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McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) The acting head of the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday issued the first-ever Homeland Threat Assessment report on the state of security of the United States, detailing illegal immigration, cyber threats, COVID-19, violent extremism and drug cartels as among the top threats to the nation.

Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf prefaced the 26 page report by writing in the introduction that it is for the entire American public to read, so they can understand the daily threats his agents face.

It is as close as the American people will get to seeing and understanding the information that I see as Secretary and that our employees see in their national security missions. As you read through the HTA you should have faith in knowing that these threats were identified using the best intelligence, operational information, and employee knowledge available to the Department, Wolf wrote. The result is a Whole-of-DHS report on the threats to the Homeland.

These threats were identified using the best intelligence, operational information, and employee knowledge available.

The report draws upon all sources of information and expertise available, he wrote. This includes information from intelligence officers, law enforcement agencies and operational units.

Top security threats to the American public include:

The report says Mexican-based TCOs represent an acute and devastating threat to public health and safety. It cites over 71,000 drug overdoses in the United States in 2019 and says TCOs foment corruption, and destroy confidence in the international banking system.

These organizations operate human trafficking chains that bring in illegal migrants and attempt to exploit legal immigration avenues, the report says.

Transnational criminal organizations especially those based in Mexico will continue to be an acute and devastating threat undermining public health and safety in the Homeland and a significant threat to U.S. national security.

The biggest threat by drug cartels is their ability to control territory including along the U.S. Southwest border and co-opt parts of government, particularly at a state and local level, the report says. The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartel networks post the greatest cross-border drug smuggling threat as they dominate the trafficking of cocaine and other drugs.

Drug cartels operate large human smuggling rings on the Southwest land border and have tradditionally taxed human smugglers and traffickers to move migrants through their areas of operation.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the report cites that drug cartels and coyote traffickers have continued to move undocumented migrants, which threaten local border communities and DHS agents.

Many victims never seek assistance from law enforcement because of language barriers, fear of retaliation from their traffickers and/or fear of law enforcement. This allows traffickers to force victims into labor or commercial sexual exploitation. Traffickers continue to target people they believe to be susceptible for a wide variety of reasons, the report says.

The report acknowledges that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed how the Trump administration is admitting asylum-seekers who seek to lawfully cross at land ports. Since March, all land ports have been closed to anyone not considered an essential worker. And all U.S. immigration court cases have been indefinitely postponed.

The report predicts that the pandemic increases the chance of a mass migration event from Cuba or Haiti.

A surge in illegal immigration activity at the Southwest border will require United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to re-examine how resources are properly aligned at the Southwest Border, likely impacting the larger asylum system, it states.

Furthermore, the report is critical of a lack of bipartisan support of detention measures and budgetary impediments towards immigration that it says continue to undermine U.S. immigration enforcement policies.

This is despite billions of dollars that Congress has appropriated at the Trump administrations request to build a nearly 2,000-mile-long border wall along the Southwest border.

High volume of illegal immigration, including unprecedented numbers of family units and unaccompanied alien children arrivals, stretch government resources, and create a humanitarian and border security crisis that cripples the immigration system, the report states.

However, migrant advocates point out that since the coronavirus pandemic began and the Trump administration enacted Title 42 barring travelers from crossing at land ports to stop the spread of the virus the expulsion of migrants has been rapid, and agency officials have admitted that they are not being held in detention facilities.

U.S. Border Patrol Deputy Chief Raul Ortiz last month came to South Texas and told Border Report that the expulsion of thousands of migrants, many children, during this COVID-19 pandemic is swift, quick processing, often within hours, and they are then taken back to Mexico. This allows us to minimize the exposure to our workforce and to the communities and be able to repatriate and expel these individuals back to Mexico, Ortiz said.

Those who have gotten past Border Patrol checkpoints, the report warns, should note that interior raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will soon begin in the interior. As the pandemic subsides, ICE will conduct additional enforcement operations to uphold its public safety mission and address the growing fugitive backlog, the report said.

Read more:
First-ever Whole-of-DHS report on US threats released - wreg.com

By Isabella Lloyd-Damnjanovic

The deaths of more than 350 migrants in the 2013 sinking of an overloaded smuggling vessel off the Italian island of Lampedusa shocked the world and reignited debate over the European Unions response to the increasing numbers of asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean Sea. At first, frontline EU Member States moved swiftly to set up search-and-rescue operations, adopting an approach in keeping with international conventions such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which require rescue of persons in distress in states territorial waters regardless of their legal status.

This response proved short-lived. The European Union changed its approach at the height of the 2015-16 migration crisis, when approximately 1.4 million asylum seekers and migrants reached Europe via the sea. Shifting from a decentralized system of national rescue operations, the bloc instead concentrated on border management via Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, and prioritized erecting obstacles to reaching its borders, increasing surveillance, and criminalizing search-and-rescue operations by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This move towards securitization made the sea passage more dangerous and difficult but did not reduce migrant deaths. Instead, years after the crisis, the Central Mediterranean Route (CMR) has been responsible for more migrant deaths than any other waterway in the world, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Approximately half of the more than 38,000 migrant deaths and disappearances globally recorded by IOM between January 2014 and October 2020 occurred in the Mediterranean; of these, 82 percent have been in the Central Mediterranean. Moreover, even as overall crossings have declined, the death rate has been going up: in 2019, one in 21 people who attempted the crossing died, slightly more than double the rate of 2016. It is difficult to establish direct causation, but migrant advocates and humanitarian responders have linked the policy changes restricting NGO search-and-rescue activities to this increased death rate.

While paths across the Mediterranean can overlap, the CMR, which runs from North Africa to either Italy or Malta, is one of three main sea routes; others take migrants from Morocco to Spain, from Turkey to Cyprus, or across the Aegean from Turkey to Greece. Nearly 14,000 people successfully disembarked in Italy or Malta in 2019, many after spending days at sea, and often aided by a robust smuggling industry in Libya that has ballooned since the 2011 overthrow of leader Muammar Gaddafi. The national origins of asylum seekers and other migrants vary by route and time period, but in 2019 most travelers along the Central Mediterranean were from Tunisia, Pakistan, or Cte dIvoire. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that at least one-third of those who arrived in Europe via the Central Mediterranean in 2018 were in need of international protection, among them unaccompanied or separated children, who accounted for 15 percent of migrants arriving in Italy in 2019. Although fewer people traveled the CMR in 2019 than any year since 2012, the rate of migrant deaths and disappearances relative to arrivals along this route has steadily increased, more than doubling from 2016 to 2019, from 2.4 percent to 6.4 percent. This rate dropped dramatically in 2020, potentially due to higher numbers of migrants departing in sturdier vessels from Tunisia, changes in movement patterns due to the coronavirus pandemic, and other factors.

This article evaluates the evolution of European policy regarding Central Mediterranean crossings, which initially was grounded in a search-and-rescue frame following the Lampedusa shipwreck but subsequently took on a hardened security lens. Europes approach shifted to prioritize enforcement against migrants at sea and criminalization of NGOs that launched their own search-and-rescue operations, sometimes to great publicity, as when the British artist Banksy financed a vessel in mid-2020. In the process, European leaders made the route more treacherous for migrants.

Initial Policy Response: Member State-Led Search and Rescue

Most migrants crossing the Central Mediterranean to Europe arrive in Italy. At the time of the Lampedusa shipwreck, Italian policy had largely taken a humanitarian approach to sea arrivals, rather than one focused on border enforcement. Officials often rescued asylum seekers and other migrants from vessels in distress, allowing them to disembark and undergo asylum processing in southern Italy. Following the Lampedusa shipwreck, the Italian government launched Operation Mare Nostrum, a search-and-rescue program with a monthly budget of 9 million euros, in an effort to decrease the number of deaths at sea. As a maritime security operation involving units from the Italian Navy and Air Force, Mare Nostrum spanned 70,000 square kilometers of the Mediterranean, including areas strategically positioned around the Libyan coast. The operation was equipped with two submarines, coastal radar technology, helicopters with infrared capability, drones, and 900 staff. Mare Nostrum proved to be highly effective in minimizing deaths at sea, rescuing nearly 156,400 people during its single year of existence. Moreover, the operation proved to be successful at identifying and apprehending smugglers; it was responsible for the arrest of more than 350 smugglers and the confiscation of nine ships.

Despite its objective success at minimizing maritime deaths, however, Mare Nostrums high cost and the refusal of other EU states to contribute to its funding eventually made the operation politically unsustainable. Increasing anti-immigrant sentiment and political pressure from within Italy and other Member States contributed to its termination in October 2014. Critics of Mare Nostrum cited it as a pull factor responsible for the uptick in migrant crossings in 2014. Within Italy, growing resentment of the lack of European support justified its dissolution; then-Interior Minister Angelino Alfano argued that Italy could not and should not take charge of the Mediterranean border on its own.

The end of Mare Nostrum heralded a dramatic decrease in Europes willingness and capacity to conduct search and rescue. In its place came a policy focused on centralized border management, characterized by border-control agreements with origin or transit countries such as Libya, the conditioning of development aid including the EU Trust Fund for Africa on migration management agreements, and the criminalization of civil-society rescue operations in its territorial waters. The consequences have been fatal.

From Search and Rescue to Border Externalization and Criminalization

Following the termination of Operation Mare Nostrum, surveillance and enforcement activities at Europes external borders were taken over by Frontex. Established in 2004 as the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders, Frontex was given an initial mandate to coordinate Member States border control, facilitate intelligence sharing, and assist in returning third-country nationals entering the bloc without authorization.

In November 2014 the agency launched Operation Triton, whose primary focus on border surveillance and enforcement illustrated the shift in priorities. With less than one-third the funding of its predecessor and only 65 personnel, Triton initially confined its area of operations to a mere 30 nautical miles beyond the Italian coastline, severely limiting its capacity to conduct search-and-rescue activities. Fabrice Leggeri, Frontexs head since January 2015, insisted that Triton had not been designed to replace Mare Nostrum, whose activities he said had bolstered Libyas smuggling trade. Search-and-rescue operations were not in Frontexs mandate, and this is in my understanding not in the mandate of the European Union, he said in 2015. We should not support and fuel the business of traffickers.

After more than 1,200 migrants died in two shipwrecks in April 2015, Frontex expanded Tritons reach to 138 nautical miles off the Italian coast and the European Union launched a military mission, European Union Naval Force Mediterranean (EU-NavFOR Med), also known as Operation Sophia, to more comprehensively address trafficking and smuggling. Sophia extended its patrol activities into Libyas territorial waters and focused on targeting smugglers vessels. To evade these patrols, smugglers abandoned traditional wooden vessels in favor of cheaper, unseaworthy rubber dinghies without engines, which were often towed by skiffs and then left adrift. A 2017 European Commission joint communication noted the consequences of these changes, concluding that the large number of dinghies contributes to making journeys increasingly dangerous and to the rise in the number of deaths at sea. While the rhetoric of both missions suggested that humanitarian operations remained a core component of EU policy, neither operation had a specific search-and-rescue mandate, and the proportion of rescues conducted by Triton and Sophia steadily decreased during their tenures. For example, according to data collected by the Italian Coast Guard, Triton was responsible for 24 percent of total rescues in 2015, but for just 13 percent by 2017.

In December 2015, at the height of the migration and refugee crisis, the European Commission proposed expanding Frontexs mandate, making it responsible for managing the entirety of the European Unions borders and giving it executive powers similar to those of national border agencies. Many legal scholars and human-rights activists were quick to condemn what they saw as the potential for abuse of these executive powers. They were particularly concerned about agency accountability for human-rights abuses committed in remote locations such as on the high seas, during joint return flights, and in third-country detention centers, as well as the challenges associated with guaranteeing adequate mechanisms for reporting and addressing complaints by foreign nationals outside EU territorial waters.

The number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean by sea into Europe reached a peak of more than 1 million in 2015, precipitated largely by upheaval from the Syrian civil war. This represented an almost six-fold increase in migrant arrivals since the previous year, and though this number dropped to about 360,000 by the end of 2016, it still constituted more than twice the previous average of annual arrivals. In response to this spike in crossings and the void left by changing EU policy, maritime NGOs began to expand their search-and-rescue operations. Between 2015 and 2016, the number of nongovernmental search-and-rescue vessels active along the CMR more than tripled, from four to 13, according to the Italian Coast Guard. Groups such as Mdecins Sans Frontires, Sea-Watch, and Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) became important search-and-rescue actors in the Mediterranean, accounting for 26 percent of all rescues in 2016. The Italian Navy (20 percent) and Coast Guard (20 percent) also accounted for significant operations, while EU-NavFOR Med accounted for about 13 percent and Frontex just 8 percent of total rescues that year. NGOs importance rose over time to account for 38 percent of total rescues in 2017 and 40 percent of rescues by the first half of 2018.

Italy-Libya Deal

In 2017, the Italian and Libyan governments signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) placing responsibility to intercept and return smugglers and migrants with the Libyan coast guard. In exchange, Libya received significant development funding from the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, border enforcement training for its coast guard, and financing and medical equipment for its migrant detention centers. Although Italy had negotiated with Gaddafi to curb migration and crack down on smuggling operations throughout the 2000s, this was the first externalization agreement the two countries signed since the outbreak of the Libyan civil war and the 2012 European Court of Human Rights verdict in Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy. The decision in that case found Italy responsible for violating the principle of nonrefoulement by returning asylum seekers from the Maltese area of responsibility back to Libya. The MoU was renewed in early 2020.

This redirection of responsibility for preventing migrants from reaching Europe to Libyan authorities has resulted in more instances of arbitrary detention and a spike in detention-related abuses in Libya. Human-rights groups have argued that the MoU directly implicates Italy and the European Union more generally in the large-scale violation of asylum seekers rights. Reports indicate that conditions in Libyan detention centerswhere hunger strikes, overcrowding, riots, torture, lack of medical care, and physical and sexual abuse run rampantconsistently violate human-rights standards. Although Libyan authorities have been well funded by the European Union, the country remains in the midst of civil war, and coast guard leaders include an assortment of former smugglers and militia members.

Criminalization Takes the Lead

The Italy-Libya agreement and Frontexs prioritization of anti-smuggling surveillance was accompanied by the increased criminalization of NGOs search-and-rescue activities. Until 2013, Member States in the Mediterranean had discouraged private vessels from fulfilling their international obligations to rescue people in distress but did not prosecute them for it. This changed after the expansion of Frontexs powers in 2015, and EU members began actively prosecuting NGOs involved in rescue activities, seizing and impounding their vessels, and charging crew members with facilitating illegal immigration. Data collected by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) show that 17 NGO ships were involved in legal proceedings between 2017 and June 2020. NGOs have nonetheless continued to intervene in rescue activities at their own risk. In the process, some activists have emerged as unlikely celebrities, such as Sea-Watch ship captain Carola Rackete, who squared off against the Italian government, and Pia Klemp, who commands the Banksy-funded rescue boat Louise Michel.

In 2017, as a result of intense political pressure, NGOs operating in the Mediterranean agreed to sign a code of conduct, drafted by Italy in consultation with the European Commission, which prohibited search-and-rescue activities in Libyan territorial waters and enacted other restrictions. Because of the MoU with Libya, the new code of conduct effectively limited the NGO ships available scope of rescue to European territorial waters and redirected most responsibility for search and rescue to Libyan authorities.

Italy and Malta have prevented civil society search-and-rescue vessels from disembarking at their ports since 2018. The following year, with the backing of then-Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, Italys Parliament adopted a law imposing fines of up to 1 million euros and automatically impounding private vessels found to be conducting rescue activities. European states affected by irregular sea arrivals, including Italy, Greece, Spain, and Malta, since 2015 have pursued legal cases against individuals and NGOs for their humanitarian intervention, alleging crimes such as facilitation of irregular immigration, human smuggling, membership in a criminal organization, and money laundering. According to FRA, more than 40 criminal investigations have been initiated by European states since 2017, of which a dozen remain pending. For example, in 2017 Italy pressed charges against the crew of the German NGO Jugend Rettets Iuventa for their activities off the Libyan coast; the Italian NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans had two vessels impounded for several months starting in mid-2019. Frontexs Operation Sophia was ended in March 2020, after a year of operating without naval vessels, a change made under pressure from Salvini. It was replaced with Operation Irini, which focuses solely on enforcing an arms embargo against Libya.

NGOs, meanwhile, have directly blamed the European Union and its Member States for the increased rate of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean. Their leaders have criticized governments for scaling back search-and-rescue operations while targeting private rescuers. Mdecins Sans Frontirs stated: Not only has Europe failed to provide search-and-rescue capacity, it has also actively sabotaged others attempts to save lives.

Read more:
Criminalization of Search-and-Rescue Operations in the Mediterranean Has Been Accompanied by Rising Migrant Death Rate - World - ReliefWeb

WASHINGTON If North Texas lawyer Stephen Daniel has his way, the race for Texas' 6th Congressional District will be decided on the issue of health care.

But U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, R-Arlington, says his battle with cancer amid the campaign has given him an up-close look at the health care system and why the Democratic policies that Daniel is campaigning on would be bad for North Texas.

Across the board, the campaign has been defined by the coronavirus pandemic and Wrights cancer diagnosis.

Daniel, 44, says both highlight the need to improve the nations health care system and make it more equitable for Texans living in the district.

My opponent goes around and hes bragged about what great health care he gets, and he consistently votes against everyone elses health care and denies everyone else the same great health care that he gets, Daniel said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.

Thats something that has really bothered me in this race. Its that type of mentality that we just dont need in Washington. We should all have access to great affordable health care and great [prescription] drugs at low prices, he added.

Wright, 67, announced in July 2019 that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer earlier that year. He said he had no intention of slowing down but was hospitalized twice last month due to complications with his treatment and has been unable to campaign since then.

Due to his health, Wright was unable to participate in an interview, but he provided statements in response to questions from The News.

As Ive battled cancer while remaining hard at work, Ive come to understand just how reliant on American healthcare ingenuity the rest of the world is, Wright said. If we go down the road Democrats demand, mainly the complete government takeover of our healthcare system, we will forever diminish our ability to innovate and find new treatments. We will also destroy whats left of competition in the healthcare arena, driving up costs for the taxpayer.

Daniel hit Wright for the GOPs efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his vote last year against a Democratic-led bill that would reverse a decision from President Donald Trump to relax a provision of the ACA that allows states to receive federal financial support and to waive the ACAs mandates, known as Section 1332. In return for the flexibility, states are required to guarantee coverage that is as comprehensive and accessible as that provided by the ACA.

I have friends and family that paid more for health insurance per month than they do for their house or their car, Daniel said. In Texas, we have the highest uninsured rate of any place in the nation, and its only gotten worse during the pandemic with people losing their jobs. Thats the main reason I got into [the race]. I was so struck by how nightmarish the health care system is.

Wright, the former tax assessor-collector for Tarrant County, is in his first term in Congress, succeeding longtime U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, who Wright worked for as chief of staff and district director from 2000 to 2009. Wrights been involved in North Texas politics for decades, serving on the Arlington City Council from 2000 to 2008.

In 2018, Wright secured his seat by an 8% margin and won an uncontested primary in March of this year.

Daniel was born in Austin, moving to the North Texas town of Itasca as an infant. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, becoming the first member of his family to graduate from college in 1999. Daniel then attended St. Marys Law School in San Antonio, graduating in 2002, and now works for Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins' law firm.

Daniel became the Democratic nominee for the district in March when he also won an uncontested race.

Most of the districts population is in suburban Arlington and the southeast corner of Tarrant County. The district stretches to the southeast, encompassing Waxahachie, Corsicana and the rural areas around the two towns.

National Democrats are targeting Wrights district and have it on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees list of districts that its seeking to flip this November. The DCCC, the campaign arm for House Democrats, polled the district in June, finding just a single-digit lead for Wright. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Beto Orourke also outperformed Wrights 2018 challenger in the district in his race against Sen. Ted Cruz.

Along with health care, Daniel said he will prioritize improving public schools, increasing access to broadband internet in rural areas and assisting small businesses hurt by the pandemic, if elected in November.

Wright promised to defend conservative values and rebuild the economy from the damage caused by the pandemic.

I prioritize constituent services at home, and in D.C. I stand up for the common-sense, conservative values of our district, Wright said. Our campaign is all about getting our nation back to work after the COVID pandemic, fighting for true border security, including stopping human trafficking, and returning fiscal sanity to Washington by reducing spending and waste.

Daniel turned Wrights conservatism against him, calling him an extremist who follows his partys lead when voting on legislation. Several controversial opinion columns that Wright wrote for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in the 1990s are further proof of that extremism, said Daniel, promising to be a congressman who works with members in both parties.

I am not just a checkbox for a party vote, and I think thats what separates us. People are tired of the extremism in Washington, Daniel said. I know I am.

When Wrights columns resurfaced this year, his campaign called the columns out of context comments from two decades ago and accused Daniel of embracing mob-mentality cancel culture.

Wright continues to play up his conservative bonafides, highlighting his decades of service in the district.

Ive served this district for many years, Wright said. Be it as Tarrant Co. Tax Assessor-Collector, Chief of Staff for CD-06, or as your Congressman, Ive been a taxpayer watchdog, fighter for the unborn, and strong advocate for ending illegal immigration and human trafficking on our southern border.

Despite the outside support, Daniel faces an uphill battle to unseat Wright.

Wright reported just over $105,000 in cash on hand at the end of the last fundraising period in June. Daniel reported $84,900 in cash on hand at the end of the same period.

Neither man has been able to campaign in person recently, with Daniel holding online events due to the pandemic and Wright on bed rest due to his hospitalizations.

You try to get your message out any way you can, Daniel said.

More here:
In suburban D-FW congressional race, Wright touts conservative record, Daniel calls for end to extremism - The Dallas Morning News

Mark C. Thies| The Fayetteville Observer

American workers are still reeling from widespread layoffs. Nearly 1 million Americans filed for first-timeunemploymentbenefits at the end of September, bringing the cumulative total to more than 55 million since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

President Trump made a bold move to pause major guest worker programs until the end of the year, and that should be applauded. However, the presidentcando even more tohelpput Americans back to work. Fortunately, we already have an existing federal program that could open up job opportunities for millions of citizens.

More: Energy efficiency can help rebuild NCs economy

More: Before voting: What do you want America to look like?

More: Lorry Williams: Observers Voter Guide coming Oct. 18

E-Verifyis a free, electronic system that prevents businesses from hiring illegal aliens. By mandating that all employers use it, the administration could create countless new job opportunities and provide much-needed economic relief for America's struggling working class.

The system is remarkably easy to use. Employers simply visit the online database and input the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of newly hired employees. The system then cross-references that data with other federal records to determine usually within a few seconds whether or not the employee is eligible to work in the United States.

E-Verifyis extremely accurate. Within one day, the system verifies almost all 99% of new employees as eligible for work. Of the remaining 1% who receive "tentative non-confirmations," the vast majority turn out to be illegal aliens.

DespiteE-Verify's demonstrated success, 90% of businesses don't use it. And that's often a deliberate decision. Profit-hungry businesses don't vet their employees because illegal immigrants are willing to work for far lower wages than their native-born counterparts. Nearly four in 10 illegal aliens have been paid less than minimum wage. This wage fleecing enriches employers by $128 billion annually.

America's working class which is already struggling financially in these COVID times suffers the most from this illegal competition. Over the past two decades, an influx of illegal aliens has increased the number of low-skilled workers by approximately 20%. This excess competition has depressed the wages of native-born workers without high school diplomas by almost 4%.

It's not just high school dropouts who are negatively affected, though. When the size of a labor pool such as high school graduates increases by 10%, wages for native workers fall 2.5%, on average.

It's for these reasons that a handful of states including Arizona, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina require all employers to useE-Verifyfor new hires.

The results speak for themselves. States that have implemented mandatoryE-Verifyhave recorded a 40%drop, on average, in their populations of recently arrived illegal immigrants within one year of implementation. That's hardly surprising turning off the jobs magnet eliminates the primary incentive for illegal workers to come here.

Widespread adoption of this reformcan't come soon enough. Already, an estimated 11 million illegal aliens reside in the United States and roughly 8 million of them are employed. Hundreds of thousands more will join their ranks this year.

Meanwhile amid the COVID-19 pandemic and recession tens of millions of Americans currently find themselves unemployed.

President Trump needs to makeE-Verifya key plank in his reelection platform, and then work with a future Congress to mandate it nationwide. He could humanely stem the number of illegal aliens flocking to the United States, decreasing competition for those increasingly scarce jobs.

We knowE-Verifyis effective in deterring illegal immigration and opening up job opportunities for Americans. Now it's up to our nation's chief executive to answer citizens' pleas and put them back to work.

Dr. Thies is the Dow Chemical Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Clemson University whose research is focused on sustainability.

See the rest here:
Trump should advocate E-Verify to help solve the unemployment crisis - The Fayetteville Observer

National Review, September 4, 2020

Immigration was not a major theme of the recent Republican convention, but there was one sentence that caught my attention. In his speech on the first day of the event, Donald Trump Jr. said, "If Democrats really wanted to help minorities and underserved communities ... they'd limit immigration to protect American workers."

He included other things in that list, such as school choice and supporting police. But the unadorned call for reducing immigration was notable not illegal immigration, not low-skilled immigration, not criminal immigration, just immigration. And not ameliorating its consequences or fixing the problems of a "broken" system just reducing the level.

Whether or not Don Jr. meant to do so, that one sentence pointed to an approach that's more effective and less inflammatory than many of the policies pursued by Republicans. Too often, those skeptical of today's immigration policies expend inordinate energy on the symptoms of excessive immigration rather than addressing the actual problem: too much immigration.

One example is the effort to exclude illegal aliens from the census count for the purposes of reapportioning seats in the House (and for drawing House and state legislative districts). Of course it's absurd that illegal aliens effectively have representation in Congress. And since they can't vote (and seldom do noncitizens who vote seem to usually be legal residents), including illegals in the reapportionment calculations gives greater weight to the votes of citizens in the House districts where illegals live than to citizens in other districts where there are fewer eligible voters, each vote counts more, creating something akin to rotten boroughs.

But how is the Census Bureau supposed to do this? It's required to count everyone, but then somehow identify individual illegal aliens, and their places of residence, and subtract them from the count used to apportion House seats and draw districts? If this were possible for more than a handful of people, ICE would be able to just go and pick them up and deport them. If having a large illegal population is a problem and it certainly is then how about we try to shrink it?

The best way to do that would be through worksite enforcement. And while we're starting to see more of that, it's still woefully, almost comically, inadequate. The division of ICE with the worksite portfolio (Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI) focuses on customs work and doesn't give a rat's patootie about illegals filling American jobs. So what we're essentially doing is asking the Census Bureau to do ICE's job. Good luck with that.

Another example of focusing on immigration symptoms rather than immigration itself is welfare use. Immigrants are significantly more likely to use taxpayer-funded services than the native-born are. This is mainly because of their lower average level of education, which translates to lower incomes, which means they're more likely to qualify for welfare benefits.

The usual response to this longstanding problem has been to avoid addressing immigration policy and instead simply try to deny immigrants access to welfare. In 1996 Congress explicitly chose to address symptoms rather than the cause; it expanded the ban on immigrant use of welfare in the broader welfare-reform bill, while rejecting the Barbara Jordan Commission's recommendations to trim legal immigration back to the levels of the 1980s.

And it didn't work. Within five years immigrant welfare use was right back where it had been before the changes. There were a number of reasons for this; George Borjas found that some states picked up the slack, while at the same time naturalization increased among welfare-dependent immigrant groups, since the immigrant-specific rules didn't apply to citizens. But the basic reason is this: A modern society is not going to let kids starve, or people die on the steps of the emergency room, just because they're not citizens.

And even this administration's efforts to tighten the "public charge" rules (excluding people likely to use welfare) and shift to a more "merit-based" system sensible as they are aren't going to make much difference in the end unless numbers come down. The proposed public-charge rules are about as tight as they are likely ever to be, and yet they permit significant use of taxpayer-funded safety-net programs before triggering exclusion and don't even consider welfare use by the children of immigrants, where the real public expense is. And "merit" doesn't quite mean what people think. Immigrant college grads earn significantly less than comparably educated Americans, in part at least because foreign degrees on average don't translate into the same level of skills as U.S. degrees. As a result, even educated immigrants are much more likely to use welfare than educated Americans.

In short, if you're going to admit large numbers of immigrants, you're going to create a significant welfare burden for taxpayers. The only way to avoid that is to admit fewer immigrants.

Another attempt to ameliorate the effects of mass immigration is seen in the plethora of rules designed to protect American workers from the large-scale importation of foreign workers. The various employment-related programs both permanent and "temporary", high-skilled and low-skilled have a variety of different worker protections: Some require jobs to be advertised before a firm is permitted to import a worker, other visas require payment of the "prevailing wage" or the "adverse effect wage rate", yet others limit the nature or duration of employment for foreign workers.

And none of it really works. Mind you, I'm all for these rules, and more, because without them things for American workers would be even worse. But in reality, they're a poor substitute for simply not importing workers in the first place. The rules are routinely gamed by lawyers and consultants vastly more numerous and cunning and motivated than the well-meaning but hapless regulators at the Labor Department. And what does the "prevailing wage" mean, anyway? By the time something like that is calculated (even assuming perfect information) and translated into policy decisions, the information is out of date.

I understand the reason immigration-controllers advocate such rules; in the face of implacable business lobbies demanding unlimited immigration, this is often all you can get, and sometimes even Democrats will support some of these restrictions. But the real goal always needs to be the abolition of these programs, not merely the amelioration of the harm they do.

All these efforts at addressing symptoms are essentially defensive, and my hat's off to those fighting in the trenches. But victory comes only through offensive action. And the first step toward being able to take the offensive is to ensure that your own side knows the goal. So, to adapt Don Jr.'s observation, if Republicans really wanted to help minorities and underserved communities and all American workers and taxpayers they'd limit immigration.

See the article here:
Immigration: Numbers Are of the Essence - Immigration Blog