Dems aren’t even hiding it — Kamala Harris promises mass amnesty and more illegal immigration

Progressive Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday and called for “comprehensive immigration reform” — including a “pathway to citizenship”, i.e., amnesty, for 11 million illegal immigrants.

She then said the quiet part out loud, admitting that a President Kamala Harris “will work with Congress to get that done.”

This Democratic call for amnesty is nothing new.

One of the first acts of the Biden-Harris administration was to release a framework for the “U.S. Citizenship Act.”

Ignore the title: that bill would have put virtually every illegal immigrant in the United States — including serious criminals — on a path to citizenship, while at the same time opening the door for aliens deported under Trump to return.

What’s more, that Biden-Harris proposal would have weakened immigration enforcement and doubled future legal immigration.

Any popular support for the bill evaporated when millions of unvetted illegal migrants poured over the Southwest border, more than a few motivated by the prospect of a fresh amnesty and a shot at lavish government benefits.

Still, congressional Democrats kept trying, next attempting to exploit legislative “budget reconciliation” loopholes to push through a more modest (but still extremely costly) amnesty that would have benefitted “only” 6.5 million illegal immigrants.

That effort was repeatedly stymied by the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian.

But had the reconciliation amnesty come to the floor, Harris would almost definitely have cast the deciding vote (it had zero Republican support in the closely divided Senate) to make it law.

That defeat didn’t deter Sen. Chuck Schumer from taking to the Capitol steps in November 2022 to demand an amnesty for so-called “Dreamers,” unlawfully present aliens brought to this country as children.

He apparently couldn’t help himself at the time from admitting that this effort was simply a stalking horse for the party’s “ultimate goal” — “a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented, there are here.”

Thanks to the Biden-Harris border debacle, the number of “undocumented” is now well north of 13 million, but that surge likely plays into Democrats’ amnesty plan.

The last major amnesty passed on a bipartisan basis in 1986, and proponents’ strongest talking point was that the illegal population — then just over 4 million — had grown so large that legalization was the only option, coupled with a promise of more serious future enforcement.

Illegal immigrants got their amnesty, but it simply encouraged even more of them to come here.

And of course, the promise of beefed-up enforcement never came to fruition.

If Kamala Harris wins this fall, and Democrats control enough of the legislature, it will be deja vu all over again.

Don’t say we haven’t been warned

https://nypost.com/2024/07/30/opinion/dems-arent-hiding-it-kamala-harris-promises-mass-amnesty-and-more-illegal-immigration/

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‘Zero Tolerance’: Republican Files Bill to Deport Pro-Hamas Migrants After DC Riot

House Republicans are promoting a bill that would make foreign students who support terrorist organizations ineligible to remain in the U.S., a response to pro-Hamas protesters who brought chaos to Washington, D.C., Wednesday.

Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., introduced a bill Thursday directing U.S. officials to deport any foreigner on a student visa who “has participated in activity in support of, or as an endorsement of, a foreign terrorist organization.”

The legislation came in response to crowds of people around Washington, D.C., who burned an American flag, vandalized monuments, and praised anti-Israel terrorists on Wednesday to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

Authorities ordered protesters to disperse later in the afternoon and arrested almost two dozen.

“We will not stand for the chaos and antisemitic violence across our campuses and cities,” Langworthy said in a press release Thursday. “It’s a privilege to come to the United States to study, not a free pass to come to our country to spread hate, burn our flag, and vandalize our institutions.

“This bill ensures anyone here on a student visa who supports a foreign terrorist organization will be deported, protecting our national security and making it clear that we have zero tolerance for terrorism.”

Reps. Randy Weber, R-Texas; Cory Mills, R-Fla.; and Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., are co-sponsors of the bill.

“If you are in America on a visa and you’re supporting a terrorist organization, we don’t want you here,” Weber remarked. “This is the greatest country on earth, and if you’re protesting on behalf of a bunch of thugs who kill, rape, and torment their own people, you can take that protest right back to where you came from.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/26/zero-tolerance-republican-files-bill-deport-hamas-migrants-dc-riot/

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The Great ‘Border Czar’ Whitewash

The amount of gaslighting that the Leftmedia is doing to elevate Vice President Kamala Harris in her new status as the likely presidential nominee of the Democrat Party is insane. The legacy media’s latest attempt at memory-holing is to assert that conservatives were the ones inaccurately labeling Harris the “border czar.”

It was the Leftmedia itself that first hailed her as such.

Before that, though, in March of 2021, President Joe Biden said, “I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that … are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”

Kamala Harris was tapped to be in charge of overseeing the border and “stemming the migration to our southern border.” It was a job she completely failed at (though it’s obvious that the influx of illegals was the goal of this administration). Much to the chagrin of the Democrats and their media allies, immigration is the top issue for the majority of Americans this election.

Most Americans hate the open southern border. They despise the humanitarian crisis it has created. They abhor the sharp rise in crime that far too many illegals — often with gang associations — have inflicted on American citizens. Because Harris was asked “to lead our efforts” vis-à-vis illegal immigration, she should be paying for her abdication at the ballot box.

The panicking Leftmedia is now attempting to retcon this entire fiasco. This week, Axios reporter Stef W. Kight explained that Harris was never the “border czar” and that Republicans were pouncing. She stated, “In the past few days, the Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had.” Hilariously, Kight’s own previous reporting in 2021 directly contradicts her framing.

In a further attempt to circle the wagons, Axios added an editor’s note to Kight’s article defending Harris from her failures, uproariously stating, “This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ in 2021.”

CNN is claiming that Harris’s job was never to be in charge of the border; her job was to combat “the roots of immigration.” This spin was echoed by other outlets like USA Today and TIME Magazine.

In 2021, interviewers like NBC News’s Lester Holt questioned the vice president on her work dealing with stemming the flow of migrants. Holt asked Harris when she was going to the border. Harris responded with a vague, "We’ve been to the border.” Holt fired back, “You haven’t been to the border.” Harris infamously replied, “And I haven’t been to Europe.”

No one but the extremely gullible or politically ignorant is fooled by this whitewashing attempt by the Leftmedia. In fact, the House of Representatives yesterday put forth a resolution to condemn the Biden administration and VP Harris for her failure as the “border czar.” The resolution passed with the help of six Democrats crossing party lines.

The media will continue to try to make Harris more appealing, but her policies are radical and anti-American at their core. Harris was also complicit in the cover-up of Biden’s failing mental acuity. That should be reason enough to scare off undecided voters.

If Harris is declared the official nominee at next month’s Democratic National Convention, it’s likely that the more America sees of her, the less they will like her.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/108813-the-great-border-czar-whitewash-2024-07-26

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Massachusetts: A Case Study in Mass Immigration and the Welfare State

More than six million new migrants have arrived in the country since January 2021 outside of established lawful immigration programs, including illegal border crossers allowed to enter after apprehension, inadmissible aliens allowed to fly from abroad under controversial parole programs, and illegal aliens who evaded detection (the so-called “gotaways”). Together with New York, Texas, Florida, California, and Illinois, Massachusetts has emerged as one of the top destinations for illegal immigrants in recent years, according to government records on immigration court filings and academic research. As in other destination states, this influx presents a serious challenge to Massachusetts. While many lawmakers, including the state's current governor, Maura Healey, have long embraced sanctuary policies that guarantee access to housing, welfare programs, health coverage, and other benefits regardless of immigration status, some are now raising concerns about the cost to taxpayers. This report examines the fiscal impacts of historic levels of unlawful immigration in Massachusetts as one example of a sanctuary state, and recommends ways to mitigate the cost to taxpayers by reversing many of those policies before even more substantial costs begin to accrue in the coming years.

The cost to Massachusetts taxpayers of temporary housing and shelters is enormous, but it pales in comparison to the costs that will accumulate in the future if those in the temporary shelters today remain in the Commonwealth for the long term.
Taxpayers in Massachusetts have spent more than $1 billion to date on the emergency shelter system that has been overwhelmed with the task of housing thousands of newly arrived migrants, some who entered illegally and some who arrived under one of the Biden administration’s controversial parole programs. State budget officials expect they will have to spend another $1.8 trillion in the next two years.

It’s not clear where the funding to cover the shelter and other costs will come from, but Healey frequently expresses her strong hope that the federal government will soon help replenish the state coffers with funds recently appropriated by Congress for the federal emergency shelter program run by FEMA.

Federal funding may bail out the Bay State in the short term, but the unprecedented influx of migrants engineered by the Biden administration will prove to be a significant burden for Massachusetts taxpayers over the long run. The cost of temporary housing and shelters is enormous — but it pales in comparison to the costs that will accumulate in the future if those in the temporary shelters today remain in the Commonwealth for the long term. These long-term costs include schooling, social services, medical care, public safety, and more. These costs will accrue even if these migrants are able to find jobs, whether with a work permit or through illicit employment. Our research shows that immigrants generally have high labor force participation rates, but because most of the new arrivals lack the education or skills needed for an individual or family to be self-sufficient in Massachusetts, they will continue to access the state’s generous social safety net, much of which is available even to illegal immigrants who settle in the state.

This report identifies the most significant long-term fiscal impacts of the recent influx of illegal and quasi-legal immigration in Massachusetts. These include costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, public education, health care and health insurance, and public safety.

 Among the findings:

The number of illegal and inadmissible migrants living in Massachusetts is about 355,000, with about 50,000 new arrivals since 2021.

Illegal and inadmissible migrants are eligible for certain welfare programs in Massachusetts, despite federal bars on access to certain programs.

A significant share of migrants settling in Massachusetts who entered under Biden parole programs, including Ukrainians, Haitians, and children, may be eligible for welfare programs upon arrival.

Other parolees may become eligible for welfare programs five years after entry, regardless of whether they ever attain legal status. This cohort represents a potential fiscal time bomb in terms of welfare costs, beginning in 2026. The additional annual cost for SNAP benefits alone just for the parolees in Massachusetts could be $4.6 million.

An estimated 10,000 migrant children have arrived in Massachusetts since 2021, including 8,500 unaccompanied minors.

Everyone in Massachusetts has access to at least a basic version of government-subsidized or government-paid healthcare, regardless of immigration status. The legislature is considering a bill to expand this program to cover more health services for illegal immigrants.

The cost of incarcerating illegal alien criminals in Massachusetts now exceeds $27 million per year. This cost is exacerbated by sanctuary policies that shield criminal aliens from detection and by Biden administration policies that have reduced interior enforcement efforts.

State lawmakers could reduce the burden of illegal immigration on taxpayers by limiting access to welfare benefits, deterring and sanctioning employers who hire illegal workers, reversing sanctuary policies that obstruct immigration enforcement, and tapping into remittances migrants send abroad.

https://cis.org/Report/Massachusetts-Case-Study-Mass-Immigration-and-Welfare-State

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Feds Were Reportedly Instructed to Clear Scene of Illegal Immigrants During Harris’ Border Trip

Federal immigration authorities were instructed to clear the streets of migrants ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ one and only border trip, according to sources that spoke with the New York Post.

Before Harris made her first and only trip to see the U.S.-Mexico border in June 2021 in El Paso, Texas, federal agents were reportedly ordered to clean the area up to disguise the actual level of the border crisis, according to Border Patrol sources that spoke with the New York Post. Agents were reportedly told to move illegal migrants out of holding facilities in order to put on a “show” for the vice president—and even went as far as to style unaccompanied minors’ hair.

“They rented out a ton of hotels and we spent hours moving out bodies. The kids that remained, we had to braid their hair,” one agent stated to the New York Post, and added that they “made jokes about how the building was more secure than the whole border was.”

“She had zero interest in really seeing anything. It was rushed,” added a former official who was present during Harris’ visit.

President Joe Biden tapped Harris to lead the administration’s efforts to mitigate the then-fledgling border crisis in early 2021, with specific instruction for her to address the root causes of irregular migration from Central America. However, almost immediately after the announcement, her office began to distance Harris from the job description, according to CNN.

Following growing pressure to visit the border, Harris finally did so in June 2021. In the time since Harris was appointed to address the root causes of illegal immigration to the U.S., more than 7 million migrants have tried crossing the U.S. southern border, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection.

The El Paso sector was being bombarded with migrants at the time. There were more than 21,500 Border Patrol encounters in that month alone, according to CBP data.

“We sanitized all the aliens out of there to make it look good,” another agent told the New York Post of the Harris visit.

After Biden announced he would no longer seek reelection over the weekend, Harris established herself as the presumptive presidential nominee for her party without a primary vote. In that time, numerous media outlets have attempted to downplay her appointed responsibilities on the border crisis.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/feds-were-reportedly-instructed-to-clear-scene-of-illegal-immigrants-during-harris-border-trip/

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Britain has reached its immigration breaking point

Between 2022 and 2023 the population of England and Wales increased by over 600,000 – the biggest increase since 1949, when records began. This population explosion has been fuelled almost entirely by immigration.

That’s because in 2019, with Brexit done, a new and more liberal immigration system was put in place. Instead of taking back control, as had been promised to the British people, it threw the gates wide open.

Most of the increase was driven by two new visas. One was for care workers. Rather than increase wages in a sector dominated by British workers, it undercut them. Meanwhile the graduate visa was supposed to attract world-class talent by offering them two years work in Britain after graduation. Instead it created a bonanza in dubious one-year postgrad courses, offering a foot in the door of the British market, with many of these students working illegally for Deliveroo rather than starting tech unicorns.

Adding to the madness, both visas allowed for dependents to be brought along, leading whole families in the Global South to decamp here.

The result is that our economy has seen a huge influx of low-skilled workers, on top of the millions who have entered our country since the Blair government turned us from a country of emigration in the 1990s into a country of mass migration. Instead of the promised economic boom, we’ve seen GDP per capita fall, meaning that even if the economy is technically growing, individually we are actually getting poorer.

This excess of labour, which is entirely the result of government decisions to keep levels of legal immigration high, has warped the economy. Rather than invest in automation, which would deliver more productivity and therefore more growth, we’ve seen Britain fall behind our international competitors in adopting industrial robots. Famously, automatic car washes have decreased in number since the 2000s, being replaced by hand washes manned by migrants.

In addition, all of these people have placed greater stress on our infrastructure. We haven’t built a new reservoir since the 1990s, while we’ve added millions of new people. As a result, we get hosepipe bans every year and the sewage system has to flush waste into rivers when the Victorian piping can’t handle the scale of usage. The same is true across roads, railways, hospitals, dental clinics and much more. No amount of investment can match the increase in population driven by immigration.

Some of this is also due to demographic changes in our population. Lots of people are living longer and longer thanks to medical improvements, which has a big cost as the elderly use health care much more than the rest of us. At the same time, too few children are being born to replace the workers who retire. Inevitably higher costs and fewer taxpayers strains public services.

Immigration is sometimes touted as a solution. If British people won’t have babies then we need foreigners to keep the economy going. The issue is that not all workers are alike. There is now academic literature showing that workers from Western countries, like Japan or America, are a net fiscal benefit but that non-Western workers are a net fiscal negative. Unfortunately the latter make up the vast majority of those coming here to work.

There’s also no way that immigrants can solve the demographic crisis, as they too will get old and need care. In fact, they probably make it worse: too many immigrants are a major reason for our sky-high property prices, which make it hard for young people to buy a house and have children. If more than half your income goes on rent, there isn’t much left for raising a family.

So to manage the strain we need both a sharp reduction in immigration and record-breaking expansion of our infrastructure, including housing. That doesn’t mean all immigration needs to cease. We know that some migrants really do add to our society – but they make up only a few tens of thousands of the millions coming here. By setting a high income requirement to come here, ending exemptions, and shutting down other routes in, we could achieve this.

The new government has made much of their pragmatism. The record of the Conservative years is clear: mass immigration makes no fiscal sense. The pragmatic option is to sharply reduce migration, reducing the environmental impact and incentivising business to invest in productivity-raising automation. Britain could be both welcoming and thriving.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/16/migration-britains-population-explosion-demographics/

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DOJ Sues Migrant Child Center for ‘Sexual Abuse and Harassment’

On July 18, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it’s suing Southwest Key Programs Inc., “a Texas-based nonprofit that provides housing to unaccompanied children [UACs] who are encountered at” the Southwest border, for engaging in “a pattern or practice of sexual abuse and harassment of” children trusted to its care. Such a shocking claim — while inevitable — is emblematic of the issues inherent in the federal government’s UAC system, which has never worked and is now breaking down under its own weight as migrant children continue to surge across the U.S.-Mexico line.

How We Got Here. The term “unaccompanied alien child” is defined in statute as:

a child who — (A) has no lawful immigration status in the United States; (B) has not attained 18 years of age; and (C) with respect to whom — (i) there is no parent or legal guardian in the United States; or (ii) no parent or legal guardian in the United States is available to provide care and physical custody.

Under that definition, only alien minors without parents or legal guardians here are considered UACs, but nonetheless the federal government — and DHS in particular, lumps plenty of kids with parents and guardians here illegally in as UACs, too.

That definition was added to federal law by section 462 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HSA), as good a starting point as any in explaining why Border Patrol has apprehended nearly 82,000 UACs in just the first nine months of FY 2024.

As its name suggests, the HSA was the law that created DHS. Prior to the establishment of that department, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was responsible for detaining, caring for, and releasing alien children.

I refer to it as the “former INS” because it was abolished in section 471 of the HSA, with its immigration responsibilities dispersed among various other agencies at DHS, including CBP, ICE, and USCIS.

Responsibility over the detention, care, and release of UACs wasn’t retained by any of those agencies, though. A hasty Democratic amendment to the HSA transferred authority over those children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

As I’ve explained repeatedly in the past, even though I was present when that amendment was adopted, I have no idea why jurisdiction over UACs was transferred to ORR, an office that to that point had no experience in detaining, caring for, or releasing anyone, let alone children.

There was no discussion about the amendment itself, nor any as to why ORR was a better fit than ICE, which retained jurisdiction over the detention of aliens generally for immigration purposes.

Notably, legacy INS units that ICE inherited did, in fact, have experience in the care and placement of such children.

Immigrants’ advocates, however, had long been critical of how INS dealt with alien kids, so the sponsors of that amendment likely assumed placing those children anyplace else was a better choice. History has not vindicated that assumption.

At least initially, there weren’t that many UACs showing up at the border. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the number of UACs apprehended by DHS and referred to ORR in the early 2000s “averaged 6,700 annually and ranged from a low of about 4,800 in FY 2003 to a peak of about 8,200 in FY 2007”.

That quickly changed after a now-Democratically controlled Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA).

Section 235 of the TVPRA divided UACs into two separate groups based on nationality: (1) children from “contiguous” countries (Canada and Mexico); and (2) minors from “non-contiguous” countries (everywhere else).

Under that provision, UACs from a contiguous country can be returned home if they haven’t been trafficked and don’t have a credible fear of return.

UACs from non-contiguous countries, however, must be transferred to ORR within 72 hours and placed into formal removal proceedings (UACs are not subject to expedited removal), even if they haven’t been trafficked and have no fear of return. By statute, ORR then places most of those children with “sponsors” in the United States — usually the children’s own parents or guardians.

Not surprisingly, the number of UACs from non-contiguous countries soared after that provision took effect as parents (and, more importantly, smugglers) realized the TVPRA all-but guaranteed any child who could make it illegally into the United States would be released into this country to rejoin his or her family.

https://cis.org/Arthur/DOJ-Sues-Migrant-Child-Center-Sexual-Abuse-and-Harassment

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