The Daily Signal - Why Biden’s Immigration Policy Will Harm Americans and Migrants Alike

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

A migrant caravan began moving toward America’s southern border after the Biden administration announced a pause in deportations for 100 days.  A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday temporarily blocked Biden’s decision to suspend deportations, pending arguments. The president's immigration policy, such as the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, pose a grave threat to America, according to Ana Quintana, a Heritage Foundation senior policy analyst in Latin America and the Western Hemisphere.  Quintana joins the podcast to explain the likely impact of Biden’s changes to immigration policy.  We also cover these stories:  President Biden signs four executive actions targeted at ending racial disparities and injustice.   The Senate confirms Antony Blinken as secretary of state. House and Senate Democrats reintroduce legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get the yes you've been waiting for at Capital One.ca.ca. slash yes. Terms and conditions apply. This is the daily signal podcast for Wednesday, January 27th. I'm Rachel Dutas. And I'm Virginia Allen. A migrant caravan is headed towards the southern border and is expecting entry into the United States as President Biden has announced a pause on deportations for the next 100 days. Anna Quintana, a Heritage Foundation senior policy analyst in Latin America and the Western Hemisphere, joins the show to explain. what we need to know about the caravan. She also breaks down Biden's immigration policy and what the president's actions may mean for America's southern border over the next four years.

And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. President Joe Biden signed four executive actions on Tuesday targeted at removing racial disparities and racial injustice in the country. The First Act directs the Department of Housing and Urban Development to re-evaluate their housing policies and take steps necessary to redress racial discriminatory federal housing policies, according to a White House fact sheet. The second action orders the Department of Justice to stop its use of private prisons.

The third action is a memorandum which expresses America's commitment to tribal sovereignty and the last executive action seeks to combat xenophobia against Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans. Biden gave a speech before signing the four actions per the Washington Post in which he touted the four actions and also criticized the 1776 Commission. Look, in a weeks ahead, I'll be reaffirming the federal government's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and accessibility building on the work we started in the Obama-Biden administration. That's why I'm rescinded the previous administration's harmful ban on diversity and sensitivity training and abolish the offensive counterfactual 1776 Commission.

Unity and healing must begin with understanding and truth, not ignorance and lies. Today, I'm also issuing an executive order that will ultimately end the Justice Department's use of private prisons, an industry that houses pretrial detainees and federal prisoners. The executive order directs the Attorney General to decline to renew contracts with privately operated criminal facilities, a step we started to take at the end of the Obama administration, and was reversed under the previous administration. This is the first step to stop cooperation from profiting off of incarceration

that is less humane and less safe as the study show. And it is just the beginning of my administration's plan to address systemic problems in our criminal justice system. The Senate has confirmed Anthony Blinken, 78, 22, to be President Biden's Secretary of State. Blinken formerly was Secretary of State during the Obama administration and has also been an advisor of Biden's and also was staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during Biden's chairmanship of the committee. He also held senior positions at the White House's National Security. Security Council when Biden was Vice President. On Tuesday, Democrats in the House and Senate reintroduced legislation to raise the minimum wage

to $15 by 2025. This would more than double the current minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. The wage increase bill did pass the House in 2019, but not the Senate. The legislation is still expected to receive opposition for Republicans in the Senate, as the Senate cannot pass the $15 minimum wage bill without support from 10 GOP members to break a filibuster. Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, is a leading advocate for the wage increase, calling the current 725 an hour federal minimum wage, a starvation wage. Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the Job Creators Network,

released a statement in opposition to the wage increase Tuesday, writing, most small businesses cannot afford a federal $15 minimum wage, particularly coming out of this pandemic induced recession. The nonpartisan congressional budget office estimates that a $15 minimum wage could eliminate up to 3.7 million jobs. When you consider that President Biden has already canceled the Keystone pipeline and recommitted America to the Paris Accord, that could bring the total number of lost jobs under the Biden administration to 10 million. The chief of the Capitol Police has apologized for the Capitol Police's failures during the January 6th violence at the Capitol that ultimately left five people dead. In testimony before

the House Appropriations Committee, acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman said via the Hill, I'm here to offer my sincerest apologies on behalf of the department. Pittman said, who has taken over leadership of the Capitol Police since January 11th, following the resignation of former Capitol Police Chief Stephen Sunn. On January 6th, in the face of a terrorist attack by tens of thousands of insurrectionists determined to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes, the department failed to meet its own high standards as well as yours, Pittman told the committee.

She added, we knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target. The department prepared in order to meet these challenges, but we did not do enough. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Anna Quintana as we discuss the migrant caravan headed towards the southern border and what President Biden's immigration policy means for America's future. Do you have an interest in public policy?

Do you want to hear some of the biggest names in American politics speak? The Heritage Foundation hosts webinars called Heritage Events Live. These webinars are free and open to the public. To find the latest webinars and register, visit heritage.org slash events. It is such a pleasure to welcome Anna Quintana to the show. Anna is a Heritage Foundation senior policy analyst in Latin America and the Western Hemisphere. Anna, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having me, guys.

There is a migrant caravan traveling towards America's southern border as we speak. So let's start there. Tell us what we need to know about this caravan. Sure, yeah. So I think the key thing to know is the timing of this, right? So they set off a few days before the inauguration. And the curious thing about it is it happened a few days after Kamala Harris went on Univision, one of the largest Spanish language channels and essentially outlined the Biden administration's amnesty plan, right?

That they would be suspending deportations for 100 days. They would be granting green cards to TPS holders, you know, outlining their pathway to citizenship for the 11 plus million e-legals in the United States, et cetera. And within three days, that's when the 7,000 plus from Honduras started making their way to the United States. So a part of me has to think that the Biden administration knew that this would happen. I mean, if they're out there touting, we're not going to be deported. individuals for 100 days, I have to believe that they would have expected the natural response to be a lot of individuals thinking, now is my shot to get to the states. Well, I think you and I have common sense and others have common sense in thinking, well,

you outline an amnesty plan. Clearly, it's going to lead to a border search, right? And clearly, about a month ago, their senior advisors even went on a major Spanish language wire service and stated that they will not immediately, which contradicting Kamala, they would not begin undoing President Trump's immigration policies because they were getting word that there were going to be masses of people coming to the United States. But then Kamala, a few weeks later, completely undid the mitigation efforts that they put in place. Well, we're going to dive a little deeper into the Biden administration's policies on immigration. but let's just chat a little bit more about how these caravans operate and how they work. I know back in 2018, you traveled down to Mexico City as there was a caravan moving north towards the border. These were individuals mainly from the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

You sat with them, you talked with them, you saw the situation on the ground. So can you just explain a little bit about what you learned on that trip back in 2018 regarding how these caravans, caravans form, how they operate, kind of who's driving them, who's leading them? Sure. So I think one thing to note is the caravans then are different than what's happening now, right? So like the method of transportation is essentially the same because it's been, it's just been learned that it's cheaper and it's safer to travel in large groups. And it's also just far easier to get through border controls, right? Like if you are in a group of like a thousand something plus people, you can easily just push past, you know, the National Guard and just push past, you know,

like the border control police, right? So back then, what was going on was it was largely these, like, politically kind of, you know, these leftist political groups that were organizing these caravans and essentially telling these people, and these are incredibly desperate people. Like, I think that's the one thing to keep in mind. So it's really easy and unfortunate how easy it is to manipulate them, right? They're telling them, well, once, you know, you guys get to the United States, the United Nations is going to be at the border to help, you know, adjudicate your case on your behalf. And I'm sorry, but anybody who tells me otherwise, I'm going to tell them to your face, your line, because that's specifically what, like, the caravan organizers told me to my face and what some of the migrants told me to my face. That, you know, the UN would be there because, according to the migration protection, the global convention on migration protection, you know, something to that effect, they would have. they would have the United Nations would have to be there. And so you would also, there were also, you know, various like leftist U.S. base groups who were there essentially guiding people on the U.S. asylum process, right? Because it's quite difficult to actually qualify for U.S. asylum. So you've always had this issue of so many meritless cases of people just floating around in the United States who, you know, claim asylum, but essentially at the end, never qualify for asylum.

And so there are people who guide and coach them there. And so we were there in Mexico City for a few days. It was about like 5,000 plus something people. And, you know, it was just very unfortunate, right, to see, like, all of these, like, leftist organizers, like, leftist agitators who have a political objective, right? Like, they want to undermine and destabilize the United States. And they want to agitate relations. This time it was, you know, these groups from Honduras, these, like, leftist political organizations

from Honduras and they would tell us how they would, you know, go from city to city and they would call the next city that they would go to and they would say, hey, we're on the way with, you know, 5,000 whatever people. So have an area set up for us. In this case, it was a stadium, have food, have clothes, have whatever. And the city would have to do that because otherwise they would get a lot of negative attention on them if they didn't. Wow. So it's really strategic. Like this doesn't really happened by accident. It sounds like it's very well orchestrated. I mean, it has to be, right? Because how else do you move so many people from one point to one? I mean, these are countries. People are going from Honduras to El Salvador to Guatemala to Mexico, right? I mean,

this is like these are mass movements of people. And so this requires resources. This requires logistics. Like this requires a lot of methodical like planning here. And this is before there were like stricter border control measures between like Guatemala and Mexico, for example, and like between like Honduras and between like Guatemala's like border further, like their southern border. And what role do drug traffickers, human traffickers play within these caravans or, you know, taking advantage of potential opportunities within a caravan like this? Oh, God, it's so awful. I mean, one of the groups, like one of the groups that we met had told us like that about, I think it was like a hundred of the people who that were traveling with them had hitched a ride on some trucks on like some 18 wheelers. And they went through, I forgot which drug cartels territory. And they were extorted by this one organization.

And they didn't have the sufficient amount of money on them. and they ended up, you know, they were kidnapped and killed, right? So, I mean, so that's incredibly common. And, like, just a few days ago, and, like, one particular part of Mexico called, like, Damo Lippas, the Central America, I think they were specifically from Guatemala. They were killed. Like, I think they were burned alive. I mean, like, these sorts of things are common, right?

Because essentially, you know, cartels and various other criminal organizations control the transportation networks. Like, they control a lot of, like, human smuggling as well. So there it's if people don't have the money to pay to transit, that's what's going to happen to them. Wow. So, so sad. So we're seeing that as President Biden, he announced, okay, we're putting pause on deportations for 100 days. That promise, as we chatted about, seems to have brought on this flood of individuals who are now traveling towards the border. just talk a little bit more on your thoughts about this decision to pause deportations for 100 days. I mean, what are the effects of that decision not only regarding the caravan, but then also for those

individuals who are already in the States? Sure. So, I mean, so think about this, right? So this absolutely incentivizes people to make this incredibly dangerous journey. And I think, you know, we all should be incredibly like, livid with the Biden administration for their radical immigration policies and their lack of attention to border security. But I think also at the end of the day, we should also have humanity towards the individuals who are putting themselves on this dangerous journey. I think it's awful that the Biden administration is kind of like dangling this carrot and saying,

hey, by the way, we're not deporting people for the next hundred days because they're creating this like false incentive to people to come to the United States. They should never do that. At the end of the day, America is a country of laws, right? We're a country who needs to maintain the integrity of our immigration system. And we cannot do that if we have a president who's saying, well, we're not going to deport anybody for 100 days, guys. So by the way, just come on over. Like, who cares? Because you have people who are literally going to risk their lives and are going to risk their children's lives and their wives who are potentially going to get raped and sexually assaulted on the way over here.

And then for the people who are inside of the country, I mean, if you're already at the point where you are going to be deported, why give this impression that America, is no longer going to uphold its commitment to keep and to keep the sanctity of its immigration system. Like it just, it absolutely makes no sense. I mean, at this point, it's like, why are you going to selectively choose and selectively politicize which part of our criminal justice system you want to apply the laws to just because it's politically convenient for a domestic constituency that you are trying to appease? It's, I mean, it's a logical. And it just shows that, again, the Biden administration.

is one, they're not focused on unity, right? They're just completely focused on this, you know, hyper-radical perspective of just applying the law for whatever suits them politically. Well, I was reading today that before Trump left office, the Department of Homeland Security signed the sanctuary for America's first enactment or it's also called safe. So this agreement says that Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, and Texas must be given in 180 days notice. before the executive branch can actually make changes to immigration policy. So could you just walk us through a little bit more of understanding this action by the Department of Homeland Security before Trump left office?

And then the impact that that might have on what Biden is saying regarding, you know, pausing these deportations for 100 days. I think that the key thing is so, yeah, so I think before Trump left office, I think they put a host of these measures in place, right? in order to prevent the federal government from coming in, so just so the states can have more of an active role in place. So like a few days ago, for example, we saw El Paso issue an alert that they were anticipating a massive influx of migrants, and that would essentially give the state of Texas, again,

more of an ability to exert the state's powers, like, again, under safe. but what we've now seen from the Biden administration is that they are going to overrule that. So I think, again, while the Trump administration may have put these safeguards in place for border states and for states that are particularly more vulnerable to inflicts of migration, I'm not necessarily convinced, and I think also what we're seeing the evidence is that the Biden administration is going to uphold them. Frankly, they're just, they're absolutely not. So frankly, I don't think many Americans should have confidence in that. So then what can we expect to see when these caravans do reach the border?

What's going to happen to these people? Okay. So what's happened right now is the caravan, the vast majority of it, has been broken up inside of Guatemala. And you can, I mean, I think a lot of credit needs to go to the Guatemalan government for breaking it up because the transit route has been from Honduras and to Guatemala. and then after Guatemala would have gone through Mexico and then into the United States, right? The Guatemalan government, again, to their credit, really did a lot because, I mean, it's completely

unfair that Guatemala's health protocols have been broken and Guatemala's immigration protocols have been broken. I mean, this is a country who has been under just like us a very strict lockdown. And as a consequence, they've also experienced a massive economic downturn. So why is it that just because the. Honduran government did not stop their people from playing, that the Guatemalan should have to suffer from that as well. And so I think, you know, it's pretty great that the Guatemalans stop them. But again, I think this is only for now, right? I think we are, we should anticipate to see

more individuals coming because this immigration bill will be put forth. I think they're now saying that they want to put it forth in peace meals. And, you know, I think we should have a bit more deeper into this because it's not just the temporary pause on on deportations. It's so many more things, right? It's green cards for TPS holders. It's the pathway to citizenship, rather, for 11 million. I mean, it's an incredibly, it's the most radical immigration bill that I think I've seen in my seven plus years at heritage. And there's a significant amount of democratic support for it that that is quite concerning. Let's go ahead and dive into that. So it's called the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. Tell us what we need to know about this proposed legislation, Anna. Sure. So imagine 11 million people

who are here in this country illegally, right? And frankly, I think that number is completely, it is not an accurate number. That number should be far higher, probably closer to 15-something million. A significant chunk of these people are probably, have already either been convicted of a convicted of a crime, convicted of a felony, so in a normal situation, if let's say they were here legally, they would not even qualify for citizenship. The Biden administration is proposing that if they have been here for eight years, they can now be, they can now apply for a green card. And then after they have a green card for five years, they can apply for citizenship. So imagine, you come into this country illegally, you are now on a fast track for U.S. citizenship. When in comparison, so many people who I know

who've gone through the process legally, it's been far slower for them. Incredibly. Like, I mean, my parents, it took them far longer than that to become U.S. citizens. And they came to this country as political refugees, right? My friends who are living in Mexico, whose families have opened up businesses in the United States, who have visas, their process is far more costly and far slower. And these are people who, again, did things, the legitimate, the right, way and who are still going to have to wait far further behind in the line than individuals who

came into this country illegally. And so now people with temporary protected status, right? So this is a designation that's given to individuals from a country that's in the middle of a major catastrophe, a major political situation where they cannot go back for fear of their lives, right? So that's for Nicaraguan's salvage. There's a few countries for where these individuals have temporary protected status. The problem is Democrats have always used TPS as conservatives have alleged as a backdoor amnesty.

Because, for example, Nicaragans have had TPS for about 20 years. Same thing with Salvadorans, right? There's nothing temporary about a program that's a 20-year-old program. Now the Biden administration is saying, hey, you know what? You've been here so long. Let me just give you a green card. after you have a green card, you can apply for citizenship a few years later. Again, what's the purpose of anything called temporary if you can eventually become a citizen?

There's literally nothing about it. And then there's the, you know, like we were talking about, the pause and deportations, they want to add additional immigration judges because they say they want to relieve the backlog on the U.S. immigration system right now, which is, There's about a million plus cases held up in immigration courts. Oh, and also they want to dramatically expand the U.S. refugee program, right? The U.S. dramatically expand the U.S. refugee programs, create new refugee resettlement programs. So when Obama left office, for example, the U.S. was admitting about 118,000 refugees into the United States.

And that was like the high, that's essentially the highest point in U.S. history, right? And the United States is still processing refugee applications from the Obama administration era. Biden wants to lift it to 125,000. So imagine we're still processing refugee area, Obama era refugee admission applications. Biden wants to expand it dramatically. So it's every which way you look at this kind of immigration proposal plan, it's broad amnesties. It's essentially not looking out for the American people or the American worker. And it's appeasing a domestic constituency that he should not.

not be looking out for. Well, it seems in so many ways, you know, going back to this kind of fast track for citizenship, it just removes the incentive for individuals of why, why would I go through the legal process? Why would I do it correctly when it's going to be so much harder and take so much longer than if I just do it illegally? You know, this is a thing, though, people still, people of integrity are still going to do it the legitimate way, right? Because it's there, it's, it's, it's, because it's a matter of pride. Nobody ever. like people of pride will never want to be known as no i i i didn't i it's just it's a matter of like i'm not going to accept biden's handout yeah but then again it's also a matter of i think of americans

who like legitimately care about the integrity of just their country and the integrity of their immigration system should take a look and examine okay do i want my schools right now to have like right now our schools are completely shut down right like our teachers are working from home because, you know, our teachers unions have just completely hijacked this entire system. And imagine the impact on our schools that this is going to have. Like, imagine the impact that this is going to have, like, on our local communities. And this isn't not an xenophobic argument, right? But this is an argument that we actually need to sit back and think about. We have about 11 million Americans that are unemployed. And yet the priority for this administration in these

first, in the first two weeks, is to shut down the Keystone pipeline. And, you know, and and to push forward this massive amnesty bill that's going to encourage a massive influx of people into this country. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. You're shutting down jobs and then you're bringing in all these individuals that need jobs. Exactly. Yeah, just absolutely crazy. Talk a little bit about Biden's, his policy decisions around Dreamers or DACA recipients.

Well, that's the other, for them as well. It's green cards as well. He wants to expand for DACA recipients. He wants to. Right now that's also that's tied up with Texas right now is fighting, is fighting the U.S. government. Like with it is fighting, rather they're going to expand the fight with the Biden administration, kind of like Texas has been they essentially like the major bulwark against the

broadening of DACA. But the Biden administration essentially wants to make. wants to broaden the dreamers who qualify for DACA. So dreamers are essentially individuals who came into this country as youths and who came into this country legally. And so essentially to qualify for DACA benefits, they would need to like officially be enrolled, quote unquote, within like the DACA program. And he wants to, the Biden administration wants to make it easier for individuals who are

dreamers to enroll for DACA benefits. And again, this begs the question. It's like, well, who exactly is the priority here for the Biden administration? Well, and then on top of all this, we also know that Biden is stopping funding to the border wall, correct? Yes. Yeah, that has been that he's, yep, he has shut that down. The border wall construction is no longer. I mean, I've heard tangentially that some like ongoing, you know, there, there, it's, it's, it's being phased out, right, just to phase out certain contracts. But yes, border wall construction is no longer. And I mean, again, this is just him making political decisions.

Because if you go to border, if you speak to border agents, right? Like, I mean, these are non-political individuals. These are the men and women who are at the border every single day. And they just want it to be easier for them to stop anything that's coming into the border, whether it's individuals, whether it's drugs, whether it's even honestly, like diseased cows. because that's something that happens, right? You have disease cows coming in from Mexico, going into like U.S. ranch, like going onto like U.S. ranchers properties. And then imagine what happens to like the herds of like onto like American ranchers that will then in fact their entire herd. And there goes their livestock. And so it just makes it a lot easier for them to do their jobs. So is there anything among President Biden's immigration policies that we've seen so far that we can say, is positive or that will benefit Americans in any way? I think it's encouraging that he wants to add more judges to help relieve the backlog,

but then you look at why these judges are being added, like why is the backlog being relieved? And it's only to expedite the entry and expedite the processing of people who essentially are already here illegally and to give them, and to legalize their status in the United States, right? So like half of the reason, essentially the objective of why he's trying to do it is wrong. Yeah. It's just their philosophical outlook on what the U.S. immigration system is therefore is unencouraging, to be frank.

So, Anna, we so appreciate all of your research and your work on this topic. Can you tell us how our listeners can follow your work? Sure. So, you know, our colleagues and I, we're just always on Twitter. We're always commenting on this. We are also, you can find our work on heritage.org. You just search our names. And I mean, yeah, we're out there.

And I think, you know, trying to combat the Biden administration's immigration policies and kind of shine a light as to why this is not good for America, why this isn't good for the border states is that's going to be a top priority of ours this year. Anna, thank you so much your time. We so appreciate it. No, thank you. Really appreciate it. Have a good one.

And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geine, and John Pop.

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