Border Security Bill Provides Aid, Buses, Legal Shields to Migrants

A transport officer, right, helps immigrants Dilma Araceley Riveria Hernandez, and her son
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Neil Munro

Democrat legislators added numerous aid and welfare programs in the 2019 spending bill to support the growing wave of economic migrants, even as they agreed to provide $1,375 billion for construction of a border wall.

The border spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security offers “$192,700,000 for improved medical care, transportation, and consumables to better ensure the health and safety of migrants who are temporarily in U.S. Customs and Protection] custody,” according to a congressional Explanatory Statement of the provisions.

The spending includes funds to aid and feeds economic migrants as they journey across the border towards jobs in U.S. cities, as well as funds to bus the migrants from the border to pro-migration non-profits: 

To facilitate these additional requirements, the conferees provide $192,700,000 above the request to include $128,000,000 for contract medical professionals, $40,200,000 for increased consumable commodities such as food, infant formula and diapers. 

Border officials are also directed to bus migrants from reception centers directly to the welcome centers run by pro-migration aid groups:

Within the $114,147,000 increase above the fiscal year 2018 funding level for the Transportation and Removal Program, ICE is directed to provide for the transportation of migrants to such shelters based on where collaborating organizations have open sheltering capacity, including during surge periods. ICE shall immediately notify the Committees in advance of any decision to deny such transportation.

The flow of cheap workers to U.S. cities is a boon to business groups because it lowers their payroll costs and spikes their sales of food, autos, and housing to migrants. Government agencies also benefit from the inflow of more poor people — while ordinary Americans pay the price of reduced wages and raised housing costs.

The bill was drafted by a panel of 17 GOP and Democrat legislators who sit on the House and Senate appropriations committees. However, none of the GOP members on the panel are immigration experts, while the Democrat side included several legislators who are determined to raise the inflow of migrants. This imbalance allowed the Democrats to compromise on some major funding issues — such as funding for a border wall — while snatching important political wins by quietly imposing pro-migration policies.

President Donald Trump warned Monday that the spending plan likely would include “landmines.”

The bill includes many large programs to help illegal migrants, as well as people who walk up to the border to ask for asylum so they may get work permits. The language also includes backdoor curbs on enforcement agencies. 

For example, the legislation reopens the joint cartel-to-agency smuggling route for so-called “Unaccompanied Alien Children.” Former President Barack Obama opened this route when his deputies agreed to let illegal migrant parents in the United States “sponsor” — pick up — their foreign children from government shelters after the cartels deliver the children to the border agency. President Donald Trump’s deputies have been shutting down this route by arresting illegals who try to “sponsor” their children from the government shelters:

The language also offers a legal shield to illegals who agree to pay cartel-affiliated smugglers to move additional children into the United States. The shield is created by the language barring officials from deporting people who are “a sponsor, a potential sponsor, or member of a household of a sponsor or potential sponsor”:

The bill directs border agencies to spend $1 million on “rescue beacons” so that migrants who try to sneak through the deserts and scrubland along the border can call for help when they are exhausted.

The bill adds $220 million to build new border reception centers for illegal migrants and asylum migrants, even though the vast majority of migrants say they are eager to take very low wage jobs in U.S. cities, undercutting the ability of Americans to earn a decent living:

The conferees provide a total of $270,222,000 for construction and facility improvements, an increase of $222,000,000 above the request. The amount includes $192,000,000 for a new central processing facility in El Paso, Texas, $30,000,000 for renovations to the existing McAllen Central Processing Center … The conferees expect the new El Paso facility and renovations to the existing processing center in McAllen, Texas, will make them more appropriate for use as temporary holding sites for individuals in CBP custody, particularly families and unaccompanied children. At a minimum, these facilities should be equipped with appropriate temperature controls and avoid chain-link fence-type enclosures. CBP is also encouraged to use a more appropriate blanket type than currently utilized.

The extra construction money is also intended to help reduce the number of migrants who are detained until their claims for legal asylum are accepted or rejected. For example, the budget adds $30 million to ensure that 100,000 migrants in the federal welcome centers can get an “Alternative to Detention” option, such as monitoring devices attached to the migrants’ ankles. Without enforced detention, the vast majority of economic migrants who expect to lose their asylum cases rationally disappear into the growing population of illegal migrants: 

ICE is directed to prioritize the use of ATD programs for families, including family case management, for which the bill provides significant additional resources. ICE should continue working with the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Department of Justice to prioritize the adjudication time line for the cases of individuals enrolled in ATD, particularly those of families and asylum seekers.

The budget also provides $30 million to hire pro-migration groups that will guide migrants towards winning asylum: 

The conferees include … $30,500,000 for the Family Case Management Program (FCMP), which can help improve compliance with immigration court obligations by helping families’ access community-based support for basic housing, healthcare, legal, and educational needs.

The budget plan also directs the Department of Homeland Security to help pro-migration lawyers and political groups contact and aid the migrants: 

Within 60 days of enactment of this Act, the Director shall provide one or more national, nonprofit organizations that have experience advising on legal resources available to immigrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees with the location of all over-72 hour detention facilities, including those owned by ICE, by contractors, or by units of state or local government in the event such organizations are willing to identify pro bono immigration legal services providers in the area of each facility. ICE shall also display this information on an easily accessible area of its website, or provide a link to the organizations’ websites if such information is provided there. To ensure the information is up-to-date, the Director shall notify the organizations prior to any change to the inventory or location of the above mentioned detention facilities.

Business lobbies back the federal government’s economic policy of using both legal and illegal migration to boost economic growth.

But that policy also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor.

That annual inflow of roughly one million legal immigrants — as well as the population of two million visa workers and eight million working illegal immigrants — flood the labor market. The flood spikes profits and Wall Street values by shrinking salaries for 150 million blue-collar and white-collar employees and especially wages for the four million young Americans who join the labor force each year.

The federal government’s cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in Heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that coastal investment flow drives up coastal real estate prices and pushes poor Americans, including Latinos and blacks, out of prosperous cities such as Berkeley and Oakland:

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