How would you answer that question? This was how it was put to me recently and I thought it might be helpful to others to share how I responded. It is my job, of course, to talk about immigration reduction, but it also is something I strongly believe will help Americans, especially the most desperate already among us.
The Biden Administration is barreling towards the midway point of its inaugural year and while their immigration policies received rave reviews from cartels, smugglers and traffickers, the courts are starting to signal the honeymoon is over.
The Depart- ment of Homeland Security recently released May's southwest border apprehension data, showing more than 180,000 encounters with illegal aliens last month alone. These most recent apprehension numbers are keeping up the pace of the worst border surge in two decades.
The American Farm Bureau Federation recently joined all 50 state Farm Bureaus and the Puerto Rico Farm Bureau in sending a letter urging the Biden administration to address the surge of undocumented immigrants entering the United States.
The Supreme Court, through a unanimous decision, has curbed the parameters of Temporary Protected Status, ruling that its temporary protection from deportation does not guarantee a shot at a more permanent stay.
The Biden administration's responses have more so encouraged the surge than quelled it. Reversing the surge requires closing the border to most, non-essential traffic during of the COVID-19 pandemic; Title 42, restarting the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP, or "Remain In Mexico" program), which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico until their case can be heard by an immigration judge; and other actions.
Can we have a good-faith debate about limits while the government runs a de facto open borders policy? Enforcement at the border has been essentially abandoned under the Biden Administration and this sea change has been given little notice by the D.C. media corps.
The Chamber of Commerce has started a lobbying campaign to massively increase legal immigration into the United States, specifically a momentous increase in foreign visa workers to further stagnate and even lower prevailing wages in the American job market.
The Department of Homeland Security has officially terminated the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as "Remain In Mexico," initiated under President Donald Trump. The Remain In Mexico policy enabled immigration agencies like ICE and Border Patrol to keep illegal aliens in Mexico while waiting for their immigration court date in the U.S.
Republicans on the House Committee for Natural Resources hosted a forum this week to discuss the environmental impacts of Pres. Biden's ongoing border crisis. In each of the last two months, 170,000 illegal border crossers have been apprehended by Border Patrol agents, not to mention the countless number of individuals who crossed illegally and undetected.