Understanding the decade-long series of specific decisions that led to chaos

The chaotic humanitarian and national-security disaster at the Southwest border did not happen overnight. Although the Biden administration has made it much worse by ham-handedly trashing successful policies put in place by his predecessor to gain control of the border, the disaster is the natural end-product of a series of specific decisions.

Congressional Democrats are attempting to use a poorly understood legislative maneuver known as “reconciliation” to pass a massive amnesty for eight million aliens.

Legal Immigration Will Implode Under ‘Budget Reconciliation’ Bill

Never-Ending Green Cards for Criminals in ‘Budget Reconciliation’ Bill

Amnesty in the Reconciliation Bill Could Cost Social Security and Medicare $1 Trillion

Parsing Immigration Policy, Episode 21

The "public charge" doctrine – meaning that a person likely to have to be supported by taxpayers (a public charge) should not be permitted to immigrate – is one of the oldest elements of American immigration policy.

But then as now, the main question is how to define public charge.

A profile of foreign-born Afghans

This report uses the latest Census Bureau data to examine where Afghan immigrants live and their education levels, income, employment, fertility, poverty, welfare use, and other sociodemographic characteristics.

Watch Panel: Afghans in the US

The P-2 program for Iraqis was suspended earlier this year because of widespread fraud, raising doubts about the integrity of this program for Afghans (who were only recently designated for P-2 admissions) weeks before the collapse of the U.S.-backed Kabul government.