Yet again, President Trump has demonstrated that he will do everything in his power to secure our border — even though Democrats in Congress continue to obstruct any and all measures to solve the illegal immigration crisis.
This week, the president issued a policy memo outlining strategies to address the severe deficiencies plaguing our asylum policy, which illegal immigrants are increasingly abusing in order to skirt our normal immigration procedures.
Of the tens of thousands of asylum requests processed every year — a number that has been increasing rapidly in recent months — only about 20 percent are ultimately granted, indicating that the overwhelming majority of asylum requests are either fraudulent or baseless.
“In March, more than 100,000 inadmissible aliens were encountered seeking entry into the United States,” Donald Trump wrote in a memo to the attorney general and the homeland security secretary.
“The extensive resources required to process and care for these individuals pulls U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel away from securing our Nation's borders,” he continued. “Additionally, illicit organizations benefit financially by smuggling illegal aliens into the United States and encouraging abuse of our asylum procedures.”
The nation is fortunate that President Trump has the guts to say what most Democrats in Washington won’t: illegal immigrants who strategically exploit our humanitarian laws undermine U.S. sovereignty and security.
In normal times, proposals to address this urgent matter would originate in Congress and receive bipartisan support — but the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is afraid of giving the president a policy victory ahead of the 2020 election, so Democrats have instead focused their attention on trying to keep the discredited Russia collusion hoax alive.
With obstruction-obsessed Democrats refusing to provide the necessary resources, President Trump has been forced to fight for border security on his own. Declaring the border crisis a national emergency, for instance, allowed Trump to reallocate previously-appropriated funds to construct the border wall that our immigration enforcement professionals have repeatedly requested, and now he’s tackling another major source of illegal immigration.
In order to safeguard our country from the drug cartels and violent gangs that take advantage of the asylum process, President Trump has instructed the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to establish a system of administrative fees for asylum and work permit applications. The memo also directs them to ensure that asylum applications are settled within 180 days of being filed, a process that currently takes months, if not years.
The order also instructs the departments to prohibit asylum-seekers from receiving employment authorization until their asylum request has been granted by a judge, and to revoke employment authorization for illegal immigrants who are denied asylum.
These are the sort of common sense policies that protect American communities, but the mainstream media are already working overtime to distort the president's memo, portraying it as an unfair proposal that would “burden” the poor by instituting application fees and work-authorization restrictions for asylum-seekers.
The fees that the president now wants to impose, however, are explicitly limited to “the costs of adjudicating the application,” which will surely cost much less than the thousands of dollars that asylum-seekers routinely pay human smugglers to take them across the border.
Moreover, restricting access to work permits will discourage the abuse of the asylum process by migrants who simply want to take advantage of the superior economic opportunities that the U.S. offers, freeing up resources for processing those who have legitimate claims to access our generous asylum protections. Yet, as they’ve done throughout his presidency, liberals are duplicitously trying to spin Trump’s asylum order as an assault on human rights.
From day one, President Trump made it clear that he was eager to negotiate with the Democrats on immigration and come up with a bipartisan approach to border security. Sadly, the Democrats took the opposite position.
Despite this intense political resistance, however, President Trump has never given up on his commitment to securing the border, and he’s demonstrated once again that he’ll do what it takes to protect the American people, even if he has to do it alone.
As New York City’s 40th Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik was in command of the NYPD on September 11, 2001, and responsible for the city’s response, rescue, recovery, and the investigative efforts of the most substantial terror attack in world history. His 35-year career has been recognized in more than 100 awards for meritorious and heroic service, including a presidential commendation for heroism by President Ronald Reagan, two Distinguished Service Awards from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, The Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and an appointment as Honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
© 2023 Newsmax. All rights reserved.