We estimate that beginning in 2025, plan subsidies—specifically, the reinsurance subsidies for the beneficiaries with the most drug spending—will be cut $30 billion, out of revenue that currently totals about $110 billion. With $30 billion less to finance prescription benefits, something will have to give. Plans currently have far too little profit to span the chasm that the Inflation Reduction Act opens between expenses and revenue.
Biden has claimed to want to cut the costs of prescription drugs like insulin, despite canceling — in his first week in office — an executive order by President Trump to lower the prices of insulin and epinephrine.
He and his party also claimed during the midterm elections that Republicans want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, since Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) wants to reauthorize all federal spending at regular intervals.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Biden’s HHS Nominee Does Not Rule Out Taxpayer-Funded Healthcare for Illegal Aliens
JOHN BINDER
President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, dodged a question on whether he would push to provide American taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits to illegal aliens.
This week, during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Becerra was asked by Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) about his previous support for decriminalizing illegal immigration and providing illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits.
Becerra, though, dodged the question by saying he would follow the parameters of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, which he said allows “very rare” cases of illegal aliens to receive benefits.
The exchange went as follows:
DAINES: You’re on record for pushing for allowing illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded healthcare and for decriminalizing illegal entry into the United States. This coupled with President Biden’s radical plan for granting citizenship to those who are here illegally would potentially lead to hundreds of thousands, if not potentially millions, more people flooding into our country. [Emphasis added]
As you know, in 2016, California passed a law requiring covered Californians to apply for … waivers to allow illegal immigrants to purchase health insurance in the marketplace. This waiver was withdrawn after President Trump’s election. [Emphasis added]
My question is this: Will you attempt to use the waiver authority contained in the Affordable Care Act to grant healthcare benefits to illegal immigrants? [Emphasis added]
BECERRA: Senator, I can tell you that where the law, as it stands now as I see it, it does not allow those who are unauthorized in this country to receive taxpayer-paid benefits except in very rare circumstances and it will be my job to make sure that we are following and enforcing the law. And I can commit to you that that is what we will do. [Emphasis added]
In a letter to Biden, 11 Senate Republicans and 64 House Republicans asked the president to withdraw Becerra’s nomination to be HHS Secretary, citing his support for taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits for illegal aliens, among other issues.
“Mr. Becerra seeks to decriminalize illegal immigration, which would extend expensive government benefits like Medicaid to anyone who illegally crosses our borders,” the letter states.
A Politico report this week suggested Becerra is eyeing plans to provide illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits should he lead HHS.
“He’s one of those individuals that had exceedingly deep convictions about the need to cover the undocumented individuals in all of our communities,” former Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-TX) told Politico of Becerra.
Should Becerra become HHS Secretary, he could let illegal aliens onto Obamacare exchanges while pressuring states to pursue similar policies to those in California. Likewise, Becerra could open Obamacare exchanges to particular subgroups of illegal aliens, like those enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
As Breitbart News reported, forcing taxpayers to provide healthcare to all illegal aliens would cost citizens anywhere between $23 billion to $66 billion every single year — potentially a $660 billion bill for taxpayers every decade, without adjusting for inflation and the increasing number of illegal aliens.
Cost is only the first issue facing taxpayers. Medical experts have admitted providing healthcare to illegal aliens would ensure a never-ending flood of illegal aliens arriving at the southern border with “serious health problems” and local hospitals would have to cover the costs.
Already, taxpayers are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
When U.S. voters were polled by CNN on the issue in July 2019, nearly 6-in-10 said they were opposed to such a policy, including 63 percent of swing voters and 61 percent of self-described “moderates.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Study: Amnesty Will Cost ‘Hundreds of Billions’
NEIL MUNRO
President Joe Biden’s amnesty plan will spike Social Security
spending by “hundreds of billions” over the next few decades,
according to a forecast by the Center for Immigration Studies
(CIS).
The February 22 report, titled “Amnesty Would Cost the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds Hundreds of Billions of Dollars,” says:
The new taxes paid by the average amnesty recipient amount to only half of the $94,500 noted above. The net effect of amnesty is therefore $140,330 [in Social Security benefits] minus $47,250 [in paid taxes], which is about $93,000 per recipient. In any large-scale amnesty, in which millions of illegal immigrants gain legal status, it is easy to see how the net cost could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The predicted $93,000 per person cost would be a financial burden for taxpayers — but would be a giveaway to business groups because the Social Security payments will be converted into purchases of consumer products, healthcare services, medical drugs, apartments, and food.
At least 11 million people — perhaps 20 million — are living illegally in the United States. The number rises as people overstay their visas, evade deportation orders, or sneak over the border — but it also falls as some migrants get deported, leave, or find ways to get green cards via the rolling “Adjustment of Status” process.
But taxpayers’ expenses are also economic gains for business groups and investors. In January 2020, a coalition of business groups sued deputies for President Donald Trump after he reduced the inflow of poor migrants into the U.S. consumer market, saying:
Because [green-card applicants] will receive fewer public benefits under the Rule, they will cut back their consumption of goods and services, depressing demand throughout the economy …
The New American Economy Research Fund calculates that, on top of the $48 billion in income that is earned by individuals who will be affected by the Rule—and that will likely be removed from the U.S. economy—the Rule will cause an indirect economic loss of more than $33.9 billion … Indeed, the Fiscal Policy Institute has estimated that the decrease in SNAP and Medicaid enrollment under the Rule could, by itself, lead to economic ripple effects of anywhere between $14.5 and $33.8 billion, with between approximately 100,000 and 230,000 jobs lost … Health centers alone would be forced to drop as many as 6,100 full-time medical staff.
CIS promised a more detailed report:
This is just a rough estimate. We are currently working on a detailed model that will provide more precise costs for both Social Security and Medicare. Again, however, any reasonable calculation will produce a large cost, simply because amnesty will convert so many outside contributors into actual beneficiaries.
For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and to the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.
The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, intra-Democratic, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950’s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.
The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration 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, and from the central states to the coastal states.
However, Biden’s officials have been broadcasting their desire to change border policies to help extract more migrants from Central America for the U.S. economy. On February 19, for example, deputies of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas posted a tweet offering support to migrants illegally working in the United States and to migrants who may wish to live in the United States.
We'll get 1 million-plus Biden migrants this year, warns ex-Obama/DHS official now at Harvard.
The warning includes a weak criticism of the ethnic lobbies & open-borders progressives who are undermining an Ivy League giveaway in the amnesty bill.#H1B https://t.co/RqZBEGcxKO
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) February 22, 2021
Kamala Harris: Medicare for All Includes Illegal Aliens
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/05/viva-la-raza-supremacy-hispandering.html
Harris, a guest on CNN's "State of the Union," said "I support Medicare for all. It is my preferred policy." She said she supports the bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
MICHELLE MALKIN
15 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE AMERICAN TAX-FUNDED MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA “The Race” NOW CALLING ITSELF UNIDOSus.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/michelle-malkin-15-things-every-legal.html
"This is country belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!
California Democrats Lobby to Give Health Insurance to All Illegal Aliens
JOHN BINDER
Democrats in California are lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to expand the state’s health insurance program to all illegal alien residents.
Newsom introduced as part of his budget plan an expansion of the state’s health insurance program that would allow elderly illegal aliens 60 or older to become eligible for coverage. The cost to taxpayers is estimated at nearly $860 million.
Democrats, though, said Newsom’s plan does not go far enough and that the state should make all illegal alien residents eligible for coverage. California is home to at least three million illegal aliens.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
“Our ultimate goal is everyone,” state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) said of pushing for more coverage. “I think we are in the best position than we have ever been to make more significant process than we ever have. We are going to keep on pushing to include more uninsured.” [Emphasis added]
California’s Medi-Cal system already covers young immigrants until they turn 26. The state first offered Medi-Cal coverage to children living in the country illegally through the age of 18 in 2016. Last year, young adults were eligible for coverage after California expanded the age cut-off so that it mirrored that of the Affordable Care Act, which allows a person to remain on a parent’s health insurance plan until turning 26. At the time, Newsom called the expanded eligibility the “right thing to do.” [Emphasis added]
…
“Everyone has been talking for the past year or more about how certain communities were disproportionally impacted by the pandemic, such as undocumented and low-income Californians,” said Sarah Dar, the director of health and public benefits policy at the California Immigrant Policy Center. “Now, with the $75 billion, we have to fix those structural issues and ensure the safety net programs help all communities. Now is the time to do as much as we can.” [Emphasis added]
Earlier this month, State Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D) introduced legislation to effectively drive healthcare migration to the state of California with a plan that would allow adults to add their elderly illegal alien parents as dependents to their health insurance coverage.
The California Health Benefits Review Program admitted that the plan would likely ensure that foreign nationals in Mexico and Central America with health problems would migrate to California to secure coverage.
“Although there are administrative hurdles relating to receiving care in the United States for a dependent parent residing in Mexico or Canada, the opportunity to receive care in the United States would be very attractive, especially for those with high-risk conditions,” the analysis notes.
Today, Americans are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Joe Biden Diverts Healthcare Cash to Help
Illegal Migrants
NEIL MUNRO
President Joe Biden has taken $2 billion from Americans’ healthcare programs to help deliver migrant youths and children to their illegal-migrant parents throughout the United States, press reports say.
“The Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] has diverted more than $2 billion meant for other health initiatives toward covering the cost of caring for unaccompanied immigrant children,” Politico reported May 15. The article continued:
The redirected funds include $850 million that Congress originally allocated to rebuild the nation’s Strategic National Stockpile, the emergency medical reserve strained by the Covid-19 response. Another $850 million is being taken from a pot intended to help expand coronavirus testing, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
…
In addition to transferring money from the Strategic National Stockpile and Covid-19 testing, HHS also has pulled roughly $436 million from a range of existing health initiatives across the department.
The program costs are expected to reach almost $9 billion by October according to a leaked report in the New York Times.
The transfer of funding to the growing population of more than 50,000 foreign children and youths means fewer resources for lower-profile American kids, as their diverse American parents are damaged by the Chinese virus, cheap labor migration, job losses, housing costs, drugs, or homelessness.
The Politico report follows the leak of a government report to the May 10 New York Times. The leaked report showed how the HHS agency expects to spend almost $9 billion by October to implement Biden’s decision to import the youths and children of U.S.-based illegal migrants.
“Current projections show [a] preliminary budget estimate of $8.6b for FY21,” said the briefing for officials in HHS. It continued:
With existing resources, a shortfall (of 366m) occurs in May and grows quickly through July with an overall project shortfall in excess of $4 billion
…
OMB approved an additional transfer from HHS resources to the UC [UAC] programing the amount of $850 million this week. This funding is not reflecting in this morning balance — will be added once [the] execution process is complete. There may be [an] additional $846.5 million available in future weeks. This will mitigate but not fully resolve the project budget shortfall.
The HHS spending does not including spending — or diverted resources — at other agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) and Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) are the top Republicans on the panels overseeing federal spending at HHS and the DHS. Their offices did not respond to emails from Breitbart News.
Since January, roughly 50,000 youths and children have been accepted at the border by the government-run program, which replaced President Donald Trump’s policy of flying the youths and children back to their homes in Central America.
Biden declined to use the judge-approved option of flying the arriving youths and children back to their distant homes. Strong majorities of swing voters blame Biden, not Trump, for the unpopular migration crisis.
“The $2.13 billion in diverted money exceeds the government’s annual budget for the unaccompanied children program in each of the last two fiscal years,” Politico reported.
But the overall migration is an economic stimulus for Biden’s business donors because the migrants inflate rents and stimulate federal, state, and local spending.
Most of the 50,000 “children” are actually older teenage boys, many of whom will take jobs at low wages to repay their smuggling debts and support relatives in Central American countries.
But even children are an economic stimulus for Biden’s business donors because they inflate rents and because they stimulate federal, state, and local spending, for example, on K-12 education programs.
Biden’s delivery of the incoming youths and children also helps to keep their illegal migrant parents in the United States amid pressure from their distant families to return home. For example, a New York Times May 6 report noted 51 percent of the UACs released in the prior week were handed over to parents or step-parents. Another 38 percent were handed over to immediate relatives, some of whom may have been fronting for nearby illegal migrant parents who declined to come forward.
A May 13 tweet by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) cited federal data for 1029 that said 79 percent of sponsors were “without [legal] status.”
The migration also creates a new generation of illegal migrants for business groups and progressive Democrats to champion instead of poor or disadvantaged Americans, just as Democrats now cheerlead for the “DACA” illegals.
Biden’s policy is being implemented by Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban-born child refugee who runs the Department of Homeland Security. Mayorkas frequently claims the United States is a “Nation of Immigrants,” not of Americans. He frequently argues the nation’s values require Americans to accept many migrants, poor or rich, old or young, as if there is no economic or civic cost to Americans from the inflow of foreign migrants.
The federal delivery of children to their illegal migrant parents, after their handoff at the border by cartel-controlled coyotes, has been an open secret in Washington, DC, for at least six years.
The secret federal cooperation with the coyotes and the cartels stopped when President Donald Trump used his emergency authority in 2020 to send the migrants home when they arrived at the border. The cooperation has been accelerated by President Biden as his deputies seek to extract more wage-cutting workers, taxpayer-supported consumers, and high-occupancy renters from Central American into the United States.
“We’re complicit as a nation in human trafficking,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said at a March 26 press conference in Texas with 17 other GOP senators.
DEMOCRATS PARTNER WITH MEXICO TO ORCHESTRATE A MASSIVE INVASION OF DEM VOTING ‘CHEAP’ LABOR
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-biden-amnesty-and-mexicos-planned.html
"Mexican president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for mass immigration to the United States, declaring it a "human right". We will defend all the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said, adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job, welfare, and free medical in the United States."
"Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador
has previously proposed granting AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added."
"Many Americans forget is that our country is located against a socialist failed state that is promising to descend even further into chaos – not California, the other one. And the Mexicans, having reached the bottom of the hole they have dug for themselves, just chose to keep digging by electing a new leftist presidente who wants to surrender to the cartels and who thinks that Mexicans have some sort of “human right” to sneak into the U.S. and demographically reconquer it." KURT SCHLICHTER
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. MONICA SHOWALTER
BIDEN’S SEC. OF HHS XAVIER BECERRA IS ASSOCIATED WITH THE MEX FASCIST MOVEMENT OF LA RAZA ‘The Race” AND MEX SEPARATIST MOVEMENT M.E.Ch.A. (google it)
Biden’s HHS Nominee Does Not Rule Out Taxpayer-Funded Healthcare for Illegal Aliens
JOHN BINDER
President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, dodged a question on whether he would push to provide American taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits to illegal aliens.
This week, during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Becerra was asked by Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) about his previous support for decriminalizing illegal immigration and providing illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits.
Becerra, though, dodged the question by saying he would follow the parameters of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, which he said allows “very rare” cases of illegal aliens to receive benefits.
The exchange went as follows:
DAINES: You’re on record for pushing for allowing illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded healthcare and for decriminalizing illegal entry into the United States. This coupled with President Biden’s radical plan for granting citizenship to those who are here illegally would potentially lead to hundreds of thousands, if not potentially millions, more people flooding into our country. [Emphasis added]
As you know, in 2016, California passed a law requiring covered Californians to apply for … waivers to allow illegal immigrants to purchase health insurance in the marketplace. This waiver was withdrawn after President Trump’s election. [Emphasis added]
My question is this: Will you attempt to use the waiver authority contained in the Affordable Care Act to grant healthcare benefits to illegal immigrants? [Emphasis added]
BECERRA: Senator, I can tell you that where the law, as it stands now as I see it, it does not allow those who are unauthorized in this country to receive taxpayer-paid benefits except in very rare circumstances and it will be my job to make sure that we are following and enforcing the law. And I can commit to you that that is what we will do. [Emphasis added]
In a letter to Biden, 11 Senate Republicans and 64 House Republicans asked the president to withdraw Becerra’s nomination to be HHS Secretary, citing his support for taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits for illegal aliens, among other issues.
“Mr. Becerra seeks to decriminalize illegal immigration, which would extend expensive government benefits like Medicaid to anyone who illegally crosses our borders,” the letter states.
A Politico report this week suggested Becerra is eyeing plans to provide illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits should he lead HHS.
“He’s one of those individuals that had exceedingly deep convictions about the need to cover the undocumented individuals in all of our communities,” former Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-TX) told Politico of Becerra.
Should Becerra become HHS Secretary, he could let illegal aliens onto Obamacare exchanges while pressuring states to pursue similar policies to those in California. Likewise, Becerra could open Obamacare exchanges to particular subgroups of illegal aliens, like those enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
As Breitbart News reported, forcing taxpayers to provide healthcare to all illegal aliens would cost citizens anywhere between $23 billion to $66 billion every single year — potentially a $660 billion bill for taxpayers every decade, without adjusting for inflation and the increasing number of illegal aliens.
Cost is only the first issue facing taxpayers. Medical experts have admitted providing healthcare to illegal aliens would ensure a never-ending flood of illegal aliens arriving at the southern border with “serious health problems” and local hospitals would have to cover the costs.
Already, taxpayers are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
When U.S. voters were polled by CNN on the issue in July 2019, nearly 6-in-10 said they were opposed to such a policy, including 63 percent of swing voters and 61 percent of self-described “moderates.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Why is Biden releasing thousands of Covid-positive migrants into the country?
By Patricia McCarthy
The answer to that question may be in his absurd speech on Thursday when he said “we may have to reinstate the lockdown restrictions” if… If what? What if the migrants the Biden Administration is allowing to come across the southern border without being tested, even if showing symptoms, then given bus tickets to any American city they hope to reach, is a grand plan to spread this flu throughout the country again in order to reinstate all the unconstitutional restrictions to which millions of Americans willingly submitted? Chances are that the powers that be never dreamed so many people would give up their freedom to work, shop, eat, go to movies, vacation, have their kids in school, etc. without a fuss… but they did.
The carefully calculated, thoroughly propagandistic fearmongering the media has done over the past year in service of the left was embarrassingly effective. Too many Americans have lost the ability to question authority and have accepted the covid “mandates” as if we are all subjects of a benevolent oligarchy. Nothing could be further from the truth. This past year has been about several things:
(1) defeat Trump by any means necessary, no matter how illegal;
(2) use this flu, a variation of Sars-2 to do it;
(3) convince the citizens of the world that this flu is a death sentence so they will comply with any and all restrictions on their basic freedoms;
(4) proscribe any and all existing effective treatments for this flu – HCQ, Ivermectin, for example, both inexpensive and widely available;
(5) make disobeying any of the mandated restrictions a crime; maskless people and those who choose not to be vaccinated, must be rendered outcasts and/or criminals. That pretty much sums up where we are today.
The left thinks it has won and it seems perhaps they have but as usual they are overstepping. So jubilant at their bare majority in the House and Senate, they seem to think they’ve achieved power in perpetuity. They successfully rigged the 2020 election, blatantly, and got away with it. If they pass their HR-1, the “election reform” bill, they will have cemented vote fraud in stone. That’s their plan.
And how easy it will be since they have at least half the population scared to death of a manipulated seasonal flu, ready to cower in self-quarantine to survive. The teachers’ unions have successfully won billions of dollars in “covid relief” without ever having to go back to work. They want to make virtual school the new normal!
And these are the people, like the ever-invidious Nancy Pelosi who are always claiming their every move is “for the children.” Yeah. Right. They could not care less about anyone’s children but their own. They’ve proven that over and over and over again.
At this moment they are importing hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over the world through the now porous southern border that Trump had gained control of, many of them with Covid.
They desperately want to re-impose all the lockdown restrictions. They are drunk with power over our daily lives.
But here’s the thing! Covid is no death sentence. It is preventable and treatable with inexpensive drugs that have been around for decades. The vaccine is unnecessary. They are not even vaccines in the true sense of that word. These vaccines are actually “hacking the software of life.” Masks are unnecessary and actually dangerous. The lockdowns were just a purposeful power grab to punish all the small businesses who the left assumed supported President Trump who had so successfully energized the economy.
They are basking in their success at stealing the election, putting millions of Trump supporters out of business. They’ve further ramped up racial divisions even beyond Obama’s wildest dreams and thoroughly tanked the economies of California and New York.
China, the “man behind the curtain” of all of this, is laughing its way to global domination with the obedient acquiescence of the Biden administration and his party that is clearly willing to sell out the United States for their own personal financial gain.
Biden, or whoever is calling the administration’s shots, is sending migrants into the vast reaches of the American interior on purpose. It’s part of their plan to create a new covid surge so they can then shut us all down again. Will we the people stand for a replay of what was an effective coup d’etat?
As the Democrats plot to disarm those of us who revere the Second Amendment, they may be skating on thin ice, overplaying their ill-gotten hand. But their agenda is obvious. The handwriting is on the wall people. The leftists have a plan and they are sticking to it. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country.
House Democrats Urge Joe Biden to Give Obamacare to DACA Recipients
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ
30 Jan 2021121
2:29
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) and 93 other House Democrats are urging President Joe Biden to give Obamacare benefits to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) recipients.
Castro and the 93 other House Democrats signed a letter Tuesday pressing for the change as part of the response to the coronavirus pandemic, claiming it would benefit not only those in the DACA program, but also the general public, NBC News reported.
The letter was addressed to Biden and Acting Secretary of Health and Human Services Norris Cochran.
Castro said in the letter:
Access to Covid-19 testing and treatment for DACA recipients and their U.S. citizen children is absolutely critical during this pandemic, particularly for the 202,500 DACA recipients employed as essential workers on the front lines to keep our country healthy and running.
Under current rules, DACA recipients cannot enroll in Obamacare because they are not considered “lawfully present.” Castro argued that DACA recipients are treated as “lawfully present” for other federal benefits and urged the Biden administration to revoke the rule.
Whether House members plan to enact legislation to this effect or just want Biden to introduce an executive order on the subject is unclear.
Some Republicans say the effort will not pass Congress if Democrats try to introduce it as legislation.
“He’s doubling down on putting American taxpayers last by giving free health care to DACA recipients, when he should be solely focused on the most urgent health issue of our time: getting every American vaccinated,” Lauren Fine, a spokeswoman for Republican House Whip Steve Scalise told Fox News Friday.
“An expansion of ObamaCare to DACA recipients won’t pass Congress and is wasting time he should be spending on leading us out of the Coronavirus crisis and reopening our economy,” Fine added.
If Castro’s push is successful, the move would be another expansion of benefits the Biden administration would be providing to illegal aliens.
The DACA program, which was started in 2012 during the Obama administration, allowed illegal aliens who came to the country as young children to work or go to school while they legally remained in the country.
Former President Donald Trump repeatedly tried to end DACA, but the Supreme Court rebuffed his efforts.
Joe Biden Orders Aid, Benefits for Migrants
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty
NEIL MUNRO
2 Feb 2021286
5:01
President Joe Biden will sign three migration-related Executive Orders on Tuesday, including one directing deputies to consider offering legal entry to illegal immigrants who used their children to cross the border during President Donald Trump’s tenure, say press reports.
The Washington Post reported statements made by officials to selected reporters Monday evening:
Government officials said they had not settled on a single legal status that would be given to returning parents, adding that families could receive different visas or legal protections depending on their cases.
The briefing was used to frame media coverage of the three orders that Biden will sign Tuesday. The New York Times outlined:
Officials said that could include providing visas or other legal means of entry to parents who have been deported back to their home countries. Or it could involve sending children who are living in the United States back to those countries to be with their parents. They said each case would be looked at separately.
“The official said each family would be evaluated on an ‘individual basis,’ taking into account the ‘preference of the family … and the well-being of children,'” according to NBC.
The giveaway is aimed at the roughly 5,500 families who were temporarily divided when the children who were brought over the border were held in shelters. At the same time, the adults were separated and prosecuted for violating the nation’s border laws.
Democrats used the “separated kids” theme to rally liberal opposition to President Donald Trump’s efforts to block southern migration, which included almost one million people in 2019. That migrant wave included many people who brought their children to help them open catch and release loopholes in border rules.
Biden’s offer of benefits for “separated families” is being played up by sympathetic reporters at many outlets and helps to minimize discussion about the broader impact of the pending Executive Orders.
The White House officials downplayed the immediate consequences of the three Executive Orders. The New York Times said:
Senior administration officials said Monday night that most of Mr. Biden’s directives on Tuesday would not make immediate changes. Rather, they are intended to give officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the State Department time to evaluate how best to undo the policies.
National Public Radio reported:
The executive actions make clear that rolling back former President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration measures won’t happen overnight. In fact, more actions are almost certain to follow, officials told reporters on a preview call about the measures.
“It takes time to review everything, so we are starting with these right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of it,” one of the officials said.
But the orders could have a dramatic impact over the next few years.
For example, one order directs the Department of Homeland Security to remove barriers to migration, such as Trump’s “Public Charge” test. The test bars green cards to poor migrants who would need government support to prosper in the United States.
Another order directs officials to create a new pipeline of migrants from Central America to Americans’ workplaces and communities.
Also, the offer of benefits to people who brought their children to get through loopholes creates another incentive for millions of poor people to bring their children as they head north to get jobs — or even legal status — under Biden’s looser policies.
Those policies would further encourage low-skill migration that would spike workplace competition for blue-collar Americans and boosting government aid for poor migrants. That migration would benefit investors, who gain from cheap workers, reduced need for automation, and greater government spending.
The media reports downplayed Biden’s encouragement of migration with the claimed goal of raising economic incentives for migrants to stay in their home countries.
Unlike Trump and his pro-American policies, Biden and his deputies are determined to share Americans’ resources with foreign migrants on the claims of “fairness” and “humanity.”
“President Biden’s approach is to deal with immigration comprehensively, fairly, and humanely,” CNN reported.
For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration — or the hiring of temporary contract workers into the jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, priority-driven, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory.
The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration 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, and from the central states to the coastal states.
NYTimes revives old claim: Americans should get the blame for illegal migration b/c they won't OK endless migration into their national labor market.
This claim is elite BS – and is proven wrong by 1990 immig law. But Biden, GW Bush & WSJ also push it.https://t.co/YCo40wcUHX
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) January 31, 2021
Steve Scalise: Vaccinating Illegals Before Americans ‘a Slap in the Face’
SEAN MORAN
House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) said in a statement Tuesday that President Joe Biden handing out vaccines to illegal immigrants before U.S. citizens should be considered a “slap in the face” to millions of Americans waiting for the coronavirus vaccine.
Scalise, the ranking member of the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis, released a statement after Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Monday that the agency would provide “equal access to the COVID-19 vaccines” for “undocumented immigrants.”
“It is a moral and public health imperative to ensure that all individuals residing in the United States have access to the vaccine. DHS encourages all individuals, regardless of immigration status, to receive the COVID-19 vaccine once eligible under local distribution guidelines,” the DHS explained in a statement Monday.
DHS continued:
To reach underserved and rural communities, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in collaboration with federal partners, will coordinate efforts to establish and support fixed facilities, pop-up or temporary vaccination sites, and mobile vaccination clinics. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection will not conduct enforcement operations at or near vaccine distribution sites or clinics. Consistent with ICE’s long-standing sensitive locations policy, ICE does not and will not carry out enforcement operations at or near health care facilities, such as hospitals, doctors’ offices, accredited health clinics, and emergent or urgent care facilities, except in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
Scalise said that this move amounts to a slap in the face for Americans waiting to get the vaccine.
He said:
President Biden’s plan to vaccinate illegal immigrants ahead of Americans who are currently being denied the COVID-19 vaccine is a slap in the face to millions of hard-working families who have been waiting months for the vaccine and expect Washington leaders to be looking out for them. This pattern of President Biden putting non-citizens ahead of American citizens is even more disturbing after last week’s actions that put foreign jobs over American jobs; now he is making Americans wait to get the vaccine behind people who came here illegally. Even worse, this comes on top of the recent exposure of the Biden administration’s original plan to prioritize vaccinating terrorists at Guantanamo Bay over Americans here at home. It is time that President Biden puts Americans first when it comes to protecting the hard-working families who are counting on Washington to put them first.
“President Biden must abandon this ridiculous plan and instead focus on getting the elderly, the vulnerable, frontline workers, and other essential Americans vaccinated as quickly as possible,” Scalise added.
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
House Democrats Seek to Include Amnesty for Illegal Aliens in Coronavirus Relief Package
JOHN BINDER
About 100 House Democrats are urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to include an amnesty for certain subgroups of illegal aliens in a relief package for Americans impacted by the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
The group of House Democrats, led by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, want to include an amnesty for at least five million illegal aliens who consider themselves “essential workers” and who are recipients of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programs. The letter states:
As you continue to work on assembling a COVID-19 reconciliation package and begin work on an economic recovery and jobs package, we urge you to include a pathway to citizenship for essential immigrant workers, Dreamers, and TPS holders, as well as their families, in order to ensure a robust recovery that is inclusive and equitable for all Americans regardless of their immigration status.
Read the full letter here:
Letter to Speaker Pelosi an… by John Binder
The amnesty would pack the United States labor market with millions of newly legalized illegal aliens who would be allowed to legally compete for jobs against 18 million unemployed Americans and another 6.2 million Americans who are underemployed.
Eventually, those legalized by the amnesty would be put on a path to obtaining American citizenship. The House Democrats claim the amnesty would boost U.S. wages, though a tightened labor market with reduced foreign competition against Americans has proven to spike salaries.
“A pathway to citizenship for undocumented essential workers would raise the wage floor and in turn benefit all workers, beyond direct beneficiaries,” the House Democrats write.
The proposal comes as President Joe Biden’s administration has put forth an amnesty plan that would allow nearly the entire illegal alien population — between 11 and 22 million foreign nationals — to eventually obtain American citizenship.
Thus far, 28 of the most vulnerable House Democrats have stayed silent on whether they would support such a proposal at a time of mass unemployment.
Every year more than 1.2 million legal immigrants are awarded green cards, another 1.4 million foreign nationals are given visas, and hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are added to the U.S. population. Wall Street, the big business lobby, and Big Tech have lobbied for years for an amnesty and an increase in legal immigration levels to boost their profit margins by cutting labor costs through U.S. job outsourcing.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.
Almost half of cancer patients in the US deplete entire life assets by second year of treatment
After a colon cancer diagnosis, Deb Genetin, a 57-year-old resident of Springfield, Ohio, just outside Dayton, was denied a life-saving surgery at Mercy Health hospital because, in the words of the hospital, her “financing wasn’t in place.” Genetin has not had health insurance in 10 years and makes only $20,000 a year as an administrative assistant in a law firm.
Last month, Genetin told the Times-Reporter, “They never told me how much money they needed, how much money I had to come up with. It was just a ‘No.’” Genetin had previously applied for financial aid through Mercy Health but was rejected. Genetin then sought cheaper care at Ohio Valley Surgical Hospital, where she received the necessary surgery.
A team of surgeons operate on a patient [Source: Flickr.com]
While Genetin is currently cancer-free and now has health insurance, she is struggling to both meet her payments and pay off medical debt. “I had to drop my hours and my income to get [health insurance] and now I struggle to pay the house payment,” she told reporters.
Genetin is one of thousands of cancer patients in the United States who struggle to afford adequate treatment. In the last decade, researchers and physicians have begun to further explore the patient-level financial and health consequences of high-cost cancer treatment.
A 2018 study from the American Journal of Medicine (AJM), titled “ Death or Debt? National Estimates of Financial Toxicity in Persons with Newly-Diagnosed Cancer, ” evaluate d the extent of financial damage caused by a cancer diagnoses in the United States. The study ’ s large sample size of 9.5 million is a significant extension of previous studies that gathered data on a smaller or state level. The data was pulled from the Health and Retirement Study sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and Social Security Administration. Data was collected from 1998 to 2014 on people over 50 years old.
Inclusion criteria for the AJM study involved new cancer diagnoses of any type excluding minor skin cancer. Based on the year of diagnosis, a baseline financial value was gathered from two years before the diagnosis to act as a control. The trajectory of the patient’s finances was examined at two years and four years following the initial diagnosis. Changes in the patient’s net worth were calculated based on total wealth, a figure including assets and properties and subtracting debts such as mortgages and consumer debt.
The study found that 42.4 percent of the 9,527,522 new diagnoses of cancer between 2000 and 2012 had lost their entire life’s assets by year two. A further thirty-eight percent had depleted their life assets by year four. The average net worth by year two was $92,098, depleted from the average initial net worth of $644,031.
Large decreases of net worth were seen among those with both worsening and improving cancer status. The largest overall decreases were seen in patients over 75 years old with an average loss of $115,000. Comorbidities such as hypertension, current smoker, and lung disease increased the odds of total net worth depletion. Those with Medicaid as compared to private insurance were independently associated with financial losses at year two and four.
This is not a new phenomenon. In 2013, cancer physicians and researchers wrote a two-part manuscript, “Financial Toxicity: A New Name for a Growing Problem” in which they coined a new term, “Financial Toxicity,” to describe the patient-level financial impact of cancer care. The term encompasses both the objective financial burden on the individual and society as well as the subjective experience of financial strain during a period of illness and healing. The inclusion of the word “toxicity” in the term is carefully chosen, as researchers have found that the financial stress of cancer treatment is a risk factor for mortality.
In a study titled “Financial Insolvency as a Risk Factor for Early Mortality Among Patients With Cancer” published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2016, authors Scott D. Ramsey, Aasthaa Bansal and Polly Newcomb linked cancer registry records with federal bankruptcy records. A previous study by the same researchers showed that individuals with cancer are two and a half times more likely to file for bankruptcy compared to those without cancer. With this knowledge, the results of the 2016 study are all the more shocking.
While results varied based on the type of cancer, those who filed for bankruptcy after a diagnosis of breast, lung, colorectal or prostate cancer had significantly higher mortality rates. Patients suffering from prostate cancer who filed for bankruptcy were twice as likely to die. The risk of mortality was 2.5 times as high among patients with colorectal cancer who filed for bankruptcy compared to those who did not. While bankruptcy is at the extreme end of financial desperation, other studies have also found an association between high out-of-pocket costs and poor clinical outcomes.
There is no one reason for the correlation between financial toxicity and poor clinical outcomes. Financial insecurity may lead patients to seek out underfunded hospitals where risks of infection or medical errors may be higher. Patients may skip doses of medications or cut pills in half to stretch their prescriptions, in some cases resulting in subtherapeutic, and thereby insufficient, blood levels of medications.
Patients forced to handle large out-of-pocket costs are also more likely to forgo or delay necessary treatments. Cancer patients often work longer hours or cancel vacations to cover medical expenses sacrificing periods of rest and putting undue stress on their bodies during a period of healing. Many lose their jobs after long hospitalizations, or cannot work due to lowered immune systems or fatigue, further dragging them into debt and financial distress. For many, extra expenses for healthy food or even safe, comfortable housing is cut in order to pay for treatment.
In the US, cancer is one of the most expensive diseases to treat, second only to heart disease.
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), many chemotherapy agents cost more than $10,000 a month. Many treatment regimens require multiple chemotherapy drugs working in tandem, increasing the cost two- or threefold. And the cost is growing as new pharmacological breakthroughs and treatments carry impossible price tags.
Immunotherapy, for example, is a groundbreaking new treatment that activates the body’s immune system to fight cancer cells. It has been approved in the US and elsewhere as a first-line treatment for many types of cancer. While typical chemotherapy kills all cells, immunotherapy is more precise, sparing healthy cells resulting in fewer side effects and a higher quality of life during treatment. Immunotherapy also capitalizes on the immune system’s ability to continuously adapt in order to kill even the most rapidly changing cancer cells. Relapse rates are reduced with immunotherapy because the immune system has “memory,” and it can remember cancerous cells and fight them if the cancer returns.
While the development of immunotherapy is a result of decades of scientific research across the world—most of which took place in publicly funded institutions—the final, packaged, life-saving product, is only available to a select few. Without insurance, immunotherapy costs roughly $100,000 per person when taken for a year. Like chemotherapy, immunotherapy is often used in combination, which doubles or triples the cost. One immunotherapy agent, named Kymriah, used as a one-time dose to treat refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, costs $475,000.
Recent lawsuits against major pharmaceutical companies have shown that the cost of high-priced drugs are not simply a product of research and development—as companies claim—nor are the profits they generate used to fund future innovation. Instead, profits are funneled into stock buybacks, boosting the company’s stock profiles and increasing the wealth of the executives.
Even with private insurance, many patients are denied coverage for immunotherapy or forced to cover up to 25 percent of the cost. Furthermore, drug costs are just one aspect of cancer treatment. Hospitalization, teams of specialists, new advancements in imaging, surgery and radiotherapy collectively contribute to a systemic rise in cancer treatment cost that shoots past the rate of inflation. At the same time, average deductible costs for job-based health insurance have increased from $376 in 2006 to $1,300 in 2019. In a country where 70 percent of people live paycheck-to-paycheck, a single overnight stay in the hospital could deplete a family’s savings.
Young adults, while less likely to be diagnosed with cancer, face an even higher chance of financial ruin after diagnoses. With insufficient savings accounts, student debt, lower-income jobs and lack of eligibility for Medicare, young adult cancer survivors begin their lives buried in debt, many relying on crowdsourcing websites like GoFundMe or private charities to stay afloat.
The upsurge in research on the financial impact of cancer treatment has spurred many health care workers to advocate for screening patients for financial toxicity as well as initiating open conversations about the financial stress of treatment. However, aside from connecting patients with resources like private charities that cover a limited portion of treatment costs, conversations and awareness about financial toxicity are not a solution, as the problem finds its source in the capitalist system and the historic levels of social inequality that it has produced. Among rich and middle-income countries, the US has some of largest income-related disparities in health care. In the face of a cancer diagnosis, this translates directly to financial ruin and higher mortality among poor and working-class Americans.
Healthcare access has declined in past two decades, despite Obamacare: Study
by Cassidy Morrison
Financial access to healthcare services has declined over the past two decades, despite the implementation of Obamacare and other government insurance programs, according to a new study.
The analysis, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, traces the drop in access to the rise in premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and other costs, which have weighed against higher insurance coverage. It concludes that "over the past 20 years, the proportion of adults aged 18 to 64 years unable to see a physician owing to cost increased, mostly because of an increase among persons with insurance."
The authors, three doctors, interpret the results as evidence in favor of government-financed healthcare.
“With private insurance, we’ve seen significant worsening in the amount that patients are expected to pay, like premiums, deductibles, out-of-pocket costs, co-insurance, and co-pays,” said Dr. Laura Hawks, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the report.
The study finds that the share of insured adults who had trouble affording the cost of seeing a physician increased from 7.1% to 11.5% between 1998 and 2017. Meanwhile, insured people with chronic health conditions struggled frequently to pay for visits to specialists. About 1 in 5 patients with a chronic medical condition, such as diabetes or heart disease, said they could not see a doctor because of high costs. In 2017, for instance, the proportion of insured people who have chronic conditions, including heart disease, yet were unable to afford a visit to the doctor was 6.9 percentage points higher than in 1998.
The decline in access has occurred even though health insurance coverage has risen, from 83.1% in 1998 to 85.2% in 2017.
Hawks said government-run health plans, such as Medicaid, give people higher-quality coverage because they lack the same cost-sharing measures as private plans, including premiums and deductibles, that restrict access to health services.
“Our interpretation Is that the increased cost-sharing that’s required for private insurance companies to exist is the reason for these rising costs,” Hawks said. “So, if we were to reform the healthcare system, we’d want it to be universal as well as comprehensive, and the only way we could accomplish this is through a single-payer insurance system.”
Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have each proposed Medicare for All healthcare plans, which would eliminate all premiums, deductibles, and co-pays by enrolling everyone living in the United States into a government plan.
Democrats and President Barack Obama enacted Obamacare to provide access to private health insurance for people who did not have employer-provided or government insurance plans. The law did improve access, according to the study. However, a single middle-class earner making about $48,000 or more annually makes too much money to qualify for tax subsidies for premiums, making a private plan through the Obamacare marketplace too expensive for individuals and families.
One of the study's authors, Dr. David Himmelstein, a public health policy professor at the City University of New York and a supporter of “Medicare for all," said Obamacare accomplished a lot but came up short.
“The study is an endorsement of the fact that we need more reform of the healthcare system, but it doesn’t suggest a specific reform,” Himmelstein said. “What it says about [Obamacare] is that it brought more people into the system, but it didn’t fix the system.”
Bottom line, all of these new services for illegal border crossers are bonanzas, not just for the NGOs who benefit, they are benefits for human smuggling rackets, who can now advertise these wares as part of their illegal alien benefit packages and use the news of them to draw more business. Biden is helping that bunch ultimately with these free-hotel contracts even Americans in distress don't get. Cartels will use this incentive to drum up more business.
Biden Hollows Out Trump-Era COVID Protections at the Border
Memo: Biden admin plans to team with migrant advocates to 'streamline' border admission
President Biden delivers speech on Afghanistan on Apr. 14 / Getty ImagesJoseph Simonson • May 20, 2021 5:00 am
The Biden administration is preparing to gut COVID-19 safety restrictions on illegal immigrants and asylum seekers and essentially reverse the Trump administration’s pandemic health protections without public notice, according to documents circulating within U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
While the Trump administration took a hardline approach to turning away immigrants to avoid "a serious danger of introduction of [a communicable] disease," at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Customs and Border Protection is now quietly walking much of that guidance back. A May memo, reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, highlighted a potential work-around of the safety measures. The memo, authored by senior staff at CBP, emphasizes the ability of "customs officers [to] determine [who] should be allowed into the United States."
Customs and Border Protection officials say the Biden administration is looking to liberally interpret that provision, which was initially meant for migrants with extenuating circumstances related to humanitarian concerns or political repression. Broadening the humanitarian exemption would constitute a de facto reversal of the Trump administration’s guidance on limiting migration into the country. The shift in policy would come as border patrol agents encountered 178,622 migrants in April, among the highest-trafficked months on record.
"They’re keeping in place Trump’s order while broadening it enough to please left-wing activists," a senior Customs and Border Protection official told the Free Beacon. "If they rescind Title 42, they can’t deport single men."
The memo says the federal officials "will be relying" on immigrant-related, nongovernmental organizations "to identify undocumented individuals potentially amenable to be exempted on humanitarian grounds." Customs and Border Protection officials say essentially outsourcing immigration processing to NGOs could flood the country with migrants, many of whom never attend their immigration court hearings. Critics say activists from border organizations like the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society coach migrants on how to gain asylum status, rather than seek out the most vulnerable.
Trump invoked Title 42, a little known provision that enables the executive branch to curtail border crossings during a public health crisis, in a March 2020 executive order. Left-wing advocacy groups call Title 42 a violation of international human rights treaties and have demanded the Biden administration reverse his predecessor’s invocation of it. The Biden administration claims the "streamlined" process of admitting immigrants will combat COVID-19 by reducing "the amount of time undocumented individuals spend in congregate settings, thereby reducing the risk of COVID-19."
Using an expansive view of the pandemic exemptions and partnering with NGOs will ensure that more illegal immigrants and asylum seekers will enter the country, according to the senior CBP official.
"What the Biden administration is doing is giving them the ability to play both sides," the official said.
President Biden fulfilled a campaign promise by publicly instituting Title 42 exemptions for all migrant children, a decision many have blamed for the surge of unaccompanied minors at the southern border. Border agents could soon face a secondary surge—broad humanitarian exemptions would allow most families and children to claim asylum, regardless of whether they test positive for COVID-19 or other diseases. Single men, Customs and Border Protection officials say, would likely still face deportation unless they say they fear for their safety in their home country.
The release of the memo comes as border patrol agents increasingly see what the New York Times dubbed "pandemic refugees" from countries as far away as India on the southern border. April numbers released by the government showed 30 percent of families found on the border came from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—a 22.5 percent increase from April 2019.
