Podcast appearances and mentions of preston huennekens

FAIR's Preston Huennekens and Ron Kovach discuss the latest trending immigration stories from legislation, to polling, to the Biden administration's remarks about the situation at the border.

Preston Huennekens joins JT to talk Border Crisis one last time.

Preston Huennekens joins JT to discuss the crisis at the border issues.

A South Alabama Car maker is alleged to be using underage Illegal immigrants. Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform has the latest.

Preston Huennekens from Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the continuing crisis at our Southern border.

Preston Huennekens from Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the Supreme Court decision allowing the Biden administration to end the Trump era remain nin Mexico policy.

Tragedy in Texas as 53 bodies are discovered in the back of a tractor trailer, an attempt to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States

Preston Huennekens from Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about an Immigration judge hired during Trump era accusing the Biden administration of ousting conservative appointees.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses May's border apprehension numbers and how they are the highest in American history.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the continuing crisis at the Southern Border.

32 mile-long caravan coming to the southern border? Again? Preston Huennekens, Government Relations Director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform joins Joe to get into what's going on. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the continuing crisis at the border and how many illegal immigrants are still crossing the border.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about the Biden administrations plan to end Title 42 being put on hold for the time being.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about the surge in apprehensions at the in the month of April.

Preston Huennekens from Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses a letter that was sent to Congress urging them to take up border security legislation.

Preston talks about the continued issues at the border and that Title 42 being overturned would be the ultimate nightmare

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the wall being build around the Supreme Court as our Southern Border remains wide open.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the increase in traffic at the Southern Border and the rising costs of dealing with the surge of immigrants.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the continuing crisis at the Southern border

Preston Huennekens from Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about President Biden's plan to cancel Title 42 at the Southern Border while leaving some other COVID protocols in place across the country.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration record joins JT with what this change means for Americans.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the situation at the Southern border and giving Asylum Agents the power to allow illegal immigrants to cross the border.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the soaring numbers of apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the Southern border.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses a report that shows how much border crossings at the Southern border have increased during the Biden presidency

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about President Biden's lack of action to fix the crisis at the Southern border as well as efforts to get Ukranians into the country

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses President Biden pulling border patrol agents from our Southern border to assist with Ukranians attempting to get into the US.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about illegal immigrants being funneled into American cities by the government.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the continuing crisis at the southern border and the Biden administrations lack of response.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses Facebook privately allowing human smuggling on the app.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about the government flying immigrants to different areas across the country.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses how the hostage situation at a synagogue in Texas last week could have been prevented.

Preston Huennekens, FAIR's government relations manager and Jason Peña from our research department discuss illegal alien voting in New York, benefits for illegal aliens in California, and how the Texas synagogue terrorist entered the United States.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about how illegals atr now allowed to vote in elections in New York

FAIR's Preston Huennekens joins WERC-AM's (Birmingham, AL) JT to discuss Vice President Kamala Harris' new communications director, and his recently discovered support for immigration deportations. Preston and JT additionally review the immigration legacy of Harry Reid and Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) missing annual arrest and deportation report.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses a new member of Vice President Harris' staff having to apologize for previous remarks about illegal immigrants

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the continuing crisis at the Southern border.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens joins WERC's-AM (Birmingham, AL) JT to make immigration-related policy and news predictions for 2022.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform joins JT to talk about the struggles at the Border and the Biden administration's incompetence.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens joins WERC-AM's (Birmingham, AL) JT to discuss U.S. Customs and Border Protection's "unconscious bias" training amid a historic border crisis.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses Customs and Border Patrol hosting an "Unconcious Bias" seminar for agents in the middle of the crisis at the border.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens joins WERC-AM's (Birmingham, AL) JT to discuss whether the Biden administration will reimplement the "Remain in Mexico" program after a federal judge ordered the administration to reinstate it “in good faith.”

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the situation at the Border and the Biden administration's lack of action to fix the crisis.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about how the spending bills going through Congress will affect our immigration situation.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about some border patrol agents pushing back against President Biden;s vaccine mandate for federal employees.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens joins WERC-AM's (Birmingham, AL) JT to discuss how the Biden administration's catch and release policies are leading to horrific murders as well as its proposal to pay illegal aliens hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform joins us to talk about the situation at the Border.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about the Biden administration giving money to illegals once they cross the border.

Preston Huennekens From FAIR on Border Crisis

Preston Huennekens from Federation for American Immigration Reform joins us with an update on the crisis at our Southern border.

FAIR's Spencer Raley, Preston Huennekens, and Matthew Tragesser discuss the poorly executed withdrawal from Afghanistan and how the U.S. can best address Afghan refugees, especially those who have helped the U.S. military.

Today on understanding immigration - a covid 19 update at the border with congressman Ronny Jackson Matthew:  welcome back to episode 39 of FAIR's understanding immigration podcast this is Matthew Tragesser FAIR's press secretary today we're going to provide a covid 19 update at the southern border now we previously did an episode on this topic in March of 2020 but obviously much has changed since then more people are entering the country illegally now than last year and really more than ever the delta variant is proliferating in the U.S. and all around the world and there still hasn't really been a consistent covid 19 protocol at the southern border for asylum seekers and illegal aliens entering the country so joining me today as always is Preston Huennekens from our lobbying department but also we have a very special guest joining us today is Congressman Ronny Jackson from Texas house district 13. he is a navy veteran and the former white house physician under Barack Obama and Donald Trump and brings a unique perspective to this important issue welcome to today's show congressman and thank you for your service. Rep. Jackson: thank you guys I appreciate you all having me Matthew: so I want to start off with this basic question is covid 19 a legitimate threat at our southern border especially with the number of apprehensions that we're seeing you know it's been six months of continued increased illegal immigration 210,000 apprehensions estimated last month is this a legitimate threat with covid 19? Rep. Jackson: oh absolutely you know we've already documented I was down at the border months and months ago and it's even gotten worse but when I was down there months ago I was at an HHS facility at Carrizo Springs they were testing people there they weren't testing them the border patrol wasn't testing them whenever they were retaining them but when they turned them over to HHS or turn them over to catholic charities or whoever they turn them over to to disposition them in this particular case it was HHS they were testing them and they documented that 20% of these immigrants that were crossing the border were copied positive the day they got them and 5 percent were testing positive during their stay there so 25 percent of the immigrants crossing the border are documented to be positive now these are young otherwise healthy you know adults most of them so a lot of them aren't symptomatic they're not in the hospital except that they have it you know they're carrying the virus that can spread it and then we're looking at record numbers on our border right now 188,000 in June alone and it just keeps getting higher and higher every month we're on track right now to have over two and a half million people entering our country illegally this year that's the ones that we know of there's at least thirty to fifty thousand a month that cross the border that are called getaways that they document across the border because they see them on cameras but they don't know who they were where they went or what they were doing so we have a huge huge public crisis a public health crisis at our border that not only did Biden and the Biden administration facilitate and initiate with their policy but they're doing absolutely nothing about it. Preston: and congressman that's a that's a great point and I wanted to ask you your thoughts on title 42 obviously it's the only policy that the Biden administration has kept in place since taking over in January and really you know that's the only thing that is keeping this from turning into a real disaster particularly with the health implications of it with all of these people coming over the border many of them are unvaccinated many of them like you said are not being tested for covid so I just want to get your thoughts on that and maybe tell our listeners what you think would happen if title 42 is lifted in the future well they're chomping at the bit to lift title 42 they were going to do it and the only reason they backed down was because this delta variant popped up and over the numbers just kept going through the roof so politically they didn't think they could do it let me tell you this they would like everybody to believe that title 42 is still in place but it's not title 42 has already been exempted for unaccompanied minors and for family units coming over for asylum you go to McAllen Texas go anywhere on the Texas border try to get on a plane get on a plane the plane is full completely full of undocumented illegal immigrants that can't speak English that don't know where they're going that have these tickets around their necks they have no ID they got on the plane without an ID too which none of us can do they get on the plane they just have a note from the border patrol saying I don't have an ID  let me fly on the plane I mean that there's that's ridiculous none of us could do that but that once again another double standard for their for their socialist you know policies where they're allowing this to happen but anyways these people get on the plane and they fly all over the all over the country they're going everywhere every time I go out there I can't even get on a plane there's a couple times when I was in McAllen I had to drive to San Antonio so I could fly back to DC because all the planes were full of immigrants Matthew:wow so you know this makes me wonder… Rep. Jackson:and then yeah let me document here's another here's another example of that let me just throw this in real quick what about the fact you know they would they would like they would think they would like everyone to believe that title 42 is being enacted and title 42 is being followed and people are coming in and then look at the news where 7,000 covid positive immigrants have been released into the city of McAllen from McAllen this year in the last six months seven thousand fifteen hundred last week covid positive they were they were released into McAllen Texas. Matthew: yeah that's just unbelievable and you know it makes me wonder why do you think the mainstream media and even the Biden administration continues to downplay the severity of the situation I mean you look at the figures the data it all proves otherwise and they're not making a big deal about it whatsoever. Rep. Jackson:a couple of reasons number one ultimately deep down inside they're okay with this happening they literally view every single person that crosses that border as a voter for them whether that person actually ever votes or not they want to get them registered to vote and they want to get them mailed a ballot if you can take all of these people register them to vote mail them ballots you can have ballot harvesters like they do legally in California go all over the united states and gather these ballots up fill their ballots out and vote for them that's what's going to happen this is just going to lead to unbelievable voter fraud this is an avenue by which they think they will never ever lose another election again they want all these people to come over here and register them as democrats and they think they're gonna have the ability to vote within the next five to ten years and they're probably right because the way they're getting them over here in New York city for example New York is paying every single illegal immigrant in the state of New York sixteen thousand eight hundred dollars I believe is the number that's what they're paying them giving them a check for sixteen thousand eight hundred for every illegal immigrant in the state of New York their rationale for doing that is like well these people work and live here as well but they haven't been able to cash in on the unemployment benefits that you know documented Americans have so we're going to we're going to make it right we're going to give them we're going to give them a lump sum check simultaneously they're registering them to vote in New York in state elections this is crazy this is how this is going to play out you know in a couple of years they'll be saying well look they've been voting in New York elections for years now why can't they vote in federal elections that's where this is headed so number one they're okay with it because it's it represents voters in their mind number two they went in part of the immigration problem that we have right now as a result of Biden's just reckless approach to everything when he first got into office which was anything that had President Trump's name on it or associated with President Trump he wanted it immediately undone so he went and immediately undid all the executive orders that President Trump had in place that were basically had removed all the incentives for people to come up here and basically had solved the border crisis all of those were undone the incentives were back in place word got out expeditiously to these countries all over all over the world especially El Salvador Honduras and Guatemala that if you come up here you know you'll get in no question no there's no question about it and if you if you if you send your unaccompanied minors up here the Biden administration Kamala Harris in Guatemala made a promise to the Guatemalan people that if they if they had a family member that got into the United States that she promised they would reunite them that was a huge incentive coyote started going into Guatemala and gathering up unaccompanied minors and with their parents blessings to bring them to the states so they could dump them here so that their parents could follow because Kamala Harris promised that would happen and in the interim they didn't have money to do this the cartels normally get paid for that service these families were poor they don't have any money so their unaccompanied minor family members that the cartel brought over here are expected to be servants for the cartel for the foreseeable future to work it off so they're going to be taking care of cartel business which is not waiting tables and mowing lawns and any things that we think of for young people might be doing it it's going to be illegal cartel business. Preston: absolutely and congressman you sit on the foreign affairs committee I wanted to ask you kind of a point that you alluded to referring to Kamala Harris she's been tasked by the Biden administration to look into you know this quote-unquote root cause of migration which you know their plan is essentially to just dump money into corrupt central American countries I wanted to get your thoughts on that and if you think that is any way a good use of taxpayer resources and maybe also touch a little bit on what you think the actual root causes of this crisis might be. Rep. Jackson:well if Kamala Harris really wants to address the root cause she needs to get up from her desk walk down the hall and walk into the oval office that is the root cause Biden and his policies are the root cause of everything that's going on right now that's where it started and that's the problem so that's where she needs to be addressing the root cause as far as giving money to these to these countries to these third world countries thinking that if we give them money that people aren't going to want to leave there anymore that is so ridiculous none of that money is going to go to those people anyways these are the most corrupt governments out there that money will be consumed by the drug cartels and by the people that are in power in those governments none of that money gets to the people anyways plus we don't need to be setting a precedent that we pay people not to come to our country illegally that's insane that we would try to that we would do something like that and make that public and basically set that precedent so yeah they're just like everything else in the Biden administration just unbelievably off base on all of this. Matthew: Congressman kind of speaking on that same subject you know we're talking about some sectors along the border releasing covid positive migrants into the U.S. but it seems like there's like an inconsistent strategy or protocol with this along the border you know why aren't all illegal aliens being tested for covid 19 is it a lack of medical resources lack of border patrol personnel or just ineptitude from the Biden administration. Rep. Jackson: it's a little bit of all of that I mean obviously their resources are very thin right now the Biden administration is doing everything they can to defund the border patrol you know they've already basically completely defunded and neutered ICE, ICE is pretty much non-existent anymore in the but in the Biden administration they're going to take money away from border patrol as well as a law enforcement agency the recent budget that came out had all kinds of increases for tons of these you know social things that fit into their into their social agenda all these departments and these programs including like you know a huge raise an increase of 87,000 auditors in IRS simultaneously there is no increase zero and potentially a decrease in the budget for DHS for the department of homeland security under which the border patrol operates so they are they are simultaneously defunding the border patrol as part of their defund the police attitude anyways so they're thin as far as resources go as far as personnel go the people that are out there supposed to be patrolling between the points of entry on the border patrol they're not doing that they're at the point of entry because they're overwhelmed with numbers there they're having to help customs and border protection people that normally do that so they're passing out juice boxes changing diapers filling out paperwork accompanying these people to the hospitals all of these other things that they have to do that are not actually securing our border from drugs and sex trafficking and human trafficking and weapons and all the stuff that's crossing our border that's not being done because of it because they're so thin right now so they don't have the personnel to properly test number two the Biden administration doesn't want them testing everybody there they don't want those numbers going out they do not want this to look like continue to look like a growing crisis which if you started testing everybody there you would see the numbers are huge and the Biden administration you know in my mind they don't they can't defend this already but they wouldn't have a leg to stand on so they don't want to ask questions that they don't want the answers to so there's a lot of reasons why they're not being tested. Preston: well Congressman we know that you're a busy guy so we're gonna let you go but we again wanna just thank you for coming on and explaining your unique perspective on the crisis and particularly the health implications of it so again thank you so much for joining us today it's been a true pleasure great discussion and I know that our audience will definitely have a better understanding of the situation thank you Congressman  Matthew:thank you Rep. Jackson: thank you guys I appreciate you all having me. Matthew: so Preston that was Congressman Ronny Jackson from the 13th district in Texas you always had a lot to say there you know what were some first impressions you had about that conversation obviously you know he is someone who's very experienced not only as a member of congress but also with a medical background remember he was the literally the personal doctor for Barack Obama and Donald Trump so you know he's seen very highly in the medical community but what were some first impressions there. Preston: yeah I thought he had a lot of unique perspectives particularly with the medical background like you brought up I really was fascinated to hear what he said at the very end of our conversation where he just where you I think had asked him about why the mainstream media isn't really reporting on this or isn't taking it seriously why the Biden administration isn't taking this seriously and I thought that his perspective that this is actually kind of part of the plan is really unique and it is I think true certainly in many circles of the democratic party that they look at this as a way to get future voters in particularly as they're planning to amnesty tens of millions of people through the budget reconciliation process as we've discussed in the past and I think it also he discussed as well the double standard that is shown towards illegal immigration and health in the United States to where you know we you know like he said he's like I can't get on a flight and yet there are packed planes leaving Texas full of illegal aliens who can't speak English who just have tags on their wrists telling them where they're going so I thought he just brought a very unique perspective from that having seen it he was discussing his you know being from Texas but also his trip to the border recently so I think those are really the topics he brought up that made the most impact with me. Matthew: you know you're spot on there I think we can all realize now that this is deliberate policy by the Biden administration they're in full control of it they know exactly what they're doing and the congressman brought that up exactly I thought it was very interesting too that he kind of talked about why certain sectors are not testing migrants for covid you know you know some of these articles are saying well in some sectors they're being tested some they're not being tested at all and then some are even testing them they're still testing positive and then still being released into communities so it's really like an inconsistent strategy right now but he said the reason why it's not being you know kind of mandated across the border these covid 19 tests for illegal aliens and asylum seekers is because the Biden administration pretty much knows that these rates the covid rates are going to be increasing and they don't want to be you know dealing with the PR with that and that would obviously you know create another challenge to this border crisis knowing that you know migrants are bringing covid 19 cases in large numbers to the country especially when we're struggling with it you know you look at these the vaccination rates and some of these countries in central America where the vast majority of illegal aliens and asylum seekers are coming from you know Guatemala two percent of its population is fully vaccinated Honduras three percent El Salvador is better at 26 but that's still you know quite low and even a country like Brazil 21% so you know that is seriously a problem you know and it goes to show you know that's probably why the Biden administration is not fully testing migrants along every sector along the border for covid 19 because they don't want to know the answer to that. Preston: that's a great point and it's particularly ironic when the Biden administration has announced that all visitors to the United States will have to show proof of vaccination and yet we don't have to show that at the southern border people can walk in they likely have covid  I mean it's like you just said you know Guatemala two percent Honduras three percent vaccination it's and again this isn't this isn't like a personal fault of theirs I'm not saying it is but I'm saying it is highly likely that with a disease this contagious in the conditions that people travel in and the conditions that they're they you know live in when they arrive in the U.S. even that it has to be driving coveted particularly in the southwest border corridor. Matthew: right and you know another big thing that the congressman brought up which you know we've actually touched on in the last episode is the importance of title 42 you know just a reminder the Biden administration extended this public health order it was first put in place in March of 2020 under the Trump administration and you know it's proven to be really successful in terms of quickly removing those who have entered the country unlawfully since the beginning of the fiscal year which was in October nearly 770,000 individuals have been removed otherwise they'd be apprehended released into communities as the congressman said you know flown bussed to wherever no one really knows where they're going and that obviously increases the chances of covid spread or the delta variant or you know it's a public health issue all right well that's a great place to end today as a reminder we'll be releasing a new episode of understanding immigration every other Monday our episodes are available on most platforms including spotify apple podcast google podcasts you can also visit our website at fairus.org to access some and also on our twitter feed @FAIRmmigration so please spread the word this has been a fantastic episode and until next time this has been understanding immigration presented by FAIR 

FAIR's Preston Huennekens joins WERC-AM's (Birmingham, AL) JT to discuss July apprehension totals at the southern border. Immigration authorities apprehended more than 210,000 Illegal aliens in July--the highest total for the month in more than 20 years. The vast majority of apprehensions continue to occur in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in southern Texas.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about the continuing surge of migrants crossing the borders into the US,

FAIR's Spencer Raley, Preston Huennekens, and Matthew Tragesser discuss how a little-known emergency health order called Title 42 is helping mitigate the spread of COVID-19 at the southern border and why the Biden administration's plan to to lift the order is completely contrary to how seriously they claim to be taking the global health pandemic.

Preston Huennekens from Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about the surge of people crossing the border and bring Coronavirus with them.

Preston: welcome back to another episode of FAIR’s understanding immigration podcast this is Preston Huennekens with FAIR's lobbying department and I am joined by our press secretary Matthew Tragesser and our research director Spencer Raley today we're going to discuss one interesting aspect of the current border crisis and evaluate how it reveals greater issues with our immigration system as a whole the Biden and border crisis continues unabated with no real change on the ground most of the people coming in are still some of the usual suspects people from central and South America traveling overland to the southern border but increasingly our law enforcement agencies are apprehending aliens from all over the globe including many from countries that the U.S. considers state sponsors of terrorism so Spencer I just want to go ahead and start with you and just ask you know how is this possible how are our policies set up that this is something that can occur? Spencer: yeah thanks Preston and first of all when we talk about extra continental illegal immigration we're talking about illegal immigration from essentially outside of our continent you know most illegal immigrants even now still come from Mexico or Central America so we talk about extra-continental illegal immigration that could mean those from South America but more often we're talking about individuals from Europe from Africa the Middle East Asia somewhere other than where the usual suspects come from and honestly right now the reason this has become such an issue is pretty simple it's hard to get legal visas or even travel permits to the United States right now due to the covet pandemic but even if it were easy why should you considering there are almost no legal ramifications for illegal entry so with the combination of those two issues you have more and more people just opting to fly to Mexico or Central America areas where you often don't even need a tourist visa to visit and then make the simple trek north cross the border can either be detained in many cases released into the interior of the country without even a notice to appear or just cross the border and not be detected at all so because of that we're seeing more and more people just try to bypass the bureaucracy or you know everything else and just try to come to the United States illegally. Preston:right and it also particularly makes sense when we think about the issue that our country has with asylum abuse where you know if your goal is to come in and just stay in the country indefinitely right before it would make the most sense to just fly into LAX and just never leave but when if you think that you have a you know you have a claim to asylum and the current administration has pretty much said that they are open to any and all claims you know yeah why wouldn't you fly to Mexico City and then just you know join a caravan join you know there it's not difficult to get to the you know our southern border when you're there and then just you know go through the asylum process like everyone else knowing that you're going to be released into the interior of the country knowing that you're going to get a work permit and knowing that ultimately you'll be here even if your claim is ultimately dismissed you'll be here for about two years. Spencer: yeah and we're seeing in addition to that individuals who have asylum claims that are not approved under the new deportation priority system most likely aren't going to be removed anyway so best case scenario you come to the United States as an illegal alien you don't have to wait through the entire process of trying to come here illegally and then you get approved for asylum worst case scenario your asylum case isn't approved but you still don't have to leave and you know there's essentially a zero percent chance that the federal government's going to come looking for you or prosecute you for working in the United States so again it kind of comes down to the situation why bother go about this the right way when there are essentially no ramifications for doing otherwise. Matthew: it's pretty interesting how we talk about you know where these mines are actually coming from outside of Central America and Mexico you know there's one story I was reading about from the in the New York Times literally this past month talking about a migrant from India who had flown to Dubai from Mumbai and then had flown to Paris all the way to Mexico City took a two-day bus trip to the U.S.-Mexico border and I assume applied for asylum and then as you mentioned Spencer you know these asylum claims the whole process for this could take years at a time to you know get your court hearing date and many times more often than not these asylum seekers won't show up for their court hearing day and they just you know kind of disappear into the interior but my thought about this is you know these migrants really being persecuted if they're flying pretty much all across the world into Mexico city bypassing all these countries to qualify for U.S. political asylum you have to be persecuted by your government based on your race religion nationality political opinion or membership to a particular social group but if you're bypassing all these countries and you're just kind of like you know asylum shopping it doesn't really seem like you're being persecuted and you know it's highly recommended if not even you know mandated that you apply for asylum in the first safe country you arrive in and that's not what's happening at all right now it's people are bypassing all these countries. Spencer: well I think the numbers prove you're right Matthew I mean if you look at how far down the asylum fraud rate was and even the asylum application rate was the United States after MPP was implemented it shows that the situations aren't quite as dire for the vast majority of these applicants as they should be to meet the criteria for an asylum application individuals opted instead just to stay in their home country instead of trying to come to the United States putting in an application and staying in a safe third country because that wasn't their ultimate objective it wasn't to reach a safe country it was to come to the United States and ultimately find work meaning that these are economic migrants not asylum seekers and yeah it might suck if you are looking for a better economic life but you have to follow the correct channels to go through that and not just exploit whatever loophole you can find in the country that you want to go to. Preston: and I think especially in that example Matthew you're talking about someone who's spending hundreds of dollars just in airfare alone not even to talk about you know food how you know hotel accommodations like I mean that's not a trip that you make in just an afternoon right that takes significant planning a significant number of stops along the way someone who is fleeing for their life or you know you're you know you don't necessarily know if that's the kind of person doing that right you know especially and I'm not saying that India doesn't have its own problems obviously it does for certain populations there but you know was France not safe enough I mean it's like again it just goes back to there are obvious examples of asylum shopping and it's entirely because of the way that our system is set up and yet we still have politicians who just ignore the problem pretend that these incentives do not exist and I think it's just very it's indicative of everything that's kind of come from the U.S. not recognizing safe third country status for a number of different countries.Matthew: right and then also if you think about it these types of asylum seekers you know they're basically creating kind of or they're adding more to this backlog that we already have so now people that actually have legitimate asylum claims and are actually facing persecution now they're being kind of pushed to the sidelines by these people that may not even be persecuted they may not even qualify for asylum you know again seeking better wages or finding a better job or reuniting with family doesn't qualify for U.S. political asylum so you know we already have more than a million cases in our backlog right now with just a few hundred immigration judges to adjudicate them so I mean it just it adds on to this backlog and you know it's it hurts those that are actually needing it whether it's from Central America or wherever around the world. Spencer: yeah and that's I think the really tragic thing here and to your point the current backlog for asylum cases is tens of thousands long and the current backlog of immigration cases in total is over a million long so you're talking potentially two three four years before you even get your first real hearing and for someone who may have a legitimate asylum claim in the works that's a long period of instability in their lives of not knowing what's going to happen are my am I going to be able to stay in a safe country or am I going to have to go back and that's all because people are using this as a loophole to resettle in the United States and I think something that we're starting to potentially see that's going to make this an even bigger problem especially with extra continental migrants coming to the United States and applying for asylum is that there is an additional security element to those cases that has to take place as well you know we're seeing a rate of rise of more than a hundred percent more than 200% in some cases of individuals coming to the United States from terror-prone countries such as you know Yemen other countries in the Middle East Egypt etc where when someone applies for some from one of those countries we have to go take additional steps to ensure that they are not placing our national security at risk and with the current administration essentially saying hey you can just come on into the United States resettle and then we'll go through this entire process it makes it even more troubling especially when we can't do initial security checks on these individuals that was one thing that was very great about MPP is for individuals who might pose some sort of national security threat we could require that they not remain in the United States until that case is heard and it just made citizens a lot safer.Matthew: you know you mentioned individuals from Yemen and I think that it's important for our listeners to know that actually just in January two individuals who were on the tear watch list were apprehended at their at the southern border and so you know again I know it's not as large of a number as you know people may think it is but it still does present national security concerns and that doesn't even account for those who are you know known as gottaways that the Border Patrol you know they don't have the bandwidth to even apprehend these people and they're just kind of they know that they have crossed the border unlawfully but they don't they can't apprehend them they don't have the resources or bandwidth so yeah it is still some a threat that should be considered seriously and you know think about 9-11 there are 19 actors involved in that and that is one of the you know most deadliest events ever in us history so it really doesn't take that many harmful actors to inflict you know the damage catastrophic damage like we saw with 9-11. Spencer: that's a really good point and honestly it's the gottaways that are often more notorious individuals we actually see in many cases where human smugglers attempt to get the attention of Border Patrol over to you know the individuals that are hoping to the economic migrants hoping to come to the United States and work and while that goes on the more criminal element to illegal border crossing is occurring somewhere else where there aren't any Border Patrol and we're seeing that reflected even in apprehension numbers even in the customs duties that you see ice take place in obviously the number one offender is going to be the drug trade you know most of that still comes from Central and South America but not all of it you know there are a number of drugs that are on the rise in the United States that are produced overseas fentanyl exactly another concerning thing that we often don't see mentioned in the media is counterfeit goods that are coming in from China from India from you know other countries that are either counterfeit which of course hurts American companies or perhaps produced up to standards that wouldn't be allowed as United States commerce such as produced with slave labor or you know using dangerous materials buying a you know a toy car or something with lead paint you know these are things that often come across the border as well and find their ways into various shops or thrift stores or whatever in the United States and we're starting to see more and more goods like that being seized because our border is so porous you know individuals from you know other countries across the ocean are seeing that as you know an economic opportunity hey you know the entire custom system is essentially down because this the border the United States is not secure therefore we can start pumping other goods and making money that way which you know hurt Americans it hurts our safety it hurts our economy as well. Preston: yeah and that I think that's such a great point to bring up about the gottaways because you know in the particularly in the 90s in the early 2000s everyone that came illegally tried to avoid Border Patrol because the goal was really just to kind of get in work under the table that has now changed because of our asylum loopholes and so everyone who wants to pursue that same goal of just getting into the U.S. so that they can work they want to run into Border Patrol and they go in many cases they go out of their way to encounter a Border Patrol agent because that's how the asylum process begins for them whereas you're correct Spencer to bring up the point that for the smuggling organizations it makes a lot of sense to shield their activities by bringing in you know these you know these migrants even though that's not their primary business and so Border Patrol is now having to identify house and address the people while you know a different element of that same group that brought them over can drive the drugs into the interior of the desert or you know smuggle people that are going to be sold for into sex slavery into the interior. Spencer: it's really a front for their true business you know in some ways this is a lot like what you'd see occur in the 1920s prohibition era in the United States you might have a legitimate looking business something that you know criminal organizations would use as a front in order to hide the more primary business the more notorious or nefarious goings-on that they have and that's what you're seeing here bringing individuals to the United States intentionally putting them in contact with Border Patrol while that's going on they smuggle drugs across the border where those Border Patrol agents should be patrolling it's a front for what really makes them most of their money. Matthew: now here's some interesting figures based off of that so in April Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 33,000 illegal aliens from countries outside of Mexico and the Northern Triangle so think about tens of thousands of people just a month but here's even more of a startling figure this is a 35% increase from March and it's the largest total for a month in at least three fiscal years so you know this is not okay people can make the argument okay well this has always existed you know at the Southwest border people are always coming from you know regions in Europe Africa Asia wherever but not at these rates that we're seeing and how early it is in the Biden administration in recent months since the beginning of the fiscal year in October Border Patrol agents have apprehended individuals from more than 160 countries so virtually every country in the entire world and you know that should cause some concern I mean think about it it's we're typically seeing people from the Northern Triangle from Mexico but to see this how expansive it's gotten I mean these migrants know full well that again as we as we've said the border’s wide open and if you enter unlawfully and are in the country unlawfully you have virtually no chance of being removed from the country so it's I mean it's easy. Preston: and I and I think too this might be almost the starting point for a new type of illegal migration to the U.S. where we start seeing more and more people from outside of the Americas you know from Asia Africa Europe who are deciding that it makes sense to try and come and abuse the asylum system this way because this is their best chance of getting to the U.S. you know if you can't get family sponsorship if you can't if you have no chance of getting employer sponsorship you're you know you're not from a country that's engaged in the visa lottery you know there's very limited ways to come to the U.S. and so if someone is really that hell-bent on coming it if all that's stopping you is a thousand dollars in plane tickets you know why wouldn't you why wouldn't you try there's certainly nothing no laws on the books now that are stopping people from attempting this. Matthew: and to go along with that I mean to provide some more context with the interior immigration enforcement there was a report recently saying that each ICE agent in ICE’s 6,000 person unit is only averaging one arrest of an illegal alien every two months the deportation totals for April the latest data available were the lowest for a month on record so again if you come here illegally doesn't matter where you're coming from any part of the world you virtually have no chance of being removed so it's this huge pull factor that it's telling everybody to come now and it's you know clear as day. Spencer: and this is deliberate you know we saw the Biden administration attempt to put in an entire freeze on deportations for a hundred days now that was you know a hold was put on that in court but that didn't stop his administration from getting as close to freezing deportations as they could we're now seeing the idea being entertained of flying some deported illegal aliens back to the United States it's very clear that the Biden administration isn't just letting things get out of control a lot of this is intentional you know they're trying to increase the numbers of individuals coming into the United States you know legally or illegally we're seeing that with increases in legal methods as well with temporary visas etc so I guess my question is why is this a priority and should the Biden administration be actually interested in representing the interests of the American people again what could they do to stop this crisis in its tracks. Preston: I think this all comes back to the way that our asylum system is currently set up because right now we have before 2014 before 2013 we didn't have these waves of people coming and applying for asylum and then getting relief for you know two to three years at a time and then disappearing when they're when their court decision went against what they wanted and so I think you have to look at the way that we are letting people clear the credible threshold barrier we're you know we are very I think Matthew like you said if you can get to the border there there's a great chance that you're going to be able to stay for at least even if you have the worst asylum case in the world you're going to be here for at least three years the way that the current backlogs are the way the immigration court system works and so until we're willing to address that and acknowledge that not all of these people have legitimate asylum claims we're just speeding around the bush and I think the Trump administration tried to do this outside of Congress you know the MPPs they did work they prevented some people from beginning their journey to the U.S. for solely economic reasons the asylum agreements that we put in place with the Northern Triangle countries those worked because the people who did need help were able to get it whereas it at the same time disincentivized coming to the U.S. for solely economic reasons and again as long as you're allowing people to claim asylum because they're afraid of crime rates in their home countries which is not as sad as it is and as disappointing as it is that is not an appropriate claim for asylum in the United States the way that our current laws are written maybe not how they're interpreted but how they're written that is not what asylum is for and we need to come back to that understanding of asylum and you know I don't even necessarily know if you need legislation to change that I think the Trump administration showed that just through the interpretation of certain laws at the executive level that is something the Biden administration could do tomorrow if it wanted to and I think it would help not only stop some of the migration flows that we're seeing from Central and South America but would also stop this extra continental migration where you're not encouraging people to come from Romania or to come from India or to you know to come from countries in Africa just because they they're seeing what's going on at the border and they realize this is an opportunity for them to migrate to the United States outside of the regular legal order. Matthew: you know it's interesting the Department of Homeland Security actually provided the Biden transition team with kind of a threat assessment of this whole phenomenon and they write quote although the majority of migrants do not pose a national security or public safety threat pathways used by migrants to travel to the U.S. have been exploited by threat actors as a result surges of migrants could undermine our ability to effectively secure the border I mean it's clear as day they just toss that out didn't take that into any consideration in what they're doing now but that's a great question Spencer you know I don't know what their any goal with this is you know there has to be certain limitations it can't just be okay anyone who wants to come should be able to come and you know again it's a mockery of our asylum system you know these are protected statuses for people who are genuinely being persecuted and now it's basically kind of just being handed out and it's a disservice. Spencer: yeah I think so much of this is a rejection of any and everything that had to do with Trump in fact sometimes with some of the good immigration policies I sometimes wish right before Trump left office if he would have just reversed everything that way whenever the administration came into office they would went oh we need to do the exact opposite of whatever trump did therefore we're going to implement MPP we're going to secure the border because you know while that may be ridiculous and probably is a ridiculous assessment sometimes it seems like all they're doing is just what did Trump do we'll do the opposite at least for now even on things that yeah where we saw previous administration officials say this was working you know when we saw money already being contracted to building the wall and the Biden administration had to literally pay people to do nothing not to do not to complete their contract some of these literally had no sensical reasoning behind them and I don't know if the Biden administration just thinks that the general American public is too stupid to see these negative ramifications or if they don't care but I mean we're already seeing that Americans see it we see that Biden’s polling numbers on immigration are pretty much lower than any recent president that I could find in their first hundred days. Preston: and it's even it's his worst issue certainly Spencer: by far and it's not getting better it's getting worse in fact you know most and most Americans give a president you know a little bit of time to make good on their promises you know we call that the honeymoon period you know even on something that is not necessarily considered their strong point you might see approval ratings at least in the 40s or 50s with immigration a lot of Biden’s numbers are down in the low 20s I mean even his own party doesn't agree with him you have to get to like the radical of the radicals before he finds any level of support so so much of what's going on right now makes very little sense to anyone. Matthew: right and I also think another kind of side topic that should be mentioned quickly here is you know maintaining these security kind of cooperation agreements with the Northern Triangle countries so Todd Bensman he works for Centr for Immigration Studies great guy who does work on this issue he had a recent report talking about in Honduras that authorities there recently apprehended 187 nationals from Somalia 182 from Syria and 63 from Tunisia I mean that you know there's some questions to be asked you know how do they arrive in Honduras how you know what are their ultimate motives but you know it's important that we facilitate openness and transparency and kind of have these security partnerships with Northern Triangle because these are pretty much the first stops that people from these you know terror prone countries are going to arrive in before they go to the U.S.-Mexico border so again the threat is all over Central America even South America again countries with lax visa requirements so it's easy to you know fly into but again I think it's important that we maintain those partnerships because if we go if they go in the dark with us you know we're just shooting ourselves in the foot. Spencer: yeah absolutely and you know to kind of build on that point you're making we see commonly there's traffic on the border of Colombia and Peru that is ultimately tracked to be individuals who flew to a South American country or who originate in South America but are making the trek to the border traffic along that border is higher than it has ever been right now to the point that it's damaging sensitive ecological areas in both those countries and recently Peru has started taking steps to try to completely close off that border partially because they want to protect sensitive ecosystems but also because there's a very real threat with a lot of these individuals crossing violence is up they don't have a good security profile on any of these individuals coming across the border and it's not the usual suspects anymore it's people from overseas and you're seeing other countries such as Mexico stepping up their efforts at their southern border to try to stop migration northward I think it's really embarrassing that the United States a westernized you know first world country is doing less to stop illegal immigration into our country than Central and South American countries you know it's our problem it’s not it shouldn't be a situation where Mexico Peru other countries have to try to necessarily solve the problem for us it's very important that we have that open line of communication that we require that they do their parts but right now we're not doing our part and we're making it difficult on the citizens of those countries as well because we aren't taking border security seriously. Preston: and a lot of that too is because of just the whiplash of they entered into agreements with the last administration that now this administration doesn't want to honor so it's just confusing all across the board in that respect but I think that's a great point to end on that's all the time that we have for today but for those listening we hope that you enjoyed today's episode about the continued crisis at the southern border and its ongoing effects on the country as a reminder we'll be releasing a new episode every other week our episodes are available on most platforms including Spotify Apple podcasts and Google podcasts you can also visit our website fairus.org and our twitter handle @FAIRImmigration to access episodes until next time this has been understanding immigration presented by FAIR. 

Preston Huennekens from Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about changes being made to ICE and President Biden rolling back some of President Trumps policies for sanctuary cities.

Spencer:Today on Understanding Immigration the American refugee program all right welcome back to another episode of FAIR’s Understanding Immigration podcasts this is Spencer Raley FAIR’s director of research and today I’m joined by Madison McQueen from my research team and Preston Huennekens from our lobbying department now on May 3rd President Biden announced a massive increase in the refugee cap this despite the fact that millions of Americans continue to go unemployed and struggle to care for their own families due to the ongoing economic impact of covid 19. also this decision was not based on the advice of his experts or particular driving need or a new war humanitarian issue overseas rather it was simply another situation where the administration caved to excessive external pressure from the open borders lobby over the past decade the refugee cap has ranged from anywhere from fifteen thousand all the way up to eighty five thousand in the past it's grown to as much as two hundred and forty thousand obviously all of these drastic changes can lead to confusion for the American people what goes into the decisions that drive the refugee cap up or down what's the ideal number how does our program compare to other programs around the world these are all questions that we hope to address in this episode so Preston I want to start with you tell us more about the recent change to the refugee cap and why the bite administration suddenly changed their mind and how did they arrive to this particular number? Preston: Right so most of Biden’s immigration moves can be characterized essentially as doing the exact opposite of what former President Trump did regardless of the effects or consequences and their decision to change the refugee ceiling is no different it's important to remember that resettlement as it's applied today is not really a life-saving last resort for refugees we know I think this has been shown in year after year of data from the UN that about 80% of them are in normal circumstances they're not people who are truly fleeing for their lives in many respects they look a lot like people coming from south of our border and applying for asylum they're people who the situation at home is not great but it's not the worst thing in the world the government hasn't collapsed as you mentioned there's no there aren't really any global wars occurring right now and so this goes back to the Trump administration where the Trump administration took this information from their experts they had looked at it and they said our current ceiling does not need to be as high as it is for what we are doing and so they set it at 15,000 which I believe was still the highest really of any developed country that was accepting refugees at the time and naturally opponents of President Trump lost their minds they said this was a dereliction of our duty as one of the strongest countries in the world as a country that has traditionally had a very robust refugee program but again even with this 15,000 number we were still taking in generally more refugees than most other developed countries and so now Biden comes into office on January 20th 2021 and he doesn't touch the refugee number for a while and then he had substantial pressure from his allies in congress from the media from universities and from the non-profit advocacy sector that really supported his presidency supported his campaign he had enormous pressure from them to raise the ceiling from the Trump level of 15,000 to something else and so it's also important to remember not only are these outside allies and these outside groups pressuring him to raise the number but members of his own staff are who by and large are significantly more to the left of him on the immigration issue remember these are all people that campaigned for him by and large they come from a different generation of democratic politics than he does despite working for him and so there's a lot of internal pressure as well for him to raise this cap and so incredibly he actually announces on May 3rd that no he actually isn't going to raise the cap he's just going to keep it at the Trump level and he kind of dusted his hands off and moved on and then everyone in democratic politics completely lost their mind when he said this and so next thing you know you have his allies in congress that are blasting him and essentially suggesting that Joe Biden President Joe Biden is continuing and fulfilling Donald Trump's immigration policies which god forbid of course he couldn't do that so he's the democratic president he can't do that so even the Trump policies that have worked have to be overturned in his eyes and so within a few hours Joe Biden’s white house has released a statement clarifying that they're going to raise it to over 62,000 people and it really was a remarkable episode and it really just illustrates how beholden Biden is to these groups and to these to the universities to members of the mainstream media to a lot of these immigration nonprofit organizations that he has drawn from for staff and things of that nature and so it really just kind of illustrated that Joe Biden might not necessarily be in charge when it comes to setting refugee policy even though it is largely up to him as the president of the United States to do that. Spencer: I think what's so troubling to me is that like you mentioned this was not based on the advice of experts it was literally based on orange man bad theory he announced that the data suggested Trump's policies were indeed what was best for America at this time that's what his experts told him that's what they reviewed and decided hey this should stay as it is and then reverse course simply because the anti-Trump crowd howled about it just because Trump did something doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best course of action but when the entirety of your public policy approach is let's see what Trump didn't automatically assume it was wrong and do the opposite no matter what the science says no matter what the data says no matter what experts say it's ultimately going to end up a recipe for disaster and like you mentioned so many in this country like to suggest that it's inhumane that we don't accept more refugees and we've heard that all throughout the Trump administration we heard that throughout the Obama administration some have gone so far as to say there should be no cap we should just take as many as we can fly into the country and these individuals often point to other countries as an example of how the United States could do better so Madison maybe detail a little bit how does our refugee program compare to other countries especially other westernized countries? Madison: Well historically the U.S. has led the world in terms of formal refugee resettlement we accept more refugees annually than any other country and we have one of the most generous programs in the western world in 2016 the U.S. accepted 96,900 refugees and in fact the U.S. was listed as the top resettlement submission and destination country for 2017, 2018 and 2019 all will underneath these Trump lower caps the U.S. admitted over 29,000 individuals into the country in 2019 and according to the UN refugee agency there was 21,159 refugee submissions to United States comparatively there were only 9,031 refugee departures for Canada and 5,774 departures for the United Kingdom so even with President Trump's lower caps the United States still accepts more refugees than any other country for 2020 the U.S. government assisted refugee resettlement targets were 18,000 which was lower than obviously our 96,000 for 2016 but that still was far higher than for example Canada whose cap was just over 10,000. now of course covid affected these numbers not only for the U.S. but for other countries and so for 2020 our refugee acceptance was about 11,814 for that year beyond accepting refugees for resettlement the U.S. also grants humanitarian protection through various other means we had 46,508 individuals that were granted asylum in 2019 which was a 34% increase from the previous year whereas for the same year the UK granted asylum to just over 11,000 individuals not only do we have the asylum programs but the U.S. also offers temporary protected status known as TPS two countries facing ongoing armed conflict environmental disasters such as earthquake or hurricanes epidemic or any other extraordinary and temporary conditions TPS is a temporary deferral of removal due to these circumstances in a person's or demographic's home country and currently there are 12 countries who have TPS designation Biden just instituted TPS sector Biden just instituted a TPS designation for Venezuela so now there's about 300,000 Venezuelan nationals currently residing in the United States who are going to receive temporary legal status and work permits through this TPS program another program offered by the U.S. as humanitarian aid is our unaccompanied alien children resettlement program which places unaccompanied alien children or UACs into the custody of the office of refugee resettlement once in custody these children are put into contact with their parents or guardians or other relatives in the U.S. and the program begins the process of finding suitable sponsors often these sponsors are a parent or close family relative already in the U.S. and until a sponsor is found the children are provided care and wraparound services in one of the 170 facilities across the United States in addition to these programs the United States also has a visa category designed to help victims of abuse called the U visa and the U visa is a non-immigrant visa program is open to victims of certain criminal activities that happen inside the U.S. such as domestic violence and these incidents that cause substantial physical or mental abuse this visa is valid for four years with extensions in specific circumstances and not only does it help to bring domestic abuse out of the shadows but it also helps build trust with law enforcement agencies congress sets limits for this visa category however sponsored family members are not included in that cap so for 2018 there was a total of 17,915 victims and their sponsored family members who are approved for the U visa so while many people want the U.S. to raise our refugee cap they're ignoring the many other ways that we provide humanitarian protection outside of just the refugee resettlement program and they also ignore the fact that we far exceed the refugee admissions of other countries. Spencer: I think that's really an impressive thing if you think about most countries have a refugee program most of them asylum is rolled into that other humanitarian efforts are rolled into that parole for illegal aliens is rolled into that some have an asylum program in addition to their refugee but you're still talking figures that often range between about 5,000 and maybe for the upper echelon 50,000. but if you just kind of do a back of the envelope write up on how many individuals the United States accept into you into the country on an annual basis for humanitarian purposes you're talking hundreds of thousands and you mentioned TPS is supposed to be a temporary protection from deportation until the situation improves in a home country but I mean anyone who's looked into this knows that hasn't been the case it's been another avenue for resettlement these programs are rubber stamped again and again and again and I think that's a good point to bring up as well because refugee status asylee asylum status asylum is often turns into something that's a little more permanent at least until the host country can have a regime change or something that makes it safe for the individual to go home but initially refuge the refugee program was not intended to be permanent resettlement but it's become that that option has been given and it's used for another form of permanent resettlement so again I think it's an extremely unfair accusation to make to suggest that the United States is not pulling our weight on an international scale to help take care of individuals who are victims of unfortunate circumstance instead the ultimate goal of these advocacy groups these open borders proponents is to just import more cheap labor into the United States and to try to change the social fabric of the United States to something that is more favorable to their goals and that again is extremely troubling especially when you're considering the fact that the United States is not only continuing to recover from the economic impacts of covid19 but is also spending a tremendous amount of taxpayer dollars on helping mitigate that economic impact the unemployment rate just came out as 6.1 percent and that was a slower than expected recovery but that number as we all know is misleading it's been slow slower than expected improvement but it is estimated that more than 20 percent of individuals who work in the lower tier lower income jobs are still without a job and that's after over 40 percent of them lost their jobs due to covid 19. and FAIR has found in some of our previous analysis that almost all refugees work in low-income jobs in fact the annual wage for a new refugee in the United States averages out to only about 12 dollars an hour so those that do find work are taking that work from this pool of low income opportunity which there are millions of Americans looking for right now and we've also found that the taxpayer cost is significant as well up to eighty thousand dollars per refugee over their first five years in the country or roughly 16,000 per year and again this is all occurring this refugee cap is being increased three-four-fold during a time when we're literally passing trillion dollar relief bills for covid 19 and now we're adding these bills that are 16,000 per person for an additional perhaps 50,000 refugees onto the back of American taxpayers who are struggling to put food on their family's plates due to covid 19. it's an almost immoral issue if you think about it kind of runs against the kind of common sense idea that the United States is first and foremost responsible to making sure that their own citizens are taken care of and able to put food on their family's plates and have a place to sleep at night versus those from other countries and again it might be a good discussion to have if the United States wasn't doing that already but we are to the tune of hundreds of thousands of individuals a year so Preston we've now seen what our program looks like right now how it's looked in the past as well as how it compares to other countries and how it far exceeds what other countries are doing but what should our refugee program look like today who should it include how can we ensure that those who are entering the country are not problematic individuals and should we be taking in so many refugees during a time when American citizens like I mentioned are struggling to get back on their feet? Preston: So I think this is one of the more interesting debates to have regarding the refugee program is one what does it look like and two who should it benefit I think we need a radical restructuring of the way that the United States deals with refugees by and large there has not been a refugee crisis in the Americas so that includes north and south America and central America in a very long time I think we all know where some of the more recent refugee crises have come from it's been the Middle East it's been Africa and to an extent Asia and so there is this idea that we are somehow helping by bringing people thousands of miles away to the United States instead of resettling them somewhere closer to home where more people could be helped someone who has talked about this to a great deal and I’m actually about to take his analogy that he's used is Mark Krikorian from the Center for Immigration Studies and he has used the analogy of there's a group of people who are drowning in the ocean and you come up you come across them what makes more sense do you give all of them a life raft which keeps them afloat they're not going to drown they're not going to die or do you give one of them the keys to the boat that you are on and leave everyone else to kind of fend for themselves in the water because that's essentially how our current refugee resettlement program works is that instead of helping I think the number is about 11 or 12 people in their region by providing food aid by providing money to the countries that do take them in that kind of thing instead of doing that and helping more people overall what we're currently doing is giving a golden ticket to one of those people and bringing them to United States resettling them in the United States and that's all good and noble but in terms of actually helping people helping people that are going through the collapse of a state government who are going who have faced genocide these kinds of things that we associate with refugees it doesn't really do anything you're helping a very small number of people and so I think when I say we need to look at how we evaluate refugees in these countries in our country what I think we need to do is really use resettlement as an absolute last resort the resources that our country spends on refugee resettlement could go so far and help so many more people if it was directed in terms of food aid monetary aid maybe the resources of the U.S. military stationed overseas the way that the national guard works domestically helping in events like that I think that goes a lot longer to help more people than just bringing a handful of people over to the United States whether the number is 15,000 or whether it's 62,000 it still doesn't matter because there's still millions of people who if they had the choice would come to the U.S. in a second so I think that's really the number one thing is we need to look at not I think the number is very arbitrary and that's kind of where a lot of our modern politics says oh Trump lowered it to 15,000 and Biden’s taking it to 62,000. that's not the issue the issue I think is the amount of aid that we can give to local governments overseas to help them either resettle people or deal with a surge of people kind of like the European union did with Turkey following the civil war in Syria it would it would have I think that is really where the conversation should go instead of just arguing about numbers and where they should be resettled in the U.S. and things like that. Spencer:Right and I think that's a that's a really good point in fact we did some analysis on that a few years ago and found that in most situations it's 90 percent cheaper and much more effective to care for refugees and what we typically found was the first safe country they could arrive at versus importing them to the United States the other thing we found is that when you do that you can help a more diverse group of people right now those coming United States are those who are wealthy enough to get here now in the United States those might not particularly be wealthy individuals but in their home countries these are the individuals who should be able to go back to their country and help solve some of the issues that they're facing instead of simply leaving and resettling elsewhere so what we found is that if you create agreements or create incentives for some of these neighboring countries to take in refugees individuals that speak the language and could contribute right away to the economies of the neighboring countries it's better for the refugees they're not being transplanted to a place they have no clue about they haven't been to before they can't speak the language etc it's better for American taxpayers because we don't immediately put them on welfare rolls which is typically the case when they come to the United States in fact there's a governmental program that connects new refugees to welfare programs now interestingly there's not one that connects them to jobs but there is one that connects them to welfare programs so it's better for us in terms of our pocketbook and again it's better for the situations in those countries because more people can be taken care of they're closer to home so that they can go back and help improve the situation at home or once the situation improves they have more incentive to return and contribute to their own country to their own culture now just to be frankly honest like you mentioned everything we do is not even a drop in the bucket it's not really making an impact on a global stage at this point the refugee program we have is nothing more than a self-righteous pat on our own back on the international scale because we're doing very little to help improve the situation those countries to help the governments get back on their feet to improve the situation we're offering no incentive to those host countries to end whatever corrupt behaviors they may be partaking in to cause a refugee exodus and instead what we end up doing is we just decide what's a number we should bring into the United States we do that we celebrate say that we did something good and then go on to ignore the root problems and I think that's really unfortunate and something that we of course need to rectify and try to think about this topic on a more global scale how we can actually have a positive long-term impact. Preston: And Spencer that even comes to another point that you just reminded me of is addressing the role of the refugee resettlement agencies in the United States I’m not sure our listeners or even the average person is aware of how much our government actually kind of delegates the task of settling these people in the U.S. to outside groups whether they are religious organizations or immigrant advocacy groups there are there's a forget the exact number but there's an exact number registered with the state department who essentially bid on government contracts to resettle people so for them it's actually extremely profitable to keep the numbers high because for each refugee they settle they're essentially getting a check from the government and that is that is very problematic when you have essentially and to be frank I’m surprised that democrats for as much as they hate privatization of government services I’m shocked that they have gone along with this instead of allowing the federal government or some arm of the state department to do this and it's created a lot of issues there's a lot of states that have said we do not want refugees resettled here they get into lawsuits with these groups and then next thing you know the federal government is stepping in on behalf of these organizations and it's just a nightmare because you bring these people here and then if a city votes in a referendum and says we do not want these people here who is the this random NGO to tell them well tough luck because we have a contract from the state department and that's pretty much how it works right now and I think that's another thing that we have to look into is why are we allowing pretty much private organizations to determine where refugees are going against in many cases the will of the people in those localities. Spencer: That's a really good point and I think something that we should bring up is that these localities are not necessarily rejecting refugees because oh we hate foreigners as is often accused but we found that there are a number of you're talking small cities 10, 20, 30,000 people who because of refugee resettlement from the federal government from these organizations that you talk about that are supposedly non-profits but make a great profit off of resettling refugees are resettling them in these in these small jurisdictions and it has a massive impact on city planning on school systems on tax programs in fact we found that some of these school systems have as many as 12 different languages now spoken by students in their schools and that's extremely difficult it puts a lot of stress on teachers or in worst case scenarios you're seeing these schools firing English-speaking teachers in order to bring in bilingual teachers or to import teachers from somewhere else that can speak the language of these refugees and what ends up happening is you have fewer English speaking teachers that are addressing the needs of citizens and more individuals that are being forced to they're forcing that budget to these refugee programs and again they had no way of planning for it they get very little notice sometimes it's not even a month that hey there are 300 refugees are going to be resettled in your city tough luck deal with it and it's just not fair I know that a lot of these jurisdictions we've heard from a lot of these cities they've said hey we'd be happy to help out if you let us plan this let us know that hey next year two years three years from now we're hoping to resettle a few refugees in your in your city and they're happy to help or they can say we've already got a large population that speaks a particular language so we can resettle those refugees into our jurisdictions and be able to help them right away but at this point so far the federal government's just like yeah no tough luck we're going to give you whatever we feel like giving you we're going to resettle whoever we want to resettle there and you have to deal with it impressive like you mentioned these organizations it's nothing but a profit machine to them and I don't think it should come as a surprise to anyone that most of the groups that just hounded the Biden administration and attacked the Biden administration for keeping their refugee resettlement numbers low were the groups that stand to make millions upon millions of dollars thanks to this cap being increased so again it comes down to a situation where it's not that experts said that this should happen that it would make the world a better place if we increase the refugee cap it's more that hey our donors are saying they want to increase the refugee cap and they want more money and so they're going to hound us about it and we're just going to cave into what they want. Preston: Yeah I mean when you're getting paid when you're getting a check from the federal government for every refugee that you resettle you obviously have an incentive to resettle as many refugees as you can and I think that speaks to how broken the current system is the current system out it obviously I have and I said earlier I think a perfect system would be that we allocate a lot of instead of paying these groups in the U.S. to do this and helping only a handful of people essentially we should be using that money to help significantly more people closer to where the crisis is or closer to where the issues are actually occurring because right now it's what we're doing right now is just silly and like you said it's more just to pat ourselves on the back and claim that we have some sort of moral high ground even when if you really look into the issue we don't. Spencer: Right it's nothing but a self-righteous endeavor that just so happens to transfer money from the federal government to an ally’s pocket and unfortunately while that whole corrupt system is going on there are millions of individuals all around the world who are suffering that we could be helping and that's really a tragic thing. Madison: I think you guys hit the nail on the head it definitely is one of those self-righteous pat on the back it's a vested interest for these companies and organizations who are getting paid to resettle refugees and it's honestly virtue signaling they're saying oh hey look at us we resettle all these people look at how righteous we are how much better we are than all of you but it's not about caring for the person it's not about wanting to set these people up for success and it makes a lot of sense of what we're seeing with the crisis currently as well as just come in illegally come in as a refugee we'll help the some people that we can we'll give you a little bit of money put you on welfare so we can get your vote or get more checks it's all about a vested interest of when it comes down to money rather than hey let's make sure that these people are being taken care of that these people are set up for success and like you both were talking about we can help way more people if we were to reframe how we address the refugee resettlement program how we're meant to re if we readdress how we're meant to see the refugee crisis around the world is it really about helping people and if that's the case let's find a better way to do so by having people resettle in countries that are closer providing that aid in money water monetary funds whatever it may be rather than hey come to the U.S. so it makes us look good. Spencer: Exactly and I think that's a good point as well we're not setting these individuals that we do bring into the United States up for success as we mentioned earlier a large number of these a very large number of these individuals end up being on welfare long term meaning greater than five years most of them make very little money in fact we found in that five-year period most of them went from earning an average of twelve dollars an hour up to maybe close to thirteen after five years that's not much of a pay increase we've also found that children who enter the United States via the refugee program typically perform below average in school for the duration of their public school experience so it's really a tragic situation where individuals are being brought in the United States but they aren't being given the tools they need to succeed so we're spending billions of dollars on this program every year we're making organizations rich to resettle them but we're really not doing anything to solve this conflict on a global scale we're not doing anything to set up those that come to the United States for success and overall that's just kind of a tragic thing and that may be kind of a tragic note to end on but that's all the time we have for today so we hope that you've enjoyed today's episode and perhaps learned something new as a reminder we'll be releasing a new episode every other Monday now for any of our new listeners out there check out our series on your favorite platform such as Google Apple and Spotify to see what other topics we've been discussing that may interest you in fact we have more than 30 episodes uploaded right now that cover important topics that impact your daily life like remittances DACA gang violence and many other issues that you can easily find from our podcast pages we hope that each and every one of you continue to stay safe and sound and until next time this has been Understanding Immigration presented by FAIR. 

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform talks about the crisis being caused by the Biden Administration at the Southern Border.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens, Matthew Tragesser, and Immigration Reform Law Institute senior fellow Tom Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), discuss immigration policy in the Joe Biden era.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens, Spencer Raley, and Matthew Tragesser discuss the first 100 days of the Biden administration and how American immigration policy has been impacted by the president's administration's actions.

FAIR's Spencer Raley, Matthew Tragesser, and Preston Huennekens discuss the border surges under the Trump and Biden administrations. How has President Biden handled the surges at the border and why have members of the media been restricted from accessing detention facilities? What is President Biden hiding?

WHO-AM (Des Moines, IA)'s Jeff Angelo and FAIR's government relations manager Preston Huennekens examine The American Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. Both pieces of legislation would provide legal status to millions of illegal aliens.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens, Madison McQueen, and Matthew Tragesser discuss the ongoing crisis at the southern border which the Biden administration refers to as a mere challenge.

FAIR's Matthew Tragesser, Spencer Raley, and Preston Huennekens discuss President Biden's bill proposal which would be the largest amnesty proposal in U.S. history.

FAIR's Spencer Raley, Matthew Tragesser, and Preston Huennekens give another update on more executive actions that President Biden is using to undo even the most practical immigration policies of the previous administration.

Preston Huennekens from Federation for American Immigration Reform discusses the Biden Administrations handling of illegal immigrants.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens, Matthew Tragesser, and Spencer Raley talk about President Biden's first week in office when he issued more immigration executive orders than those addressing COVID-19 and our weakened economy.

FAIR's Matthew Tragesser, Spencer Raley, and Preston Huennekens talk about how apprehensions at U.S. borders have tripled since April despite COVID-19 travel restrictions. Will Joe Biden face another border crisis like we saw in 2019?

FAIR's Preston Huennekens, Matthew Tragesser, and Spencer Raley discuss the issue of criminal alien gangs in the U.S. and how enforcing laws at the border and in the interior can make communities safer.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens and WERC's (Birmingham, AL) JT discuss how a recent immigration reform meeting between prominent Republicans and Democrats mirrors the ‘Gang of Eight’ bipartisan group that attempted to pass a mass amnesty in 2013.

Preston Huennekens from the Federation for American Immigration Reform joins us to talk about illegals possibly getting amnesty during the Joe Biden presidency.

FAIR's Spencer Raley, Matthew Tragesser and Preston Huennekens discuss Biden's picks for Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and other cabinet picks and what these hires would mean for United States immigration going forward.

FAIR's Matthew Tragesser and Preston Huennekens discuss the accomplishments and failures of the Trump administration regarding immigration.

FAIR’s Preston Huennekens tells McAllen, TX, KURV radio host Sergio Sanchez why mandatory E-verify and reforming the broken asylum system would lower the burden on border security and decrease apprehensions as the possible next president’s “signature campaign pledge in immigration is to provide a pathway to citizenship and an amnesty for… practically every illegal alien that lives in the U.S.”

CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan discusses the Trump victories and challenges in immigration and border security. Anti-illegal immigration activist D.A. King discusses a Georgia state law that lets illegal aliens vote. Todd Bensman from Center for Immigration Studies explains the COVID-19 spike on the border and what the real cause is. Preston Huennekens from FAIR talks about what happens to immigration and border security if Biden wins. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

FAIR's Preston Huennekens, Matthew Tragesser, and Spencer Raley argue why a merit-based immigration system is more beneficial than a chain migration system in the United States.

Pittsburgh’s Bloomdaddy and FAIR’s Preston Huennekens discuss why the candidates are ignoring immigration – President Trump’s strongest issue – on the campaign trail.

FAIR’s Preston Huennekens breaks down the final presidential debate and explains the dangers of Biden’s immigration plan to Daybreak with Drew Steele’s listeners.

Preston Huennekens with FAIR discusses what people can expect with Immigration practices under a Joe Biden administration versus those under a second term of President Trump.

FAIR's Spencer Raley, Preston Huennekens, and Matthew Tragesser examine both candidates' immigration policies and actions in an educational discussion about the 2020 presidential election.

FAIR’s Matthew Tragesser, Spencer Raley, and Preston Huennekens discuss student visa programs and the impact they have on national security and workforce economy.

FAIR’s Preston Huennekens, Spencer Raley, and Matthew Tragesser discuss the increasing number of apprehensions of illegal aliens at the northern border with Canada and why this may be a growing problem.

FAIR’s Spencer Raley, Preston Huennekens, and Matthew Tragesser discuss the issue of non-citizen voter fraud.

FAIR’s Preston Huennekens, Spencer Raley, and Matthew Tragesser discuss the Department of Homeland Security which was established in 2003. The episode covers the different parts of DHS (USCIS, ICE, and CBP) explaining what they are each responsible for and breaks down how these departments are different.

FAIR’s Matthew Tragesser, Preston Huennekens, and Spencer Raley explain the 287(g) program which grants federal immigration powers to local law enforcement, enhances public safety, and is cost effective.

FAIR’s Spencer Raley, Matthew Tragesser, and Preston Huennekens, discuss how illegal aliens residing in the U.S. could be included in the Census and how the Trump administration has recently issued a memorandum trying to make sure only the population of U.S. citizens counts towards representative apportionment.

FAIR’s Preston Huennekens, Spencer Raley, and Matthew Tragesser explain the asylum process and how it's severely abused in the United States.

FAIR’s Spencer Raley, Matthew Tragesser, and Preston Huennekens talk about the fiscal cost of illegal immigration and how that amount can be reduced.

FAIR’s Matthew Tragesser and Preston Huennekens talk about how immigration affects national security. Learn how our broken immigration system and porous border can lead to terrorism, gang violence, and other crime.

FAIR’s Preston Huennekens, Spencer Raley, and Matthew Tragesser talk about the negative impacts that unchecked immigration has on the environment in the United States and question the reasoning of why some of the biggest environmental groups in America have been neglecting to address this issue.

FAIR’s Matthew Tragesser, Preston Huennekens, and Spencer Raley talk about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy (DACA). The Supreme Court is set to make a ruling regarding the continuation of DACA very soon and here you can find out about the policy.

FAIR’s Spencer Raley, Matthew Tragesser, and Preston Huennekens talk about how remittances impact the US economy.

FAIR’s Matthew Tragesser, Preston Huennekens, and Spencer Raley discuss how guestworker programs depress wages and displace Americans from jobs and why, at a time when millions of Americans file for unemployment, the administration seeks to import more foreign cheap labor.

FAIR’s Matthew Tragesser, Preston Huennekens, and Spencer Raley discuss how important the border wall is for immigration enforcement and its history.

FAIR’s Matthew Tragesser, Preston Huennekens, and Spencer Raley discuss the relationships between Coronavirus and immigration and the immigration measures countries are taking to curb the disease.

FAIR’s Matthew Tragesser, Preston Huennekens, and Spencer Raley discuss sanctuary cities: what they are and what you need to know about them.

In this inaugural episode, FAIR's Matthew Tragesser, Preston Huennekens, and Spencer Raley discuss the E-Verify program: what it is, why it's important, and what you need to know about it.

Under pressure from a bipartisan group of senators, the Homeland Security Department last month increased the number of visas available for foreign guest workers seeking to toil in America's seasonal industries, from seafood processing to resort housekeeping. Two critics of the decision, Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that supports pro-labor policies, and Preston Huennekens of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates more restrictive immigration policies, come at the issue from different perspectives but agree that it's bad for American workers and, in some cases, for the foreign ones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices