The result of President Joe Biden‘s permissive folly at the southern border is that the immigrant population of the United States grew by a record 8 million people in the last four years, with over half that number entering the country illegally. This mass of foreigners who have no right to be here and are not wanted by American citizens has inflicted financial havoc on state and local governments. If Congress does not act, the illegal population will add to federal deficits as well.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, Biden’s failure to secure the border will add $300 billion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years. Other estimates place the financial burden of Biden’s illegal immigration wave to federal, state, and local governments at over $150 billion a year.
Most illegal immigrants are ineligible for most federal welfare programs, but there are important exceptions. More than half of illegal immigrant households include a child born in the United States. These children are eligible for all federal welfare programs. Many states have also extended Medicaid eligibility to illegal immigrants directly, and six states allow them to collect food stamps. All illegal immigrant children are also eligible for school lunch and other benefits under current law.
Finally, and most importantly, immigrants who have been paroled into the U.S. for a term longer than a year — most illegal immigrants released into the country by Biden have a two-year parole term — are eligible for all federal welfare programs. Parole status, granted by Biden to most of the illegal immigrants he allowed into the country, drives illegal immigrant welfare spending.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced legislation last week to shut off the flow of tax dollars to illegal immigrants, including those granted parole. Lee’s America First Act painstakingly goes through authorizing statutes for each federal safety net program and makes sure those in the country without proper permission, including those on parole, are ineligible for each program. The list of programs covered by the act includes the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, Head Start, Medicaid, Medicare, Section 8 housing, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Supplemental Security Income, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
The legislation also eliminates the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Service Program, which was used by Biden to divert FEMA dollars away from natural disaster emergencies to housing for illegal immigrants. It bans Housing and Urban Development Community Block Grants from being used for goods or services to illegal immigrants.
Lee’s legislation has no chance of passing this year. But since its first-order effects would be primarily budgetary, cutting federal spending, it would qualify for inclusion in whatever reconciliation bill Republicans produce early next year.
Republicans will want to include as much of their immigration reform agenda as possible in that bill, but the Senate parliamentarian, empowered by Senate rules, will probably decide most of that bill falls outside what can be done with a simple majority in reconciliation. A federal mandate that employers must use the Department of Homeland Security’s E-verify program to confirm the legal status of employees would also likely fall outside reconciliation.
But other items, such as Lee’s America First Act, would qualify. Such policies might include increased fines for visa overstays, increased fees for asylum applications, and even taxation of remittances to foreign countries, which run in the hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
The U.S. is a nation of immigrants. But when most of our ancestors came here, there was not a trillion-dollar welfare state waiting to support them. They had to make it on their own or with the help of their communities. Until the parole loophole exploited by Biden can be closed by legislation or court ruling, Congress should make clear that those in the country illegally may not live on welfare.
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