The Unexplained Immigration Surge
The sudden surge in illegal immigration under this administration has a lot of us asking the question: Why?
Why would President Biden almost immediately open our southern border, stop construction on the border wall, stop deportations, want welfare benefits for illegal immigrants, and a quick path to citizenship for all illegals?
In 1986 Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act. In addition to making it a crime to knowingly hire illegal immigrants, the legislation gave amnesty to all illegal immigrates already in the US. In other words, it gave all illegal immigrants in country green cards – in turn meaning they would not be deported.
The bill was quite controversial at the time but passed because Congress promised to make illegal immigration more difficult. As part of that promise, incorporated into the bill was a substantial increase in border control resources. On three additional occasions since then the border patrol has been strengthened and enlarged. In addition, the Severe Fence Act of 2006 authorized a fence along the US-Mexico border.
So, our immigration policies and laws have changed over the years. But since 1986, the law has been expanded to allow more legal immigrants. Here are the basic types:
Family-based: green card holders can petition to bring spouse, children, siblings, and parents.
Employment-based: employers can petition and hire foreigners with valuable skills.
Ceilings: Under this provision, no country can have immigrants higher than 7% of the total number of people immigrating to the US in one year.
Diversity Visas & Others: 50,000 immigrants are allowed in annually on a lottery type basis to countries with a relatively low rate of immigration.
Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Provisions are made for people who are fleeing persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
Current legal immigration allows over 1 million immigrants a year.
The last grouping, refugees, is the supposedly the quasi-legal basis for the surge in immigration.
While the Congress and the President can set limits on the number of refugees entering the country, those limits in practice do not exist currently.
From a practical perspective, we have approximately 350 immigration judges to hear the refugee or asylum cases claimed by immigrants at the border. In 2018, each judge had a backlog of 2,000 cases. Throw in the additional 6 million or so “refugees” admitted on a ‘temporary’ basis since then, pending their day in court, we’ve added over 17,000 to each judge’s backlog.
Since the start of the Biden administration, the surge in illegals and the backlog in the courts has been accelerating at a breakneck pace. It’s interesting to note, in keeping with the Trump administration, Biden initially kept the refugee cap at 15,000. But in May 2021 he raised the cap to 62,500 – then totally ignored his own order and opened the border.
President Biden has yet to explain the reason he has done this. He and his cabinet and staff continue to say the border is secure – a bald-faced lie.
Everyone knows the magic word at the border is “refugee.”
Instead of preventing illegal crossings (‘got-aways’ are now estimated at an additional 1 million/year) by border control agents, those agents are now relegated to “processing” millions of immigrants saying the magic words at the various check points. For the most part this processing is done without vetting of those crossing (we don’t know who we’re getting). Agents are just recording identities, providing food and board on a temporary basis, arranging for transportation wherever these people might like to go, and giving them a court date to make their ‘refugee’ case.
Order is impossible currently.
Immigration courts and judges are currently hearing cases of “refugee” status claimed by immigrants in 2016. That means people actually showing up for their court hearings have been living here for 6 years already. That in turn means that judges must determine whether the criteria under which immigrants might be given refugee status is dependent on their personal situation 6 years ago. Throw in just the fact that most of these people are obviously permanently settled here and the judges have an impossible judicious task.
But we don’t have an administration or Congress even trying to handle the situation we’re in. If either wanted to limit the illegal crossings, they would use the current law to limit the numbers and clarify the original intent of current law. If they want to have an open border, they could hire 87,000 more border desk jockeys instead of the not needed 87,000 more IRS agents.
For all practical purposes, the Mexican drug cartels are in control. They charge a fee for peoples’ transport across the border and are bringing in massive amounts of drugs, now especially the deadly fentanyl, with little difficulty. Agents just don’t have the time to do what they were hired to do.
We go back to the question: Why? Why open our borders? Why does this administration have a come one, come all policy?
Some speculation out there as to why this happening is to bring in more Democratic voters. That Party assumes the ‘Hispanic vote” is theirs and bringing more Hispanics in will eventually increase the number of Democratic voters. Is that the possible reason? If it is, it’s sick partisanship trumping a healthy, sovereign country.
Certainly the more illegals we have here, the more difficult it is to do anything about it. Therefore, by default, the bet is the country will throw up its hands at some near future point, grant all illegal immigrants in country amnesty, and provide several specific “paths to citizenship.”
The strategy is the same as it was in 1986. “After we legalize all the current illegals, we’ll tighten the border.” Right.
This unprecedented surge in illegal immigrants can only be intentional. The reason continues to be unexplained.
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Have a great and prosperous week
Hug somebody.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_immigration_laws
https://omarsalguerolaw.com/5-basic-us-immigration-laws-policies-you-need-to-know/
SPIDER Bites
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