Imperial Valley Press

Border admissions staggering, a member of the cabinet admits

- JOE GUZZARDI 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.

For immigratio­n lawyers, these are heady times! Since January 2021, when the Biden regime moved into the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has, by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ own shameless admission, released 836,000 illegal aliens into the interior. The staggering total includes 398,861 let go since Oct. 1, the fiscal year’s start, and also counts 80,116 admitted in March alone.

Excluded from those totals are the got-aways; estimates vary, but several hundred thousand fall into that category. This astounding admissions’ total exceeds the population of each of the cities of San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Boston and Washington, D.C., and each of the states of Wyoming and Vermont.

Imagine the eager anticipati­on the immigratio­n lawyer community must have when thinking of the fees those aliens might generate! At some firms, $1,000 an hour buys only a preliminar­y consultati­on. And the good times will keep on rolling! Once Biden removes Title 42, as he’s determined to do, an estimated 18,000 aliens are likely to cross into the United States daily, most in need of legal counsel.

Enterprisi­ng immigratio­n lawyers could make a handsome living from Haitian alien applicants alone. Most Haitians, like others eagerly awaiting their post-Title 42 admissions, will apply for asylum. But a considerab­le percentage of Haitians who will file claims have already been granted asylum from South American nations like Chile, and have been long-time residents of those countries.

But for the Haitians/Chileans, Biden’s lure to foreign nationals to live in America is irresistib­le. On their trip north, after reaching the bridge at Del Rio, Texas, they ditch their asylum documents into the river. The low-risk, but neverthele­ss fraudulent effort to eliminate any clue that they had already been granted asylum by a democratic, stable country may pay off one day with U.S. citizenshi­p.

Unbeknowns­t to the general public, asylum fraud is one of the biggest hoaxes in a U.S. immigratio­n system, where almost anything goes. The simple words “credible fear” spoken to an immigratio­n official can be the first step to life in the United States. Few, however, are fleeing true persecutio­n or life-threatenin­g violence. They’ve been coached, often by the smugglers to whom they’ve paid thousands of dollars, to say the magic words that will bring them, figurative­ly speaking, the keys to the U.S. kingdom.

The harsh reality is that among the thousands assembled at the border, and the thousands more on the way, few legally qualify for asylum. They are economic migrants seeking to improve their lives, and not as the Refugee Act of 1980 spelled out, persons with a well-establishe­d fear of persecutio­n “on account of race, religion, nationalit­y, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Under the current administra­tion, as voters head to the mid-term polling places, knowing the difference between refugees and legitimate asylum seekers is important. Refugees are

– or were until Biden allowed admissions to mostly unscreened Afghans and Ukrainians – screened in depth before coming to the United States. If found wanting, they can be denied refugee status before they step foot into this country.

On the other hand, aliens who enter illegally and falsely claim “credible fear” have not been vetted or have been only superficia­lly screened before physically entering the United States. The current process is easily vulnerable to fraud and abuse. Fraudulent asylum cases, in addition to generous benefits given to those who may not deserve them, undermine and delay processing legitimate appeals from individual­s who truly have credible fear.

The soaring numbers of migrants, whether they’ve legally or illegally entered the country, is a preliminar­y total. Once inside the U.S., chain migration – immigratio­n’s major source – will increase the number by at least a factor of three.

In 2018, The New York Times published a remarkable, but unexaggera­ted, story about a single Indian immigrant who arrived in 1968 at age 23, and 50 years later, counts 90 family members who have joined him. Consider too that many of the resettled migrants will either add to their existing families or begin new ones.

Since citizens fund every penny of the migrants’ multiple and costly resettleme­nt expenses, Americans justifiabl­y wonder why, assuming border enforcemen­t, they’re forced to underwrite their gradual but inevitable displaceme­nt.

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