House Democrats have advanced a plan that would allow hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens enrolled in former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to take jobs in the United States Congress.
California has its first “unprotected” illegal alien in state office, after Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) appointed Lizbeth Mateo to the California Student Opportunity and Access Program Project Grant Advisory Committee.
Mateo, an attorney, was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. illegally at the age of 14 with her parents, who are also illegal aliens, according to the Sacramento Bee
She complained that illegal aliens are not adequately represented in state government, and described her appointment as a step towards correcting that alleged injustice.
“While undocumented students have become more visible in our state, they remain underrepresented in places where decisions that affect them are being made,” Mateo said, as quoted by Fox News.
De León, who is running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), described Mateo as: “a courageous, determined and intelligent young woman who at great personal risk has dedicated herself to fight for those seeking their rightful place in this country,” according to Fox News.
Mateo, however, seems somewhat confused about which country she prefers.
In a Facebook post in 2016, apparently celebrating her graduation from Santa Clara University School of Law, Mateo declared, in Spanish: “[E]verything is dedicated to Oaxaca, Mexico!! to that land that I miss so much.”
Lizbeth Mateo (Facebook)
While she is the first “unprotected” illegal alien to hold a state office, she is not the first elevated to public office in California. In 2015, the city council of Huntington Park, California, appointed two illegal aliens to city commissions, sparking a public backlash.
De León and other state officials are stoking an ongoing confrontation with the federal government over federal immigration laws.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution , which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak .
Clarification: the State Senate indicated that Lizbeth Mateo was the first illegal alien appointed to state office, but in fact she is only the first without any legal protected status. “The Senate announced that the appointment was a first for the state, but that wasn’t true,” the Sacramento Bee noted . Gov. Jerry Brown appointed a DACA recipient to a state office in 2016. The article has been corrected to reflect that.
Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/another_line_they_cut_into_illegals_get_free_public_housing_as_impoverished_americans_wait.html
By Monica Showalter
Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.
The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do it yesterday.
According to a report in the Washington Times :
The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.
Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.
Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.
“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”
The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.
Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.
The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact being shut out.
The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.
The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.
Los Angeles County Pays Over a Billion in Welfare to Illegal Aliens Over Two Years BY MASOOMA HAQ
In 2015 and 2016, Los Angeles County paid nearly $1.3 billion in welfare funds to illegal aliens and their families. That figure amounts to 25 percent of the total spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to Fox News .
The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in California, Pew reported.
Approximately a quarter of California’s 4 million illegal immigrants reside in Los Angeles County. The county allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.
The welfare benefits data acquired by Fox News comes from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services and shows welfare and food stamp costs for the county’s entire population were $3.1 billion in 2015, $2.9 billion in 2016.
The data also shows that during the first five months of 2017, more than 60,000 families received a total of $181 million.
Over 58,000 families received a total of $602 million in benefits in 2015 and more than 64,000 families received a total of $675 million in 2016.
Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who studies poverty and illegal immigration , told Fox the costs represent “the tip of the iceberg.”
“They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend,” Rector said. It can cost the government a total of $24,000 per year per family to pay for things like education, police, fire, medical, and subsidized housing.
In February of 2019, the Los Angeles city council signed a resolution making it a sanctuary city. The resolution did not provide any new legal protections to their immigrants, but instead solidified existing policies.
In October 2017, former California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54 into law. This bill made California, in Brown’s own words, a “sanctuary state.” The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the State of California over the law. A federal judge dismissed that suit in July. SB 54 took effect on Jan. 1, 2018.
According to Center for Immigration Studies , “The new law does many things: It forbids all localities from cooperating with ICE detainer notices, it bars any law enforcement officer from participating in the popular 287(g) program , and it prevents state and local police from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status.”
Some counties in California have protested its implementation and joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.
California’s campaign to provide public services to illegal immigrants did not end with the exit of Jerry Brown. His successor, Gavin Newsom, is just as focused as Brown in funding programs for illegal residents at the expense of California taxpayers.
California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens, including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities easier for illegal-alien students to attend.
According to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2017 report , for the estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants living in the country, the resulting cost is a $116 billion burden on the national economy and taxpayers each year, after deducting the $19 billion in taxes paid by some of those illegal immigrants.
BLOG: MOST FIGURES PUT THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS IN THE U.S. AT ABOUT 40 MILLION. WHEN THESE PEOPLE ARE HANDED AMNESTY, THEY ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY EFFECTIVELY LEAVING MEXICO DESERTED.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 22 million non-citizens now live in the United States.
IMPOSE E-VERIFY AND PUT EMPLOYERS OF ILLEGALS IN PRISONS BUILT ALONG THE NARCOMEX BORDER AND WE STOP THE INVASION THAT DAY!
Texas Democrat County Judge Invites Biden to Border to ‘Witness Challenges’ He Created ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP via Getty Images 3:17
A Texas Democrat border county judge is inviting President Joe Biden to visit the border and “witness first-hand the challenges being created by current policy.” On Friday afternoon, Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez sent a letter to President Biden inviting him to the region and expressing a need for “immediate and decisive action” in dealing with the ongoing surge in immigration.
In his letter, Judge Cortez asked for federal manpower and resources claiming that while he is sympathetic to the plight of “asylum-seekers,” the government needs to address their needs in a safe manner without putting at risk the well-being of his community. In Texas, a county judge is the chief executive officer for the county’s government.
The letter comes after a week of controversy began when La Joya Police Department issued a health alert after discovering a group of COVID-19 positive migrants eating at a Whataburger and not staying in quarantine. As Breitbart Texas reported, the migrants told police that they had been released by U.S. Border Patrol after testing positive for COVID-19 . That group and several other migrants were staying at a local hotel in La Joya that was being paid for by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV).
Soon after, the City of Weslaco sent out a statement requesting a meeting with CCRGV after learning the charity was using a hotel there to also house sick migrants, Breitbart Texas reported . Cortez also sent a statement calling out Biden’s Department of Homeland Security over the release of sick migrants into the community asking them to stop the practice.
In response to the controversy, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state troopers to stop any civilian vehicles being used to move migrants. The order placed him squarely at odds with the Biden administration.
Cortez is one of the border county judges that had opposed a disaster declaration issued by Governor Abbott claiming that crime in the area had not risen to the level that would merit such a measure.
The judge’s apparent flip flop on border issues received some backlash from Monica De La Cruz Hernandez, a Republican activist turned candidate for U.S. Congress in South Texas.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook . He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com .
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook . He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com .
Republican 2022 Migration Pitch: More Border Funds, Nothing Else Drew Angerer/Getty Images 8:58
The Republican leaders in the House have drafted their initial immigration pitch to 2022 voters, and it offers little or no benefit to the many working Americans who oppose President Joe Biden’s wave of economic migrants.
Rep. John Katko (R-NY), the leadership-picked chairman of the new American Security Task Force , unveiled the leadership’s July 29 Border Security for America Act of 2021 .
“From finishing the border wall system to modernizing technology and bolstering border staffing, this legislation tackles key shortcomings and weaknesses,” Katko said in a statement .
“That’s all there is to it?” responded Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, who noted the bill does not include any language to close up legal loopholes in the border, such as catch-and-release rules:
It is pretty weak. I’m not against it, but it will not address the border crisis. The border crisis is primarily driven by loopholes in the law that everybody is aware of, not by a lack of equipment or personnel. I don’t dispute there almost certainly are personnel and equipment needs, but that’s not the main problem here.
Since January, President Joe Biden’s deputies have used those loopholes to help bring 600,000 migrants across the border, even as they reassure swing voters that they are operating a “humane, orderly and safe immigration system.” That inflow includes roughly 300,000 job-seeking, wage-cutting migrants who were allowed to sneak across the border, and often, to climb across President Donald Trump’s border wall.
A young Mexican helps a compatriot to climb the metal wall that divides the border between Mexico and the United States to cross illegally to Sunland Park, from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico (HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
During Trump’s term, the House GOP leaders drafted a bill to close the loopholes while they also funded Trump’s border wall, Krikorian said:
The border crisis is indisputably driven by these loopholes in the [border] law that Republicans proposed to plug a couple of years ago … Everybody knows what the problem is. Republicans were on board with fixing it and it’s kind of curious that a border-focussed attempt at consensus legislation wouldn’t include the problems that are driving the border, the border crisis.
Moreover, Katko’s bill would simply re-order Biden to do what prior Congresses have already directed. For example, Biden’s deputies have simply ignored critical elements of Congress’s immigration law, refused to deport foreign criminals, and have refused to spend border-wall construction funds appropriated by Congress in 2020.
The bill is co-sponsored by GOP leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY).
“It feels like an attempt to do the least possible to be seen [by voters] as addressing the border crisis, the … a minimalist response to Biden’s disaster on the border,” Krikorian added. “They’re not presenting a coherent alternative vision. They’re just hoping they can get away with a minimal response.”
The votes, tweets , statements , and polling memos from the GOP’s 2022 leadership team corroborate Krikorian’s concerns.
For example, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) chairs the GOP’s campaign group, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). On June 24, he ranked the issues that the NRCC will emphasize in the 2022 race, saying, “You’ve got to have the right message … [and] our third battleground poll of the cycle has shown right now, it’s inflation, its rising prices, it’s the crime wave, it’s the border.”
McCarthy put Katko in charge of the security task force, whose title subordinates the pocketbook issue of immigration underneath security issues, such as the border. That Katko pick sidelined other GOP leaders, such as Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who offers a broader, uplifting, populist, and pocketbook pitch to swing voters — including many of the voters who now tell pollsters that they “somewhat” support Biden’s loose migration policies.
US Representative John Katko (R-NY) addresses the press during the congressional border delegation visit to El Paso, Texas (JUSTIN HAMEL/AFP via Getty Images)
Moreover, Katko’s task force only includes one recognized advocate for working Americans — Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) — alongside several pro-migration advocates. For example, Katko and three other members on the 14-member task force voted in March for a Democrat amnesty bill that would displace many Americans from agriculture jobs and provide the Democrats with millions of government-dependent voters.
“John Katko is the typical corporate Republican,” one person active in the immigration debate told Breitbart News in June, adding:
He speaks a great game on illegal immigration, and is sorrowfully bad on legal immigration to the United States. He has never found a guest worker program he does not support, he’s never found a legal immigration program he does not think should be expanded, and I don’t think that he considers immigration as something that affects working Americans.
Katko’s office declined to answer questions from Breitbart News. McCarthy’s Twitter account did not mention Katko’s border-wall bill.
The surprising passivity on immigration is directed by top GOP officials, one source told Breitbart News. He continued:
I found that there is a really interesting, aggressive core of freshmen House members. They have told me that their [GOP] leadership has essentially pulled them aside and said “Shut up.” In other words, don’t do anything aggressive [such as] oversight letters and hearings. They said, “Leadership has, in several different ways, ranging from explicit to implicit, said, ‘Stand down, be quiet, let the Democrats sink themselves.'”
The Congressional Leadership Fund is the major donor fund for House Republican members. The fund reveals little to the public, but its leaders reportedly also fill out the top positions at a business advocacy group, titled the American Action Network (AAN), which favors low-wage labor migration. In July, the AAN funded a poll of 51 swing-voting districts that touted inflation and crime but downplayed the border crisis.
It would be understandable for McCarthy and his deputies to avoid conflicts with pro-migration donors, said Krikorian. “But the fact that [Katko’s bill] doesn’t include anything on the loopholes is not understandable,” Krikorian said, adding:
Conservatives need to make clear that this is not sufficient. The days they could be bought off with a few shiny pennies are over … That’s what the Trump movement was all about, and they’re not going to eat the dog food any more.
Democrats will exploit the GOP’s passivity to push their own amnesty this year, Krikorian warned. “The conclusion they’re going to draw is that they can continue the disastrous policies at the border without paying too heavy a political price because the Republicans aren’t going to take advantage of the Democrats’ disastrous policies for political gain,” he said. “It definitely will strengthen their resolve to not change what’s going on at the border,” he added.
Without a GOP pushback that offers an uplifting, pocketbook alternative , the many voters who “somewhat” support Biden’s amnesty policies will be more likely to default for Democrats in November 2022, said Chad Bohnert a pollster with Zogby Analytics.
And many of the GOP voters who care about migration will stay home on Election Day without a positive agenda for blue-collar voters, Bohnert added:
There’s 15 percent, 20 percent, of the grassroots, maybe 25 percent, that are pissed at the Country Club Republicans. They won’t go Democrat, but they won’t show up … We know turnout is the key to everything, and it always will be.
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 , bipartisan , rational , persistent , and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.
Overall, legal and illegal migration moves wealth from employees to employers , from families to investors , from young to old , from children to their parents , from homebuyers to investors , from technology to stoop labor .
Migration also moves wealth from heartland red states to the coastal blue states . Within each state, the federal government’s labor-inflation policy also helps move wealth and status from GOP rural districts to Democrat cities .
“My sense is that [GOP leaders] figure they’ve got the victory next year in the bag, so doing the minimum [on immigration] will be enough,” said Krikorian. “I hope the Republicans win next year, but I think they’re getting a little overconfident,” he added.
