So handing Joe $14 billion to secure the border, is in fact handing him $14 billion to open the border. That's seven times what President Trump asked for for the construction of a border wall, which actually would have secured the border
Funny how it costs more to open a border than build a wall
Back in the old days, when President Trump sought a piddly couple of billion to build a border wall, Democrats bellowed that it was too costly and America couldn't afford it.
My, my, how things have changed.
These days we learn that if shutting down an open border with a wall is costly, prising open a border wider for all illegal comers is even more costly, and I'm not talking about the lifetime of taxpayer-paid "services" illegal border crossers are going to be requiring once they get in.
Right now, Joe Biden is calling for $14 billion to "protect" the border, and blaming the GOP-controlled Congress for not giving it to him.
Congress has resisted all right, and Byron York has pointed out an interesting reason for that which hasn't gotten much attention:
Joe Biden has already been spending a lot of money on so-called border control.
According to York, in a Washington Examiner column:
In fiscal 2021, according to the report, Congress appropriated $4.869 billion for Border Patrol operations and southwest border surge funding. In fiscal 2022, that figure grew to $6.235 billion. In fiscal 2023, it grew to $7.153 billion. Altogether, that is a 47% increase in funding for the border during the Biden years. During that same time, the report notes, monthly encounters with illegal crossers at the border have grown from 163,043 in fiscal 2021 to 230,549 in fiscal 2022 to 266,762 in fiscal 2023. That is a 63% increase. And so far, in fiscal 2024, the number has jumped again, to 308,933.
So they've handed Biden billions after billions, raising the Border Patrol's budget by 47% in Biden's three years, but somehow ended up with a 63% increase in illegal border crossings through 2022 and probably more in 2023. More money, more illegal crossings, and it's not a one-to-one-ratio, it's exponentially higher on the migrant side the more cash that gets shoveled in.
We've seen this dynamic elsewhere -- the more money that gets spent on schools, the lower their outcomes in test scores and literacy. We've also seen that the more money that gets spent on homeless programs, the more homeless a city has. Economist Thomas Sowell has described that as having all the poverty you'd like to pay for, and this border crisis spending would definitely would go into that category.
After all, if Joe Biden had wanted to invest his own money on something with this kind of a return, he'd have a outperforming portfolio.
More money equals more illegal border crossings, basically because Joe spends that money on speedier migrant "processing," the way opening more checkout lines in a supermarket contributes to higher turnover.
York attributes it to the baseline of the problem which is policy:
The current catastrophe resulted from one act: Upon taking office, Biden signaled to the world that if you enter the United States illegally, you will be allowed to stay. Since then, millions have come — lowest estimate 6 million, and perhaps many more than that — and only a small portion has been turned away. That has created an enormous magnet to draw immigrants, nearly all of whom do not have a legitimate claim of asylum. It is a problem entirely of Biden's creation.
Biden blames much of the influx on poverty. Yes, lots of people in the poorer parts of the world would like to come to the U.S. for more money and a better life. But that has been true for a long time. What changed in January 2021 was that Biden opened the door — come, and you can stay.
Migrant satisfaction comes first. Actual border security contradicts the first purpose, so no border security.
So handing Joe $14 billion to secure the border, is in fact handing him $14 billion to open the border. That's seven times what President Trump asked for for the construction of a border wall, which actually would have secured the border
Is it too much to say that giving Joe Biden twice the money for border contol which is what he is asking for, might just double or triple the illegal border crossings now seen going on in the states?
It doesn't seem as though there could be any other outcome.
York notes that Republicans are onto this, which is a good thing.
Now, Johnson and his fellow House Republicans have prepared a report on how much money has already been spent on the border during the Biden years. The spending has been going up, up, up, and it just brings more illegal border crossers. "Congress has appropriated more funds, always beyond President Biden's budget requests, and seen record crossings at the border," the report says.
Now it's time for Republicans to get the word out about this disastrous spending to the voters.
Image: Bruce de Torres, via Flickr // public domain
Invasion Inversion: Turning America Upside-Down
Behold: It’s the leprechaun-logistics theory of magic migration that tells us hordes of clean, fed, and comfortably shod invading migrants miraculously and spontaneously appear at the America end of their personal rainbows, where they demand pots of U.S. taxpayer gold.
But with no backpacks to carry water, energy snacks, or even spare socks for their journey? Shoot, our children don’t go off to neighborhood elementary schools without backpacks full of supplies. So how is it these folks walk the 1,300-mile south-to-north expanse of Mexico, not to mention trekking from Central and South America, without backpacks?
Watching thousands of illegals daily pour across America’s southern border forces recognition that this mass invasion didn’t just pop out of the woodwork or happen organically. The magnitude and duration of this invasion demands answers to four core questions: 1) Who organizes these people? 2) Who provides water, food, and critical support for these hundreds of thousands of people? 3) Who arranges and distributes the go-to-this-enabler contact lists these invaders are given and then carry with them so they know with whom to connect when they step off free-pass buses and gratuitously ticketed airplanes? And 4) Who recruits, coordinates, and supports the many enablers named on these contact lists — located in cities across America — who connect the invaders with free-to-them services and unending support?
Media tell us that many invaders traveled far distances and have endured harrowing conditions. But they don’t look all that travel-worn. Any reader who has traveled in developing countries, especially in adventure-travel mode (ostensibly, walking through the Darien Gap and the length of Mexico qualifies) knows that it is a neat trick to keep self and clothes clean and body hydrated and nourished.
By absence of any mention, mainstream media imply that this is all organic. It’s all just happening. Relax, folks — there’s nothing hidden here. This faux non-explanation is not believable on its face. The big lie lives in all of this, and the big liars are journalists who don’t do their jobs and politicians who’ve been doing a job on America through the full spell of this invasion.
Now bring to this that “remittances from the U.S. given to Mexicans in Mexico reached a record $55.9 billion in 2022” and American “taxpayers could pay up to $451 billion to care for migrants who entered the US illegally.” This steals needed greenbacks from American household budgets.
How can largely unskilled and relatively uneducated migrants, who — thanks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its partners in Congress — often work under the table for less than minimum wage, manage to send to their families in Mexico an average $390 per month? Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains:
Much of this gifting is made possible by generous American state and federal subsidies to illegal aliens. Frequent subsidized housing, health care, legal assistance, education and food in the United States are often used to free up cash for illegals, who then send it to Mexico.
When trusted people and institutions repeatedly ignore the obvious, this breach of trust can induce confusion and self-doubt in the trusting person, which is the aim of gaslighting.
Consider four historical examples of media malfeasance — psy ops, really:
1) The Soviet Union, where its “enemies of the people” were forced to confess to crimes they had not committed — and the people acquiesced to Pravda’s promoted show trials.
2) Nazi Germany, whose propaganda machine targeted certain groups to justify persecution — and the people subscribed and consented.
3) North Korea, where Dear Leader uses the machinery of mass communication to shape and control the thoughts and beliefs of his people — and people weep and worship at the sight of him.
4) China, whose propaganda engine manipulated public opinion and suppressed dissent — and the people passively assented while tens of millions died.
Is national suicide America’s fate? If not, the necessary singular rallying point must be for rank-and-file Americans to resolve absolutely that America is for Americans, and beyond that, only for a measured number of legal immigrants and visa-holders, who must follow our laws and rules, speak intelligible English, embrace and support the American ethos, and have skills to sell on the legal labor market. Allowing anything less writes large that the American Experiment is failing, rapidly and irreversibly.
To turn this around, to save America, we the little people must clearly and forcefully communicate to political power players that they are to 1) stop all illegals from crossing our borders and 2) reverse the flow of illegal migration. Illegals now in America must return to their home countries or to other nations that accept them. America has reached the point where We the People must be heard and heeded.
This is winner-take-all. Either American citizens win or the invaders win. One political party supports this invasion. One political party allows this invasion. And your and my tolerating politicians’ wrong actions or their feckless inaction is killing Americans, especially paycheck-dependent working-class Americans.
There are four ways to force these fixes on our elected leaders and the administrative state to whom these leaders sell public trust.
The most difficult and critical one first, trite as it is: 1) Clean political house. Vote out career status quo–protectors, and vote in a nasty breed of mission-first hard-charging restorers of American sovereignty.
2) Post articles that critically challenge quick-buck media channels — as I have done here — to uncover and broadcast truth.
3) Publish open letters to named journalists and policy experts respectfully, if sharply, demanding answers to the four questions presented at the top of this article.
4) Ask wealthy conservatives to set up and support multiple teams of skilled, honest, and fearless investigators to find answers to the four core questions and others that emerge from their deep investigations.
The Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught his students that words and theory without action are meaningless. This article is this Stoic’s action. Now it could be your turn to act, for history is showing that this is America’s “Stand or Die” order.
Greg Moo is a former high school principal, Alaskan commercial fisherman, college teacher, certified all-position welder, organization development consultant, and author of articles and a still relevant old book.
Image: woodleywonderworks via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
It’s your thing Joe
The latest from the border is that the Department of Justice is picking another fight with Texas. As you may know, Texas passed a law making illegal immigration a state crime. According to Governor Abbott, the Biden administration has forced Texas to fend for itself. So it’s more “court time” for Texas vs. the DOJ.
I agree that Texas is pushing the limit and the DOJ may be technically right about its criticism of the law. At the same time, being technically right does not fix the problem if your policy is totally wrong.
The Dallas Morning News nailed it in Friday’s editorial:
Texas’ latest law aimed at stemming migration is likely to present constitutional concerns. But the federal government drove this moment to its crisis by throwing up its hands in the face of hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing into the U.S. every month.
Immigration officers logged nearly 2.5 million migrant encounters last year. That’s a city more than double the size of Dallas.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has come in for easy criticism from immigration advocates who think the state’s policies are inhumane, from creating new physical barriers to busing or flying migrants to other parts of the country.
But the Biden administration’s response is to condemn any effort Texas makes in the name of enforcement. That includes suing the state over a new law that authorizes the arrest and potential deportation of suspected migrants.
We have serious concerns about that law. But no one should be surprised that the state is now passing laws around immigration when there has been so little action by the federal government to act to protect the state.
Yes, there are concerns but the reality on the ground can not be overlooked. From Laredo in the east, to El Paso in the west, to neighboring Arizona, the situation is beyond unsustainable.
What happens if this case goes to the Supreme Court? I don’t know, but the Biden administration is risking a double loss here. First off, the justices may agree that Texas is under siege and entitled to self-defense. Secondly, and this is bad, but the ruling will confirm that the federal government has been missing in action.
P.S. Check out my blog for posts, podcasts, and videos.
Image generated by AI.
Schadenfreude: Biden campaign volunteers quitting 'in droves'
Is there any hope left for the U.S.S. Biden?
It's not just that his polling numbers are reaching the point of no return.
Now his campaign staff are fleeing -- "in droves."
According to Newsweek:
A group of staffers working on President Joe Biden's reelection campaign warned the president that his volunteers are quitting "in droves" over his handling of Israel's military response in the Gaza Strip.
Biden has faced immense pressure from members of his own party over the United States' policies in light of the surprise Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, which killed about 1,200 people and resulted in roughly 240 hostages, including some Americans. In response, Israel launched an extensive air and ground offensive in Gaza, killing nearly 22,000 Palestinians over the past several weeks, according to Gaza health officials cited by the Associated Press (AP).
In a letter published Wednesday on Medium, an anonymous group of Biden's campaign staffers demanded the president call for a ceasefire in Gaza, citing concerns that not shifting his policy on the issue could hurt his 2024 chances.
The money quote from the letter is here:
"Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict," the Medium letter read.
"It is not enough to merely be the alternative to Donald Trump," the campaigners continued. "The campaign has to shift the feeling in the pits of voters' stomachs, the same feeling that weighs on us every day as we fight for your reelection. The only way to do that is to call for a ceasefire."
That feeling in the pits of all those stomachs is more likely that the campaign is losing and nobody wants to be on a losing team, working like the dickens to save it, and in the end losing. That's the more likely reason the staffers are fleeing -- the voting public doesn't want their 'product.'
Palestine looks more like just an excuse. Since when have these people actually cared about Palestine?
While there have been a few high-profile resignations from the Biden administration over Israel's attempt to defend itself from terrorism coming from Palestine -- it's chiefly from Palestinian- and Palestinian-linked Arab- and Muslim-Americans, where it's far more plausible that these characters have lives that revolve around Palestine, the way the life of Rashida Tlaib, who waves a Palestinian flag in a congressional office, does.
The young hipsters of the Biden campaign who are jumping ship look more like they may be using Palestine as the opportunity to just get out. We already know that odds are good they are anti-Semitic, but to insist that their lives revolve around Palestine rather than what happens here and the power they can obtain here if they win this election is simply ridiculous.
Because odds are, they know they're losing the election with an embarrassment like Joe at the helm. Young people are fleeing him, black people are fleeing him, Hispanics bolted a long time ago. Most voters say he's too old to be president and many are disgusted with his policy failures around inflation, the economy, the open border, and crime. Joel Kotkin has an excellent piece describing why the left is losing against the right in what increasingly looks like a great change of direction.
So Palestine and all that supposed love of the Palestinian children offers the perfect opportunity for them to jump ship, which, it turns out, the paid staffers are contemplating, too.
Yesterday, Axios reported that there was trouble even among that group.
The White House chief of staff shelled out his own cash to put on a "morale-booster" holiday party for them:
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients is throwing an off-campus party for hundreds of Biden staffers to celebrate their last three years — and steel the team for the final sprint ahead of the election, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Zients, a millionaire former businessman, knows that White House staff have a grueling year ahead of them. He's using his personal funds to convey appreciation for Biden aides who spend most of their waking hours at work.
Obviously, he knows they want out, too. Seems a lot of people want out, what with Biden's wretched record of 'achievements' which his team is pathetically bragging about. Maybe it's too much even for them.
The latest polling average from RealClearPolitics shows that President Trump is ahead of Joe Biden by one point, a shocking thing given that Trump is always supposedly behind and the polling companies in great numbers usually bias leftward.
Sean Trende, the RealClearPolitics political numbers cruncher, points out that not only is Trump bouncing up in polls, he's now the favorite to win.
The correct position right now is that Trump is better positioned in the polls to win this election than any GOP nominee since at least 2004. Not only that, he habitually over-performs his polls. Frankly, if you are willing to set favorites this far out, you should almost certainly declare Donald Trump the favorite.
What's more, Biden's public approval rating at around 40 percent or so has sunk so low that many analysts say it's at the point of no return, with no candidate ever going on to win an election from an approval rating that low.
It's ugly out there and going to be a lot of work to win over the public to this jalopy of a president. Who'd want to do that? No wonder they're getting out while taking their chance to grandstand for Palestine. This is rats fleeing the sinking ship.
Image: Monica Showalter, with use of public domain images
Mayorkas ‘Parole’ Plan for Labor Migration Stalls Border Talks, Ukraine Funds
GOP legislators want the White House to shut down its new “parole” migration pathway — but White House officials involved in the border negotiations are rejecting any restrictions.
Democrats “don’t want to deal with parole,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) told Breitbart News. “They want to leave it wide open” because they want to create a parallel immigration system run by government-funded non-profits, and operating alongside the legal migration system and illegal cross-border flow of migrants, he said.
Democrats who are worried about the political damage from President Joe Biden’s migration should “call up the White House and say, “Work with Republicans to change asylum, change parole [and] implement a Title 42 authority that would stop the inflow,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told “Face the Nation’ on December 31. “We’re full,” he added.
House Speaker Mike Johnson warned the White House that the House has already voted for a bill – H.R. 2 – to shut down the parole pathway. He released a December 21 letter to Biden and his deputies saying, “Cease exploitation of parole authority, and ensure it is granted solely ‘on a case-by-case basis’ instead of using parole for entire classes of aliens.”
The parole issue is rarely mentioned in media reports about the slow-motion migration talks, partly because most reporters are cheerleading for more migration. Also, White House officials and GOP Senators prefer to tout claimed progress in the less important issue of asylum.
Yet parole is the bigger problem, in part, because White House officials are rejecting any curbs on parole. “Biden officials have told Hispanic lawmakers that they are resisting GOP demands to limit the administration’s authority to release migrants through the legal tool known as parole,” Axios reported on December 19.
The Democrats are resisting compromise because they using their parole claim to create a parallel, administration-directed immigration system under the control of Biden’s ambitious pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
RELATED: “I’m Done with You” — Rep. Clay Higgins Tells Off Alejandro Mayorkas to His Face
Homeland Security Committee Events / YouTubeThat parole goal is being protected even though Democrats choose to combine border security with a funding package to help Ukraine survive amid the war against Russia.
For decades, the border officials who regulate the inflow of legal visitors and tourists have also been allowed by Congress to “parole ” individuals into the United States in emergency circumstances, such as a boat crewman’s medical emergency. Various administrations exploited the loophole to import many people — often with the tacit approval of congressional leaders — until Congress tightened the law in 1996.
Congress “limited the executive branch’s authority to parole aliens as a class [by] allowing it to do so ‘only on a case-by-case basis,'” according to a December 2023 report by Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who now works with the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Second, it struck the phrase ‘for emergent reasons or for reasons deemed strictly in the public interest’ and substituted in its place ‘for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,'” said the CIS report.
But Congress’ 1996 limits on parole are being ignored by Mayorkas, who is both a lawyer and a pro-migration zealot. Since 2o21, he and his deputies have given parole to more than 1.4 million people in multiple categories — far more than the annual inflow of 1 million legal immigrants.
For example, Mayorkas ignored the”case-by-case” legal requirement when he provided parole to roughly 100,000 Afghans. Many of the Afghans got their parole documents after they were first flown to a safe airport outside Afghanistan, and even though many had done little to help their government fight the Taliban armies.
Mayorkas also provided a parole welcome to roughly 200,000 Ukrainians and 25,0000 Russians, nearly all of whom had safely passed through safe European countries on their way to Mayorkas’ parole welcome.
Mayorkas is giving parole to 360,000 migrants per year who fly in from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela. They are given parole under the justification that they would otherwise break the law by crossing the border illegally — and despite the damage to their home country caused by their exit.
RELATED: Mayorkas Refuses to Use Term “Illegal Immigrants”
C-SPANMayorkas is also using his parole loophole to sneak economic migrants past Congress’ law that asylum seekers wait six months before getting a work permit. The six-month delay was written to prevent companies from importing cheap and desperate foreign workers as asylum seekers. But now border migrants can get parole and work permits, allowing them to quickly flood the labor market.
Mayorkas is giving parole to the family relatives of legal migrants from Central America. This allows the relatives to bypass the line for the roughly 250,000 green cards annually authorized by Congress for the reunification of extended families.
He has also given parole to many of the 600,000 Mexican single adults who have been admitted amid backroom promises by Mexico’s pro-migration government to streamline the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.
This massive parole inflow is in addition to the inflow of roughly one million legal immigrants, and roughly one million white-collar and blue-collar visa workers, This vast legal and illegal inflow inflicts massive pocketbook damage to ordinary Americans by cutting their wages and driving up their housing prices.
For Mayorkas, parole is a far more powerful tool than asylum — despite several lawsuits against his use of parole.
Since 2021, Mayorkas and his allies have encouraged migration by touting asylum to would-be migrants.
However, while asylum gets migrants into the country, they are still in illegal status until they win their court plea for asylum. Also, they can get only work permits after several months., Also, relatively few migrants go through the asylum process because few expect to win their often bogus asylum pleas.
So this asylum doorway gets migrants in — but it also expands the visible population of penniless illegals that fuels public opposition to Democrats’ claim that the United States is a “Nation of Immigrants.”
In contrast, parole approval gives migrants instant legal status and fast-track work permits, and also puts them on a path to welfare and medical benefits. This economic package helps migrants anchor themselves in U.S. society, to bring in their spouses and children, and then apply for the “Adjustment of Status” rolling amnesty that gets them a green card and citizenship.
Moreover, parole allows migrants to fly quietly into U.S. airports, thus reducing the visible monthly inflow of illegal migrants.
So the Cuban-born, pro-migrant homeland security chief is using parole — not asylum — to build a parallel migration system alongside the migration system established by Congress in 1990 and 1996.
RELATED: Kari Lake — Fentanyl Coming Across “Wide Open Border” Is a “Weapon of Mass Destruction”
Matt Perdie / Breitbart NewsFor example, he is using parole to bypass Congress’ limits on family chain migration into American communities, to import hundreds of thousands of cheap and compliant workers for companies, and to implement the administration’s efforts to reshape the nation’s economy and labor market for the benefit of investors and CEOs.
He is using parole to anchor economic migrants in America, partly because the migrants get work permits. Also, the two-year parole status can be renewed, and it provides a five-year path to the U.S. welfare programs that allow low-wage migrants to stay in the United States. Moreover, parole migrants from Haiti and Cuba get instant access to welfare programs. “As they walk out of the airport with that wet stamp, they’re eligible for Medicaid. welfare and food stamps,” Arthur told Breitbart News.
Mayorkas is also setting up”Safe Mobility Offices” in foreign countries where U.S. officials can grant parole, refugee status, or temporary work visas — to applicants seeking to live in Americans’ society. Mayorkas’s pending “magnet” request for $14 billion in extra funding asks for $1.3 billion to expand the inflow of parole migrants in 2024.
Overall, Mayorkas has repeatedly and consistently called for a Canadian-style, immigration-first economic strategy that would expand government power over Americans’ labor supply and the business sector.
In March 2023, for example, he told a Senate hearing:
It is an economic security threat, the shortage of workers … Regrettably, regrettably, our legal immigration system is not designed to meet the need of employers here in the United States, despite the fact that individuals from other countries want to come here to work — even seasonally, even temporarily — earn the money that they can bring back to their home countries and support their families there.
In December 2022, for example, Mayorkas told ElPasoMatters.org:
We look to our partner to the north that has a much more nimble immigration system that can be retooled to the [national government’s] needs at the moment. For example, Canada is in need of 1 million workers and they have agreed that in 2023, they will admit 1.4 million … immigrants to fill that labor need that Canadians themselves cannot. We are stuck in antiquated laws that do not meet our current needs.
This goal of a cheap labor, migrant-inflated economy– and the use of parole to create it — is backed by the FWD.us, a group founded by West Coast investors that urged Senators to confirm Mayorkas as homeland secretary in 2021. The founders include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who spent more than $100 million on programs to boost turnout in Democratic districts in 2020.
But Canada’s high-migration economy has flooded the nation’s labor market with cheap and lesser-skilled migrants that have flatlined national productivity. It has spiked rents, housing prices, homelessness, and inflation, and has even forced down the nation’s birthrate.
Similar policies have produced similar results United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, France, and Germany, forcing extensive backtracking this year as polls shift against the pro-migration incumbents.
Yet Mayorkas and his team are rejecting any curbs on their use of parole in the Senate talks. Politico reported on December 22:
Mayorkas’ talks with Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) are advancing despite facing huge hurdles. They’ve made progress on changes to asylum standards but remain at odds over dialing back the president’s parole authority and new expulsion authority, according to a second person briefed on the talks.
Even if parole is included in the deal, GOP staffers will have to scrutinize the language for new loopholes, Arthur told Breitbart:
Negotiators and members need to be very explicit about any proposal to expand the ability of the Biden administration to allow foreign nationals into the United States on parole, because the Biden administration has shown willingness to abuse the very, very limited parole authority it already has.
There is also little trust among Republicans, even Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) who helped clinch Senate passage of the 2013 “Gang of Eight”cheap labor bill. On December 221, he told Politico:
“I don’t think Mayorkas gets it done. I mean, you’ve seen his performance on the border, it’s worse than abysmal,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said. “We have him up for hearings. And he sits there and says the border’s secure. He’s not even dealing with reality.”
“We’re not going to reach any kind of agreement until the president tells us what, if anything, he’s willing to do to secure the border,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Politico.
But the GOP leadership is eager to show they are all opposed to Mayorkas’ parole programs.
“Our [GOP] colleagues at the negotiating table are under no illusions about how difficult it is to fix our nation’s broken asylum and parole system,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in a December 18 floor speech. “There’s no longer any disagreement that the situation at the southern border is unsustainable and requires the Senate to act.”
GOP legislators want the White House to shut down its new “parole” migration pathway — but White House officials involved in the border negotiations are rejecting any restrictions.
Democrats “don’t want to deal with parole,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) told Breitbart News. “They want to leave it wide open” because they want to create a parallel immigration system run by government-funded non-profits, and operating alongside the legal migration system and illegal cross-border flow of migrants, he said.
Democrats who are worried about the political damage from President Joe Biden’s migration should “call up the White House and say, “Work with Republicans to change asylum, change parole [and] implement a Title 42 authority that would stop the inflow,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told “Face the Nation’ on December 31. “We’re full,” he added.
House Speaker Mike Johnson warned the White House that the House has already voted for a bill – H.R. 2 – to shut down the parole pathway. He released a December 21 letter to Biden and his deputies saying, “Cease exploitation of parole authority, and ensure it is granted solely ‘on a case-by-case basis’ instead of using parole for entire classes of aliens.”
The parole issue is rarely mentioned in media reports about the slow-motion migration talks, partly because most reporters are cheerleading for more migration. Also, White House officials and GOP Senators prefer to tout claimed progress in the less important issue of asylum.
Yet parole is the bigger problem, in part, because White House officials are rejecting any curbs on parole. “Biden officials have told Hispanic lawmakers that they are resisting GOP demands to limit the administration’s authority to release migrants through the legal tool known as parole,” Axios reported on December 19.
The Democrats are resisting compromise because they using their parole claim to create a parallel, administration-directed immigration system under the control of Biden’s ambitious pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
RELATED: “I’m Done with You” — Rep. Clay Higgins Tells Off Alejandro Mayorkas to His Face
Homeland Security Committee Events / YouTubeThat parole goal is being protected even though Democrats choose to combine border security with a funding package to help Ukraine survive amid the war against Russia.
For decades, the border officials who regulate the inflow of legal visitors and tourists have also been allowed by Congress to “parole ” individuals into the United States in emergency circumstances, such as a boat crewman’s medical emergency. Various administrations exploited the loophole to import many people — often with the tacit approval of congressional leaders — until Congress tightened the law in 1996.
Congress “limited the executive branch’s authority to parole aliens as a class [by] allowing it to do so ‘only on a case-by-case basis,'” according to a December 2023 report by Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who now works with the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Second, it struck the phrase ‘for emergent reasons or for reasons deemed strictly in the public interest’ and substituted in its place ‘for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,'” said the CIS report.
But Congress’ 1996 limits on parole are being ignored by Mayorkas, who is both a lawyer and a pro-migration zealot. Since 2o21, he and his deputies have given parole to more than 1.4 million people in multiple categories — far more than the annual inflow of 1 million legal immigrants.
For example, Mayorkas ignored the”case-by-case” legal requirement when he provided parole to roughly 100,000 Afghans. Many of the Afghans got their parole documents after they were first flown to a safe airport outside Afghanistan, and even though many had done little to help their government fight the Taliban armies.
Mayorkas also provided a parole welcome to roughly 200,000 Ukrainians and 25,0000 Russians, nearly all of whom had safely passed through safe European countries on their way to Mayorkas’ parole welcome.
Mayorkas is giving parole to 360,000 migrants per year who fly in from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela. They are given parole under the justification that they would otherwise break the law by crossing the border illegally — and despite the damage to their home country caused by their exit.
RELATED: Mayorkas Refuses to Use Term “Illegal Immigrants”
C-SPANMayorkas is also using his parole loophole to sneak economic migrants past Congress’ law that asylum seekers wait six months before getting a work permit. The six-month delay was written to prevent companies from importing cheap and desperate foreign workers as asylum seekers. But now border migrants can get parole and work permits, allowing them to quickly flood the labor market.
Mayorkas is giving parole to the family relatives of legal migrants from Central America. This allows the relatives to bypass the line for the roughly 250,000 green cards annually authorized by Congress for the reunification of extended families.
He has also given parole to many of the 600,000 Mexican single adults who have been admitted amid backroom promises by Mexico’s pro-migration government to streamline the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.
This massive parole inflow is in addition to the inflow of roughly one million legal immigrants, and roughly one million white-collar and blue-collar visa workers, This vast legal and illegal inflow inflicts massive pocketbook damage to ordinary Americans by cutting their wages and driving up their housing prices.
For Mayorkas, parole is a far more powerful tool than asylum — despite several lawsuits against his use of parole.
Since 2021, Mayorkas and his allies have encouraged migration by touting asylum to would-be migrants.
However, while asylum gets migrants into the country, they are still in illegal status until they win their court plea for asylum. Also, they can get only work permits after several months., Also, relatively few migrants go through the asylum process because few expect to win their often bogus asylum pleas.
So this asylum doorway gets migrants in — but it also expands the visible population of penniless illegals that fuels public opposition to Democrats’ claim that the United States is a “Nation of Immigrants.”
In contrast, parole approval gives migrants instant legal status and fast-track work permits, and also puts them on a path to welfare and medical benefits. This economic package helps migrants anchor themselves in U.S. society, to bring in their spouses and children, and then apply for the “Adjustment of Status” rolling amnesty that gets them a green card and citizenship.
Moreover, parole allows migrants to fly quietly into U.S. airports, thus reducing the visible monthly inflow of illegal migrants.
So the Cuban-born, pro-migrant homeland security chief is using parole — not asylum — to build a parallel migration system alongside the migration system established by Congress in 1990 and 1996.
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Matt Perdie / Breitbart NewsFor example, he is using parole to bypass Congress’ limits on family chain migration into American communities, to import hundreds of thousands of cheap and compliant workers for companies, and to implement the administration’s efforts to reshape the nation’s economy and labor market for the benefit of investors and CEOs.
He is using parole to anchor economic migrants in America, partly because the migrants get work permits. Also, the two-year parole status can be renewed, and it provides a five-year path to the U.S. welfare programs that allow low-wage migrants to stay in the United States. Moreover, parole migrants from Haiti and Cuba get instant access to welfare programs. “As they walk out of the airport with that wet stamp, they’re eligible for Medicaid. welfare and food stamps,” Arthur told Breitbart News.
Mayorkas is also setting up”Safe Mobility Offices” in foreign countries where U.S. officials can grant parole, refugee status, or temporary work visas — to applicants seeking to live in Americans’ society. Mayorkas’s pending “magnet” request for $14 billion in extra funding asks for $1.3 billion to expand the inflow of parole migrants in 2024.
Overall, Mayorkas has repeatedly and consistently called for a Canadian-style, immigration-first economic strategy that would expand government power over Americans’ labor supply and the business sector.
In March 2023, for example, he told a Senate hearing:
It is an economic security threat, the shortage of workers … Regrettably, regrettably, our legal immigration system is not designed to meet the need of employers here in the United States, despite the fact that individuals from other countries want to come here to work — even seasonally, even temporarily — earn the money that they can bring back to their home countries and support their families there.
In December 2022, for example, Mayorkas told ElPasoMatters.org:
We look to our partner to the north that has a much more nimble immigration system that can be retooled to the [national government’s] needs at the moment. For example, Canada is in need of 1 million workers and they have agreed that in 2023, they will admit 1.4 million … immigrants to fill that labor need that Canadians themselves cannot. We are stuck in antiquated laws that do not meet our current needs.
This goal of a cheap labor, migrant-inflated economy– and the use of parole to create it — is backed by the FWD.us, a group founded by West Coast investors that urged Senators to confirm Mayorkas as homeland secretary in 2021. The founders include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who spent more than $100 million on programs to boost turnout in Democratic districts in 2020.
But Canada’s high-migration economy has flooded the nation’s labor market with cheap and lesser-skilled migrants that have flatlined national productivity. It has spiked rents, housing prices, homelessness, and inflation, and has even forced down the nation’s birthrate.
Similar policies have produced similar results United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, France, and Germany, forcing extensive backtracking this year as polls shift against the pro-migration incumbents.
Yet Mayorkas and his team are rejecting any curbs on their use of parole in the Senate talks. Politico reported on December 22:
Mayorkas’ talks with Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) are advancing despite facing huge hurdles. They’ve made progress on changes to asylum standards but remain at odds over dialing back the president’s parole authority and new expulsion authority, according to a second person briefed on the talks.
Even if parole is included in the deal, GOP staffers will have to scrutinize the language for new loopholes, Arthur told Breitbart:
Negotiators and members need to be very explicit about any proposal to expand the ability of the Biden administration to allow foreign nationals into the United States on parole, because the Biden administration has shown willingness to abuse the very, very limited parole authority it already has.
There is also little trust among Republicans, even Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) who helped clinch Senate passage of the 2013 “Gang of Eight”cheap labor bill. On December 221, he told Politico:
“I don’t think Mayorkas gets it done. I mean, you’ve seen his performance on the border, it’s worse than abysmal,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said. “We have him up for hearings. And he sits there and says the border’s secure. He’s not even dealing with reality.”
“We’re not going to reach any kind of agreement until the president tells us what, if anything, he’s willing to do to secure the border,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Politico.
But the GOP leadership is eager to show they are all opposed to Mayorkas’ parole programs.
“Our [GOP] colleagues at the negotiating table are under no illusions about how difficult it is to fix our nation’s broken asylum and parole system,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in a December 18 floor speech. “There’s no longer any disagreement that the situation at the southern border is unsustainable and requires the Senate to act.”
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