He added, “Our numbers are actually increasing. In the past 30 days alone, we’ve intercepted over 340 alien smuggling cases. … We’ve seen an increase in high-speed pursuits through our neighboring counties, through our local county here, Val Verde County. Those pursuits are up 117% so far this year. The number of sex offenders that we have arrested within these groups of individuals is up significantly, over 2,000%.”
Biden Trips on the Border
Column: The one issue where the White House plays defense
The pickings are slim for Republicans in Joe Biden’s Washington. For the past few months, the president has maintained a job approval rating in the mid- to low-50s. He has a net positive rating in the double digits. He gets good marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, for his distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines, and for his (misguided) decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The American Rescue Plan is extremely popular, and the American Jobs Plan polls well. The rules of the House and budget reconciliation in the Senate mean that Republicans are powerless to stop major economic legislation from becoming law. Meanwhile, the conservative grassroots are more interested in election integrity and identity politics than in policy. GOP officials are frustrated. "It’s always harder to fight against a nice person because usually people will sort of give him the benefit of the doubt," Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) told The Hill recently.
There’s one issue, however, where the public has doubts. It’s the border. The surge in illegal immigration throughout his first 100 days in office has left Biden vulnerable to Republican criticisms and worried about the political implications. The crisis has exposed as false the idea that this administration is staffed with an "A-Team" of "hyper-competent" technocrats able to manage anything that comes their way. Leaks to the news media reveal an administration playing an internal blame game. The typically unflappable Jen Psaki has been caught up in spats with the White House press corps. The upshot is that Biden’s missteps have given the GOP an opportunity to unite around border security and tight labor markets.
The public doesn’t like the results of Biden’s asylum policies. Just 24 percent of adults in a late March AP-NORC poll approved of Biden’s handling of the border surge. Last week’s Quinnipiac poll showed 29 percent approval. A Morning Consult survey conducted at the end of last month found that a majority of registered voters blamed Biden, not "seasonal migration," for the spike in illegal entries. Participants in the Engagious/Schlesinger swing-voter focus group doubted that Biden’s emphasis on diplomacy and humanitarian aid would reduce the pressure on the border. "Swing voter support for Biden’s border policies is like sand falling through an hourglass," Engagious president Rich Thau said to Axios.
And Biden’s response isn’t helping. He put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of efforts to solve the problem, but Harris recognized the political peril involved and quickly made it clear that she would be engaged in diplomacy rather than emergency response. Harris will meet virtually with the president of Guatemala on April 26, two days after her in-person visit to New Hampshire. The southern border has yet to appear on her schedule.
With Harris burnishing her foreign policy credentials, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has been left to coordinate the administration’s efforts. One reason Republicans unanimously opposed Becerra’s confirmation was that he’s a lawmaker and activist in a job best suited for bureaucrats and wonks. They had a point. The press routinely depicts Biden as unhappy with Becerra and "frustrated" at his inability to house, care for, and resettle unaccompanied minors safely and swiftly. What did Biden expect? The moment demands a figure with the logistical brilliance of Dwight Eisenhower and the moral core of Albert Schweitzer. That description doesn’t exactly fit Becerra, who is best known for suing nuns.
Nor is the anti-Becerra leak campaign the only piece of evidence that the White House fears an immigration backlash. Last week, in the space of several hours, Biden flip-flopped on refugee admissions. First came the announcement that, contrary to his campaign pledge, Biden would not raise the cap on refugees. Democrats and progressives slammed the move as inhumane and illiberal. Then the White House, always keeping an eye on its left flank, said it would increase the number of refugees after all. Press secretary Jen Psaki blamed the confusion on "messaging." She was right—the White House had two different messages in one afternoon. A week later Psaki was still trying to explain the discrepancy.
It turns out that Biden didn’t want to draw further attention to immigration by admitting more refugees during the border crisis. His political instincts may have been sound—but he wasn’t willing to test those instincts against criticism from his own side. The White House can’t even admit that what’s happening on the border is a crisis. When Biden told reporters, "The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people, and we couldn’t do two things at once," Psaki and other administration officials said he was referring to the "crisis" in Central America that is supposedly forcing migrants to seek a better future in the United States. Please.
Biden spoke the truth: There is a crisis on the border. What he can’t accept, however, is that his policies are responsible for it—and are making his political difficulties worse. And so he’s handed Republicans a powerful issue in an otherwise bleak environment. Now they have to use it.
Biden rings another dinner triangle for illegals to surge on in
In the midst of a border crisis he claims isn't happening, Joe Biden has a peculiar means of stopping it:
By inviting more of them in.
According to Breitbart News:
President Joe Biden’s administration may provide immigration rights and citizenship to many foreign “climate migrants” who claim they are being displaced by climate change, the Associated Press (AP) reported this week.
Which doesn't exactly make sense. If the entire Earth is frying up hot from global warming, why would changing the latitude and longitude of a particular group of foreign nationals make any difference to them, or, for that matter, help the Earth to 'heal,' as the lefties like to put it? Isn't the prospect of bringing foreign nationals to hurricane and wildfire zones afflicting the states as a supposed result of global warming, taking them from the frying pan to the fire? Some refugee logic going on there, but that's far from the worst of it.
The climate-change canard is specifically mentioned in lefty literature as the reason why Central American peasants are leaving their subsistence farms and claiming asylum in the United States.
Never mind that urbanization of this kind has happened all over Latin America, and for many, many years. Climate had nothing to do with it. Poverty did. Where did the favelas of Rio de Janeiro come from? Tell us about the shantytowns of Caracas. For uneducated subsistence farmers, it often makes more sense to leave a hand-to-mouth existence in the zero-infrastructure countryside where the government does nothing, than to try one's luck on the outskirts of the region's miserable oversized cities and live on garbage scraps and Chiclet sales. In places such as Bogota, Medellin, and Lima, the countryside refugees flowing into the cities are actual war refugees, escaping communist guerrilla brutality. I've been to those places -- and I asked.
Joe didn't include them in his invitation, of course, he just rang the triangle for "climate" refugees. If someone mismanages their land, or wants better salary or a country with rule of law, well then, blame the climate, and come on in.
What's obnoxious about this is that pretty much anyone in El Salvador, Honduras, or Guatemala can claim that. Climate change doesn't come for just conuco farms, though, by its own logic it's supposedly all over. So anyone who lives in those places now, country or city, hard-hit farm, or shantydown, has a right to asylum, on climate grounds, since we're the bad guys, you see, and we owe it. Quick, get over here, the time is now, get in before Joe changes his addled mind, so the invitation reads.
Let's also talk about those conuco farms -- farms which subsist by burning brush and forest -- which is why Brazil and Bolivia had a air pollution crisis a couple years ago. These farms exist all over Latin America. What Joe's doing is offering asylum in the states to the very people who are contributing to the polluting by burning all the brush. Those carbon emissions from those subsistence farms, blameworthy or not, add a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Joe's not rewarding greenies with green cards in this current dinner triangle for climate refugees, he's offering it to the biggest polluters.
And the nonsense about climate refugees itself is nonsense, too. Land mismanagement, a failure of government to issue title-deed to peasants for their property rights, all make the land vulnerable to mismanagement, overuse, and burning. It's the tragedy of the commons, as the matter is known. Fix that, and you get American-style greenery and bona fide ownership management.
Breitbart noted that Joe didn't see fit to invite any of the presidents of these Central American countries where the migrants are surging in to the states to his low-viewer conference, you'd think their input might be valuable.
Most hideous of all is that Joe is issuing this climate refugee invitation right in the middle of a border surge.
His previous invitation was to unaccompanied minors, but it's apparently not been enough. That blunder led to many Latin American presidents condemning his idiocy, as tens of thousands surge over and find themselves in overcrowded government detention facilities, filling not just those but stadiums, convention centers and military bases all around the U.S.
Biden's denied that he's the one responsible, but the double-digit surges in numbers, as well as the news stories of toddlers dumped over the border wall and left alone, killed in high speed car crashes, or abandoned in the desert by smugglers tell another story. Or, you could ask those migrants in Biden t-shirts why they're coming, they'd point to Biden, too.
There was an incentive offered to do things this way instead of use the legal channel, and now Joe's encouraging more of it, inviting pretty much all of Central America and anyone else from any country to claim a chimerical climate refugee status.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that Joe Biden really doesn't care that there's a border surge and actually wants a bigger one. He's likely to get his wish with this one, with a bigger surge about to begin.
Image: Screen shot from video from Sky News Australia, via YouTube, citing thescoop.us and @crazyraiderrad (IG)
To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Kamala Harris to Meet Virtually with Guatemalan President
Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to meet virtually with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei to “collaborate” on migration solutions, according to a statement from a White House official.
Senior Advisor and Chief Spokesperson Symone Sanders issued the following statement Wednesday evening:
Vice President Kamala Harris and Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei will meet virtually on Monday, April 26. During this meeting, the two will discuss working together to address immediate relief needs of the Guatemalan people as well as deepening cooperation on migration.
The following day, the Vice President will participate in a virtual roundtable with representatives from Guatemalan community based organizations. This convening will be hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City and will underscore the importance of placing the Guatemalan people at the center of solutions to root causes of migration.
The Vice President last spoke with President Giammattei on March 30th. In that conversation, they agreed to collaborate on promoting economic development, leveraging technology, strengthening climate resilience, and creating the conditions to expand opportunity for people in their home countries in order to address the root causes of migration to the United States.
In the statement, Sanders noted that Harris and Giammattei’s conversation will include relief needs for Guatemalans, noting the two had previously spoken on March 30.
According to the statement, Harris is also slated to participate in a virtual roundtable with representatives from Guatemalan community-based organizations, which will be hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City.
According to an Axios report on the matter, Harris will also travel to Guatemala in June.
Last month, Harris, who was tapped by President Joe Biden to oversee solutions to the crisis on the southern border and has yet to make a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, told reporters “not today” in response to a question about her plans to visit.
“But I have before and I’m sure I’ll do it again,” Harris, who still has no plans to visit the border, added with a laugh.
“We’ve got to treat this issue in a way that is reflective of our values as Americans and do it in a way that is fair and is humane, but we have to meet the moment,” she said, giving no further clues on a planned visit. “There’s a lot of work going into that.”
Follow Kyle on Twitter @RealKyleMorris and Facebook.
Mike Pence: Joe Biden’s Open Borders Cuts Wages, Crowds Schools
President Joe Biden’s failure to guard the border is threatening the jobs, wages, and schools needed by ordinary Americans, says an op-ed by former Vice President Mike Pence.
“Until left-wing politicians recognize the true nature of the border crisis and its roots in far-left policies, the crisis only will get worse,” Pence wrote in his April 21 article for DailySignal.com. “American families will be punished with lost jobs, lower wages, overcrowded schools, and overburdened public services,” he added.
Pence’s comments are “either complete smoke-blowing, or he has come to understand the really fundamental problems about our immigration policy and their effect on working-class Americans,” said Jessica Vaughan, the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Pence “does not have a good record on immigration, but he may have learned a lot during his time in the White House,” she said.
“I’m willing to give people the benefit of the doubt,” she added.
Besides, “what’s important is not what politicians think, but what they do,” she said.
And, she continued, “the more they go on record in this way, the harder it makes it later for them to renege.”
Moreover, she noted, the 2024 “primary voters have long memories and will not be fooled by insincere statements that are contradicted by actions.”
Two more polls show the chaos of Joe Biden's half-open/half-closed border is damaging his ratings with independents & Latinos who recognize the harms.
GOP leaders are changing their talking points to maximize their gain from the progressives' ambition https://t.co/6xPvyCdevz— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) April 15, 2021
Before being picked to serve as Vice President to President Donald Trump, Pence was governor of Indiana and did little to offset or curb the inflow of foreign workers.
For example, the Indiana-based Cummins Inc. uses the federal H-1B program to import hundreds of cheap and inexperienced Indian visa workers annually. Those visa workers take the jobs needed by the young American engineers who trained at universities to design and build engines.
In 2015, Pence folded when business groups opposed a GOP-backed religious freedom law.
In the White House, Pence and his aides did little to help Trump. Pence’s top aide, Marc Short, for example, was hired from a Koch brothers business group, and he played a largely passive role as Democrats blocked Trump’s immigration reform bills and his plans for a border wall.
Since February 21, Pence has been “a distinguished visiting fellow” at Heritage Foundation. The foundation’s board is also looking to replace the recently departed president, Kay James.
Pence’s op-ed on Biden’s tolerance for illegal migration, however, was welcomed by pro-American reformers.
Pence wrote:
President Joe Biden inherited the most secure southern border in American history. Under the Trump-Pence administration, we built more than 450 miles of the world’s most robust border wall, reducing illegal crossings by over 90%.
…
The catastrophe now unfolding at our border is a direct result of progressive policies and pronouncements emanating from Democrats in Washington. But Democrats can end this disaster just as quickly as they caused it. All they have to do is reinstate commonsense border enforcement and stop treating U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol as a concierge service for illegal aliens.
The truth is, support for open borders and unlimited immigration is a key precept of today’s Democrat Party. It is extremely telling that most Democrat politicians refuse to even utter the word “crisis” to describe what obviously is an unmitigated disaster. Many on the radical left likely don’t see the current crisis as a failure, but ultimately as a victory in their never-ending struggle for open borders.
…
The savage drug cartels that profit from human smuggling will grow richer and more powerful by the day, bolstering their ability to terrorize their home nations while flooding American neighborhoods with a sea of poisonous drugs and violence.
And American families will be punished with lost jobs, lower wages, overcrowded schools, and overburdened public services.
Pence focused on the similar threats posed by mass illegal immigration and of legal open borders — and ignored the existing and huge economic impact of legal migration and of legal visa workers:
America is a welcoming nation to many who come in search of opportunity, but we also must be a nation of laws. Open borders combined with free health care, education, and welfare is a recipe for disaster. You can be for working-class families or you can be for open borders—but you cannot be for both.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.
This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, rational, and recognizes the solidarity that Americans owe to each other.
The voter opposition to elite-backed economic migration coexists with support for legal immigrants and some sympathy for illegal migrants. But only a minority of Americans — mostly university-credentialed progressives — embrace the many skewed polls and articles pushing the 1950’s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.
The deep public opposition to labor migration is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money away from most Americans’ pocketbooks and families. It moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, from red states to blue states, and from the central states — such as Pence’s Indiana — to the coastal states such as New York.
Bloomberg exposes the OPT-worker program that CEOs use to push many US graduates out of tech & Fortune 500 careers.
You'd think estb. journos would care about their kids' futures. But corporate media won't follow the $$ in migration politics.#H1B #OPT https://t.co/4PWGwSiXjq— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) March 13, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment