that [the containers] be kept in place until the federal government replaces them with adequate infrastructure to prevent what was being experienced prior to the containers being deployed.”
It will likely “cost about $70 million” in “Arizona taxpayer dollars” to remove the shipping containers, according to Ali Bradley, NewsNation’s border correspondent.
In Cochise County, Ducey’s administration has completed over 3 miles of the latest shipping container border wall that is intended to be 10 miles long when completed. The project, expected to cost around $95 million, will use 3,000 shipping containers.
After completion of the wall in Yuma, the Bureau of Reclamation sent a letter to Arizona state officials saying the Yuma border wall was illegally constructed on federal land and must be taken down. But instead of removing the shipping containers, Ducey filed a lawsuit against the federal government.
In October, Ducey asked the Arizona District Court to determine who has “jurisdiction over land within the State of Arizona,” and to consider the “state’s interests in protecting itself.”
Border Patrol reports over 2 million encounters with illegal aliens at the border in fiscal year 2022, which ended Sept. 30. In October, Border Patrol encountered 230,678 illegal aliens at the southern border, an increase of more than 65,000 from last October.
Border Patrol in the Yuma Sector does not report a significant change in the numbers of illegal aliens apprehended in the Yuma Sector before or after the Ducey administration filled in the wall’s gaps.
During the first full week of July, about a month before the completion of the wall, Border Patrol Yuma Sector reported 5,800 migrants arrested. During the last full week of November, Yuma’s Border Patrol reported 5,900 migrant arrests.
The wall is expected to help funnel illegal migrants to specific crossing locations, however, making apprehensions easier.
“It is incumbent on the Governor to be engaged from a geographical, [or] local, perspective on what is needed on the border for the that area,” Wilmot said. “In other words, what’s needed in Yuma County may not be the answer for any other county in the state, nor should the governor make decisions from a political or ideological perspective, or based on a special interest group’s agenda.”
“Public safety and public health should always be the priority for the citizens of the community and the state,” the sheriff said. “Agriculture in Yuma County provides over 90% of the winter vegetables for the United States, so when crops are damaged and the farmland is environmentally impacted, it is a concern that must be addressed.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/12/14/sheriff-reveals-hidden-benefit-gov-duceys-makeshift-border-wall/
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15 December, 2022
British asylum plan said to violate international law
Rishi Sunak’s plan to deny asylum to migrants arriving in small boats violates international law and undermines Britain’s “humanitarian tradition”, the United Nations has said.
The prime minister on Tuesday promised to return thousands of Albanians to their home country, speed up asylum processing, make it harder to claim modern slavery, open reception centres to get 10,000 migrants out of hotels and prosecute more people for steering dinghies.
Critics condemned the measures as “cruel, ineffective and unlawful” while the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) appealed to Britain “uphold its legal obligations”.
Several MPs, including former prime minister Theresa May, raised concern at a new hurdle of “objective evidence” required from victims of modern slavery seeking help from the Home Office.
“Modern slavery is a very real and current threat,” said Ms May, who spearheaded the 2015 Modern Slavery Act. “We must do nothing to diminish our world-leading protections for the victims of this terrible, horrific crime.”
Mr Sunak told MPs his proposed legislation will “make it unambiguously clear that, if you enter the UK illegally, you should not be able to remain”.
“Instead, you will be detained and swiftly returned either to your home country or to a safe country where your asylum claim will be considered,” he told the Commons.
Experts questioned which “safe countries” asylum seekers could be sent to, with the High Court due to decide two legal challenges over the Rwanda scheme on Monday, and no returns agreements in place with EU countries.
Mr Sunak said the government would distinguish “illegal migrants” from “genuine refugees”, but the vast majority of small boat arrivals have claimed asylum and more than half of decided applications were successful.
The UNHCR said that limiting asylum to people arriving through “legal routes” goes against the basic principles of the 1951 Refugee Convention, and that resettlement programmes championed by the government “cannot replace the obligation to extend protection to asylum seekers arriving in the UK and applying directly”.
“The announced proposal to first detain, and then either return asylum seekers to their home countries, or transfer them to a third country, would amount to a denial of access to the UK asylum system for those who arrive irregularly,” said assistant high commissioner Gillian Triggs. “That approach would close down access to asylum in the UK for all but a privileged few.”
The authority warned that forcibly deporting asylum seekers to the countries they fled would “undermine the global refugee system at large and would be a violation of international refugee law”.
Asked if the plans “flout international law”, the prime minister did not directly answer but said the proposals were based on “common sense, fair principles”.
He claimed the system would still help those “most in need and most vulnerable” and said he had received formal assurances from Albania confirming that it will protect deported people at risk of re-trafficking.
Mr Sunak pledged to create more safe and legal routes for refugees to reach the UK, but said they would not be implemented until “we have proper control of our borders” and did not provide any detail.
At the same time, he announced that there would be a quota set by parliament on the number of refugees resettled in Britain – which amounted to just 1,391 people in the past year, compared to 86,000 conventional asylum applications.
Tim Naor Hilton, the chief executive of Refugee Action, said most of the announced changes were “cruel, ineffective and unlawful and will do nothing to fix the real problems in the system. They’ll instead cause misery for thousands of already traumatised people”.
The Refugee Council said the government had failed to come up with a “workable or principled” solution to Channel crossings, arguing that migrants resorted to small boats only because there are no legal and safe routes open to them.
Chief executive Enver Solomon said: “This government wants to treat people who come to the UK in search of safety as illegal criminals.
“This is deeply disturbing and flies in the face of international law and the UK’s commitment as a signatory of the UN Convention on Refugees to give a fair hearing to people who come here in search of safety and protection.”
Sile Reynolds, of Freedom from Torture, accused the prime minister of “recycling unethical and unworkable gimmicks”.
“Fast-tracking refusals and removals based solely on nationality or method of arrival is a dangerous, one-size-fits-all repackaging of a policy that risks breaching our international obligations to protect refugees,” she said.
After overcrowding at the Manston processing centre in Kent threw a spotlight on the government’s expenditure of more than £5m a day on hotels for asylum seekers, Mr Sunak relaunched plans drawn up under Priti Patel to house up to 10,000 people in reception centres in disused holiday parks, student accommodation and military sites.
Measures will be introduced – including a doubling in the number of caseworkers – with the intention of processing claims within “days or weeks, not years”, which Mr Sunak said should abolish the backlog of cases by the end of 2023.
The prime minister said a new Small Boats Operational Command would be created to bring together the military, the National Crime Agency and civilian staff currently targeting different aspects of Channel crossings.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/migrant-boats-channel-sunak-un-law-b2244580.html
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14 December, 2022
Rep. Tiffany on Withholding Visas from Countries Which Refuse to Take Back Their Citizens
Recalcitrant countries, those which fail to accept the return of their nationals who are under removal orders from the United States, are back in the news. In the wake of Speaker Pelosi's trip to Taiwan, Communist China announced it was “suspending China-U.S. cooperation on the repatriation of illegal immigrants”. In addition, Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisc.) has introduced the Alien Criminal Expulsion Act ( “ACE Act”), that mandates and strengthens the sanctions used by the United States to encourage foreign governments to comply with their international obligation to accept the return of their citizens.
China is one of the worst offenders, but there is a lengthy list of recalcitrant countries, including Laos, Sierra Leone, Cuba, Vietnam, and Iran. The refusal to issue travel documents and accept a deportable citizen’s return results in detention costs and, most importantly, reduced public safety – a 2001 Supreme Court decision prohibits the government from detaining a deportable foreigner for more than six months in most cases. After six months, the Department of Homeland Security is forced to release them onto America's streets, despite often having significant criminal histories.
On today’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Rep. Tiffany and Jon Feere, the Center’s Director of Investigations and former ICE Chief of Staff, discuss the powerful tool the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides by allowing the U.S. to withhold visas from recalcitrant countries, the need for tightening and strengthening the language in the INA, the executive’s lack of enforcement, and the ACE Act.
In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and the host of Parsing Immigration Policy, discusses his predictions for apprehension numbers and border policies post-Title 42. A federal court has ruled that Title 42, the public-health rule that allows the Border Patrol to expel border-jumpers without a hearing, must be lifted by December 21.
https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/inbox/id/AQMkADAwATExAGI4Ny00YzNlLWM2YjYtMDACLTAwCgBGAAADBlztJEBXQEKBICXGPmvRRAcAxaofnc0caU6chqRJ%2BKcifAAAAgEMAAAAxaofnc0caU6chqRJ%2BKcifAAGCs8RuwAAAA%3D%3D
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13 December, 2022
The ticking border time bomb: 1,000 migrants in the largest caravan in HISTORY crosses the Rio Grande into El Paso - with huge numbers being released onto the streets
More than 1,000 migrants streamed across the southern border into Texas on Sunday night in a dire indication of the chaos to come when Title 42 comes to an end in just nine days.
The group from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua - possibly the largest in history - ran across the Rio Grande into El Paso, where local officials are releasing hundreds of migrants back onto the streets and border officials are bracing for a surge in crossers.
Footage shows the migrants wading through the water carrying belongings and then waiting in line on the river's bank to be processed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials.
Title 42, the COVID policy of expelling migrants when they reach the border, is set to come to an end on December 21 – just four days before Christmas.
Overworked border guards fear thousands could cross into the U.S. from Central America every day and will be overwhelmed by the influx.
Mexican authorities appeared to have assisted the illegal crossings, with images emerging of police escorting nearly 20 buses filled with migrants into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, which is directly across the border from El Paso.
As the pandemic-era policy winds down just before Christmas, House Republicans warn in a letter obtained by DailyMail.com that the Biden administration's use of Air Marshals to assist along the border could put 'the lives and safety of airline passengers at risk' over the holidays.
Title 42 helped quell the migration crisis at the southern border as immigration officials were able to immediately expel those seeking asylum in the midst of the public health emergency.
President Joe Biden tried to put an end to the policy in May, but received a slew of backlash from Republicans who claimed it was wrong to end a policy while the U.S. was still under health emergency orders.
Title 42 was first enacted under former President Donald Trump.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11529519/Largest-migrant-caravan-HISTORY-illegally-crosses-Rio-Grande-El-Paso.html
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12 December, 2022
Interior Immigration Enforcement Decline Under Biden: State and Local Statistics
Immigration enforcement in the interior of the country has dropped dramatically under President Biden’s policies. These policies have exempted nearly all but the most serious criminal aliens from arrest and removal and have imposed cumbersome new procedures and paperwork for ICE officers to complete cases.1 According to ICE records, the number of removals nationwide declined from 186,000 in FY 2020 to 59,000 in FY 2021.2 Although Biden officials say that the policies were established in order to prioritize the removal of the most serious deportable criminal offenders, in fact the result has been a decline in the removal of criminal aliens as well as other types of cases. For example, the number of removals of convicted felons nationwide dropped from 36,000 in FY 2020 to 27,000 in FY 2021.3
This report presents new information on the decline in ICE enforcement at the state and local level. Using records obtained through a FOIA request, we examine trends in removals of aliens who were identified by ICE under the Secure Communities program. These are removal cases that originate because the alien has been arrested locally for a crime. They do not include border cases, fugitives, worksite arrestees, or other categories of ICE removals. They are a good measure of interior enforcement involving the public-safety-oriented cases that should be a high priority for ICE.
Key Findings:
Under Biden enforcement priorities, there was a 71 percent decline in removals of deportable aliens who came to ICE’s attention due to a local criminal arrest.
Ten states experienced an extreme decline in enforcement of greater than 80 percent under Biden policies (Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont).
Of the 50 U.S. counties that typically have the most criminal alien removals, 14 experienced extreme declines (greater than 80 percent) under Biden policies. About one-third of these high-volume counties are in Texas.
The high-volume counties with the steepest decline in removals of locally arrested criminals were Gwinnett County, Ga.; Plymouth County, Mass.; Bergen County, N.J.; and Kankakee County, Ill. Criminal removals dropped by more than 90 percent in these jurisdictions.
There were 50 counties, parishes, or territories with a minimal baseline volume of enforcement where the number of criminal removals dropped by 90 percent or more. Eight of these were in Georgia.
In one representative county, Howard County, Texas, under Biden policies just half the number of criminals convicted of homicides were removed than before, and there also were steep drops in removals of criminals convicted of assault, burglary, drugs, larceny, and sex offenses.
About the Data. The records obtained by the Center itemize all aliens removed by ICE in fiscal years (October 1 – September 30) 2019 through 2021 in which the alien was identified by ICE as a result of a biometric match generated under the Secure Communities program.4 Using fingerprint matching, this program flags cases of aliens who are arrested by local law enforcement agencies for local crimes, and enables ICE to take action once the alien is held to account for the local crimes. These cases are tracked by ICE in a separate, unique data system that includes information on the state and county or territory where the alien was arrested (this locality information is not available in ICE’s main enforcement records system). The data fields also include the alien’s country of citizenship, criminal history, and other information on the alien’s immigration charges and case disposition, including the date of the alien’s removal from the United States.
For this analysis, we selected records of removals for the time period of January to September in 2019 and 2021, to correspond approximately to the first nine months of the Biden administration and a comparable time period during the Trump administration before the pandemic lockdowns of 2020.
https://cis.org/Report/Interior-Immigration-Enforcement-Decline-Under-Biden-State-and-Local-Statistics
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11 December, 2022
Biden is still separating immigrant kids from their families
The persecution for her work as a lawyer in Colombia had gotten so bad that Victoria and her husband, Anton, decided they needed to start lying to their son. They couldn’t stay in Colombia any longer, but they also recognized the dangers of fleeing—especially with their son, Felipe, who was 10 at the time. So they told Felipe the family was taking a vacation to Mexico. Maybe they would even get to go to the United States, they said.
It was all a ruse to keep their son calm, to protect them from people who might target them as they traveled through Mexico.
Once they hit U.S. soil in late May, the family found Border Patrol agents and gave themselves up to ask for asylum, after which they were placed in detention to await processing.
“I’m sorry, my beautiful child,” Victoria recalled telling Felipe.
He was upset with his parents—they had lied to him; this was no vacation—but couldn’t contain his excitement about being in the United States.
“We weren’t running or hiding,” Victoria later said. “I brought evidence to show immigration officials in support of our asylum application and told the immigration officials about why we fled Colombia to save our lives.”
Despite her preparations, Victoria became nervous when, a few days into their detention, agents took Felipe away, saying that they were taking him to an appointment. He was gone most of the day. That evening, another agent brought him back; his mother hugged him tightly.
One or two days later, on or about May 29—the exact date is unclear—Victoria and Felipe were taken to another room from which they could see, but not speak to, Anton. After some paperwork and an interview, an officer told Victoria that they were taking Felipe to have a snack.
“They opened the door, took him away, and then closed the door,” Victoria said. She had heard about family separations, but didn’t think the U.S. government was still taking kids away from their parents.
Victoria sensed something was amiss and began asking officials where her son was. “I don’t know,” immigration officials told her repeatedly. Almost six months later, she hasn’t seen him.
More than 5,500 children, including breastfeeding infants, were forcibly separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s family separation policy, which began as a pilot program in El Paso in early 2017. On June 20, 2018, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials to stop separating families, but the practice continued. In 2019, the Texas Civil Rights Project documented 272 cases of family separation. Most of those cases—223—were extended family members, including siblings, aunts, uncles or grandparents, or legal guardians or step-parents.
In January 2020, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) established select criteria under which children can in fact be separated from their families: Immigration authorities may only do so if they deem the parent unfit, if the parent is going to be prosecuted for a felony, if the parent is hospitalized, or other specific circumstances.
The incoming Biden administration promised to stop such separations for good and offer reparations for the previous administration’s harms.
But as the case of Felipe shows, immigration officials have continued to separate parents and children in violation of the policy. From the start of the new administration to August 2022—the latest month for which data has been published—U.S. authorities have reported at least 372 cases of family separation.
“We said never again, but here we are,” said Kassandra Gonzalez, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project.
The Texas Observer has identified further cases not included in this count—including that of Felipe, whose case is not included in the tabulation from May. Felipe remains apart from his parents. The failure to account for the true scope of the problem means that not only is the public left without a complete understanding of the breadth of ongoing separations, but some cases—some children—have ended up lost in the system.
The Observer reached out to the White House and DHS for comment. The White House directed the request to DHS, which did not respond by the time of publication.
“This administration came in really trying to distinguish themselves on immigration policy. The main pillar of distinguishing themselves was that they would not carry out family separation,” said Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC). “They just have completely failed to actually live up to that promise to stop this—the most abusive, traumatic practice that can be carried out in immigration enforcement.”
https://www.texasobserver.org/the-biden-administration-is-still-separating-kids-from-their-families/
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9 December, 2022
DHS Is Releasing Thousands of Illegal Immigrants Without a Court Date
According to a number of Republican Senators, the Department of Homeland Security is releasing countless illegal immigrants into the interior of the United States without giving them a "Notice to Appear" in court.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Senators Marsha Blackburn, Bill Hagerty, Bill Cassidy, Ted Cruz, Michael Rounds, Cindy Hyde-Smith and Ron Johnson are demanding answers about why there is break down in the usual process.
"According to recently obtained data, tens of thousands of immigration court cases concerning the removal of illegal aliens were dismissed during Fiscal Year 2022 (FY 2022) because of failures by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials to properly file “Notice to Appear” (NTA) documents ahead of the scheduled court hearings," they write.
"As you are likely aware, the initiation of removal proceedings against an illegal alien generally involves two steps. First, DHS serves the alien with an NTA alleging the alien’s removability from the United States and scheduling a court date and location for the alien to appear for an immigration hearing," the Senators continue. "Second, DHS files that NTA with the immigration court that will hold the hearing. Importantly, even if a hearing is scheduled, jurisdiction with the court does not vest until the NTA is filed with the court—meaning that if an NTA is not filed, the immigration court is forced to dismiss the case against the alien, as a result of which the alien remains in the United States illegally with no immigration proceeding pending."
Further, the Senators are pointing out the lack of NTAs has significantly worsened under the leadership of Mayorkas.
"What caused this substantial spike in incidences of DHS officials not filing an NTA after you took office and, consequently, tens of thousands of immigration cases against illegal aliens being dismissed because of DHS’s failure to file paperwork? We urge you to immediately review DHS policies and practices relating to the issuance and filing of NTAs,” they write.
Meanwhile, the number of illegal immigrants pouring into the country continues at record rates and is expected to intensify with the lifting of Title 42 later this month.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/12/08/dhs-is-releasing-thousands-of-illegal-immigrants-without-a-court-date-n2616919
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8 December, 2022
Investigation Reveals Where Released Immigrants Have Gone in the US
The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project published a new report detailing how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have facilitated the last leg of travel for illegal immigrants once they reach the United States, which has only increased during the Biden administration's border crisis.
The Oversight Project was able to compile the report by sampling approximately 30,000 unique and anonymized mobile devices that were geofenced to a number of these NGOs along the border. Illegal immigrants hand themselves over to Border Patrol to be processed and then released if Title 42 does not apply to their nationality, though the public health order is scheduled to end on December 21. Device pings were captured throughout the month of January 2022, in four different phases:
Phase One involved “geofencing” the physical locations of the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Center and the Del Rio Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Station—around 400 devices pinged on premises.
Phase Two of the investigation involved the geofencing of 20 NGO facilities in border states—around 22,000 devices pinged on premises.
Phase Three involved geofencing 13 NGO locations located in close physical proximity to the border—around 5,000 devices pinged on premises.
Phase Four of the investigation focused on geofencing Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, located in San Juan, Texas—around 3,400 devices pinged on premises.
In Phase 2, over 22,000 devices were traced to 431 separate U.S. congressional districts out of a total 435 congressional districts. Of the 52 congressional districts with the highest density of devices, 71 percent were Republican congressional districts, according to the report.
Of the 5,000 devices captured in Phase 3, they were later traced to all but one congressional district, and of the 3,400 captured in Phase 4—all at just one NGO location—those phones later pinged in 433 of 435 congressional districts. The maps in the report show popular destinations include the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Orlando.
“The investigation confirmed that a host of NGOs are actively facilitating the Biden border crisis. Overflow from Customs and Border Protection is being transferred to these organizations so that Border Patrol avoids overcrowded facilities. These organizations apply for, and receive, taxpayer money to provide processing and transportation services and infrastructure to facilitate the migration of illegal aliens into the interior of the country.”
“Our investigation is the first ever to document the physical movement of illegal aliens into the interior of the country. What we uncovered is a mass resettlement program in which the Biden administration works hand-in-hand with NGOs. It affects the entirety of the United States. Every fire dies out unless someone fans the flames. Now we know the Biden administration has help in keeping the flames at the border burning," said Mike Howell, director of the Oversight Project.
The pipeline has had no shortage of people as there have been almost three million illegal immigrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border in the previous fiscal year. While the Oversight Project was able to track the devices due to the migrants having turned themselves in to law enforcement, there have been hundreds of thousands more "gotaways" in fiscal year 2022.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2022/12/07/investigation-reveals-where-processed-and-released-illegal-immigrants-have-gone-in-the-us-n2616880
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7 December, 2022
Border isn’t ‘important’ to Biden because Dems want radical open immigration
Before he departed for Arizona Tuesday to give a speech on the economy, President Biden was asked by a reporter if he would be visiting the border.
His answer? “There are more important things going on.”
Now, if he’d been referring to, say, the fact that the sun will sputter out and go dark in seven billion years then, yeah, that’s more important. But he was just talking about some manufacturing investments he’d be touting in Phoenix.
This is only the administration’s latest attempt to dismiss the border crisis. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said last week, “Some people are so focused on the southern border, and that’s really not the issue.”
And who can forget Vice President Kamala Harris, the sort-of-border czar, repeating Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ assertions that the border is secure?
When folks are this desperate to get you to believe that up is down, black is white, and two plus two equals five, there’s a reason.
It’s not just that they know the public disapproves of the border chaos. Past administrations, including Democratic ones, acknowledged public concern over immigration by tightening their policies to make it harder for foreigners to illegally enter.
This administration, on the other hand, is the first in our nation’s history to reject the very idea of deterring illegal immigration.
That’s not because there’s some kind of plan to import voters. Sure, those are ancillary benefits for the left, but the deeper reason this administration, from the president on down, doesn’t think what’s happening at the border is important is that they believe immigration controls are morally wrong — period. They believe that the American people simply have no right to keep anyone out. And if the immigration law requires them to do that — as it obviously does — they’ll do their best to circumvent and ignore the law.
In other words, the Biden administration sees the Immigration and Nationality Act as the equivalent of Jim Crow, and undermining it is the heroic equivalent of escorting black students into desegregated schools.
That’s what Biden means when he says “There are more important things going on” than the border crisis — not that it’s inconsequential, but that you’re a bad person for noticing.
But the consequences are real. As of October, the total immigrant population (legal and illegal) had increased by 3.2 million in the 21 months since Biden took office. Most of that increase, about 2 million, are illegal immigrants, responding to La Invitacion from Biden to cross the border and stay. The foreign-born now make up 14.7% of the population, matching the level of 1910, just before the effects of World War I and new immigration reform bills reduced the flow of newcomers.
The impact of all this on our schools, health care, infrastructure, etc. — not to mention the drugs and crime that are entering because Border Patrol has been turned into the Welcome Wagon — is huge. Maybe most important is the question of whether we can successfully assimilate such a flow. As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said earlier this year, “just the sheer number of people overwhelms communities. And this idea of mass immigration . . . is not conducive to assimilating people into American society.”
That seems pretty darn important to me.
https://nypost.com/2022/12/06/border-isnt-important-to-biden-because-dems-want-radical-open-immigration/
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6 December, 2022
Amnesty for DACA fails border security test
The U.S. nearly two-year-old border crisis continues unabated, yet Senate Democrats and some Republicans are foolishly resuming a push to grant amnesty to hundreds of thousands—and perhaps millions—of people living in this country illegally. There is a simple test to determine if a given policy will reduce illegal immigration, and amnesty—whether for DACA (Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals) recipients or any other group—clearly fails the test.
Illegal aliens coming to the U.S. generally want five things. They want to enter the country, stay here, work here, send money home, and bring family here. Policies that allow or facilitate any of those five elements encourage more illegal immigration. Policies that prevent those goals decrease illegal immigration.
Let’s begin with illegally entry. Policies such as having a wall system, using the Remain in Mexico program, and requiring asylum seekers to request protection in the first safe country they enter (and returning them there if they do not) reduce illegal entries. Illegal encounters at the border significantly decreased when the Trump administration implemented these policies.
Yet, the Biden administration halted the wall construction and ended the Remain in Mexico program. Moreover, it actively encourages all illegal aliens crossing our border to apply for asylum, even though it knows full-well that most are ineligible for the once important protection benefit. The result? Over 5 million illegal alien entries since Biden took office.
These and other ill-considered federal, state, and local policies have now so "normalized" illegal immigration as to almost erase the line between legal and illegal immigration.
At the federal level, the Administration has: watered down asylum standards and ignored immigration benefit fraud; granted mass paroles; endlessly extended "Temporary" Protected Status to nationals of over a dozen countries; continued DACA; reduced the capacity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to locate, detain, and deport illegal aliens; and provided endless "due" process before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and in immigration court until an alien gets a green card.
States and localities have created sanctuary jurisdictions in which public officials refuse to ask a person’s immigration status or to communicate with ICE. They further facilitate illegal aliens’ ability to stay longer in the U.S. by providing drivers licenses, which lead to additional downstream benefits, like bank accounts, housing assistance and voting rights. After a few years of enjoying these benefits, illegal aliens then argue they should not be deported because they have too many ties here in the U.S. If legislators want to stop illegal immigration and encourage legal immigration, stop giving them benefits that facilitate and prolong their ability to live here illegally.
Working in the U.S. without work authorization has been illegal since 1986, when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act at the recommendation of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. The commission, led by Democrat Rep. Barbara Jordan, had found work to be the number one pull factor of illegal immigration to America.
Texas judge invites Joe Biden to see the southern borderVideo
Today, however, the USCIS routinely skirts this law by providing employment authorization documents and automatic extensions through numerous "temporary" programs such as DACA, TPS, "Operation Allies Welcome" for Afghans, "Uniting for Ukraine," "Volunteering for Venezuela," and mass parole. Congress needs to take back its authority to determine who is authorized to work while in this country. Thorough worksite enforcement is also necessary to end unauthorized work. Employers should use E-Verify to the maximum extent possible to prevent unauthorized work, which will decrease illegal immigration.
The remittances sent by illegal aliens to relatives in their home countries comprises significant portions of those nations’ GDP. This leads their governments to pressure American politicians to continue ignoring illegal immigration. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy does not benefit from this generated income. Preventing unauthorized work in the U.S. disables an illegal alien from sending remittances home and would discourage illegal immigration.
Finally, ending both birthright citizenship and chain migration are necessary to prevent illegal aliens from avoiding deportation based on their acquired ties to the U.S. Illegal aliens are subject to the jurisdiction of their home country per the U.S. Constitution. As such, their children born in the U.S. are not properly U.S. citizens. Congress should correct the current erroneous interpretation granting U.S. citizenship to babies born to aliens residing here illegally.
By even discussing amnesty for illegal aliens, Congress encourages illegal aliens to stay longer in the U.S. in the hope of obtaining amnesty. It also encourages more people to try to enter illegally in the hope that they can get in on the prospective amnesty action. DACA amnesty proposals are no different. Granting amnesty to DACA recipients would only result in more minors being trafficked and abused by unscrupulous cartels and coyotes.
Amnesty rewards law-breaking, and even just considering amnesty proposals further undermines border security. Given the national security and personal safety threats already created by the Biden administration’s open border policies, the only immigration legislation Congress should be passing is a border security bill.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/amnesty-daca-fails-border-security-test
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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5 December, 2022
Suella Braverman pledges to do 'whatever it takes' to tackle 'small boats problem' in the Channel
The home secretary has pledged to do "whatever it takes" to deal with the "small boats problem" in the Channel.
Writing a foreword to a report by the centre-right Centre for Policy Studies think tank - which has called for new laws stopping migrants who enter illegally from ever settling in the UK - Suella Braverman said the numbers making the perilous crossing were "wholly unacceptable and unsustainable".
She added that ministers would "comprehensively tackle the small boats problem".
Ms Braverman insisted that calling for action on illegal migration was not "xenophobic or anti-immigration" and that she and Rishi Sunak were committed to dealing with the issue.
"The British public are fair-minded, tolerant and generous in spirit. But we are fed up with the continued flouting of our laws and immigration rules to game our asylum system," she wrote.
"And we've had enough of the persistent abuse of human rights laws to thwart the removal of those with no right to be in the UK. This must end.
"Saying so is not xenophobic or anti-immigration. It is the reality acknowledged and felt by the vast majority of the British public. To pretend otherwise is to insult them."
She added: "The prime minister and I are committed to doing whatever it takes. We are finalising our plan, and we will deliver the operational and legislative changes necessary to comprehensively tackle this problem."
The Centre for Policy Studies' report - co-authored by Theresa May's former adviser Nick Timothy - calls for the overhaul of human rights laws, with the UK "if necessary" withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, to allow detentions and offshoring the processing of asylum claims.
And it states that ministers should be looking for deals with other countries to supplement the currently stalled plan to deport migrants to Rwanda for processing.
The Home Office declined to comment on a report in The Sunday Times, claiming ministers are working on legislation which could ban asylum seekers who enter by illegal routes from ever settling in the UK.
Mr Timothy said tackling the issue would require a "completely different approach" from government, addressing a series of interconnected public problems.
"If we are to stop the crossings, we will need to take immediate and bold action," he said. "It is not something that can be fixed through gradual, incremental change."
It comes as Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said Albanians should be "excluded from the right to claim asylum" as they are coming from a "demonstrably safe" country.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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4 December, 2022
Rural Counties in Texas Are Declaring Local Immigration 'Disasters’
Several counties in Texas are declaring a “local state of disaster” over the growing number of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and entering their communities.
The Texas Tribune reported this week that the counties that declare a local disaster due to the border crisis could receive funding and support through Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) Operation Lone Star program, a border security initiative in the state between the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department.
One county in particular, Hopkins County, sits more than 500 miles from the southern border and an eight-hour drive away, the Tribune noted. County commissioners declared a state of disaster in the county over an “invasion” of migrants flooding into their community since President Biden took office.
“The health, safety and welfare of Hopkins County residents are under an imminent threat of disaster from the unprecedented levels of illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug smuggling coming across the U.S. border from Mexico,” the declaration reportedly said.
Kinney County, which is between Del Rio and Eagle Pass, was the first to do this in April 2021. Since then, over 30 counties have done so, according to the Tribune. Afterwards, this allows the counties to apply for support through Operation Lone Star for their law enforcement.
Townhall has covered how Abbott began sending illegal immigrants on buses to “sanctuary cities” led by Democrats, such as Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York City, and the latest, Philadelphia to share the burden of Biden's open border policies.
"Since April, Texas' busing strategy has successfully provided much-needed relief to our border communities overwhelmed by the historic influx of migrants caused by President Biden's reckless open border policies," Abbott said in a statement announcing the busload of migrants being sent to Philadelphia.
"Until the Biden Administration does its job and provides Texans and the American people with sustainable border security, Texas will continue doing more than any other state in the nation's history to defend against an invasion along the border, including adding more sanctuary cities like Philadelphia as drop-off locations for our busing strategy,” he added.
According to CBS News, Texas officials have sent over 13,000 illegal immigrants to New York City and Chicago. As Julio covered, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) sent some of the migrants to towns outside the city without warning.
Townhall covered how Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, on two occasions, asked the Pentagon to send in the National Guard to help process the migrants that were sent to the nation’s capital. The Pentagon denied her requests.
In an interview, Bowser then said that D.C. is “not Texas” and cannot accommodate the migrants.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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2 December, 2022
Europe Shows a Clear Link Between Immigration and Crime -- Like the One the U.S. Seriously Downplays
Violent crime is becoming common in Sweden, shocking residents of the famously placid Scandinavian nation, where horrific acts of violence have become “all too familiar,” according to Common Sense Media, part of a Swedish nonprofit organization.
Since 2018, Swedish authorities have recorded an estimated 500 bombings, while what they describe as gang shootings have become increasingly common. The country reported a record 124 homicides in 2020 and many residents were shocked in April when violent riots injured more than 100 police officers.
But Sweden’s crime spike is not an anomaly in Europe, as homicides have risen during the last decade across the European Union, from Hungary and Germany to Denmark and Finland. An analysis of EU and United Nations crime data by RealClearInvestigations shows that, as in Sweden, the broader crime wave is strongly correlated with immigration.
“The country-level data for EU countries keeps track of immigration data that allows you to look at many different places over time in a way that we simply aren’t able to do looking across U.S. states,” said Carl Moody, an economics professor at William & Mary College who specializes in criminology.
Criminal justice experts say that the precision offered by European data may provide guideposts to the United States as it grapples with a host of pathologies ranging from rising violent crime and mass shootings to social disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic. Europe’s experience suggests one avenue of inquiry for policy makers and criminal justice experts is crime directly tied to immigration and drug-trafficking across the porous U.S.-Mexico border.
Currently, however, crime statistics in the U.S. generally do not allow researchers to make definitive conclusions on how much illegal immigrants may have influenced the rise in violent crime. Because of the political sensitivity of the question, almost no state officials keep track of the immigration status of prisoners in their jails.
Over the 10 years from 2012 to 2021, about 41 million people immigrated to the European Union, and of those about 3.8 million, over 9%, are estimated to have done so illegally. Sweden's largely legal influx of newcomers averaged nearly 130,000 a year from 2012 to 2019, before the country began curtailing immigration in 2020.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has said the country’s growing problems of gangs and violence are due to its failure to integrate foreign-born residents, whose numbers have doubled during the last two decades to about two million people (or almost 20% of the total population). Sweden’s intelligence chief, Linda H. Staaf, told the BBC in 2019 that many of the perpetrators of crime share a similar profile. "They have grown up in Sweden and they are from socio-economically weak groups, socio-economically weak areas, and many are perhaps second- or third-generation immigrants," she said.
RCI collected homicide data for the European Union from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for 11 years, from 2010 to 2020, and compared it to rising percentages of each country’s foreign-born population. Even after accounting for variations among countries, the data show that each one percentage point increase in immigrant population is associated with a 3.6 percent increase in the homicide rate.
“These results are consistent with other studies in various European countries showing that immigrants – as a group – commit crime at higher rates than the native-born population,” said Tino Sanandaji of the Institute for Economic and Business History Research in Sweden.
Despite the European Union’s population being over one-third larger than America’s, the estimated 3.8 million illegal entrants over 10 years is less than the estimated 5 million illegal immigrants who have entered the United States since President Biden took office less than two years ago.
Homicides across the EU rose by about 8% between 2019 and 2020, with Germany and Hungary experiencing 25% increases. Sweden’s rose by 11%. Rising crime emerged as a key political issue there and elsewhere, contributing to September victories in Sweden and Italy by more conservative parties that made crime a key plank in their platforms.
It remains true that the vast majority of foreign-born residents and their children are not engaged in crime, but the evidence shows many of the victims of crime are also newcomers. In some instances, they have been victimized by native-born residents who resent their presence, and criminologists say this backlash should be classified as immigration-related crime. The violent riots that occurred across Sweden in April, for example, occurred after a Swedish-Danish anti-Islamist and his followers burned the Koran at a rally.
Rising murder rates in Europe are dwarfed by those in the United States, where cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and Los Angeles record hundreds of homicides every year. Homicides in the U.S. are also much more highly concentrated in tiny areas compared with Europe, with over half of U.S. murders occurring in just 2% of its counties. But Europe has long had much higher overall violent crime rates than the U.S.
European media reports and government spokespeople are often circumspect about the problem. They repeatedly attribute much of the crime to "gangs," the membership of which is rarely spelled out, and “gun violence” among unlabeled perpetrators.
Until recently, Sweden’s Crime Prevention Agency had not offered a comprehensive look at the issue since 2005. In October, however, the agency acknowledged that Sweden ranks “very high” in homicides when compared with other European nations, with a murder rate of 4 per million as opposed to the continent’s 1.6 per million.
In 2020, Swedish sociology professor Göran Adamson published a crime study showing an unmistakable link to immigration. It concluded that from 2002 to 2017, 58% of criminal suspects in Sweden were immigrants. That figure rose for murder, attempted murder, and manslaughter, where immigrants were identified as suspects in 73% of the cases, and robberies, in which immigrants were suspects in 70% of the cases.
Adamson told RCI that while members of some immigrant groups, such as Vietnamese, were less prone to commit crimes compared with native Swedes, others such as those from the Middle East and Africa – regions that account for most of the immigration to Sweden – were much more likely to do so. Overall, Adamson’s study concluded that Sweden’s murder rate had quadrupled due to immigration. Consequently, he said, he found RCI's statistical analysis to be “believable.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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1 December, 2022
A Flood of Venezuelan Migrants Is Angering Other Venezuelans
Longtime residents resent the new arrivals’ illegal entry, but they’re not happy with Biden’s attempts to stem the flow.
It took Yoaibimar Daal about a month to make the more-than-3,000-mile trek from Ecuador, where she was living, through the jungles of Central America to New York City. It took her a matter of hours to become the most virally known Venezuelan immigrant in America.
In early September, Daal stood in Times Square, her disabled son in a baby stroller, and pressed record on her phone as she half-screamed and half-cackled: “New York!”
“La marginal en Nueva York!”
In Venezuelan slang, la marginal roughly translates as “ghetto woman,” so the brief video seemed to be a celebration of Daal’s arduous journey. The video quickly went viral on YouTube, but not everyone was celebrating with her. Indeed, many Venezuelans living in the United States mocked her for her less-educated pronunciation.
“Now I understand why the United States is closed for Venezuelans,” a man tweeted with a subsequent video of Daal dancing in the subway. A Venezuelan worker at O’Hare International Airport tweeted another video of Daal dancing salsa in Times Square captioned with “The Statue of Liberty left the group.” “Are these [the Venezuelans] the US Embassy gives visas to?” a woman asked. “And they deny it to the Decent Venezuela that just wants to vacation?”
Daal’s videos (she has posted more than 110 of them) have brought into the open the tensions and class prejudices between some of the 500,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. — many of them well-off and conservative — that had arrived mostly by plane in earlier migration waves and the poorer and undocumented wave (known collectively as the “Venezuelans who crossed the Darien” because of a notoriously perilous spot on the Panama border through which they had to pass) that started crossing into the U.S. in 2021. But the internecine anger between some long-time residents and the new arrivals is complementing the political frustration conservative Venezuelans feel toward the Biden administration over its sometimes-contradictory immigration policies and approach to the Venezuelan regime; it’s another reason why once-blue parts of South Florida have flipped for Republicans.
Even during the height of Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis between 2014 and 2018, according to Customs and Border Protection data, apprehensions of Venezuelan migrants at the southern border never passed 80 people a year. But between January 2021 and September of this year almost 240,000 Venezuelans like Daal arrived at the southern border, applied for asylum and were admitted pending resolution of their cases. But then, in October, pressured by the rising influx, the Biden administration expanded the use of Title 42 — a policy that expels migrants to Mexico, denying them a chance to seek asylum — to include Venezuelans. It also announced a humanitarian parole to bring in a maximum of 24,000 Venezuelans if they have a sponsor and can pay air travel expenses. Seven thousand Venezuelans have already moved in through the parole program and around 5,000 have been deported. Recently, a federal judge struck down Title 42. Fifteen states are going to court to maintain Title 42, but there is growing concern that a new wave of migration will follow once Title 42 disappears as expected on Dec. 21. Mexico has already found almost 5,000 Venezuelan migrants crossing its territory as the suspension approaches.
Venezuela’s current economic crisis is driving the exodus. According to the consulting firm Ecoanalítica, 50 percent of the country has an income of $100 or less a month while a basic monthly food basket surpassed $400. But this dire situation has not engendered much sympathy from many Venezuelans already in the U.S. who believe the new arrivals are tarnishing the image of Venezuelan expatriates. It’s a dynamic that echoes how Cuban-Americans who fled Castro in the 1960s disparaged the influx of thousands of poorer migrants, known as Marielitos, who swamped South Florida during the 1980s.
The pre-Darien Venezuelan diaspora is mostly made up of middle- and upper-class Venezuelans who left during the past 25 years after the rise of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian socialist governments, making them the Latino community with the highest education level in the United States — even higher than the U.S. average. This community settled mostly in South Florida but also in Texas, where many former oil workers that were fired when Chávez purged the country’s national oil company found new jobs. They also have an average wage that is higher than the average wage of Hispanics in the U.S. In fact, Venezuelans who speak English well or very well (around 80 percent before the Darién crisis) have higher average wages than the whole average U.S. population. While seemingly leaning conservative, Venezuelan-Americans are divided politically. During the last midterms, two Venezuelan-American state representatives were chosen: Carolina Amesty in Florida, a Republican, and Democrat Adam Zabner in Iowa. A former Miss Venezuela also ran for Congress in Texas under the GOP and was defeated.
For Francys Chacón, a lawyer who moved in 2017 from Venezuela to Manhattan, it’s not a matter of social class but of being law-abiding. “I won’t go to your home without your permission, but because you invited me or allow me,” she says. “It’s not the correct thing.” Many of the new migrants, she says, are bringing an attitude of “viveza criolla” — a concept in some South American countries that describes taking advantage of others. “Coming here and believing the government will give you everything, will give you a home, will give you food,” she says, “That they are entitled to that benefit.” For her, Title 42 will not stop the influx but “it’s a way of slowing down the situation.”
Nevertheless, she believes “disinformation” and “ignorance” — including promises of immediate asylum or Temporary Protected States for those that cross the border — are pushing many of the migrants to come. “I have acquaintances who say: ‘Why do I need a visa? It’s the same as entering, arriving at the border, and applying for asylum.’”
Reactions like Chacon’s are sometimes worsened by an online conspiracy theory that asserts that Maduro is releasing criminals from jail and sending them to the United States in migrant caravans, as Fidel Castro did during the Mariel Boatlift. While the conspiracy — first promoted by far-right site Breitbart and then magnified by some House Republicans and Donald Trump — is baseless, it feeds on Venezuelans’ anxieties about gangs like Tren de Aragua that have followed migrant caravans to many South American countries. Remarks such as Trump’s, which described the migrants as “vicious criminals” released by Maduro, have not been generally rejected by Venezuelan-Americans — a voting bloc that tends Republican — but rather “they have said: ‘Oh, look how they [the new migrants] are making us look!’”, says Raúl Stolk, a Venezuelan lawyer based in Miami who owns Caracas Chronicles, an English-language news site.
For Stolk, Venezuelans in Miami have a “a lot of social consciousness about what’s happening in Venezuela” and, moved by “compassion and connection” to their country, they tend to donate aid to Venezuela, participate in activism and help new migrants. Still, he says, “you hear the mad speech that Maduro is sending inmates.” Stolk says he’s also seen some Venezuelans saying, “it took me so much to come here legally, the good way, and these people are getting it for free!”
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: You usually CAN buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal); My Home page supplement; My Alternative Wikipedia; My Blogroll; Menu of my longer writings; Subject index to my short notes. My annual picture page is here; My Recipes;
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