I am a firm supporter of legal immigration since many of our ancestors came through Ellis Island and other places with admirable aspirations to improve their lives and with a deep respect for the principles our country was founded on.
We are a nation of proud immigrants but what is happening in the southern Rio Grande Valley is an unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis. The Biden administration’s open-door policy has achieved a 20-year high with over 100,000 apprehensions at the border in February.
It is expected that there will be more than 140,000 in March, which represents approximately 4,500 illegal crossings daily and another 1,500 “got-aways” assisted by the infamous “catch-and-release” program (which releases migrants into the community while they await asylum hearings) and restrictions on ICE deporting unqualified asylum seekers.
As if the tragedy at the border of thousands of unaccompanied children is not enough to stir a humanitarian response, the Center for Immigration Studies concluded that almost 3 million noncitizens now have <URL destination="https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10096.pdf">Social Security numbers.
</URL>This makes them eligible to receive a $1,400 stimulus payment from the $1.9 trillion “COVID Rescue Plan” while ignoring the growing homeless population. It is an unknown whether the current $33 trillion debt can be sustained by our economy. President Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t seem to understand or care about the long-term implications and appear willing to destroy the sovereignty of this great nation for narrow partisan purposes.
Richard Gene FultnerDurango
