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May 26, 2024

Illegal immigrants swarm border wall, throw sand, rocks and water bottles in ugly clash with Border Patrol agents trying to stop them

Jaw-dropping video captured a confrontation between US Border Patrol agents and illegal immigrants who tried to force their way into the US on the New Mexico border near El Paso, Texas.

Aerial footage shared by the Texas Department of Public Safety Thursday shows green-uniformed Border Patrol agents on foot and ATV racing towards the border wall as it's swarmed on the Mexican side.

At least half a dozen men on the Mexican side climbed the border barrier- which is anywhere from 19 to 30 feet tall - using a make-shift ladder.

As agents started taking migrants into custody, smugglers being paid to sneak the migrants in began throwing rocks, sand and even water bottles at the federal officers - which is a crime under U.S. law.

One full water bottle is chucked over the wall in an effort to stop the immigration agents from doing their job.

In another bizarre scene, a second water bottle is handed over to a man perched on top of the border wall.

He appears to consider hurling it at an agent, before handing it to another man who instead opens it and takes a sip out of it.

Later a border officer on an ATV tires to pull down the ladder to prevent others from climbing the border wall.

A smuggler sitting on top of the wall is holding on to it and resists.

He and the agent engage in a tug of war, with the smugglers ultimately giving up before retreating back into their country.

The incident happened near the Santa Teresa Port of Entry in New Mexico, less than ten miles outside of Texas.

Border Patrol's El Paso sector is currently the third busiest border crossing spot along the southern border with the Mexico-- behind the San Diego and Tucson sectors.

The region includes the West Texas city of El Paso and all of Southern New Mexico.

Migrants crossing into Texas's neighboring state are not looking to peacefully surrender to Border Patrol agents.

Instead, the Santa Teresa area is a well-known smuggling spot, where migrants who are not seeking asylum look to evade Border Patrol agents all together.  

In the most recent figures released by the federal agency,  30,393 migrants crossed the border in the El Paso sector in April.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/texas/article-13456469/US-border-patrol-illegal-immigrants-confrontation-Mexico-border-El-Paso-Texas.html

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May 23, 2024

Biden border chief Mayorkas in hot seat over Jordanian nationals who tried to breach Quantico

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is coming under scrutiny following news that two foreign nationals from Jordan attempted to breach the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia while posing as delivery drivers.

"Please explain how they came to the United States. Were they here illegally? Are either of them on any terrorist watchlist?" Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., questioned Mayorkas in a letter, also requesting the current status of the individuals.

The two foreign nationals sought entry to Quantico earlier this month, presenting themselves in a box truck and identifying as delivery drivers. After being brought to a holding area, they attempted to move farther toward the Marine base. However, they were prevented from doing so by officers.

The individuals were turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody following the event.

Acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner previously told Fox News Digital that the foreign nationals were in removal proceedings.

Graham prompted Mayorkas for an immediate response, asking for information about the Jordanian nationals' "background and intent."

According to the ranking member, "This will allow us to make an informed decision about how to address the recurring threat posed to our national security by this kind of incident, which is not isolated."

A spokesperson for DHS told Fox News Digital, "DHS responds to congressional correspondence directly via official channels, and the Department will continue to respond appropriately to Congressional oversight."

Republican lawmakers have increasingly sounded the alarm over the vulnerabilities at the U.S. southern border being a security threat, noting the number of nationals from all over the world entering illegally across it. Some have warned that a terrorist attack, similar to that of Sept. 11, 2001, could take place again due to relatively unfettered illegal migration occurring into the U.S.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-border-chief-mayorkas-hot-seat-jordanian-nationals-who-sought-breach-quantico

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May 22, 2024

Ineffective and Problematic Senate Border Bill Rises from the Dead

The Washington Times has reported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to bring an ineffective and problematic border bill — negotiated in secret by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Krysten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) with the assistance of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in the late fall and early winter — to the floor for a vote. That bill looked dead on arrival shortly after it was unveiled, and no one thinks it’s going to pass the Senate this time, so Schumer’s plan is really more a political stunt to shift blame for the border catastrophe to the GOP than a legislative strategy. If they hope to fix the border, the GOP and security-minded Democrats should have a better response than the first time this proposal saw the light of day.

Chaos at the Border. This bill is only an issue because the border has been in a state of chaos since shortly after President Biden took office in January 2021.

In the 14 fiscal years prior to FY 2021, apprehensions at the Southwest border never exceeded 860,000 and topped 800,000 just twice — in FY 2007 (858,638) and in FY 2019 (851,508).

In response to that latter border surge, then-President Trump implemented a number of policies to deter illegal migrants by denying them the ability to live and work in the United States while their removal hearings were proceeding, most famously (and successfully) the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), better known as “Remain in Mexico”.

Biden reversed nearly all of those Trump-era border policies directly after taking office, and in a break with every one of his predecessors, abandoned deterrence as a border strategy, instead inviting almost any foreign national who could make it to this country to remain at large here while applying for asylum.

CDC orders directing the expulsion of migrants, issued under Title 42 of the U.S. Code, were the sole Trump-era border-related initiatives Biden retained, though the administration ended those expulsion orders in May 2023 after fighting efforts by certain states to keep them in place for over a year.

Consequently, illegal entries have soared in the last 39 months, with apprehensions nearing 1.66 million at the Southwest border in FY 2021 and exceeding two million in FY 2022 (2.2 million-plus) and FY 2023 (2.045 million).

In a 2023 order barring the administration from releasing illegal border migrants on “parole” (with access to work authorization), federal Judge T. Kent Wetherell rejected the administration’s argument that “geopolitical factors” — “climate change”, corruption, violence, poverty, etc. — have been driving this border surge.

He explained, instead, that the surge is happening because administration officials have:

effectively incentivized what they call “irregular migration” that has been ongoing since early 2021 by establishing policies and practices that all-but-guaranteed that the vast majority of aliens arriving at the Southwest Border who were not excluded under the Title 42 Order would not be detained and would instead be quickly released into the country where they would be allowed to stay (often for five years or more) while their asylum claims were processed or their removal proceedings ran their course.

Current Border Detention Mandates, Expedited Removal, and Credible Fear. Each of those border migrant releases — and there have been around 3.6 million of them since Biden took office — violates section 235(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which in three separate instances mandates the detention of inadmissible “applicants for admission”, including aliens barred from admission at the ports and illegal aliens between them.

That INA provision offers CBP two options for handling certain classes of those inadmissible aliens. The agency can choose to subject aliens barred from admission because they either lack proper entry documents or offer fraudulent documents to “expedited removal”, a tool Congress gave officers in 1996 to quickly deport aliens with no right to enter.

Alternatively, CBP can opt to place those aliens and aliens inadmissible on all other grounds into “regular” removal proceedings before immigration judges (IJs).

Expedited removal, however, comes with a “catch”, which requires CBP officers at the ports and Border Patrol agents to refer aliens subject to that truncated process who request asylum of express a fear of harm if returned over to asylum officers (AOs) at USCIS, for what is known as a “credible fear” interview.

The “credible fear” standard is low, defined by statute as “a significant possibility, taking into account the credibility of the statements made by the alien in support of the alien's claim and such other facts as are known to the officer, that the alien could establish eligibility for asylum”.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Ineffective-and-Problematic-Senate-Border-Bill-Rises-Dead

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May 21, 2024

Republicans Rip Biden Admin Use Of ICE Program That ‘Failed’ To Properly Monitor Illegal Immigrants

A group of House Republicans is asking federal authorities for answers on a program meant to monitor illegal immigrants throughout the U.S., arguing it has failed to properly track enrollees and has essentially become a “social services scheme.”

Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, along with 15 other House Republicans, sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Executive Associate Director Daniel Bible a list of questions on how the agency is managing the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program in a Friday letter. The lawmakers asked for details on the number of available ICE detention beds, the rate of enrollees showing up to their removal proceedings and information on how these enrollees are supervised, among other questions:

“We write today to express our concerns about the implementation of the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. As you know, the ATD program was created in 2004 to monitor aliens on the non-detained docket (NDD) while they await the results of their pending immigration proceedings,” the lawmakers wrote. “However, today’s version of the ATD program has been expanded into a social services scheme, has failed to adequately monitor ATD enrollees, and has ultimately been an ineffective way to handle the unprecedented number of individuals on the [non-detained docket].”

The ATD program allows asylum seekers to move freely in the country in lieu of physical detention while they await their immigration court dates by using GPS monitoring, phone applications or other forms of tracking services to remain aware of their whereabouts.

The Republicans took particular umbrage with ICE’s management of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), the largest ATD program regarding enrolled immigrants and budget.

“For instance, we question whether it’s appropriate to let aliens roam the United States of America without consistently monitoring the specific movements of such individuals,” the letter read. “We also are concerned with the Case Management Pilot Program (CMPP) and the Young Adult Case Management Program (YACMP)—specifically how these methods have incentivized absconsion, diluted alien accountability, and transformed the ATD program into a social welfare system.”

The Republicans argued that U.S. tax dollars should not be paying for social services for non-citizens, but should instead be used for completing the border wall, maximizing the use of detention facilities and supporting federal immigration authorities, according to the letter.

“GPS monitoring significantly increases the likelihood that illegal aliens will comply with their immigration proceedings,” RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, told the DCNF. “Those enrolled under ISAP — the proper form of ATD — have a 98.6% compliance rate for attending immigration hearings and are easier to locate if they abscond.”

“Unfortunately, the Biden administration has failed to use the program efficiently or correctly, instead acting upon the wishes of ‘Abolish ICE’ groups who not only oppose custodial detention but call any monitoring of illegal immigrants a ‘digital prison,'” Hauman continued. “This explains why use of ISAP has decreased significantly, even as the non-detained docket approaches 7 million.”

Donalds also introduced the “Reshape Alternatives to Detention Act” on Thursday, which calls for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to utilize all detention space available for migrants arriving from the southern border and to maintain GPS monitoring of those migrants who are not being physically detained.

Mohammad Kharwin, an Afghan national who illegally entered the country, had been taken off the ISAP program almost immediately and allowed to roam free in the U.S. for nearly a year before being apprehended. The ATD program was also found to be more frequently using methods that were less adept at tracking enrollees.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/05/20/republicans-demand-answers-atd-program/s

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20 May, 2024

DHS’s New Immigration Detention Watchdog Opposes Immigration Detention

Crazy!

DHS recently announced the appointment of Michelle Brané as the immigration detention ombudsman, heading an office dedicated to becoming “an objective, credible resource for those impacted by immigration detention”. In case you were wondering, that means the detainees, not the American people.

Immigration detention is necessary because, as the Supreme Court has noted, Congress “had before it evidence that one of the major causes of the ... failure to remove deportable criminal aliens was the ... failure to detain those aliens during their deportation proceedings”, and as the House Committee on Homeland Security concluded earlier this year, “continuously detained aliens have historically almost always been repatriated, while nondetained aliens have rarely been”, and “a lack of consequences, such as detention, incentivizes illegal immigration”.

Brané is reported to be an anti-ICE activist “who has called ICE’s activities ‘abusive’ and wants to limit the agency’s powers of detention”, and asserts that removing illegal aliens before they commit crimes sounds like “a police state”.

It is no wonder that the Center for Immigration Studies’ Jon Feere says her appointment is akin to “putting an arsonist in charge of conducting oversight of the U.S. Forest Service” and worries that “she’ll use her new authority to undermine ICE detention efforts, which will come in the form of excessive audits and releases of illegal aliens based on unsupported and phony complaints”.

In 2012, the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee held a hearing on the Obama administration’s new “DHS Immigration Detention Standards”. The hearing was titled “Holiday on ICE” because, as Committee Chairman Lamar Smith explained, “ICE has decided to upgrade accommodations for detained illegal and criminal immigrants. While we would all like to be upgraded, we do not have the luxury of billing American taxpayers or making Federal law enforcement agencies our concierge.” Smith concluded that “The Obama Administration should put the interests of American taxpayers ahead of illegal and criminal immigrants.”

Brané testified at the hearing that DHS needs to “commit[] to creating a civil system of [immigration] detention that is used as a last resort ... implementing effective tools for detaining only where appropriate and necessary”, failing to acknowledge or care that in many instances, such civil detention is mandated by federal statute. Such disregard of congressional detention mandates was in large measure the basis for the first article of impeachment against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

https://cis.org/Fishman/DHSs-New-Immigration-Detention-Watchdog-Opposes-Immigration-Detention

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19 May, 2024

Nonprofits Are Making Billions Off the Border Crisis

While the border crisis has become a major liability for President Biden, threatening his reelection chances, it’s become a huge boon to a group of nonprofits getting rich off government contracts.

Although the federally funded Unaccompanied Children Program is responsible for resettling unaccompanied migrant minors who enter the U.S., it delegates much of the task to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that run shelters in the border states of Texas, Arizona, and California.

And with the recent massive influx of unaccompanied children—a record 130,000 in 2022, the last year for which there are official stats—the coffers of these NGOs are swelling, along with the salaries of their CEOs.

“The amount of taxpayer money they are getting is obscene,” Charles Marino, former adviser to Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Obama, said of the NGOs. “We’re going to find that the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money will rival what we saw with the Covid federal money.”

The Free Press examined three of the most prominent NGOs that have benefited: Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors, Inc. These organizations have seen their combined revenue grow from $597 million in 2019 to an astonishing $2 billion by 2022, the last year for which federal disclosure documents are available. And the CEOs of all three nonprofits reap more than $500,000 each in annual compensation, with one of them—the chief executive of Southwest Key—making more than $1 million.

Some of the services NGOs provide are eyebrow-raising. For example, Endeavors uses taxpayer funds to offer migrant children “pet therapy,” “horticulture therapy,” and music therapy. In 2021 alone, Endeavors paid Christy Merrell, a music therapist, $533,000. An internal Endeavors PowerPoint obtained by America First Legal, an outfit founded by former Trump aide Stephen Miller, showed that the nonprofit conducted 1,656 “people-plant interactions” and 287 pet therapy sessions between April 2021 and March 2023.

Endeavors’ 2022 federal disclosure form also shows that it paid $5 million to a company to provide fill-in doctors and nurses, $4.6 million for “consulting services,” $1.4 million to attend conferences, and $700,000 on lobbyists. In 2021, the NGO shelled out $8 million to hotel management company Esperanto Developments to house migrants in their hotels. Endeavors, which gets 99.6 percent of its revenue from the government according to federal disclosure forms, declined to comment to The Free Press.

The Administration for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, funds the nonprofits through its Office of Refugee Resettlement, and its budget has swelled over the years—from $1.8 billion in 2018 to $6.3 billion in 2023. The ORR is expected to spend at least $7.3 billion this year—almost all of which will be funneled to NGOs and other contractors.

When asked about the funding increase during a January media event, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the chief executive of Global Refuge said, “We’ve grown because the need has grown.” The nonprofit did not make Vignarajah available for an interview.

But while it’s true the number of migrants has exploded in recent years, critics say these enormous federal grants far exceed the current need. The facilities themselves are generally owned by private companies and are leased to the NGOs, which house the unaccompanied minors and attempt to unite them with family members or, if that’s not possible, people who will take care of them—their so-called sponsors. The ORR does not publicly list the specific number of shelters it funds in its efforts to house migrants, a business The New York Times once described as “lucrative” and “secretive.”

While some NGOs have long had operations at the border, “what is new under Biden is the amount of taxpayer money being awarded, the lack of accountability for performance, and the lack of interest in solving the problem,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that researches the effect of government immigration policies and describes its bias as “low-immigration, pro-immigrant.”

Consider Global Refuge, based in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2018, according to its federal disclosure form, the Baltimore-based nonprofit had $50 million in revenue. By 2022, its revenue totaled $207 million—$180 million of which came from the government. That year, $82 million was spent on housing unaccompanied children. Global Refuge also granted $45 million to an organization that facilitates adoptions as well as resettling migrant children.

Now Global Refuge employs over 550 people nationwide, and CEO Vignarajah said in January that the nonprofit plans to expand to at least 700 staffers by the end of 2024.

Vignarajah, a former policy director for Michelle Obama when she was first lady, took the top job at Global Refuge in February 2019 after she lost her bid to be elected governor of Maryland. She has since become one of the most prominent advocates for migrants crossing the southern border, appearing frequently on MSNBC and other media as an immigration advocate. Her incoming salary was $244,000, but just three years later, her compensation more than doubled to $520,000.

In 2019, Global Refuge housed 2,591 unaccompanied children while spending $30 million. Three years later, the NGO reported that it housed 1,443 unaccompanied children at a cost of $82.5 million—almost half the number of migrants for more than double the money.

In a statement to The Free Press, Global Refuge spokesperson Timothy Young said that while in care, “Unaccompanied children attend six hours of daily education and participate in recreational activities, both at the education site and within the community.”

The man with the $1 million salary is Dr. Anselmo Villarreal, who became CEO of Southwest Key Programs, headquartered in Austin, Texas, in 2021. (Villarreal took a drop in pay compared to his predecessor, Southwest Key founder Juan Sanchez, who paid himself an eye-popping $3.5 million in 2018.)

Despite a number of scandals in the recent past, including misuse of federal funds and several instances of employees sexually abusing some of the children in its care, Southwest Key continues to operate—and rake in big government checks. In 2020, the year of Covid-19, its government grant was $391 million; by 2022, its contract was nearly $790 million.

https://www.thefp.com/p/nonprofits-make-billions-off-migrant-children

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16 May, 2024

Biden plans executive order to shut down border once crossings reach 4,000 per day

What a lot of senile nonsense!

President Biden is planning executive action that would allow him to shut down the US-Mexico border once the number of migrant crossings reaches 4,000 per day, a source close to the White House told The Post Wednesday.

The order would match a provision in the bipartisan border bill that failed to pass the Senate in February, which gave the president authority to expel migrants when border crossings reached the same daily average.

The legislative proposal would have given the homeland security secretary discretionary authority to carry out removals — but would have made deportations mandatory when illegal entries surpassed 5,000 per day over a one-week period.

The bill allowed for the suspension of that authority two weeks after the seven-day average falls to 75% of those levels.

A federal government source confirmed to The Post that an executive order to limit entries was coming, though it was unclear when it would be announced.

In April, southwestern border authorities stopped an average of 5,990 migrants per day, according to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — a figure which does not include so-called “gotaways” who escaped detection and arrest.

Traditionally, the number of border crossing dips in the summer months, with migrants less inclined to try and enter the US illegally in the intense heat. However, last year, the average number of border crossers encountered per day rose from 4,819 in June to 5,919 in July to 7,515 in August to 8,991 in September.

The US Border Patrol currently has more than 10,000 migrants in custody nationwide, according to internal CBP data exclusively obtained by The Post.

https://nypost.com/2024/05/15/us-news/biden-plans-executive-order-to-shut-down-border-once-crossings-reach-4000-per-day/

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15 May, 2024

China resumes cooperating with US on illegal migration

China has quietly resumed cooperation with the United States on the repatriation of Chinese migrants illegally stranded in the U.S., The Associated Press reported Thursday.

The U.S.-China repatriation cooperation resumes amid the influx of Chinese migrants across the southern border of the United States.

China halted the cooperation in August 2022 as part of retaliation over the visit to Taiwan by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Beijing considers the self-ruled island a breakaway province that must one day reunite with the mainland — by force if necessary — and opposes any official contact between Taipei and foreign governments, especially Washington, which supplies weapons for Taiwan to defend itself.

Since the cooperation was halted, the U.S. has seen a spike in the number of Chinese migrants entering illegally from Mexico.

U.S. border officials in 2023 arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals at the southern border, nearly 10 times more than in 2022.

China's Foreign Ministry this week told the AP Beijing was "willing to maintain dialogue and cooperation in the area of immigration enforcement with the U.S." and would accept Chinese nationals who were deported.

The resumption came after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in April told NBC News the U.S. and China were holding high-level talks on the issue.

Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, said negotiations may increase the number of deportations of Chinese migrants in the short term. But he said the real effect on migrants' decision-making process depends more on U.S. resources and capacity to conduct more removals.

"Prior negotiations with Venezuela, for example, did not lead to large increases in removals from the United States partially because it takes time to change structures and implement these measures," he told VOA.

The New York Times reported that 100,000 Chinese nationals are living in the U.S. despite final orders for deportation.

The number of Chinese migrants illegally entering the U.S. on its southern border has shown a downward trend this year, after a record spike in December.

U.S. Customs and Borders Protection (CBP) said that while there were nearly 6,000 arrests of Chinese nationals in December, there were 3,700 in January, 3,500 in February, and just over 2,000 in March.

Soto attributed the drop to stronger visa and border enforcement, but also to China's censoring online information about the route.

"Because technology has become so entrenched in how migrants learn and select travel routes today, unlike in prior years when these were more heavily based on personal knowledge and networks," he told VOA, "it is likely that censoring content in mainstream channels can make it more difficult to travel along existing routes."

Social media platform Douyin, the Chinese version of the short video sharing platform TikTok, has since last year been quietly cracking down on content about "Zouxian," which means "walk the line" in Mandarin.

The term refers to Chinese migrants illegally crossing borders, including into the U.S. from Mexico and South America. It became a popular topic on the Chinese internet a few years ago and was used to search for information and tips on the route.

Reuters reported last year that many Chinese migrants found at the U.S. southern border said they found out how to travel there on Douyin.

https://www.voanews.com/a/china-resumes-cooperating-with-us-on-illegal-migration/7606638.html

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14 May, 2024

Legal immigrants are being hurt the most by Biden’s policies

Who is being hurt the most by the administration’s rush to give work permits to tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens it’s ushering illegally into the United States each month? Immigrants who follow the rules.

Most in the media focus solely on those crossing the border illegally, which is why last January, the White House began hiding the scope of its border disaster by funneling migrants through the legal ports of entry instead.

That effort was successful until my colleague Todd Bensman blew the lid off a Biden scheme that allows hundreds of thousands of nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly directly to interior US airports, under a policy with the anodyne name “CHNV parole.”

CHNV parole — which Congress has never authorized — allows up to 360,000 nationals of those four countries to enter the United States annually, despite the fact that the Department of Homeland Security recently had to admit that all of them “are, by definition, inadmissible.”

That inconvenient fact aside, each one of them is allowed to seek a work permit here.

As bad as that is, it pales in comparison to a different — and even bigger — Biden scheme you’ve probably never heard of.

It enables up to 1,400 would-be illegal migrants per day (a half-million-plus per year) to schedule appointments at the southwest border ports of entry using the “CBP One mobile app.”

Nearly 96% of them are also paroled into the United States, and all of them, again, can seek work permits here. You can also add them to the tens of thousands of other aliens apprehended by Border Patrol and released into the country monthly despite also being inadmissible.

Not surprisingly, allowing nearly 900,000 “parolees” annually to seek work permits has imposed significant burdens on US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency charged with adjudicating those requests.

Biden’s USCIS, however, has responded by expediting those parolee work permits.

According to DHS’s own stats, it took the agency on average of more than six months to adjudicate a work permit application (Form I-765) for a parolee under Trump in FY 2019.

By the first quarter of FY 2024, after parolee work requests skyrocketed under these Biden schemes, USCIS had that decision time down to 27 days.

Taxpayers may laud the agency’s newfound efficiency, but here’s the problem: While USCIS has whittled down the time it takes to issue work permits to aliens with no right to be here, the agency’s delay in adjudicating applications for legal immigrants has subsequently soared.

You’re a US citizen and want to bring your alien fiancée to the United States? USCIS took 5.2 months to adjudicate those “Form I-129F” applications in FY 2019, while today it takes 9.6 months — an 84% increase.

What about your alien spouse? Such I-130 “Petitions for Alien Relative” were adjudicated in 8.6 months under President Donald Trump, but it now takes USCIS more than 11 months to process them — 29% longer and an increase that seems like an eternity for couples looking to build a new life together.

It’s no wonder aliens abroad skip immigrating “the right way” and instead pay smugglers to help them “jump the line.”

Entering “the right way” is for suckers.

https://nypost.com/2024/05/10/opinion/legal-immigrants-are-being-hurt-the-most-by-bidens-policies/

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13 May, 2024

Dublin destroys its latest tent city as Ireland struggles to cope with migrant influx

Irish authorities have dismantled another 'tent city' in Dublin as the country continues to face an influx of migrants, many of whom have arrived from the UK.

Asylum seekers had pitched more than 100 tents in a makeshift camp along Dublin's Grand Canal, a short walk from the International Protection Office, as the government struggles to provide them with accommodation.

Pictures show the early morning operation, which involved crews checking tents were empty before they were spray-painted with an 'X' and cleared onto a truck by a 'grabber' machine.

The encampment sprung up along the waterway just days after more than 200 asylum seekers were cleared from a similar makeshift camp on nearby Mount Street.

The removal comes amid an ongoing row with the UK government over asylum seekers crossing the border from Northern Ireland, with claims that they are doing so to avoid deportation to Rwanda.

The Irish Government said Thursday morning's operation involved the Irish police service, Dublin City Council, the national health service, the Department of Integration and a waterway authority.

It was conducted more quickly than the previous operation last week, which removed people who had been living in the roadside camp for months.

A large number of asylum seekers reportedly boarded buses by 7.30am today, with the operation wrapped up by 7.45am.

The Irish government said that all asylum seekers were moved to accommodation in County Dublin, with a total of 186 applicants accommodated in the suburb of Citywest, and 99 at Crooksling, an hour from the city centre in the Dublin mountains.

A statement from the Government said: 'The purpose of the operation is to ensure the safe movement of people seeking international protection from the tents on the Grand Canal to International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS)-designated accommodation.

'The IPAS-designated accommodation has toilets and showers; health services; indoor areas where food is provided; facilities to charge phones and personal devices; access to transport to and from Dublin City Centre; and 24-hour onsite security.'

Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, Irish premier Simon Harris said the similar operation last week had a 'very positive impact' and averted a 'public health near-emergency'.

He said: 'I continue to believe that it was the right action to take. I became Taoiseach four weeks ago, I took charge of this situation.

'There had been, in my view, a tacit acceptance by many State agencies that the situation on Mount Street could just continue and was just the new norm. That was not right.'

He added: 'We will deal with the Grand Canal. Action will be taken.'

Justice Minister Helen McEntee, who recently alleged that more than 80 per cent of migrants in Ireland are coming in via Northern Ireland to avoid deportation to Rwanda, said that the government must ensure a tent city does not return.

'Once people are moved, measures will be put in place to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

'When they are provided with that accommodation, it's also really important that we don't see scenes like we're seeing now at Mount Street again, that it cannot re-emerge, that we have hundreds of tents – not just outside the international protection office – but outside people's homes, outside people's businesses.'

Tensions between London and Dublin over migration have been mounting in recent weeks, with each blaming the other for their immigration problems.

Rishi Sunak declared last month that he is 'not interested' in taking back migrants from Ireland given that the EU refuses to take back Channel migrants who arrived from France.

His comments were a sharp response to senior Irish ministers who warned they would draft emergency laws to force refugees back to the UK.

Taoiseach Simon Harris vowed in to pass new laws to facilitate returns of migrants after the country's courts declared the UK cannot be classed as 'safe' due to its pact with Rwanda.

But the UK Government said it would ignore any law passed by Ireland, with a No 10 spokesperson declaring: 'Even if Ireland was to pass legislation, it is up to the UK Government to decide who it does or does not accept into the country.

'We are not going to start accepting returns from the EU, just as France doesn't accept returns from the UK.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13398947/Dublin-destroy-tent-city-Ireland-struggles-cope-migrant-influx-blamed-Britain-Rwanda-policy.html

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12 May, 2024

The Ideological Roots of the Open Borders Push

Why does the Biden administration want open borders? As a researcher and writer on immigration, that’s the question I often get asked.

Here are the three reasons I think are behind President Joe Biden’s deliberate border chaos: electoral politics, extortion, and, most insidiously, ideology. I’ll start with ideology and come back to the other two reasons in my next two weekly BorderLine columns.

The most dangerous driver behind Biden’s open borders is ideological. Policy differences can be negotiated, but as we’re seeing on college campuses, people fanatically committed to an idea can prove intransigent, regardless of the facts.

When you see the word “abolition” used in connection with criminal justice and immigration, you might be confused. Americans rightly associate the term with ending slavery and abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison who were active before the Civil War.

Why are academics, politicians, and race professionals using it in 2024?

Those saying “abolitionist” today have appropriated it for the positive historical connotation it possesses, but they mean something else entirely. To see the roots of their ideology, you have to go back to the dawn of the New Left, as described by Chris Rufo in his book “America’s Cultural Revolution.”

Under their intellectual godfather, German academic Herbert Marcuse, Marxist-Leninists, Black Panthers, the Weather Underground terrorist group, and Students for a Democratic Society gathered.

This leftist alliance believed—as the Students for a Democratic Society magazine Prairie Fire explained—that the U.S. was founded on genocide, slavery, and racism. Its goal was to abolish the existing capitalist America and build a new society. One element of this was destroying the justice system. The Black Panthers’ manifesto thus called for the release of all black men who were incarcerated, no matter for what crime.

As Rufo writes, “[Communist Angela] Davis and her comrades began to call not for the release of individual criminals, but for the abolition of the entire system.” Davis said that “a society without racism … has to be a society without prisons.”

The Black Lives Matter organization adopted the same agenda of “abolition.” The mobs that destroyed a police station and looted Minneapolis in 2020 shouted, “Abolish the police, then the prisons.” The “abolitionist” activists in the Seattle CHAZ commune wanted to abolish the police, prisons, and courts.

BLM founder Patrisse Cullors was crystal clear in this Harvard Law Review essay from 2019: “Abolition means no borders. Abolition means no Border Patrol. Abolition means no Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” America is the source of world evil, in her view, and thus has no right to exist as a nation state nor keep anyone in the world from entering its borders.

Some Biden administration officials seem to share this core belief. Avideh Moussavian, a senior appointee at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, tweeted “#abolishICE” in 2018 and “cut ICE and [Customs and Border Protection] funding” in 2019.

Another Biden appointee, Claire Trickler-McNulty, undermined ICE from within before leaving for a nongovernmental organization partly funded by the Vera Institute for Justice. The Vera Institute says, “The U.S. immigration system is an arrest-to-deportation pipeline rooted in racism,” wants no detention of people in the U.S. illegally, and grants millions to nongovernmental organizations defending illegal immigrants.

“Abolition” ideology also has clear links with today’s campus support of Hamas. Take a look at this course taught at Columbia University this Spring by professor Mohamed Abdou, titled “Decolonial-Queerness and Abolition in SWAN.” SWANA likely stands for South West Asian and North African people. A sentence from the course description sums it up:

Using intersectional/assemblage-based theories, what decolonial, gender-based readings and formulations of feminisms/queerness exist that evade the apparent tidiness of European feminist and narrow LGBTQIA categories that characterizes most (non)Euro-American political queer-feminist scholarship beyond the depiction of queer BIPOC as co-opted and duped, colonized pawns of ‘Gay Empire’ towards elucidating critical discussions on identity, agency, subjectivity, and dissidence?

Parents are paying $90,000 a year for their kids to learn that kind of balderdash. But even if you can’t make any sense of that sentence, you can be sure of what Abdou means by “abolition.”

Columbia University now resembles Gaza as designed by outdoor equipment retailer Eastern Mountain Sports. Meanwhile at Princeton University, students briefly set up a camp last week “in solidarity with Gaza to protest Princeton’s role in funding the ongoing genocide,” according to organizers Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta was among faculty who signed a letter supporting the Princeton students and boycotting Columbia University. He is a “classics” professor who calls his field “equal parts vampire and cannibal” and the foundation of white supremacy, and argues that it should be abolished.

Peralta came from the Dominican Republic as a child, and his family overstayed their visas and became illegal immigrants. Leftist academics such as Peralta do not like nations or borders any more than they do classical antiquity. In his book “Undocumented,” Peralta wrote, “Demography is a b**ch. Holla at me if you want me to break it down for you.” By this, Peralta implies that without immigration enforcement, the “global majority”—defined here as everyone but white Europeans—will be able to dominate every country.

What we’re seeing at the southern border and on college campuses comes from the same ideological roots and ends the same way: anarchy

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/02/ideological-roots-open-borders-push-borderline

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May 9, 2024

USCIS and DOL Policy Updates May Allow More Employers to Circumvent Protections for American Workers

USCIS issued a policy update on April 10, 2024, that may expand which types of occupations can circumvent U.S. labor market protections that are required by federal law for employers to sponsor a foreign worker for a green card. By adopting the Department of Labor’s (DOL) definition of which occupations are considered “Schedule A”, USCIS is attempting to streamline how employers can petition foreign workers for green cards at the expense of the already minimal U.S. worker protections. This policy update comes at the same time DOL is considering amending its own regulations to add STEM occupations to the “Schedule A” list. Notably, an employer trying to fill a position in a “Schedule A” occupation may petition USCIS for a foreign worker without first trying to hire an American worker for that position.

Typically, federal law requires employers who wish to petition for an immigrant worker to conduct a labor market test and submit a permanent labor certification application to the DOL Employment and Training Administration (ETA) in a process known as PERM. This process, when completed, allows an employer to hire a foreign worker to work permanently in the United States and allows that foreign worker to receive a green card (i.e., obtain lawful permanent resident status). Green card holders may eventually become citizens or may live and work in the United States as LPRs indefinitely if they choose not to naturalize.

The purpose of the PERM labor certification is to both protect the U.S. labor market from unfair competition and to maintain the working conditions of domestic jobs. While the PERM program is far from perfect and subject to substantial fraud, as reported by the DOL Office of Inspector General (OIG), it is the main tool used by the U.S. government to prevent U.S. workers from being replaced with foreign workers benefiting from the employment-based immigrant visa categories. (The PERM process does not apply to foreign workers seeking to enter the United States on nonimmigrant (temporary) visas.)

What Does the PERM Process Require? The PERM process requires DOL ETA to certify to USCIS that there are: (1) not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified, and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment; and (2) that the employment of the foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers. Only after a PERM case is certified can an employer file a Form I-140 to petition USCIS to classify the beneficiary as an immigrant worker. Generally, PERM certification is required for employment-based 2nd and 3rd preference petitions (EB-2 and EB-3 immigrant visas).

Before an employer can file a PERM application with ETA, the employer must request and obtain a prevailing wage rate from ETA using the prevailing wage determination form. The prevailing wage rate is the average wage paid to similarly employed workers in a specific occupation in the geographic area of intended employment.

Additionally, regulations require that employers attempt to hire a U.S. worker first by advertising the open position in a local paper as a recruiting announcement for the opportunity twice. The employer must also place a job posting for 30 days with the State Workforce Agency (SWA). After the pre-filing recruitment process is completed, the employer must prepare a report describing the steps taken and the results achieved, including the number of hires and number of applicants rejected, categorized by reasons for any rejection.

What Is a “Schedule A” Occupation? For certain occupations, however, DOL has predetermined that there are not sufficient U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to fill positions in these occupations. These occupations are referred to as “Schedule A” occupations. Employers, in these cases, may bypass the DOL certification process and, instead, submit their labor certification directly to USCIS.

DOL regulations at 20 C.F.R. § 654.15(b)(2) require, however, that the employer provide its bargaining representative or its employees with notice that an Application for Permanent Employment Certification was filed. The notice must be posted for at least 10 consecutive business days in a clearly visible place at the location of employment.

Currently, DOL has designated two groups of occupations under Schedule A: registered nurses and physical therapists; and beneficiaries with exceptional ability in the science or arts (except performing arts) and beneficiaries with exceptional ability in the performing arts subject to certain conditions. (DOL has also determined that sheepherders are eligible for this type of processing.) DOL regulations define a science or art as “any field of knowledge or skill in which colleges and universities commonly offer specialized courses leading to a degree in the knowledge and/or skill”.

The regulation clarifies that an alien “need not have studied at a college or university in order to qualify for the Group II occupation”. The beneficiary, however, must demonstrate “exceptional ability” in their occupation by providing evidence of widespread acclaim and international recognition by experts in their field to qualify, as well as meet other eligibility requirements, such as demonstrating that the intended job in the United States will require exceptional ability.

Why Is USCIS Adopting DOL’s Definition of “Science or Arts”? USCIS made this policy clarification as an attempt to streamline the green card application process. As of March 2024, DOL reported that, on average, a PERM certification takes ETA about 397 days to issue. This does not include the time required for USCIS to process the beneficiary’s Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers. USCIS reports that the agency is currently taking as long as 10 months to process 80 percent of Form I-140 submissions. My colleague Andrew R. Arthur and I have both written about how Biden administration priorities have hindered USCIS’s ability to efficiently administer the legal immigration system.

What’s Next? DOL is expected to propose to amend its regulations to expand the list of occupations that may be considered “Schedule A” or exempt from PERM labor certification requirements. DOL issued what is known in the regulatory world as an RFI or a “request for information”, to request input from the public on “evaluating the utility of expanding Schedule A to include STEM occupations”, and provide input on “the appropriate data sources and methods for determining whether labor shortages exist, whether Schedule A should be used to alleviate any labor shortages in STEM occupations should it be determined from these data sources and methods that such shortages exist, and if so, how the Department could establish a reliable, objective, and transparent methodology for identifying STEM occupations that are experiencing labor shortages”.

DOL’s request for public input was issued expressly because DOL’s current data sets do not demonstrate a labor shortage of U.S. workers in STEM. Nevertheless, DOL is considering extending “Schedule A” status to STEM employers.

Why Does This Matter? Both USCIS and DOL’s policy initiatives indicate a clear objective to expand the types of employers that may circumvent the PERM certification process. By expanding the types of employers who may qualify for Schedule A, more employers will be allowed to hire foreign workers without first advertising the employment opportunity to U.S. workers. As stated above, however, DOL has not produced data that demonstrates that the U.S. labor market’s needs justify sidestepping procedures designed to protect jobs for U.S. workers in additional occupations.

DOL Should Prioritize Strengthening the PERM Process Before Expanding Schedule A List. Improving protections for U.S workers should be DOL’s primary goal for its regulatory agenda. Many improvements can be made without the enactment of new legislation.

For example, DOL could strengthen PERM by updating the required recruiting methods that employers must undergo to list job openings to make it easier for U.S. workers to find such listings. Current regulations require employers to list their openings twice in Sunday papers and list their posting for 30 days with the SWA — but, today, U.S. workers are more likely to seek employment opportunities using the internet rather than from paper newspapers.

DOL should also amend its regulations to require employers to submit documentation to ETA to support their attestation that they are complying with all PERM requirements. In 2020, DOL OIG found that,

An application does not provide ETA enough information to make an informed decision on whether there were no able, available, qualified, and willing U.S. workers for the job opportunity and the job opportunity would not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers similarly employed. The application does not require the employer to submit the information included in the original advertisement (i.e., the job location, position description, job requirements, wage, and where to send resumes). Additionally, the application does not require the employer to document the number of all applicants who applied for the job opportunity, the interviewed applicants’ names, and why the employer did not hire the individuals interviewed.

ETA could also engage in a post-adjudication review to confirm the veracity of the employer’s attestations and verify that a bona fide, full-time opening actually exists and is available to U.S. workers.

Without strengthening this process, DOL cannot faithfully certify to the USCIS that there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified, and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment and that employment of the foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers.

https://cis.org/Jacobs/USCIS-and-DOL-Policy-Updates-May-Allow-More-Employers-Circumvent-Protections-American

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May 8, 2024

Biden Administration Extends Obamacare Eligibility to DACA by Regulation

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that the rule may cost taxpayers $305 million per year by fiscal year 2026

(HHS) is amending its regulations to allow beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program1 to be eligible to receive benefits under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare) — including government subsidized health insurance. HHS estimates that the rule may cost taxpayers $305 million per year by fiscal year 2026.

The ACA generally requires that in order to enroll in a qualified health plan through an exchange, an individual must be either a citizen or national of the United States or be “lawfully present” in the United States. The ACA also generally requires that individuals be “lawfully present” to be eligible for insurance affordability programs such as premium tax credits, advance payments of the premium tax credit, cost sharing reductions, and Basic Health Program (BHP) enrollment. While the ACA does not specifically define “lawfully present”, it does specify that an alien must be “reasonably expected to be lawfully present for the period of their enrollment”.

When HHS issued regulations governing eligibility to enroll in a Qualified Health Plan through an Exchange in August 2012, HHS explicitly excluded DACA recipients from the definition of “lawfully present”. HHS reasoned that considering DACA recipients eligible for insurance affordability programs was “inconsistent with the relief that the DACA program afforded”, i.e., temporary protection from removal proceedings. The agency, however, included Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), parole, and other deferred action recipients as “lawfully present” for the purpose of the statute. HHS also excluded DACA recipients from the definition of “lawfully residing” for purposes of Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Programs (CHIP) eligibility under section 214 of the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA 214 option). In 2014, HHS issued regulations establishing the framework governing a BHP, which also aligned the definition of “lawfully present” with that issued for Exchanges, Medicaid, and CHIP.

Under this final rule, DACA recipients will specifically gain eligibility for enrollment in a Qualified Health Plan through an Exchange and a BHP for states that elect to operate a BHP. The definition of “lawfully present” used in determining eligibility for Medicaid and CHIPs under the CHIPRA 214 option continues to apply. DACA recipients, however, will continue to remain eligible for limited Medicaid coverage for emergency medical condition treatment consistent with 8 U.S.C. § 1611(b)(1)(A) and 42 C.F.R. § 435.406(b).

HHS has justified this change in policy by stating that, after “further review and consideration, it is clear that the DACA policy is intended to provide recipients with a degree of stability and assurance that would allow them to obtain education and lawful employment, including because recipients remain lower priorities for removal. Extending eligibility to these individuals is consistent with those goals.” Of course, the ACA was enacted by Congress before the Obama administration created the DACA program in June 2012. Congress never contemplated providing subsidized health insurance to DACA, and, perhaps more importantly, Congress has never authorized DACA.

USCIS reports estimated the DACA population to stand at about 545,000 individuals as of September 30, 2023 (more than 800,000 aliens have had DACA at one time or another since the program’s creation in 2012). Given that estimate, this rule may benefit as many as 147,000 DACA recipients, although HHS predicts that 100,000 DACA recipients are likely to enroll for the Exchanges and BHP. Most DACA recipients (73 percent) are already covered by health insurance through employer-based plans.

CIS submitted a public comment opposing HHS’s proposal to allow DACA recipients to receive ACA benefits in June 2023. In our comment, CIS argued that HHS should continue to exclude DACA from this definition because DACA has been determined by federal courts to be substantively invalid under federal law.

Additionally, CIS argued that HHS must also exclude TPS, DED, parole, and deferred action recipients (including DACA), generally, from the definition of “lawfully present” for ACA benefit purposes because these categories of aliens may not be “reasonably expected to be lawfully present for the duration of their enrollment”. TPS, DED, parole, and deferred action recipients have all received temporary forms of forbearance or permission to enter the United States, have no lawful immigration status, and no legal right to remain in the United States. As a result, they do not meet the standard Congress set to determine whether an alien should be eligible for benefits under the ACA.

Status of the DACA Litigation

On September 13, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled that the Biden administration’s 2022 DACA regulation, like the original 2012 DACA policy created by an Obama administration memorandum, was unlawful and an abuse of executive branch authority. The ruling allows current DACA recipients to maintain and renew their DACA status and work authorization until they expire. DHS, however, is prohibited from approving new (or “initial”) DACA applications. The Fifth Circuit is currently reviewing the case against DACA — but the court’s prior ruling on the unlawfulness of the 2012 DACA memorandum suggests that the court is likely to reject the Biden administration’s arguments that the program is now somehow legal. Experts expect the case to make its way to the Supreme Court for a final resolution.

End Note

1 The Obama administration, through issuance of a three-page policy memorandum, created the DACA program on June 15, 2012. DACA provides immigration benefits, including employment authorization and forbearance from deportation, to certain aliens who are in the United States illegally. In addition to other eligibility criteria, beneficiaries must have been under the age of 31 on or before June 15, 2012 and have entered United States prior to 2007, thus the DACA-eligible population is now between the ages of 27 to 43 years old.

https://cis.org/Jacobs/Biden-Administration-Extends-Obamacare-Eligibility-DACA-Regulation

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May 7, 2024

USCIS Stats Show Where the Administration’s Focus Is

Hint: It’s on getting ‘inadmissible’ aliens work cards, not worrying about immigrants doing it ‘the right way’

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) publishes so much data it’s often difficult to find anything. But pore over it and you can see where the administration’s real focus is: expediting employment documents for migrants who have no right to be here, not accommodating aliens doing it “the right way” or on helping American workers (both citizens and lawful immigrants) find jobs. If you’re a citizen waiting for your would-be immigrant spouse to complete the paperwork to receive a green card — keep waiting, the administration has more important people to help.

Number of Service-Wide Forms. USCIS publishes a quarterly document captioned “Number of Service-Wide Forms by Quarter, Form Status, and Processing Time”, which is basically a running tally of the applications the agency has received and completed, and the number that remain pending.

At the end of the third quarter of FY 2019, for example, it shows that USCIS had about 330,000 pending asylum applications (Form I-589), about 753,000 pending employment authorization applications (Form I-765), more than 1.5 million Petitions for Alien Relative (Form I-130), and around 35,000 Immigrant Petitions for Alien Workers (Form I-140).

One year later, at the end of the third quarter of FY 2020, the number of asylum applications waiting for adjudication sat near 374,000, there were about 604,000 employment authorization applications, about 1.45 million immediate relative petitions, and just over 47,000 pending I-140s for alien workers.

That was in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, and also at a point when illegal entries at the Southwest border had cratered thanks to some combination of global travel shutdowns, Title 42, and the Migrant Protection Protocols (“MPP”, better known as “Remain in Mexico”).

And then President Biden took office, and the situation at the Southwest border changed dramatically.

In FY 2019, President Trump’s last full year in office, Border Patrol agents at the U.S.-Mexico line nabbed 851,508 migrants who had entered the United States illegally. At the time, that was considered a “bad” border year.

In FY 2022, however, Biden’s first full year in office, apprehensions exceeded 2.2 million, and while 1.054 million of those aliens were expelled under Title 42, 1.152 million others were processed under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), instead. Most of them (more than 88.5 percent by my count) were released — despite the fact that the INA requires them all to be detained.

At the time, parole under section 212(d)(5)(A) of the INA was the administration’s preferred release method (and would remain so until a federal judge told the administration to cut it out in March 2023), meaning that hundreds of thousands of aliens were paroled into the United States that fiscal year.

Here’s why that matters: Unlike aliens who are detained, and aliens who are released directly into removal proceedings instead of being paroled, aliens who are paroled can apply for asylum from USCIS, and most importantly, they can apply for work authorization.

Not surprisingly, by the end of the third quarter of FY 2022, USCIS was sitting on more than 505,000 pending asylum applications and more than 1.5 million applications for employment authorization. That was in addition to 1.7 million pending immediate-relative petitions and nearly 74,000 I-140s.

By that point, USCIS had begun breaking down those employment authorization applications by class: 450,580 based on pending asylum applications; 379,034 for aliens with pending adjustment applications; 108,215 recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA); and “all other” — 574,429 pending.

The DACA applications were likely all renewals under that Obama-era “DREAM Act-lite” scheme, but those “all others” included aliens who had been paroled into the country, and in fact those aliens likely made up the lion’s share of those hundreds of thousands of pending “all other” I-765s.

Then, in January 2023, the White House announced two new parole programs for aliens without visas and no right to be in the United States: CHNV Parole, under which up to 30,000 nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela monthly are allowed to fly into the United States directly; and a separate program under which up to 42,000 would-be illegal migrants are allowed to seek parole after scheduling interviews at the Southwest border ports monthly using the CBP One app (which I’ve dubbed the “CBP One app interview scheme”).

Fast forward a year and three months and here’s what USCIS’s pending applications looked like at the end of FY 2023: 1.022 million pending asylum applications; 1.934 million petitions for alien relatives; 61,000 I-140s; and 777,223 “all other” pending employment-authorization applications.

To be clear, the I-130 is the form you — as a U.S. citizen — must file to get your alien spouse a visa to come to the United States, and as the foregoing shows, if you start that process today, you’ll be getting at the end of a mighty long queue.

“Historical National Median Processing Time”. Well, you might think, maybe the Biden administration, appreciating the massive burden that it is placing on USCIS through its parole schemes, has hired a bunch of new processors and adjudicators, and that the completion process and subsequent wait aren’t that bad.

Think again. For that I turn to yet another USCIS document, this one captioned “Historical National Median Processing Time (in Months) for All USCIS Offices for Select Forms By Fiscal Year”.

Unfortunately, I-589 asylum applications are not tracked on that document, but alien relative petitions, I-765 employment authorization applications, and immigrant worker petitions are.

In FY 2019, it took USCIS 8.6 months to adjudicate I-130s, and about 10 days to adjudicate I-140s (assuming petitioners paid the rather pricey premium processing fee — 5.8 months if they didn’t).

The good news for businesses looking to get immigrant visas for their workers is that this 10-day turnaround for premium processing on I-140s has remained surprisingly consistent in the interim — plainly, you get what you pay through the nose for. But it’s the only thing that has.

The wait for an I-130 grew to 10.3 months in FY 2022, and then to 11.8 months in FY 2023. USCIS claims that the wait for an I-130 in the first quarter of FY 2024 actually dropped to 11.1 months, but that’s still longer than the 8.6 months it had been in FY 2019.

The wait time for a non-premium I-140 stretched to 9.3 months in FY 2022 and stood at 6.6 months at the end of the first quarter of FY 2024 — roughly a month longer than in FY 2019.

If you want employment authorization after you have been paroled in on one of these Biden schemes, however, I’ve got good — no great — news. You would have had to wait 6.1 months for a parole-based I-765 in FY 2019, but by FY 2021 (Biden’s first partial year in office), that was down to about 20 days.

That delay ticked up to 1.3 months by FY 2023, but not to worry — in the first quarter of FY 2024, it was down to .9 months, roughly 27 days. Sure, you have no visa and no right to enter the United States, and as the Biden administration recently admitted to Congress, you “are, by definition, inadmissible”, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to work here!

By the way, if you have a pending adjustment application (Form 1-485) and are on your way to a green card through lawful means (current wait time: 9.7 months for a family-based application), you “are, by definition, a sucker”: your I-765 will be delayed about four months before USCIS can accommodate you. Take a number and we’ll call you as soon as we can.

One reason why aliens without visas “are, by definition, inadmissible” is to protect the wages and working conditions of American workers. The Biden administration, however, has abandoned that concept, that is at the core of immigration law, in favor of expediting work cards for parolees, regardless of the effect that it has on American workers, and on those aliens trying to come here “the right way”.

https://cis.org/Arthur/USCIS-Stats-Show-Where-Administrations-Focus

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May 6, 2024

Migrant who killed his ex with a skewer in front of her children should have been kicked out of the UK TWENTY years ago

A murder victim's family have told of their fury after discovering her killer was an illegal immigrant who should have been deported 20 years ago.

Zimbabwe-born Obert Moyo, 46, had been able to stay in this country despite three previous attacks on women.

He was jailed for life last week with a minimum term of 27 years for stabbing his former partner Perseverance Ncube, 35, through the heart with a foot-long meat skewer in front of her children aged ten and 12.

As he was sentenced, it emerged that jealous Moyo had overstayed on his visa in the early 2000s and went on to commit crimes against women prior to the murder in Salford.

Ms Ncube was an Avon lady known as Percy. Her sister Christine Chiriseri, 28, said the family only discovered the killer was an illegal immigrant after his arrest.

She added: 'I was very angry and upset because all of this tragedy could have been avoided if people had done their jobs properly.

'We all felt very let down by the Home Office and the people who should have made sure he was deported.'

Ms Chiriseri, who is taking care of the children, said: 'I am reeling over everything that has happened.

'I am trying to move on from the whole situation but I still have to process and understand what happened.

'I still feel very angry. It was a short-term relationship and it cost my sister her life.' Moyo, who admitted murder, had been convicted of harassing women in 2007 and 2009, with the latter leading to a six-month sentence.

In 2013, he was jailed for ten years with an extended licence for attacking another ex-partner in Brighton.

The victim was working at a care home when Moyo broke in through a window by unscrewing it and burning it with a blowtorch.

Once inside and armed with numerous weapons including two knives and a screwdriver, he went on to repeatedly punch her, cut her with the knife and strangle her.

He was convicted of wounding with intent, threats to kill and aggravated burglary.

On his release, instead of deporting him as an 'overstayer', the Home Office fitted him with a tag.

The murder trial at Manchester Crown Court heard Moyo failed to tell his probation officer as part of his licence conditions that he had started a new relationship with Ms Ncube, a single mother with jobs as a childminder and a bookkeeper.

Moyo forced his way into Ms Ncube's home on November 10 last year and attacked her in her bedroom before chasing her into the street and stabbing her.

Detective Sergeant Fiona Manning said: 'Percy's family deserves answers as to why this man... was allowed to remain in this country illegally. Had Moyo been deported, Percy's children would still have a mother.'

A Home Office spokesman said: 'The Government is doing everything possible to reduce legal challenges and to increase the numbers of foreign national offenders being removed.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13385279/Migrant-killed-woman-meat-skewer.html

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5 May, 2024

Latest Texas Poll Shows Strong Support for Governor’s Border Policies

Nationally, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a lot of heat for his border policies, be it busing migrants to northern cities, criminalizing illegal entries into the state, suing the administration over the president’s border policies, and erecting border barriers at the Rio Grande, but a recent poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas (UT) shows that his stance is playing well in the one place that really matters — with the voters in his state.

That poll was conducted between April 12 and 22 and surveyed 1,200 registered voters in the Lone Star State, with a margin of error of +/- 2.83 percent.

“What Would You Say Is the Most Important Problem ...”. Respondents were asked what the most important problem facing the country today is, and inflation came out on top, the choice of 16 percent of those polled. “The economy” finished third, at 10 percent, meaning that financial concerns combined were viewed as a national problem by more than a quarter of those polled.

Sandwiched between inflation and the economy, however, was “immigration”, the choice of 13 percent of respondents, and directly following the economy was “border security”, at 9 percent. Combined, therefore, immigration and border issues were viewed as the biggest problem facing the country by 22 percent of respondents.

Texas being Texas, the pollsters then asked respondents what the biggest problem facing their state was, and that order above was more than reversed: 20 percent — one-fifth of all respondents — identified immigration as the biggest issue facing Texas, and 19 percent said it was “border security” — 39 percent all told.

The two pocketbook issues — inflation and the economy — were identified as the most important issue facing Texas by just 9 percent and 6 percent of respondents, respectively, for a total of 15 percent.

That itself is remarkable, given that its more than 400 miles between Amarillo (in the panhandle) and the closest point at the Southwest border (in Langtry on the Rio Grande), and hours in driving distance from the border to major metropolitan centers like Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston. And yet, all Texans are all feeling the heat from what’s happening at the international boundary.

Border Concerns. UT then asked respondents their thoughts on whether they deemed the number of migrants attempting to cross the Southwest border “a crisis”, “a very serious problem, but not a crisis”, “a somewhat serious problem”, “not much of a problem”, or a subject on which they didn’t have an opinion.

In response, 48 percent of those polled deemed illegal immigration at the Mexican border a crisis, 23 percent stated that it was a serious problem, 19 percent deemed it a somewhat serious problem, and just 8 percent believed it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Those responses were fairly consistent with polling done two months earlier in February, which indicates that Texans by and large are concerned about the border and that not much the Biden administration has done of late has ameliorated those apprehensions.

More telling, however, was the next question, which asked respondents in each camp whether their concerns were related to one or more of six specific impacts of illegal migration.

In response, 59 percent of those who deemed the border a crisis had concerns about the strains those migrants are having on local resources; 57 percent about their impact of national security; 56 percent about crime; 53 percent their impact on the economy; 36 percent on the effect that they would have on U.S. culture; and 31 percent about the effects on the migrants and their wellbeing.

The ”somewhat concerned” cohort put the wellbeing of the migrants at the top of their list (a 37 percent response), followed by local resources (28 percent), culture (25 percent), crime (23 percent), national security (22 percent), and the economy (21 percent).

Interestingly, both the “not too concerned” and the “not concerned at all” folks were most concerned about the impact those migrants would have on American culture (an 18 percent and 20 percent response, respectively), followed by economic impacts for those who were not too concerned about illegal migration (17 percent) and the impact on the migrants themselves for those who aren’t concerned at all (14 percent).

Those responses deserve a much fuller analysis than I can offer here, but it’s safe to say that the nearly half of Texas voters who believe the border is a full-blown crisis have high levels of anxiety with nearly every negative aspect of illegal immigration.

Proper Federal Response. Respondents were next asked what the federal government should do about illegal immigration, and more than half — 52 percent — strongly supported increasing Border Patrol resources, while 81 percent in total supported such a move to one degree or another (just 13 percent opposed such action).

That was the most popular response, followed by 72 percent who supported increasing the number of immigration judges and other staff; 70 percent who want to penalize businesses that hire unauthorized aliens; 67 percent who want to increase deportations of those already here; 63 percent who want to expand opportunities for aliens to come here legally; an equal percentage (63 percent) who want to expand the Southwest border wall; 57 percent who want to make it harder for “asylum seekers” to obtain temporary legal status here; 56 percent who want to increase resources available for migrants; and just 41 percent who want to send aid to migrant-sending countries.

That latter response to illegal migration, of course, is the basis of the Biden administration’s “root causes” strategy of expanding economic opportunities for would-be illegal migrants in Central America, and in that vein, it should be noted that 46 percent oppose shipping aid abroad to stem illegal migration.

It’s especially curious, however, that exactly equal percentages of respondents support both expanding legal immigration opportunities and “building the wall”, but even more notable is that equal percentages of respondents (29 percent in each case) oppose such action.

Plainly the opinions of Texas voters about what the administration should do to stem the tide of illegal migrants are all over the map, but what’s clear is that they want something done.

That said, when asked which of these options would be most effective, a plurality (19 percent) chose the wall, followed by expanding opportunities for aliens to come legally (16 percent), increasing deportations (13 percent), expanding Border Patrol resources (also 13 percent), and making it harder for asylum seekers to temporarily stay (10 percent).

The “root causes” idea came in dead last, at 5 percent.

Support For Texas’ Border Policies. Finally, respondents were asked whether they supported or opposed various initiatives the state of Texas has taken to secure the Southwest border.

“Deploying additional state police and military resources to the border between Texas and Mexico”—the key component of “Operation Lone Star”, which Abbott implemented beginning in March 2021 — was the most popular among Texas voters in this poll, with 69 percent of respondents in support and 25 percent in opposition.

In second place was “constructing and/or repairing walls or physical barriers on the border between Texas and Mexico”, supported by 65 percent of the respondents in the UT poll, and opposed by 28 percent.

I’ll skip over the third most popular state initiative for a moment to go to the fourth-place finisher, “placing buoys and barbed wire at the Rio Grande River to deter migration”, again part of Lone Star, which was supported by 58 percent of those polled (36 percent of whom opposed).

President Biden is likely not relying on Texas’ 40 electoral votes in November, but this is likely bad news for an administration currently suing the state in federal court for the right to remove both the buoys and portions of the wire in Maverick County (Eagle Pass and its environs).

Next in popularity is “suing the federal government over federal immigration policies”, which enjoys the support of more than half — 54 percent — of Texas voters polled. That is an option the state has definitely chosen with gusto, albeit with mixed results (at best).

“Paying to bus foreign migrants awaiting their asylum hearings to other parts of the country outside Texas”, a policy Abbott implemented beginning in April 2022 to the dismay of the mayors of Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, and other “sanctuary” jurisdictions, was supported by just over half, 51 percent, of respondents. On the flip side, just 39 percent of those polled opposed the busing scheme.

The least popular Texas policy polled was “preventing U.S. Border Patrol agents from accessing parts of the Texas-Mexico border”, which a majority (51 percent) opposed and just 31 percent supported.

To the best of my knowledge, the only area the state had barred agents from entering was Shelby Park, in Eagle Pass, and even then only during a Supreme Court showdown over CBP’s right to cut the Maverick County wire in January.

Which brings me to the third most popular Texas state border initiative in the UT poll: “Making it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant to be in Texas in most circumstances”, which actually drew a surprising amount of support given all the folderol nationally — and locally — that has surrounded it.

The initiative in question is Senate Bill 4 (SB 4), which would, inter alia, make it a misdemeanor for an alien to cross the border into Texas illegally. SB 4 was supposed to go into effect on March 1, but thus far the Biden administration has successfully blocked its implementation in federal court.

Despite that fact (or possibly in part because of it) 62 percent of Texas voters in this poll supported the law, compared to just 30 percent who opposed criminalizing illegal status. That 2-to-1 margin likely doesn’t sit well with the Texas Democratic party, which has branded SB 4 a “racist ... anti-immigration law”.

Operation Lone Star and the other state border initiatives described above have cost Texas taxpayers billions of dollars, and yet they still garner widespread support from voters. That’s because, as the UT poll reveals, Texans are uniquely concerned about the implications — on their state and the nation — of insecurity at the U.S.-Mexico line.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Latest-Texas-Poll-Shows-Strong-Support-Governors-Border-Policies

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2 May, 2024

Accused Guatemalan Murderer Loose in Florida

Thank you, Joe Biden




Graphic bodycam footage from the Hillsborough County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) shows the moment last Thursday when Angel Gabriel Cuz-Choc — who has been accused of stabbing his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter to death — was taken into custody after a heated struggle. The facts of his arrest are undisputed, though the charges are unresolved, but the real question is how the illegal immigrant from Guatemala — who’s been here for three months — managed to enter.

The Alleged Crime. According to the local Fox affiliate, court documents in the case reveal the following about the crimes with which Cuz-Choc is charged:

The nature and circumstances of these offenses are excessively violent and brutal. The defendant attacked and stabbed his live-in girlfriend multiple times. In addition, he stabbed an innocent and defenseless four-year-old child while she was in the bathtub. The heinous nature of the offenses elevates [the] probability of danger the defendant’s release poses to our community and establish[es] that no conditions of release will reasonably protect the community from risk of physical harm.

It's alleged that after the offense, Cuz-Choc ran through a nearby field and into a wooded area, which is where deputies caught up to him 17 hours later. He allegedly confessed to the crimes and is charged with two counts of first-degree murder with a weapon, kidnapping, and aggravated child abuse.

While, as always, the defendant’s presumed innocent until he’s proven guilty, the cops appear to have some solid evidence in the case, at least according to the local NBC outlet, which reported based on court filings that:

Surveillance video obtained by HCSO showed the woman, identified as Amalia Cuc Choc, 36, “attempting to run from a male subject and screaming,” ... . The video also showed the woman “yelling in terror” as she was “being carried against her will” to a trailer, following the same path where deputies later discovered a trail of blood, according to detectives. They found her partially clothed, laying in a pool of blood and hidden beneath a tarp.

Her 4-year-old daughter, Estrella Pec Coc, was also found dead, laying in a “small pool of water” in a bathtub with the water still running, according to HCSO. Both victims were discovered with multiple stab wounds.

It’s unclear whether Cuz-Choc and the victims entered the United States together, or even knew each other before they got here. The sheriff stated that the mother and child came to the area about seven months ago, while other reports indicate that the trio arrived in Hillsborough County together from Guatemala three months ago.

Regardless, Cuz-Choc is not the child’s father, who reportedly is still in Guatemala.

“It’s Not the First Time I’ve Killed People”. The purported motive for the crimes is a claim Cuz-Choc became angry after Amalia Cuc Choc stayed out later with a friend than she had promised. Making the facts of the case even more disturbing is the following, also from the NBC affiliate:

Those who know Amalia and Estrella said this wasn’t the first time the suspect was violent with the victims. Pec Coc’s sister said Cuz-Choc had previously threatened their family.

“A man called me and told me to tell my sister to come back to him, because if she doesn’t, there will be consequences. It’s not the first time I’ve killed people. I’ve already killed people in Guatemala,” Dolores Choc said.

Again, these are all just allegations until proven, but assuming this threat was real (and the foregoing offers any number of reasons to think it is), it raises the question of how Cuz-Choc managed to enter the United States illegally given his criminal background.

Two Possible Answers. There are two possible answers to that last question, and neither puts the administration’s border policies in a good light. Either Cuz-Choc was apprehended by the Border Patrol, processed, and released; or he is just one of the approximately 1.8 million “got-aways”, aliens who managed to evade overwhelmed agents at the Southwest border and make their way into the United States.

If it’s the former, Cuz-Choc’s release begs the question of how DHS managed to miss the violent past of a migrant who entered the United States illegally, calls into doubt the effectiveness of the department’s vetting processes, and underscores why Congress mandated that such aliens be detained until they are either granted asylum or removed.

If it’s the latter, and he's a got-away, it’s just one more example of why it’s incumbent on the administration to secure the Southwest border now, and why border security can’t wait until a new president comes in to clean up this mess next January or in January 2029.

One Final Question. You’d be forgiven if you were unaware that a recent illegal migrant from Guatemala has been charged with the savage murders of his girlfriend and a toddler in a mobile home in Dover, Fla., 20 miles east of Tampa. The case hasn’t attracted much national attention, aside from a CBS News report that highlighted the sheriff's department bodycam footage last Friday.

That raises the question as to why such a brutal and senseless offense hasn’t received more coverage from networks that increasingly depend upon the lurid and disturbing side of human nature for clicks.

Is it because this story undermines the popular narrative that illegal migrants are simply coming here “for a better life”, or disproves the trope that such migrants are “less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans”, or is it just because domestic violence is so endemic that it’s just not “news”?

If it’s the latter, then reporters have good company in DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who (paternalistically) warned ICE officers in his September 2021 “Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law” that “a categorical determination that a domestic violence offense compels apprehension and removal could make victims of domestic violence more reluctant to report the offense conduct”.

I can think of two victims who, if the facts as alleged in this case are true, would beg to differ with the secretary’s belief that domestic violence should not compel the “apprehension and removal” of an illegal migrant — if only they had the chance to do so.

How did an illegal migrant from Guatemala end up months later in Florida — where it’s alleged that he committed two unspeakable murders? Only Biden’s DHS can answer that question, and there’s likely a reason why they aren’t talking — and why most of the media isn’t either.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Why-Was-Accused-Guatemalan-Murderer-Loose-Florida

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1 May, 2024

Two Swing State Polls Show Immigration Is on the Ballot in November

Two recently released polls show immigration is on the ballot and may be the deciding issue in the November presidential election. While American voters largely slept on this issue throughout the first three years of the Biden administration, they have received a rude awakening of late — but they could always again lose focus on the border as the election year heats up and the media offers other distractions.

One poll was conducted by Morning Consult for Bloomberg and the other by British opinion firm Redfield & Wilton Strategies (RWS) for the Telegraph (UK). The Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll involved 4,969 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and it has a margin of error of +/- 1 percent. The RWS poll included 5,010 voters in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, with no reported margin of error.

Morning Consult/Bloomberg. The first thing that sticks out in the Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll are two similar questions, one that asks respondents whether the economy is on the right track or wrong track nationally, and one that posits the same question locally.

Just 30 percent of those polled believed that the national economy is on the right track, but 43 percent thought the same about economic conditions in their own states. In other words, the rest of the country is going to hell in a handbasket in the minds of most voters, but in those seven swing states, things could be worse. Overall, though, the economic picture is grim.

Turning to the subject at hand, however, 58 percent of those swing-state voters stated that immigration would be “very important” when they cast their votes in November, and an additional 28 percent of respondents said that it would be “somewhat important”, for an overall importance of 86 percent.

While that’s insightful, a majority of voters polled stated that every issue they were asked about — the economy (96 percent important), infrastructure (81 percent important), housing (85 percent important), crime (91 percent important), climate change (64 percent important), education and schools (87 percent important), guns (79 percent important), abortion (76 percent important), senior services (89 percent important), etc. merited consideration at the ballot box, though there was an intensity gap among those issues.

Much more telling was the next question: “Asking this a different way, what is the single most important issue to you when deciding how to vote in the November 2024 election for U.S. president?”

As Bill Clinton advisor James Carville famously noted during the 1992 presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid”, and not surprisingly, the “Ragin’ Cajun’s” sage advice still applies: Just over a third, 34 percent of swing-state voters, identified the economy as their most important issue come November.

That said, immigration came in second among voters’ key issues, at 15 percent. To underscore how important immigration is to the swing-state electorate, no other issue polled in the double digits, and third place was taken (again, not surprisingly) by abortion, tied with “democracy” at 9 percent.

Immigration is what I do for a living, but if you had told me two years ago that it would edge out abortion as a key voting issue in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, I would have questioned your sanity and/or your analysis. And yet, here we are.

Abortion is shaping up in the minds of many in the national media to be a big deal in the elections in Arizona, where an 1864 law banning the practice was recently given new life by the state’s Supreme Court. (The state House voted this week to repeal it.) And yet, in the Grand Canyon State, 23 percent of registered voters said that immigration was a more important electoral issue than abortion (12 percent).

In fact, immigration came close to edging out the economy among Arizona voters, 26 percent of whom identified the economy as their top issue. Of course, Arizona was the only battleground state on the border in the Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll.

Arizona voters were the most likely to identify immigration as a top issue, while Georgia voters (at 13 percent) were the least likely. That said, it was still the number two issue in the Peach Tree State, trailing only the economy (at 41 percent).

Here’s how the rest of the states lined up: Michigan (the economy 35 percent, immigration second at 14 percent); Nevada (the economy 34 percent, immigration second at 21 percent); North Carolina (the economy 33 percent, immigration second at 14 percent); Pennsylvania (the economy 33 percent, immigration second at 16 percent, but abortion a close third at 13 percent); and Wisconsin (the economy 30 percent, immigration second at 16 percent).

Overall, voters trusted Donald Trump over Joe Biden to handle immigration, by a 52 percent to 32 percent margin (16 percent didn’t trust either of them).

In Georgia, however, that was a 48 percent to 36 percent split, and in Pennsylvania it was 50 percent to 36 percent, while in Nevada it was 57 to 28. The rest of the states largely matched up with the national average on this Biden vs. Trump issue.

RWS. The RWS poll asked slightly different questions and received slightly different results. Unfortunately, its results are mostly graphs, but they still tell a similar tale.

In that one, “the cost of living” was the main concern on voters’ minds in the six states polled, with “the cost of healthcare” coming in second and “illegal immigration” taking third place.

Further, as RWS explains:

    immigration . . . continues to be a major problem area for the Biden Administration, [as] majorities of voters in Arizona (54%), Pennsylvania (54%), and Michigan (52%) disapprove of Joe Biden’s job performance, as do pluralities of voters in the other three states polled.

That’s a problem for the incumbent, because 60 percent of RWS respondents in Michigan, 63 percent of voters in Pennsylvania, and 71 percent of those polled in Arizona believe that the United States does not have control over its borders.

On the bright side for the incumbent, he’s only 16 points underwater with voters in Florida with respect to immigration (30 percent approve vs. 46 percent disapprove), whereas in Arizona he’s 27 percentage points in the red (27 percent approve vs. 54 percent disapprove).

Voters in all six states trust Trump more than Biden when it comes to immigration: Arizona — Biden 32 percent to Trump 52 percent; Florida — Biden 31 percent to Trump 52 percent; Georgia — Biden 33 percent to Trump 48 percent; Michigan — Biden 35 percent to Trump 47 percent; North Carolina — Biden 31 percent to Trump 48 percent; and Pennsylvania — Biden 36 percent to Trump 50 percent.

As an aside, Republicans should not sleep on the issue of abortion in Florida, where it is the second most important issue, slightly ahead of immigration but still trailing the economy by a wide margin, nor in my current home state of North Carolina, where there’s a similar trend.

Recent Interest in Immigration. That’s especially true given the fact that abortion has been an evergreen issue throughout my entire lifetime, whereas immigration has only been heating up of late, as voters have become aware (and increasingly concerned) about the chaos at the Southwest border in the last year.

As recently as March 2023, immigration was a third-place finisher when voters were asked to identify their most important issue in that month’s Harvard-Harris poll, at 23 percent, trailing inflation (35 percent) and the economy and jobs (28 percent).

When Harvard-Harris asked the same question one year later, immigration jumped to the top spot, the choice of 36 percent of respondents, ahead of inflation (33 percent) and the economy (23 percent).

A lot could happen between April and November, either distracting voters away from immigration and the border or alternatively directing their attention to those issues. The same is likely not as true among those for whom abortion is and always will be their key concern.

Given that Biden has the first and last word on immigration and the border (at least until January 20, 2025, at a minimum), however, the current president could bolster his electoral hopes by switching course and gaining a handle on illegal immigration — or at least giving the appearance that he has.

I expect that the appearance of gaining control is a lot more likely than the reality, which is why an objectively Biden-friendly media keeps talking about the prospect of him using his “executive” power to bring the border under control.

If there is such a White House move, expect it to be largely for show and linked to some sort of amnesty, like one for the illegal-alien spouses of U.S. citizens that I recently discussed. Should that come to pass, you can bank on the amnesty, but likely not any meaningful enforcement.

Anything can happen in the next six months, but for now it appears that immigration could well decide how voters in key swing states will cast their ballots, which in turn will determine which candidate — Joe Biden or Donald Trump — will be sworn in next January. And for now, that issue favors the 45th president, and his party.

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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://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

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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