Portland, Maine to raise property taxes to pay for free housing for 'asylum-seekers'
MONICA SHOWALTER
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/06/june-10-2022-portland-maine-to-raise.html
Illegal aliens are known to cost U.S. citizens billions to support, but rarely is that experienced as directly as it is now in Portland, Maine, where city officials voted to raise property taxes in order to house 1,200 "asylum seekers," along with 500 homeless.
Biden Job-Approval Numbers Continue to Slide Down
About every other week, you’ll see a headline somewhere in which someone flogging an individual poll will dramatically announce that Joe Biden’s job-approval rating has reached an all-time low! Jaded political-news consumers like me will invariably tell the Chicken Littles alarmed or excited by such “news” that they should watch the polling averages instead of overreacting to random polls that could be outliers.
That’s why I feel duty bound to report that the polling averages for Joe Biden’s job-performance evaluation are definitely trending downward, ever so slowly. At the best-known source for polling averages, RealClearPolitics, Biden’s number has dipped below 40 percent (to 39.6 percent) for just the second time ever, marginally lower than the 39.8 percent it briefly registered in February. Biden’s job-approval average is still slightly above 40 percent at FiveThirtyEight, which uses a different mix of polls and weights the results for credibility and partisan bias. But at 40.2 percent, it’s also the lowest of the Biden administration.
For Biden himself, this doesn’t particularly matter 30 months before he will presumably face voters in a campaign for reelection. Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and yes, Ronald Reagan all hit job-approval numbers lower than Biden’s today (per Gallup) in their first terms and all three were reelected. For that matter, of all the presidents dating back to the end of World War II, only Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy failed to register a Gallup job-approval rating below 40 percent. Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump’s average job-approval rating per Gallup was 41 percent, barely below Biden’s present slough.
But it matters because of the high correlation between presidential job-approval ratings and the midterm performance of the president’s party. Dating back to 1934, only two presidents (Bill Clinton in 1998 and George W. Bush in 2002) managed to gain House seats in a midterm election. Both had Gallup job-approval ratings over 65 percent going into those midterms. Yes, some president’s had meh job-approval ratings and experienced relatively minor midterm congressional losses (e.g., Jimmy Carter in 1978 and Ronald Reagan in 1982). But Biden’s Democrats have no cushion given their five-seat House majority and the 50-50 Senate. They need a lift from the president, not a millstone.
That’s why the White House hopes that some dramatic external development like a Russian collapse in its Ukraine war, or a backlash to chronic gun violence, or a Supreme Court abolition of abortion rights could change the midterm dynamics. For all the vilification aimed at Biden by conservatives, and all the disappointment many progressives feel toward his presidency, his fortunes are inextricably linked to those of the Democratic Party. Uncle Joe needs to recapture some popularity in order to keep the rest of his first term from becoming a frustrating example of the limits of presidential power.
Mayorkas Extends Covert Migration Pipeline to More Cities
President Joe Biden’s pro-migration border chief is expanding the covert distribution of economic migrants to jobs and homes in Los Angeles, Houston, and Dallas, according to NBC News.
Biden’s border chief is Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban-born immigrant who is a pro-migration zealot. He is already using tax dollars to fund a series of progressive shelters and rest stops that provide rest, food, and transport to migrants as they try to reach the targeted workplaces and housing markets needed by Americans.
But the number of his incoming migrants at the border is growing so fast that it will overwhelm those aid groups’ ability to hide the traffic. That is a political problem because crowds of migrants would likely be spotlighted by the evening news. For example, Mayorkas caused a PR disaster for Biden when roughly 30,000 migrants gathered at Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021.
Haitian migrants use a dam to cross to and from the United States from Mexico, Friday, Sept. 17, 2021, in Del Rio, Texas. Thousands of Haitian migrants have assembled under and around a bridge in Del Rio presenting the Biden administration with a fresh and immediate challenge as it tries to manage large numbers of asylum-seekers who have been reaching U.S. soil. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
NBC reported on June 8:
The plan would alleviate overcrowding along the border where record high numbers of border crossers have overwhelmed the capacity of local shelters in some cities, at times leading Customs and Border Protection to release migrants on the street to fend for themselves.
…
The new model would use federal funds to send migrants to shelters in cities further inside the country before they go to their final destinations. Besides Los Angeles, cities where they will be sent include Albuquerque, Houston and Dallas. DHS is working with shelters in each of those cities in advance of moving migrants. The agency’s Southwest Border Coordination Center, which combines officials from FEMA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CBP and others, is coordinating the effort.
So far, the administration has welcomed at least 1.4 million migrants, each of whom helps to nudge down Americans’ wages and to push up housing prices.
The administration’s pipeline plan is intended to keep the population transfer out of the public’s eye, the New York Times reported on May 24:
As the Biden administration sees about 8,200 border crossings a day — or nearly the population of College Station, Texas, entering the country every two weeks, far more than at this time last year — it is counting on small nonprofit organizations like La Posada Providencia to manage the influx into border cities and towns, helping to stave off politically explosive images of chaos and disorder ahead of the November midterms.
Technically, the administration is not smuggling the cartel-delivered migrants into the U.S. economy because it is first giving them temporary legal status at the border, Todd Bensman, an expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News on June 8:
What they do is, when they cross the border, [Maoyrkas’ deputies] can very quickly legalize these people. And then what they do after that is say, “Well, they’re legal, we’ve legalized them.” So when they move them after that, they’re moving legalized people. It’s the act of legalizing them [at the border] that is the aiding and abetting [the cartels] part.
Then it just becomes impossible after that [to track the flow of migrants] … unless you follow one of the buses emptying out in Miami and then follow everybody home, they just disappear from vision.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas take part in a naturalization ceremony for new citizens ahead of Independence Day in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on July 2, 2021. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
In April, Breitbart News posted a leaked copy of Mayorkas’ border plan, which said:
A. Secretary’s [Mayorkas] Intent.
1 ) Purpose: The purpose of this plan is to describe a proactive approach that humanely prevents and responds to surges in irregular migration across the U.S. [southern border]. This will be done while ensuring that migrants can apply for any form of relief or protection [emphasis added] for which they may be eligible, including asylum, withholding of removal, and protection from removal under the regulations implementing United States obligations under the Convention Against Torture.
The Mexican government is following the same strategy of hiding the population transfer by breaking the huge migrant flow into many small streams. Bensman said:
The Mexican government is providing temporary humanitarian visas that allow migrants to roam anywhere they want in Mexico for 30 days. They’re [also] going to be providing buses that will take the 15,000 [migrants now in southern Mexico] to 10 different Mexican cities in the north. They’re dispersing them around and so they’re free to go anywhere they want. Where do you think they’re gonna go? They’re going to hit the border.
The public is deeply opposed to Biden’s open-border policies. An average of establishment polls shows that the public opposes Biden’s immigration policies by 58 percent to 35 percent. The obvious refusal to manage the border may be feeding into the public’s worry about Biden’s overall management.
Migration advocates welcome the new PR strategy as “responsible border management”:
Extraction Migration
Since at least 1990, the D.C. establishment has extracted tens of millions of migrants and visa workers from poor countries to serve as legal or illegal workers, temporary workers, consumers, and renters for various U.S. investors and CEOs.
This economic strategy of Extraction Migration has no stopping point. It is brutal to ordinary Americans because it cuts their career opportunities, shrinks their salaries and wages, raises their housing costs, and has shoved at least ten million American men out of the labor force.
Extraction migration also distorts the economy and curbs Americans’ productivity, partly because it allows employers to use stoop labor instead of machines. Migration also reduces voters’ political clout, undermines employees’ workplace rights, and widens the regional wealth gaps between the Democrats’ big coastal states and the Republicans’ heartland and southern states.
An economy built on extraction migration also alienates young people and radicalizes Americans’ democratic, equality-promoting civic culture because it allows wealthy elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.
The policy is hidden behind a wide variety of noble-sounding excuses and explanations. For example, progressives claim that the U.S. is a “Nation of Immigrants,” that Americans have a duty to accept foreign refugees, and that the state must renew itself by replacing populations. But the colonialism-like economic strategy also kills many migrants, exploits poor people, and splits foreign families as it extracts human-resources wealth from the poor home countries.
The economic policy is backed by progressives who wish to transform the U.S. from a society governed by European-origin civic culture into a progressive-directed empire of competitive, resentful identity groups. “We’re trying to become the first multiracial, multi-ethnic superpower in the world,” Rep. Rohit Khanna (D-CA) told the New York Times on March 21. “It will be an extraordinary achievement … we will ultimately triumph,” he boasted.
