The White House Says Illegal Immigration Is Down – But Is It?

America is seeing one of the largest influx of illegal aliens in the country’s history of immigration, leading to higher crime, child trafficking, and drug smuggling. Our national security is at risk, but what has the Biden administration done to protect our border and the people?

Redefining Public Charge Rule

Migrants immigrated to the US for generations with the understanding that they would need to work hard and not depend on the government for basic necessities to become legal citizens. To protect our values and prevent immigrants from becoming a burden to American taxpayers, we put into our immigration law the Public Charge Rule, which states that "any alien who… at the time of application for a visa, or… for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible."

In 2019, former President Donald Trump added to the list of disqualifying benefits Medicaid, housing vouchers, and food stamps, if the migrant receives one or more of the services for more than 12 months across a 36-month period. However, in 2022, the Department of Homeland Security reworded the rule. Now, rather than saying “likely at any time to become a public charge,” it reads "likely at any time to become primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or long-term institutionalization at government expense."

SSI, TANF, state general assistance programs, and Medicaid are all programs considered for public rule now, but the list of exemptions is huge. Migrants can stay at homeless shelters or receive SNAP, Section 8, WIC, student and mortgage loans, health plans, and more according to the Community Service Society website. All of these tax-paid benefits are a big incentive for immigration, both legal and illegal.

Biden’s Immigration Policies

The end of Title 42 caused a massive surge of migrants to the border. Since then, however, the Biden administration has said illegal immigration numbers have dropped. Is this true, or is it because the new policies have made it easier to get into the US and fast-tracks efforts that redefines illegal immigration?

To try and ease the strain at the border, Biden made changes to the asylum policies, making it so that seekers would be ineligible if they entered the country illegally and didn’t claim asylum in a country they’d traveled through. Before this took place on May 11, officials on the border were encountering about 7,500 illegal border crossers a day. After the change, the number dropped to about 3,000. However, the administration received a blow on July 25 when Judge Jon Tigar of the US District Court for the Northern District of California blocked the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule in a lawsuit, saying it is “both substantively and procedurally invalid.”

The parole program gives opportunities to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, allowing 30,000 immigrants into the country each month. In the first half of 2023, almost 160,000 migrants came illegally from these countries, but officials say that number has dropped by 89% since the inception of the new program. “The Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to expanding lawful pathways as an alternative to irregular migration has yielded positive results,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a recent statement. But as Fox News pointed out:

“Assuming these parolees ever apply for asylum at all, which many don’t, there is no fee charged for the entire process. Being dependent on city, state or federal handouts is never an impediment. This is also true for people released pending deportation hearings, who might be in that limbo for over a decade before a decision (which in around 85% of cases, is a rejection of their claim for asylum) is handed down.”

This makes it very difficult for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), as the agency already has a backlog of 842,000 pending asylum – a caseload that is expected to reach more than a million in 2024. “The higher-than-usual number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, coupled with global events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan following the U.S. military’s withdrawal there, has created dueling priorities that have exacerbated longstanding capacity concerns,” Government Executive explained.

The agency is fee-based, but many of the migrants entering the country under the new immigration policies do not have to pay these fees. “These decisions, however necessary, came at a price,” according to a USCIS ombudsman’s report. “USCIS is a fee-based agency with finite resources. The determinations to prioritize certain applications and petitions meant that other workloads could not be addressed as robustly as the priority programs.” In 2022, Biden issued or extended Temporary Protected Status for 11 countries, which the ombudsman said caused “a never-ending task for the agency.”

Michael Knowles, an asylum officer, said those being paroled into the country will be given residence for only a year or two and then they will need to seek alternative status and be added to the agency’s workload. So far, the administration has paroled 500,000 immigrants into the country.

And then came the controversial CBP One smartphone app that allows migrants to make appointments to claim asylum at one of around 26 ports of entry. There are a few problems with this approach. For one, those who make appointments using the app aren’t subjected to the new asylum rules and can wait in the US for years while the courts decide their fates.

Another issue, as Judge Tigar noted in his ruling, is that not everyone has access to the technology and won’t have access to the app. Officials said 30,000 migrants used the app in May to make appointments. But the lawsuit by advocacy groups Al Otro Lado and the Haitian Bridge Alliance argues that "CBP One essentially creates an electronic waitlist that restricts access to the U.S. asylum process to a limited number of privileged migrants," adding that asylum-seekers from Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Russia said they couldn’t get appointments while they waited in Mexico.

The administration claims illegal immigration is dropping. But critics say that information is deceiving. Policy and rule changes can certainly make it seem like things are getting better – but it doesn’t address those root problems the administration still can’t seem to figure out.