This Issue: Biden-Harris offer more details on immigration plan, including a 'priority' amnesty for more than 11 million illegal aliens

Fri, Jan. 15^th

Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States next Wednesday, and with it comes the start of the biggest push since 2013 for a massive expansion of legal immigration and an amnesty for more than 11 million illegal aliens.

Pres.-elect Biden and Vice Pres.-elect Kamala Harris spent the last several days meeting with special interest groups and talking to the media about their plans for immigration reform. Most significantly, Harris told Univision on Tuesday that an amnesty for nearly all illegal aliens will be the top priority.

According to last month's unemployment report, 9 million fewer Americans were working in December than in January of last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Neither Biden nor Harris have explained how adding tens of millions of new, permanent workers would help the millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans get back to work.

The Biden-Harris Plan

We won't know the exact details of the Biden Administration's immigration plans until it releases legislation or an outline for legislation. However, Harris shed some light on their plans during her interview with Univision.

Harris confirmed that the Administration will propose a permanent amnesty to most illegal aliens and TPS recipients currently living in the United States.

There had been some uncertainty as to how the Administration would start. Would it start with something smaller, such as the American Dream and Promise Act that was passed by the House during the previous Congress and gave amnesty to Dreamers and TPS recipients, or would it go big?

Biden-Harris will also propose reducing the period of time that aliens have to wait for green cards and to give them a more defined timeline between submitting an application, receiving a green card, and citizenship. With what we know, that's impossible to accomplish without expanding legal immigration.

The current green card wait time for aliens from Mexico who are adult siblings of U.S. citizens is 22 years. There are only two ways to shorten the wait time: 1) eliminate the category altogether, or 2) increase the annual caps. We know that Biden and Harris support expanding both family-based and employment-based immigration, not eliminating categories.

On the issue of enforcement, Biden-Harris have been mostly silent with the exception of saying that they support more immigration judges. But adding more judges without closing asylum loopholes and expanding deportations won't do much to discourage illegal immigration or to prevent border surges, and both Biden and Harris say they support loosening asylum rules and reducing deportations.

Yesterday, Biden met with potential cabinet members, business leaders, including Facebook's advocacy arm FWD.us and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and a number of pro-expansion special interest groups to discuss the Administration's immigration plans. Both Biden and Harris appear to be doing everything needed to support a massive immigration reform push in its first 100 days.

Chris Chmielenski
NumbersUSA Deputy Director

Breitbart: About those progressives who promote virtually open borders claiming humanitarian reasons, NumbersUSA's Rosemary Jenks said she doesn't think they "feel a moral duty to fellow Americans.

"I don't think [progressives] feel a moral duty to fellow Americans," said Rosemary Jenks, the policy director at NumbersUSA:

They are globalists ... [They think] their duty is to focus on [poor foreigners], not focus on their fellow countrymen or on making this country better. They have no sense of what an average American's life is like, but they can say, 'Oh, I'm a good person because I'm helping these [foreign] people, you know, by bringing up illegal aliens from Central America, I'm reuniting families.'

Their migration strategy is "cruelty to ordinary Americans too,' she added.

Immigration restrictions helped lead to Martin Luther King success

Roy Beck

Fri, Jan. 15^th

At the 1963 March on Washington that included Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic "I have a dream" speech, the lead organizer and head of the event was A. Philip Randolph. The president of the Sleeping Car Porters union had a long history of advocating for immigration restrictions as part of his five decades of advancing Black economic interests.

Apologists for Illegal Immigration Encourage Human Trafficking

Eric Ruark

Fri, Jan. 15^th

Human trafficking continues because the U.S. government refuses to take adequate steps to combat illegal immigration. Amnesty will only encourage more of the same. Border security and interior enforcement -- not lip service to the "rule of law" -- are necessary to end this scourge.

Kamala Harris Promises Quicker, Continual Amnesties

Thu, Jan. 14^th

Vice President-Elect, Kamala Harris recently outlined the immigration goals of the Biden Administration in an interview with Univision. The plan includes an eight-year "pathway to citizenship" for illegal aliens, even shorter pathway for TPS and Dreamers, more refugees, more temporary workers, and less protection for Americans and already present immigrants.

Tighter Immigration Controls Necessary to Tackle Housing Crisis Here and Abroad

Christy Shaw

Wed, Jan. 13^th

The United Kingdom is facing many of the same immigration-related issues as the United States because policy makers have failed to plan sufficiently for immigration-driven population growth, while public support for reducing annual immigration levels remains strong. In order to accommodate housing demand, open space is being paved over for development.

4th Circuit Upholds Ban On Trump Order Allowing States To Refuse Refugees

Tue, Jan. 12^th

The 4th U.S. Circuit of Appeals has upheld a ban on an executive order by President Trump which aimed to give state and local governments the ability to refuse refugees.