Biden’s Illegal Immigration Schemes Hurt the Legal Immigration System

Mark Krikorian; Elizabeth Jacobs

By Mark Krikorian and Elizabeth Jacobs on August 17, 2023

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Summary

A new government report confirms that the Biden administration’s policies accommodating illegal immigration are harming the legal immigration system.

On this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Elizabeth Jacobs, the Center for Immigration Studies director of regulatory affairs and policy, joins host Mark Krikorian to discuss the findings and implications of a congressionally mandated annual report from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, an independent office within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

USCIS administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, and Jacobs (a former USCIS official) explains how its mission has been threatened by the administration’s determined efforts to bring inadmissible aliens to the United States as quickly as possible and expand work authorization opportunities for aliens who lack a lawful immigration status.

The discussion delves into the effects of key policies, including misuse of parole and expansion of Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Jacobs underscores the need for adherence to congressional mandates: “If USCIS leadership is serious about bolstering the legal immigration system and maintaining reasonable processing times for immigration services, it has to focus its resources on programs that have been authorized by Congress – it cannot keep creating programs that are not authorized.”

In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, host of the podcast and executive director of the Center, discusses a new Biden administration tactic in its fight to force Texas to remove the marine barriers it has placed in the Rio Grande – specifically, cynical administration claims that the barriers are endangering a mussel species in the Rio Grande.