Category: Joe Guzzardi

Becerra Softens Immigration Tone

By Joe Guzzardi

Finally, from the White House comes the first acknowledgement that the border crisis has spiraled out of control.

While President Biden and Vice President/Immigration Czar Kamala Harris remain mum and refuse to check out border conditions first hand, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has sounded an alarm bell. To the disappointment if not dismay of his White House bosses, namely Biden, Harris and domestic policy chief Susan Rice, Becerra’s aides have leaked that the HHS secretary would like to see the refugee cap stay at President Trump’s historically low 15,000 annual intake instead of being increased to Biden’s recommended 65,000.

A Becerra aide told Politico that the secretary takes raising the refugee cap seriously, but “wants to take one challenge at a time,” a reference to the mounting border mess which has in large part fallen into his lap. HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement has the impossible-to-keep-up-with and costly task of providing for an unending flow of unaccompanied minors (UACs) who enter the U.S. without lawful immigration status or an available parent or guardian.

As of May 2, HHS has about 23,300 children under age 18 in its care. As a reference point, in 2020 approximately 72 percent of all children referred were over 14, and 68 percent were boys. Countries of origin for UACs were Guatemala,46 percent; El Salvador, 14 percent; Honduras, 25 percent; and other countries, 8 percent. HHS spends tens of millions of taxpayer dollars weekly to shelter, feed and locate new housing sites for the unaccompanied aliens. In its report, Politico wrote that last month HHS advised Congress that it will transfer or reprogram emergency supplemental funding, a total of $1.3 billion, toward the ongoing UAC placement effort.

Each day, Becerra’s quest for stability becomes more uphill. In April, 13,962 new UACs entered, straining Customs and Border Patrol resources. All of the UACs will need the full range of care that ORR provides. But missing from the establishment media’s border coverage was a Texas farmer’s discovery of five abandoned UACs under the age of seven, including an infant. Three were Honduran, and two were Guatemalan, all lying in dirt, hungry and crying. Dumped off by traffickers, the girls would have, the farmer believes, died – the final, tragic result of the ruthless actions of callous cartel criminals. Long-time border observers predict that, during the summer months, migrants, motivated by Biden’s open borders policies and smuggled by profiteering traffickers, will perish.

As the UAC influx continues, states are less willing to accommodate the youths, another hurdle Becerra has to overcome. Governors from 20 U.S. states, including Texas’ Greg Abbott and Arizona’s Doug Ducey, signed a letter to Biden urging him to “take action” on the border because it’s “neither closed nor secure,” and added that his plan is “unacceptable and unsustainable.” Rejecting any future effort to house UACs in their states, the governors criticized the HHS request for private facilities to take in the minors. The states, the letter continued, have neither the resources nor the obligation to solve the federal government’s “self-created crisis.” Reckless, inhumane, misguided and disastrous is how the governors described Biden’s incentivizing border rhetoric.

Becerra, most well-known prior to his HHS appointment as the California attorney general who sued the Trump administration 123 times, has softened his tune on immigration. Becerra has been a long-time immigration expansionist dating back to his U.S. House of Representatives tenure. But now that he’s on the hot seat for, first, indisputably being unqualified to fill the HHS secretary’s job and, second, underperforming as secretary, Becerra is looking to minimize his exposure to criticism by subtly pressing for a lower refugee cap.

As California AG, Becerra wasn’t directly accountable for unmanageable immigration increases. But since he became a key part of the Biden administration as HHS secretary, he’s a point man for the out-of-control border failure. Becerra has learned that there’s a world of difference between immigration advocacy from California and coping with immigration reality as HHS secretary.


Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Becerra Softens Immigration Tone

After Crossing the Border, Then What?

By Joe Guzzardi

Customs and Border Protection isn’t returning or detaining illegal migrant crossers, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t removing aliens from the interior, including convicted, released criminals. One inevitable result: a huge U.S. population surge that will help create a chaotic society which will struggle to keep up with deteriorating conditions. From the sudden, unanticipated population growth, there will be maximum strain on K-12 education, health care, public safety and other social services which can barely provide for existing residents.

Under the Biden administration, which comically ordered CBP and ICE to stop using the terms illegal alien and assimilation in favor of “more inclusive language” like “noncitizen” and “civic integration,” border agents’ tasks consist mostly of turning over unaccompanied minors to Health and Human Services, or catching but then releasing adults into the interior. Should released aliens run afoul of the law once in the U.S. interior, the Biden administration has ordered ICE to turn a blind eye. Privately, ICE officials told Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff that their jobs have essentially been abolished because the administration severely limited their ability to arrest and deport illegal immigrants. In April, ICE deported 2,962 aliens, a 20 percent decline from March, and the first time since the agency began keeping records that the monthly total dropped below 3,000.
 
In the administration’s most defiant federal law violation, Biden mandated that ICE detainers only be issued to incarcerated aliens that he as president thinks should be deported. Biden’s order disregards the removal grounds that the law lists, except possibly for suspected terrorists or others who may pose a public security threat. Florida, Texas and Louisiana filed suits against the Biden administration for its illegal enforcement restrictions that endanger the public at large. Released criminals can imperil society. The Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that the recidivism rates for state prisoners are 68 percent within three years, 79 percent within six years, and 83 percent within nine years.
 
Alleging that the White House is responsible for putting the public at risk, the Florida suit argues that “the Biden administration does not believe that being in the U.S. in violation of the immigration laws and committing serious crimes is sufficient reason to remove someone from the country.” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody charged the Biden administration with “thumbing its nose” at its legal obligation to deport criminal aliens. Instead, Moore continued, the administration’s ICE retainer cancelation policy has put convicted sex offenders, heroin traffickers and home invaders back on the street, and among unsuspecting Floridians.
 
In his opinion column published in The Hill, Nolan Rappaport, a former House Judiciary Committee executive branch immigration law specialist and one-time Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims immigration counsel, expressed concern about Biden’s rejection of the Immigration and Nationality Act’s removal grounds. Rappaport wrote that Biden has completely replaced existing removal laws with priority categories, a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers principle. Congress, Rappaport correctly concluded, writes the nation’s laws – not the president.
 
Meanwhile, the Biden administration cannot keep track of the unaccompanied migrants that have successfully entered mainstream America. Two weeks ago, about 150 young migrants ages 7-12 arrived in Erie, Pa., approximately 1,800 miles from McAllen, Texas, a focal point of the border crisis. U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R), whose district includes Erie, went to investigate the young migrants’ housing facility, and found that 28 children had COVID-19. The following day, the site was abandoned; the children and the staff were gone. Kelly tried to get more information from the Department of Health and Human Services, but couldn’t get answers.
 
Biden and his immigration advisors refer to their border magnanimity as humane. But Kelly said that, referring to the Erie facility’s abrupt shut down, Biden’s approach is aimless. And because residents have been unwittingly exposed to COVID-19, the health of Kelly’s 16^th Congressional district’s 705,687 constituents is jeopardized.
 
The administration shows no sign of making meaningful improvements to address the border chaos or its dangerous revisions regarding retainers. The administration remains indifferent. So far, the best indication that the administration may be vaguely aware of the border crisis is a virtual meeting that Vice President Kamala Harris held with Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. But they avoided tough talk, and only discussed nebulous ideas like the need to “create a sense of home” in Northern Triangle countries.
 
Former Acting CBP commissioner Mark Morgan estimates that between 3,000 and 3,500 illegal aliens enter the U.S. daily. Given those totals, much more than a vapid Harris phone call is needed to stem the illegal migrant surge.
 
 
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

After Crossing the Border, Then What?

Napolitano Forever Open Borders

By Joe Guzzardi

In Janet Napolitano’s 35-year-long professional career, she’s held important and influential positions. Napolitano has been President Clinton’s appointee as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona and was twice elected as Arizona’s governor. At one time during her Arizona governorship, many Democrats considered her a possible presidential candidate.

Eventually she became the Senate-confirmed Department of Homeland Security Secretary. After Obama left office, Napolitano accepted a position as the University of California’s president, an appointment fraught with controversy because she had no background as an academic administrator.

Napolitano resigned from UC effective August 1, 2020. Now that Napolitano is retired, she can devote full-time to her favorite cause, advocating for illegal immigrants. During her tenure at UC, Napolitano announced that no one, including campus police, could cooperate with federal officials on any immigration-related request. Napolitano is a University of Virginia Law School graduate, and in legal circles her defiance is known as obstruction of justice.

She also urged the university to file suit against the Trump administration to prevent it from rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. At the time, UC had about 2,400 illegal immigrant students enrolled, and California parents were angry that their citizen children had to compete with and lose out to DACAs for coveted UC admissions.

Given her UC history, and her ineffectiveness at border protection while DHS Secretary and Arizona’s governor, Napolitano’s USA Today Op-Ed that hailed President Biden’s nonenforcement approach to immigration is consistent with her past enthusiasm for open borders. Titled “Biden is Making Immigration Moves that Will Pay Off,” Napolitano repeats age-old approaches that have failed to control illegal immigration in years past, and will be unsuccessful in the future.

Napolitano has forgotten – or cares not to mention – that as DHS Secretary she canceled a $1 billion contract with Boeing to build a virtual fence along the U.S. border with Mexico. Launched in 2005, SBI-Net proposed to monitor the Southwest border with a single integrated surveillance system. But SBI-Net failed because of “technical issues” that, Napolitano admitted to Congress after receiving feedback from Border Patrol agents about its ineffectiveness, created “significant” schedule delays and cost overruns.

Biden’s immigration approach will pay off, Napolitano claims. But she doesn’t identify the beneficiaries – cheap labor-addicted employers. Swiftly processing asylum claims, as Biden has authorized, will quickly create a looser labor market that harms the millions of unemployed or underemployed Americans.

Biden has, Napolitano wrote, ordered DHS to recalibrate its interior enforcement priorities, and focus on convicted criminals, and away from “otherwise law-abiding individuals who pose no public safety threat.” John Sandweg, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, debunked the long-standing myth that presidential administrations, whether Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 or Obama, deported nonviolent aliens. Sandweg told the Los Angeles Times: “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.”

Throughout her Op-Ed, Napolitano predictably scorned President Trump’s border successes that included the wall and the remain-in-Mexico policy. And, citing her Arizona gubernatorial, DHS and UC experiences, Napolitano wrote, “I know something about these issues [immigration].” If so, Napolitano has tunnel vision and is overlooking the glaring flaws in Biden’s nonenforcement tactics.

In April, 42,000 illegal aliens escaped into the U.S. interior as overwhelmed Border Patrol agents couldn’t keep up with the inflow of humans – “gotaways” as the Border Patrol refers to them – or drugs. The Epoch Times reported that at least five Texas counties have issued disaster declarations and that one school district has warned parents to “be watchful of your children.”

Taking Napolitano’s immigration perspectives seriously is ill-advised. Remember, in 2010 then-DHS Secretary Napolitano told a U.S. Senate panel that the Southwest border is “as secure now as it has ever been.” In the 11 years since her bold and self-aggrandizing statement, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have successfully crossed the border, and entered the U.S. where they remain today.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Ed Note: Jeffrey Peterson, who worked for  Janet Napolitano, has this opinion as to why Democrats support open borders.

Napolitano Forever Open Borders

Biden Hikes Refugee Cap to 125,000

By Joe Guzzardi

The annual refugee resettlement kerfuffle is underway. As usual, on one side are the immigration expansionists: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, congressional Democrats with, for good measure, the predictable GOP defectors, immigration lawyers who see $$$ in their futures, resettlement agencies who also profit disproportionately, and the tirelessly active pro-immigration lobby.

On the other side are American voters who want to see an admission cap that’s consistent with the nation’s ability to absorb refugees, the current economy and, in 2021, the possible consequences from a still-threatening COVID-19 that refugees might carry. Americans also want to maintain the country’s well-deserved image as a compassionate, caring nation.

For decades, refugee admissions have been a political hot potato. Until President Trump set the annual level at 15,000, the previous levels ranged widely. Under former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. resettled an average of 81,000 refugees annually. Then, President Trump gradually cut back to his final 15,000 cap – from 45,000, to 30,000, and to 18,000 during successive fiscal years. Although President Trump set his 2020 cap at 15,000, the administration admitted only 12,000 refugees, a cautionary response to the coronavirus. The caps represent an upper limit on how many refugee applications the State Department is willing to review during a fiscal year, and not a mandated goal.

Since Biden entered the White House, however, the refugee debate has taken on another antagonistic dimension: Biden’s waffling. Biden, a cosponsorwith Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) of the Refugee Act of 1979, initially committed to extending former President Trump’s 15,000 cap, a decision he said was “justified by humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest.” But after getting intense blowback from influential Democrats like Illinois’ Dick Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, immigration lawyers and resettlement profiteers, Biden quickly reversed his course, and signed an Executive Order that committed to a 125,000 refugee ceiling in fiscal year 2022.

Biden relented under heavy pressure from Durbin who had sharply reprimanded Biden, calling a 15,000 ceiling “unacceptable.” Biden also came under attack from immigration lawyers who scorned his “cowardly” failure to fulfill his campaign promise to lift President Trump’s annual cap from 15,000 to 125,000. One immigration lawyer questioned why Biden is “perpetuating Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant legacy.”

Most craven among Biden critics were nine taxpayer-funded refugee resettlement agencies: Church World Service, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, International Rescue Committee, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Relief Corporation. The International Rescue Committee whole-heartedly endorsed Biden’s Executive Order. The agencies have a keen interest in maximizing resettlement. In 2012, a critical analysis from the General Accounting Office found that agencies’ annual federally funded budgets are determined by the number of refugees they resettle.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) published a reportthat quantified for taxpayers precisely how much refugee resettlement costs. FAIR’s study found that the cost of resettling refugees is about $1.8 billion per year, with about $867 million representing welfare payments. Other resettling costs include processing, education and housing assistance. That works out, FAIR research found, to a per refugee cost to taxpayers of nearly $75,600 during the refugee’s first five resettled years.

Biden’s backers insist that increasing refugee resettlement will preserve the U.S. position as the world’s most welcoming nation for migrants. But America’s status as the world’s most charitable – with or without admitting more refugees – cannot be challenged. In 2020, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees compiled data which showed that the U.S. was the top 2020 donor to UNHCR’s global refugee activities. The nearly $2 billion in U.S. contributions is about four times the total contributed by the source that ranked second, the entire European Union which gave an aggregate $522 million.

Refugees qualify for immediate work permission. With millions of Americans unemployed, underemployed or COVID-19 furloughed, more employment-authorized refugees create unnecessary competition for increasingly scarce jobs that citizens and lawfully present residents deserve.

Biden’s original reaction – to hold steady at 15,000 refugees for the upcoming fiscal year – was correct. Unfortunately, Biden didn’t have the courage of his convictions, and folded under the pressure Democratic extremists put on him.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Biden Hikes Refugee Cap to 125,000

San Diego Teachers Betray Students

By Joe Guzzardi

Under the guise of “This is not who we are. America is better than this,” familiar elitist-speak currently spoken to excuse admitting thousands of Northern Triangle migrants, no accommodation is too generous for them. President Biden is the latest political potentate to unconvincingly utter the America-is-better-than-this refrain. But Biden has a long way to go before he matches former President Obama in his thinly disguised admonition of average Americans. Obama uttered the backhanded insult 46 times on issues ranging from the Affordable Care Act, voting and national security to immigration.

To gauge how much taxpayers are required to tolerate while underwriting an endless stream of affirmative benefits offered to recently arrived migrant noncitizens as they’re forced to play second fiddle, turn to San Diego, Calif. For more than a year, some 130,000 children enrolled in the San Diego Unified School District have been relegated to remote, online education. School administrators blame the COVID-19 pandemic, and have insisted that for the teachers’ personal safety, and in the best interests of their students, remote learning is mandatory.

Imagine, then, the shock parents must have experienced when they learned that SDUSD teachers would be instructing young migrants in person at the San Diego Convention Center where they’re currently housed. In other words, teaching in person is okay, but only if the students are foreign nationals and not San Diego’s kids. During his interview with the national media, Reopen California Schools founder Jonathan Zachreson said that the confirmed COVID-19 infection rate among the alien children the SDUSD teachers will be instructing is 9 percent. But among the San Diego students the teachers have betrayed, the infection rate is a microscopic .0018 percent.

In its statement to the press, the San Diego County Office of Education wrote, “We also have a moral obligation to ensure a bright future for our children,” an apparent reference to the migrants. The SDCOE didn’t mention concern for the San Diego students whose futures have been harmed, perhaps irreparably, by the county’s year-long stay-at-home order.

On April 12, San Diego schools will – tentatively – shift to hybrid learning while the in-person migrant program will remain active through July. Shortly after SDUSD officials confirmed the April 12 return date, teachers immediately pushed back. An internal union email that Voice of San Diegoobtained showed the teachers are hedging on the April 12 date, and suggested that classroom conditions are not yet safe for returning. The email read, in part, “Any date for a required return is a projection and not set in stone.” To restate the obvious: the teachers and their union throw up flimsy objections to educating San Diego’s citizen children, but don’t hesitate to sign up to instruct Mexican and Central American migrants.

The SDCOE stressed that its illegal immigrant education program will emphasize English as a Second Language and social-emotional learning opportunities, a direct slap in the face to San Diego’s enrolled thousands of limited English speakers and special needs students.

Statewide, California’s quality of education has been in freefall for decades. Within living memory, the 1960s, California had the nation’s most efficient and most admired K-12 public school system. But in 1978, Proposition 13cut property taxes and, as a result, slashed counties’ available funds for school construction and upkeep. Today, California has more than 6.1 million students enrolled in nearly 11,000 campuses. For more than a year, the majority have been denied an in-person public education, a lost school year that can never be recovered. But for frustrated, furious parents to realize that SDUSD teachers’ priority is educating unaccompanied, illegally present foreign national asylum seekers while their children’s academic needs are neglected is a burdensome reality to cope with.

In his press release, California U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R) sided with the parents. Said Issa: “The decision to provide in-person instruction to illegal migrants is outrageous and parents have every right to be angry.”

Summarizing, SDUSD teachers refused to return to their contracted jobs until, first, they were vaccinated; second, they received more money, and third, COVID cases fell. The teachers have been vaccinated; they and their California’s K-12 peers got $15.3 billion as their part of the American Rescue Plan Act, and cases have plunged. Yet, the teachers brazenly refuse to go back to their San Diego classrooms, but willingly will provide education to illegally present minors. Such is the state of things in California, and in today’s Washington, D.C., where the illegal immigrant is preferred to the citizen.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

San Diego Teachers Betray Students

Texas Lawsuit Demands Border Control

By Joe Guzzardi

While justified criticism about President Biden’s border fiasco rages on, an interesting and significant legal action has gone largely unnoticed. Texan Brian Harrison, formerly President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services chief of staff, and co-plaintiff Steven Pace filed a 20-page brief in an Amarillo federal court which seeks to resume the Trump-era, no exception practice of returning unaccompanied minors to their home country.

The suit argues that the Biden administration hasn’t given a legal defense for ending the policy which was intended to protect Americans’ health and well-being during the coronavirus pandemic. Named as defendants are Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

In his legal filing, Harrison, who is on the May 1 special election ballot for the vacant U.S. House of Representatives’ seat that recently deceased Ron Wright held, has submitted a two-prong argument. First, in March 2020, the CDC invoked Title 42 which allows the federal government to bar migrants from entering the U.S. during a health crisis. But on February 2, Biden ordered a CDC review which quickly resulted in the agency’s February 17 notice that Title 42 would be suspended as it pertained to returning unaccompanied alien minors. And second, Harrison’s filing claims that the Biden administration didn’t follow the Administrative Procedure Act protocols which require federal agencies to justify any policy changes.

Since February, the inflow of unaccompanied minors has continued unabated. Worse, a space shortage at border holding facilities has forced the Biden administration to release the migrants, some COVID-infected, into the U.S. interior without a notice to appear at a later date in immigration court. The most recent federal data showed that among 11,300 child and teen illegal immigrants in HHS care, 2,900 are laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 positive. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made Biden’s policy clear when she confirmed that “we have been letting unaccompanied minors stay.” In an effort to curb negative publicity, Biden’s Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to several government agency department heads requesting volunteer deployments for as long as four months to help Customs and Border Protection (CBP) deal with the unaccompanied minors’ border surge. More border re-enforcements will be needed during the summer months when, traditionally, migration peaks.

Within a 24-hour period last week, CBP took in 111 individuals smuggled north in three separate trucks. CBP officials identified the perpetrators as possible human smugglers and said those in custody were foreign nationals from Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. None were wearing masks or other protective gear. Being forced to deal with the uptick in human trafficking detracts the CBP, as one of its officials said, from its “enduring mission priorities of countering terrorism, combating transnational crime, securing the border, facilitating lawful trade, protecting revenue and facilitating lawful travel.”

Americans just now are seeing the flickering light at the end of the year-long COVID-19 lockdown tunnel, and are increasingly concerned that the border releases could spark another round of stay-at-home-orders. Released asylum seekers who tested COVID-positive at a Brownsville, Texas, bus station told local reporters that their destinations included North Carolina, Maryland and New Jersey. Documents leaked to the media predict that the surge will last more than seven months. Consequently, other states will soon be receiving COVID-positive migrants.

Testing after Customs and Protection releases migrants gives the illegal aliens freedom to travel unrestricted throughout the U.S., an insult to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who lost their jobs and businesses. Also taken away during the government-imposed lockdown was personal choice for Americans to educate their children in public schools, and individuals’ constitutional rights to worship at churches, synagogues and mosques.

The question that the Biden administration should answer is what happens after the illegal aliens settle in the U.S. interior. On his border fact-finding mission, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) learned directly from the adults that their main reason for coming to the U.S. is to find a job. The under-18 population will require public education in already overcrowded and largely failing K-12 classrooms. Many among both the minor and adult population will need taxpayer-funded health care, and will have access to other affirmative benefits.

Although Americans take pride in their humanitarianism, the nation has been through a grueling year-plus of lockdowns and employment furloughs. Putting Americans first until normalcy returns is the course of action that the Biden administration should be ethically obligated to pursue.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Texas Lawsuit Demands Border Control

Dream Amnesty Elitist Dream

By Joe Guzzardi

As expected, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act (DREAM). Soon the Senate will consider the bill which would grant legal status to about 3 million illegal aliens who claim – an allegation that will never be fact checked – to have entered the country when they were 19 or younger.

The amnesty bill also addresses 300,000 illegal aliens from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Syria, Nepal, Burma, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti, Venezuela and Yemen who have received Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Finally, the amnesty package includes illegal immigrants with Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), an immigration benefit that affords the unlawfully present an administrative stay of removal designated for a specific time.

DREAM would be a boon for its recipients who will get lifetime valid work permits, and a host of other affirmative benefits which would also be effective for the duration of their lives. Others who profit are cheap labor-addicted employers, immigration lawyers and immigration expansion advocates. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, for example, is all-in. In a tweet, Cook urged Congress to pass the bill on behalf of the 450 DREAMers that Apple employs. Those Apple DREAMers displace or deny American tech workers and recent U.S. tech grads high-paying white-collar jobs.

But tens of millions of working-class Americans get nothing from DREAM except more job competition, and an increasingly overcrowded nation that further deteriorates already-dire public classroom seating capacity and emergency room hospital care conditions. Those specific types and classes of immigration admissions – DREAM, TPS and DED – will by 2031 conservatively add at least 3.2 million more residents to the U.S. population.

In another sobering study, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that the DREAM/TPS/DED amnesty would cost taxpayers $35 billion during the next decade. The amnestied aliens would become eligible for the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid tax credits as well as the earned income and child tax credits, an aggregate of about $42.5 billion in new federal government expenditures. However, the new green card holders would only generate about $7.5 billion in revenues, mostly from corporate income and Medicare taxes, and the nonrefundable portion of health insurance tax credits.

The method through which amnesty contributes to soaring population is explainable in two words: chain migration, another immigration albatross that Congress refuses to end. As soon as DREAM amnestied illegal immigrants become 21-year-old citizens, they can petition for their parents, who broke the law in the first place, to get them into the U.S. Hence, the chief immigration lawbreaking perpetrators, the parents, will ultimately be rewarded. More troubling eventualities: through chain migration, the amnestied youths will ultimately become anchors, paving the endless path for lawful permanent residency and lifetime work authorization for their aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. Using Census Bureau data, the Pew Hispanic Center identified immigration – immigrants and their U.S. born children and grandchildren – as the nation’s leading population driver that, left unchecked, will contribute 82 percent of the anticipated 117 million U.S. residents’ increase by 2050.

For the more than two decades that the Dreamer’s lead advocate, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), has insisted that young aliens should not be punished by, because of their parents’ crimes, imposing perpetual illegal immigrant status on them. In 2021, in yet another attempt to put DREAMers on a citizenship pathway, Durbin called for ending the filibuster which, with the Senate’s 60-yea vote requirement, blocked his previously failed efforts.

But the true reason DREAM hasn’t passed in the last 20 years is because it’s bad, elitist-written legislation designed to benefit illegally present foreign nationals and profiteers, but that harms mainstream Americans. Concerned citizens have consistently rejected DREAM. Their consensus is that giving existing immigrants the authority to choose future immigrants without considering what the newcomers may contribute to the common national interest, as DREAM Act-sponsored chain migration does, is self-defeating and risky business.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Dream Amnesty Elitist Dream