Month: August 2018

Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder’s catch-and-release spending plan “will encourage further massive waves of illegal immigration into the country,” says Peter Kirsanow, a GOP-appointed member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

“American workers finally have a beneficial labor market after suffering years of high unemployment and stagnant wages,” he said in an August 7 letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan. “Now Republicans in Congress want to blow it by gutting immigration enforcement,” Kirsanow added.

Kirsanow, who was appointed to the seven-member commission by former President George W. Bush, is one of the few voices speaking up against Yoder’s July 25 decisive endorsement of a Democratic spending amendment which revives the catch-and-release rules set by former President Barack Obama.

The amendment is now in the draft 2019 sending bill, and it would revive Obama’s rules which allowed hundreds of thousands of Central American economic migrants into the United States. The amendment bars President Donald Trump’s officials from spending any money to implement the asylum reforms announced in June by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“Reversing the Attorney General’s decision to enforce the law as it has been understood for almost 40 years will encourage further massive waves of illegal immigration into the country,” said Kirsanow’s letter to Ryan. “Attorney General Sessions’ decision to return to the understanding of the asylum laws that was in place from 1980-2016 is an effort to stop people at the border before they enter the country.”

Sessions’ reforms are already causing a “dramatic” reduction in successful asylum-claims by migrants, say immigration lawyers. That is good news for Americans seeking a wage raise but is bad news for the lawyers and for cheap-labor employers who gained when 400,000 Central American migrants got work permits in 2017.

So far, White House officials have been publicly silent on the Yoder’s July 25 giveaway to the cheap-labor employers. The giveaways also included expanding the H-2A and H-2B visa-work programs and also changing green-card rules in a way that could dramatically boost white-collar outsourcing of professionals’ jobs to Indian companies.

“I’ve not yet seen anything – but maybe that is a function of that fact that it is August in Washington,” Kisanow told Breitbart News, adding:

It seems as if this is coming in under-the-radar and it could be passed without sufficient time for discussion  … This is really a big deal — it eviscerates any notion of having control of the border.

Without Sessions’ reforms, people cross the border to claim asylum, and then disappear into the illegal-migrant workforce, he said.

White House officials have declined to answer questions from Breitbart News about the apparent lack of response to Yoder’s giveaways.

Sessions called Yoder July 25 to protest the pending amendment, but Yoder rebuffed Sessions.

There is no evidence that Yoder has followed up on his July 28 promise to fix his asylum giveaway, sources have told Breitbart News.

GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder hid plan to revive Obama’s catch-and-release policy from the WH until the day of the July 25 vote. He rejected a telephone plea from surprised AG Jeff Sessions during the markup. Vote came a day after Yoder flew with Trump to Kansas. https://t.co/OegbiNadCj

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 10, 2018

Yoder’s decision to gut immigration controls reportedly contributed to his poor showing in his August 8 Kansas primary, which then prompted the non-partisan Cook Political Report to describe his race as a “toss-up,” instead of a”Lean Republican.”

In his letter, Kirsanow urged Ryan to let the House debate the issues instead of letting Yoder and 29 other GOP legislators insert laws into the must-pass 2019 appropriations bill. He wrote:

If Congress wants the asylum laws to cover people who have violent home lives or who live in countries that are more violent than the United States, it should draft appropriate legislation and pass a law. Then the policy change can be fully debated and the American people can let their representatives know what they think …

… illegal immigration (and high levels of immigration generally) are largely responsible for the declining employment prospects and wages of low-skilled Americans generally, and black men in particular. Right now, unemployment is at 3.9 percent. Black unemployment is at 6.5 percent. We could only dream of these numbers while mired in years-long stagnation. We have more people re-entering the workforce after spending years not even looking for work. And wages are finally ticking up – MarketWatch reports, “the cost of worker compensation in the form of pay and benefits edged up to 2.8% to mark the biggest yearly gain since 2008.” In short, American workers finally have a beneficial labor market after suffering years of high unemployment and stagnant wages. And now Republicans in Congress want to blow it by gutting immigration enforcement.

Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market — but the government provides green cards to roughly 1 million legal immigrants and temporary work-permits to roughly 3 million foreign workers.

The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap foreign labor. That process spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. The policy also drives up real estate prices, 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 at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

The huge influx of cheap labor has helped to stall Americans’ wages since the 1970s:

Business groups and Democrats tout polls which prod Americans to declare support for migrants or the claim that the United States is a “Nation of Immigrants.” The alternative “priority or fairness” polls — plus the 2016 election — show that voters in the polling booth put a much higher priority on helping their families, neighbors, and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.

Rep. Yoder outlines fix for his revival of Obama’s catch & release border policies. But he & 29 GOP Reps silent on their curbing migrant-detentions, growing 2 cheap-labor visa programs, risky giveaway to 200K visa-workers in Indian w-collar outsourcing biz https://t.co/tT29D05pdW

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 3, 2018

 

Congressman Lou Barletta (R-PA) chastised Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) support for sanctuary cities on Monday, contending that a five-year-old rape victim was not provided “sanctuary” from criminal illegal aliens.

Last week, Juan Ramon Vasquez, a 45-year old Honduran national, was sentenced to two years in jail for illegally entering the country. Vasquez raped a five-year-old child after Philadelphia authorities ignored an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer and released him. Vasquez was deported from the country in 2009 but was later re-entered the United States illegally. Rep. Barletta slammed Sen. Casey for supporting the city of brotherly love’s sanctuary city policy.

Barletta asked rhetorically, “How would Bob Casey justify his support for sanctuary cities to the family of the little girl who was raped? Does Bob Casey believe it was a sanctuary city for them?”

William McSwain, the U.S. Attorney for the Philadelphia region, said in a statement last week, “The facts of this case highlight the danger posed by the City of Philadelphia’s decision to disregard ICE detainers and release previously deported aliens from local custody.”

In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, McSweeney blamed Philadelphia’s sanctuary city status for “fostering mistrust between the community and local law enforcement” by favoring illegal aliens.

Stu Bykofksy, a staff columnist for the Inquirer, noted in his article, “Given sanctuary in Philly, he raped a child”:

ICE had requested that he be detained for deportation, but our self-righteous city turned the Honduran loose, and the next time he was in custody it was for raping a 5-year-old girl. I’m sure the victim’s family appreciates Kenney’s policy that protects foreign convicted felons, which is what Vasquez was.

Sen. Casey voted against legislation in 2016 to defund sanctuary cities, including Philadelphia, as well as Kate’s Law, which imposes harsher penalties on illegal immigrants who reenter the United States. Kate’s Law would have hit Vasquez, who reentered the country after previously being deported.

“If someone is deported for a criminal conviction then we need to make sure they are prevented from ever coming back into this country,” Sen. Casey said in a 2016 statement.

Congressman Barletta said last year that “everyone’s family is put at risk” by sanctuary cities.

U.S. Department of Interior Secretary (DOI) Ryan Zinke told Breitbart News Saturday that “environmental terrorist groups” are, in part, responsible for the deadly wildfires in the Western United States. Wildfires have charred hundreds of thousands of acres and caused loss of life, including six firefighters.

Zinke said, while it is true that wildfire seasons have grown dryer and hotter, the underlying cause of the fires themselves is because of the “fuel load” of dead timber and other combustible matter littering forests.

“We have been held hostage by these environmental terrorist groups that have not allowed public access — that have refused to allow [the] harvest of timber,” Zinke told Washington Deputy Political Editor Amanda House on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM Patriot 125.

This includes as many as 80 million acres of land filled with trees that have died from beetle infections or other causes.

“This is a catastrophe and, in my opinion, a lot of it has to do with these policies refusing to actively manage our forests,” Zinke said.

“We’re spending probably, this season, over $2 billion fighting forest fires when many of them could be prevented by better forest management techniques,” Zinke said.

“But we have these radical environmentalists that close off roads, refuse to have firebreaks, refuse to have any timber harvested, no grazing, and the result is these catastrophic fires,” Zinke said.

When asked about the claims by left-wing environmental groups and even U.S. lawmakers who blame climate change for contributing to the fires, Zinke said that is a separate matter from the need to manage forests to help lessen the spread of wildfires or even prevent them.

“Whether you believe or don’t believe in climate change, it doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to remove the dead and dying timber and manage our forests, so you don’t have these burns,” Zinke said.

Zinke said it is ironic that environmental groups oppose access to federal lands to protect wildlife habitats when mismanagement of the land that results in fires destroys those habitats.

He also said that letting timber go to waste increases the need — and cost — of importing lumber, resulting in added expense for Americans who need it to build homes and other structures.

Zinke and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue are in California this week to meet with state officials and to personally thank the firefighters who are battling the fires.

“It’s good to get out of Washington and actually talk to the front line,” Zinke said. 

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