Immigration…What Could Possibly go Wrong?
Immigration through the Southern border has jumped significantly under President Joe Biden. The U.S. Border Patrol reported over 1.6 million encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2021 fiscal year, quadruple the number in 2020 fiscal year and the highest annual total on record. The number of encounters had fallen to about 400,000 fiscal 2020 as the Coronavirus outbreak hammered migration across the world.
Encounters at the border rebounded sharply in fiscal 2021 and eclipsed the previous annual high recorded in fiscal 2000, said U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal agency that encompasses the Border Patrol. A record number of encounters in 2021 involved people from countries other than Mexico.
The Border Patrol reported 608,037 encounters with Mexican nationals, 37% of the total. The remaining 1,051,169 encounters, or 63%, involved non-Mexicans, the highest total for these nationals in CBP records dating back to 2000.
Most of the encounters with non-Mexicans in fiscal 2021 involved people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. There were 308,931 encounters with people from Honduras last fiscal year (representing 19% of all encounters), 279,033 with people from Guatemala (17%) and 95,930 with people from El Salvador (6%). The number of encounters involving people from Ecuador increased over eightfold, from 11,861 in fiscal 2020 to 95,692 in fiscal 2021. There were also big increases in encounters from Brazil (from 6,946 to 56,735), Nicaragua (from 2,123 to 49,841), Venezuela (from 1,227 to 47,752), Haiti (from 4,395 to 45,532) and Cuba (from 9,822 to 38,139).
Encounters with unaccompanied children rose from 30,557 in fiscal 2020 to 144,834 in fiscal 2021, while encounters with people traveling in families increased from 52,230 to 451,087. The largest encounters were single adults. There were 1,063,285 single adults in fiscal 2021, up from 317,864 the year before. More than six-in-ten encounters (64%) involved single adults, though that was down from 79% in fiscal 2020. The Biden administration wants to roll out a new rule eliminating potential hurdles for immigrants depending on public benefits and trying to obtain legal status.
The proposed change brings the "Public Charge" rule back to the forefront. The Trump administration had modified that regulation so it reshaped legal immigrant population in the US by making it more difficult for individuals to obtain status.
Joe Biden is changing course by considering what public benefits would indicate that an individual is largely depending on the federal government and excluding benefits, like food assistance programs and housing benefits, that shouldn't be used against an individual who is otherwise relying on their own resources. Under the proposed rule, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would consider benefits, like cash assistance for income maintenance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and long-term institutionalization at government expense, according to a notice sent to Congress.
Joe Biden is also proposing a program that easily allows young adult border crossers and illegal aliens to live freely in the US. His administration is seeking bids for a DHS contract that will ensure border crossers and illegal aliens ages 18 to 19 years old — who officials say “pose a low flight risk” — are hardly monitored by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency after their release into the U.S. interior. Existing DHS programs had stricter compliance guidelines. The new program allows border crossers and illegal aliens to be monitored by “community-based services” and not require participants to be monitored by GPS tracking. Instead, the program requires most border crossers and illegal aliens check in monthly with ICE agents via telephone. The program would also “develop and maintain a network of age-appropriate and culturally sensitive community resources” for border crossers and illegal aliens.
What could possibly go wrong?
Kallie Jurgens