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A coalition of Republican lawmakers this week introduced legislation that would block funding to sanctuary states that give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants the latest indicator of a significant gap between Republicans and the Biden administration on illegal immigration.

Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn, Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Joni Ernest, R-Iowa, Steve Sained, R-Mont., Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and Mike Braun, R-Ind. Introduced the Stop Greenlighting Driver Licenses for Illegal Immigrants Act which would end some Justice Department funding to states that have sanctuary policies.

BIDEN IMMIGRATION EXECUTIVE ORDERS DELAYED, AS BIPARTISAN BILL BEGINS TO TAKE SHAPE ON HILL

Meanwhile Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., was introducing companion legislation in the House.

No town in America is secure from criminals and terrorists if our borders arent policed and federal immigration laws arent fully enforced, Blackburn said in a statement. This country is governed by the rule of law. We should not reward illegal aliens with driver licenses when they fail to follow the proper legal process.

Sanctuary policies bar local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement, particularly when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issue detainers which are requests that an illegal immigrant being released from custody be transferred for deportation.

While proponents say they encourage otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants to work with police, opponents note the number of criminals who have been released back onto the streets to re-offend as a result of such policies.

Connected to those sanctuary policies, some states such as New York have passed laws to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants, claiming it makes roads safer and is a boost to the economy.

CBP STOPS BORDER WALL CONSTRUCTION AFTER BIDEN EXECUTIVE ORDER

The bill seeks to withhold money from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, which dispenses over $250 million a year to state and local criminal justice efforts. The Trump administration had attempted to deny that money to sanctuary cities, and faced a legal battle over the move.

The law would make states that issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants or refuse to share immigration enforcement information with the Department of Homeland Security ineligible for the money.

Even if the law was able to pass the House and Senate, it would be unlikely to be signed into law by President Biden, who has taken a radically different stance on immigration and illegal immigration to President Donald Trump and Republicans.

Biden has signed a number of executive orders reversing key Trump administration policies. He has halted construction of the border wall, reversed Trump-era travel bans and his administration has paused deportations for 100 days.

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Next week he is expected to sign a number of immigration-related orders, including one that would establish a task force to reunify families separated at the border, and another to increase refugee admissions.

Separately he has proposed legislation that would grant a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants although that bill also faces a difficult path to become law amid stiff Republican opposition.

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GOP lawmakers introduce bill to block funding to states that give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants - Home - WSFX

For several days now, a school in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in Spains Canary Islands, has been more reminiscent of a prison than a shelter for migrants. The people inside are free to come and go, but most of them are afraid to wander too far from the entrance.

On Tuesday we went out to collect some money that my family had wired me. It was 3pm, and a car with four people inside stopped us in the middle of the street, explains Monsiffe, a 24-year-old from Morocco. They showed us several large knives, and fired in the air with BB guns. We were forced to run away.

Last week, between Monday and Thursday, seven Moroccan migrants living at this school in the neighborhood of El Lasso were assaulted. The attacks were carried out by organized groups of local residents, according to Cruz Blanca, the religious non-profit that runs the shelter.

Anyone who violates the law and commits crimes should be arrested and tried, but it is shameful to see immigrants being beaten up in Europe in the 21st century

Were all really scared. I feel like Im in prison, says Yassin, another migrant who lives at the school. Anyone who violates the law and commits crimes should be arrested and tried, but it is shameful to see migrants being beaten up in Europe in the 21st century.

On Monday, the prosecutors office in Las Palmas announced an investigation into potential hate crimes by members of WhatsApp chat groups that tried to get organized to intimidate or assault immigrants. Prosecutors are focusing on several messages exchanged two weeks ago calling on group members to travel to the south of Gran Canaria in order to attack migrants staying at tourist accommodation thats been temporarily converted into facilities for migrants, the news agency Efe reported.

Spain has once again become the main gateway into Europe for irregular migrants, largely because of the reactivation of the route to the Canary Islands. Last year there were around 41,000 arrivals by land and sea in Spain, compared with 34,100 in Italy and 15,500 in Greece, according to figures released on December 28 by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The Canary Islands, which are located off the northwestern coast of North Africa, received more than 20,000 migrants last year. The surge pushed the regions shelters to the breaking point and highlighted authorities inability to provide adequate facilities or assistance. The crisis was most visible in Arguinegun, a village of 2,500 residents that is part of the tourist town of Mogn in Gran Canaria. The villages port facility sheltered hundreds of migrants in overcrowded conditions for four months, until it was evacuated in late November.

Now, with new migrant centers opening up in other parts of the archipelago, protests are erupting there as well. On Saturday, there were demonstrations in La Isleta and El Lasso, two neighborhoods in Las Palmas that are home to these facilities.

Tensions are running high on the island of Gran Canaria, where Spains central government is keeping nearly 7,000 migrants. In the space of a few weeks, what began as racist rhetoric has morphed into verbal threats and assaults by local residents who are feeling scared and convinced that they need to protect their wives, children and property from an invasion. In several parts of the island, armed citizens are now taking justice into their own hands.

Experts, civil society groups and the police are convinced that the tension will only intensify. The boats are still arriving, migrants are still being retained on the islands rather than flown over to the mainland, and while migrants living in hotels have been transferred to camps, there are thousands of people concentrated in just three municipalities on the islands of Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Fuerteventura.

Theres been a lack of joint work between the central government and local authorities, notes Vicente Zapata, who teaches human geography at La Laguna University. You have to be very prudent and avoid stigmatizing neighborhoods or the society thats sheltering [the migrants]. The focus must be on the origin of the problem: the Spanish states erroneous immigration policy in the Canaries.

This expert says that the current model, which concentrates thousands of people in one area, does not work.

Spain is now asking the European Union to allocate more funds to countries in North Africa, Western Africa and the Sahel area. The more than 20,000 boat landings in the Canaries in 2020 illustrate the constant pressure on the Spanish borders of the EU, reads a letter from the Foreign Ministry to the European Commission.

Three ministries Foreign Affairs, Interior and Migrations have drafted an eight-page proposal for significant EU funding for the territories that migrants originate from. Two documents that EL PAS has had access to also request renewed efforts in security, economic diplomacy and high-level bilateral relations.

Spain already has close relations with Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia, including supplying millions of euros in aid to train and equip those countries security forces. And then there is Morocco, which received 32 million in direct aid to stop the flow of migrants crossing the Strait of Gibraltar.

Migration to Spain has experienced a succession of peaks. Sea arrivals surged in 2018 to reach 57,500 people, making Spain the main irregular entry point into Europe. After persuading Morocco to crack down on departures, arrivals were halved in 2019. But in 2020, the Atlantic route to the Canaries was reactivated after a long lull.

Standing in a cloud of hashish smoke, four local youths are whiling away the time at a street corner in Zrate, a public housing area located near El Lasso school. They say that a Moroccan man sexually assaulted a local woman, and warn that Moroccans are not welcome in their territory. Not long ago, a young North African was brutally beaten here and the moment was captured on video. We dont know whether he did something or not. But he had the misfortune of getting lost, says one of the youths mockingly. The moros [a pejorative word for North Africans] are going to have a hard time. If one of them shows up around here, hes either going to wake up in an intensive care unit or inside a box.

Police officials say that crimes committed by foreigners, as well as the assaults that they are victims of, are few and far between. But police patrols in four neighborhoods have been stepped up. Two of them are home to migrant camps, and all four are classified as vulnerable due to worse-than-average unemployment figures, educational attainment and access to housing.

At 9pm on Wednesday, there was an unauthorized anti-immigrant protest in the neighborhood of Las Rehoyas, where around 100 people defied the coronavirus curfew to sing out there arent enough beds for so many people. The mood was festive, but there have been times when things have turned bloody.

On a recent Friday, a Moroccan man stabbed a local resident with a knife, causing a wound that required five stitches. A manhunt was quickly organized to catch the attacker, or anyone who looked like him. The 31-year-old local who was stabbed, Jeremy (an assumed name), lifts his sweatshirt to reveal the scar on his chest. He nearly killed me and orphaned my two children, he says.

According to Jeremy, around three weeks ago several migrants showed up to steal clothes hanging on the line of peoples homes. Later, he says, they began stealing childrens scooters, and started to scare the young women in the neighborhood. Other residents agree that they live in fear. Some offer more or less factual information to make their point, while others fall back on hoaxes, such as the one claiming that the king of Morocco is dressing up his soldiers as illegal migrants. If theyre coming here on the warpath, were going to defend ourselves, says Jeremy.

Two kilometers from this spot, one of the targets of these local vigilante groups shows his swollen face. One of his eyes is shut from the swelling. He has been sleeping out on the street for six months, practically since his arrival on a boat. He didnt go to the doctor because he doesnt have any legal papers, and hes afraid of the police. They were attacked with tasers and battery liquid. They came with knives this size, says a local friend, indicating the length of his forearm.

English version by Susana Urra.

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Tensions rising in Spains Canary Islands over irregular immigration - EL PAS in English

Joe Biden began dismantling U.S. border controls just hours after taking the presidential oath of office. He halted the deportation of illegal aliens apprehended in the interior of the country, thus turning the U.S. into one large sanctuary zone. (A federal judge in Texas has temporarily enjoined Biden's no-deportation order, but that injunction will have little practical effect, since a court can hardly compel immigration agents to affirmatively act.)

Biden suspended a Trump administration initiative that required asylum seekers at the southern border to remain in Mexico or other Central American countries while their case is adjudicated. Before Donald Trump's now-canceled Migrant Protection Protocols went into effect, asylum seekers would disappear into the heartland while their case was pending, and would stay underground after their asylum claims were denied.

The president has instructed federal prosecutors that they may resume releasing illegal aliens caught at the border, rather than processing them for deportationa pre-Trump practice commonly known as "catch-and-release."

And Biden has announced the most ambitious amnesty proposal in history. The plan would legalize virtually the entire population of illegal aliens, including those who arrived as late as December 2020 and who have thus developed none of the alleged community ties that have justified amnesties in the past. Criminals with all but the most heinous rap sheets would also qualify.

Traditionally, amnesty proposals have come packaged with a quid pro quo: an offer of enforcement regarding future immigration violations. Amnesties have a powerful magnet effect; they induce further illegal border crossings, undertaken with the assumption that the next tranche of illegal aliens will also be granted legalized status and an eventual pathway to citizenship. The promised future enforcement is intended, at least nominally, to counter that magnet effect.

Biden is not even paying lip service to the quid pro quo convention. He proposes more foreign aid to Central American countries and some technological upgrades at the border, but those measures are a far cry from the necessary enforcement. The only thing certain about foreign aid is that it will find its way into the pockets of Third World officials. The chance that it will jump-start corruption-plagued economies is slight. And unless technology is backed up by the likelihood of deportation, it, too, will have an insufficient effect on efforts at illegal entry.

Foreign nationals have been congregating at the southern border for months, in anticipation of a Biden presidency. Absent an unequivocal signal that immigration law-breaking will be met by a return to an alien's host country, the number of illegal entries will only surge. Once deportation is off the table as a response to illegal status, the entire corpus of immigration law becomes a nullity. America's immigration policy becomes determined by people outside its bordersnot by its citizens.

By all means, Republicans should push for robust enforcement before any amnesty goes into effect, however unlikely such a commitment from the Biden administration may be. But they should also demand a different quid pro quo: stop demonizing the country as "systemically racist." Logically, both positions cannot be true: It cannot be the case that America subjects minorities to lethal racism, as Biden maintains, and that compassion requires admitting as many new victims as possible. After all, their lives will be disfigured, if we are to believe the racism narrative, by America's fatal and "systemic" bigotry.

But the racism theme has only increased in volume since the election. A day after being sworn in, Biden said he was in a "battle for the soul of this nation." So enduring was the unwillingness of white Americans to treat minorities equally that Biden was empowering "every branch of the White House and the federal government" to fight "systemic racism." "It's time to act," Biden announced upon signing the first of many executive orders aimed at engineering "racial equity."

Arguably, the U.S. has been "acting" on racial equity for decades. Hundreds of billions of dollars in transfer payments have been made; anti-poverty programs have rolled out of every level of government, supplemented with nonstop philanthropic efforts. There is not a mainstream institution, whether corporation, bank, law firm, Big Tech company, college or public agency, that is not now trying to hire and promote as many minority candidates as possible. Black applicants to selective colleges are often admitted with test scores and GPAs that would be disqualifying if presented by their white and Asian peers. Colleges are creating new academic programs simply in order to hire more black and minority faculty members. Corporate bonuses increasingly depend on the number of minorities a manager has promoted, regardless of the effects on company productivity.

So far is America's majority from embracing a white supremacist ethic that white Americans penitently turn their eyes away from black crime rates. They choose to ignore the fact that interracial violence is predominantly one-way: according to federal government statistics, blacks commit 88 percent of all interracial violence between whites and blacks. It is taboo in polite society to acknowledge the leading behavioral drivers of many socioeconomic disparities. And when Biden calls "racism [and] nativism" America's "harsh, ugly reality," as he did in his Inaugural Address, he will be applauded by many white Americans for his "unifying" message.

The progressive worldview, however, ignores such countervailing evidence and insists upon America's endemic racism as the only allowable explanation for socioeconomic disparities. Given that worldview, administration officials should explain the following dilemma: Why do they want to increase migration from Third World countries, which would only plunge the newcomers into this maelstrom of oppression? Biden has asserted that black children are at risk of getting shot by the police whenever they step outside. If this is the case, wouldn't non-American minority children be safer in their home countries? If the answer is, "well, things are worse elsewhere," that concession would at least constitute a baby step in the direction of some realism about the relative status of human rights across the globe.

The biggest refutation of Biden's systemic racism conceit, however, is the behavior of migrants themselves. The U.S. has been the most sought-after destination for would-be immigrants since global polling first assessed immigration preferences. One hundred and fifty-eight million people hope to immigrate to the U.S.five times the number of foreigners aiming for other top immigration destinations, such as Canada, Germany and Britain. The number of Sub-Saharan Africans and Caribbeans residing in the U.S. grew by more than 1.5 million between 2010 and 2019. They apparently thought that they were better off here than in their non-racist home countries. The number of immigrants from so-called "LatinX" countries, excluding Mexico, increased by 2.1 million from 2010 to 2019. And contrary to received wisdom about racist Republicans and Trump supporters, red states are the most popular immigrant destinations. Florida and Texas had the greatest numerical increases in their foreign-born populations from 2010 to 2019a combined total of 1.67 millionand North Dakota and South Dakota had the greatest increases measured as a percentage of a state's populationup 87 percent and 63 percent, respectively.

Mass low-skilled immigration and our elites' parroted narrative about America's endemic racism each erode social cohesion. Taken together, the effect is disastrous.

Sociologist Robert Putnam has argued that high levels of diversity in a community undermine the trust that its members extend toward one another. Wave upon wave of large-scale unassimilated immigration has turned Los Angeles into a sprawling congeries of balkanized ethnic enclaves. Mass immigration widens the wealth gap between the educated and the less educated by driving down wages for low-skilled jobs. African-Americans and native-born Hispanics lose their favored victim status for progressives in the context of immigration policy.

The Democrats' obsession with white America's alleged racism is equally corrosive. Young people are being taught to see bigotry where it does not exist, to hate America and its history, and to think of themselves as perennially oppressed. Many will enter the workplace with a chip on their shoulder, constantly finding offense.

The Biden administration is poised to amplify the racism narrative to new decibel levels. It is only a matter of time before Ibram X. Kendi, today's leading purveyor of white guilt, is installed in a new government office of "anti-racism."

This is not an auspicious moment, then, to radically increase immigration. Assimilating immigrants from wildly different cultures becomes all the more difficult when America has lost faith in its principles and is rapidly tearing down monuments to its past. Some portion of immigrants and their progeny have already adopted an oppositional mindset, denouncing the "white supremacy" of their chosen country. An entitlement mentality is visible in attitudes toward government support and language skills acquisition: Police officers in Santa Ana, California, for example, report that many residents expect to be addressed in Spanish.

The best course for the country would be to reduce immigration levels and racial victimology. The first measure would allow American workers to recover from the coronavirus lockdowns and would increase the odds of assimilating existing immigrant populations. The second measure would lift the pall cast by a divisive untruth. The Biden administration is unlikely to take even one of those courses of action. But it should at least be confronted with its own illogic in pursuing increased immigration into a country it simultaneously declares to be the nemesis of fair treatment and equal rights.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of The Diversity Delusion.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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If 'Systemic Racism' Is Real, Why Does Biden Want To Bring Immigrants Here? | Opinion - Newsweek

In the movie Field of Dreams, the lead character hears a voice while standing in his cornfield. If you build it, he will come. So, the man builds a baseball field. The ghost of his ballplaying father appears, and so does a whole group of famous dead baseball players.

Its antithetical to former President Donald Trumps plan to build something so people wouldnt come. As youve likely heard, construction of Trumps beautiful big wall was halted by our new president as part of the evolving changes to U.S. immigration policy.

President Joe Biden has made his intentions clear. Among his proposals: Give the millions of immigrants already in the U.S. a faster route to citizenship; restore protections for those brought into the U.S. as children; open the southern border, and stop holding asylum seekers in Mexico while they await legal entry; shutter many migrant detention centers; and somehow fix the enormous immigration-court backlog. Oh, and stop deportations for at least 100 days, except for those illegal immigrants charged with felony crimes.

As with any new administration, promises and good intentions abound. What ultimately gets done is usually something different.

One thing is clear, however. The moratorium on deportations coupled with all the other Biden immigration proposals have given hope to countless outsiders desperate to flee their poverty-stricken countries and find a new life in the U.S. Massive human caravans from Honduras are already headed this way. Some predict throngs of Central American migrants will follow.

The governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico have agreed to try to stop the hordes, but the sheer number of refugees has been overwhelming. Clashes with troops have turned violent, and splinter groups of migrants have pushed through. Bidens order to halt deportations energized them with new hope.

Hes gonna help all of us, one unidentified man in a caravan said on CNN. Hes giving us 100 days to get to the U.S. ... (to) get a better life for our kids and family.

No compassionate human can fail to feel for these desperate people. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see this ragtag group of women, children and men, who left everything behind and set out on foot to find a home devoid of rampant crime, poverty and hunger. They are determined to find a better existence through legal or even illegal means. How many of us faced with those conditions would have the courage to do that?

But at a time when countless refugees have waited months or years for USA entry, while the pandemic rages and vaccines are maddeningly slow to be administered, is it wise to think about opening our borders again? There is no guarantee that, after 100 days, the threat of COVID-19 will be gone. Is it wrong to think about the rule of law? Is it wrong to think about whats best for the United States of America?

The state of Texas, which has the nations longest border with Mexico, filed a lawsuit challenging the 100-day moratorium. The suit claims the action violates an agreement Texas has with Washington that obligates the feds to consult with the state before changing immigration policy. A Trump-appointed federal judge promptly issued a temporary restraining order to block the deportation freeze.

Payback politics are at play here, and Democrats who filed a spree of lawsuits against Trumps immigration policies, specifically his wall, should steel themselves as Republicans now respond in kind.

We have become a people who cannot tolerate neighbors who have differing opinions. How will we ever come to an agreement on how or if to help those struggling to become taxpaying U.S. citizens? We are certainly in for a bumpy immigration ride ahead.

Although a Biden official warned migrants that immigration changes would not be enacted overnight, discouraging them from coming now, it is obvious that news didnt reach Central America. People hear what they want to hear, and desperate refugees believe they heard an implicit invitation to travel north. Say, Stop the deportations and, like the movie, they will come.

Now the question is, President Biden, what will we do with them when they arrive on our southern border?

Diane Dimonds column is syndicated by Creators

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Dimond: There's a bumpy immigration ride ahead - The Winchester Star

Unlimited illegal immigrationthats what a Biden administration wants, and that is what it will be able to get after Jan. 20.

This is perhaps the most important domestic policy issue at stake for America as we face single-party leadership in both chambers of Congressand the White House. And it couldnt come at a worse time for our country as Americans struggle to keep businesses open and regain a public health footing from the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 virus.

President-electJoeBiden has a long record of calling for unlimited immigration.

In 2015, he was recalling a conversation he had with a former president of Singapore about what separates America. He stated that it was an unrelenting stream of immigrationnonstop, nonstop.

He had previously expressed this desire to the National Association of Manufacturers, where he said that the constant, unrelenting stream of immigrants into the U.S. was the basis for our economic strength.

He emphasized that he wanted not dribbling amounts, but significant flows.

With the left in control of the U.S. Senate, the Biden administration has aCongress available to rubber-stamp its most radical immigration agenda items. And make no mistake: The left will not waste this political opportunity. Its leaders understand that mass immigration historically transfers into more leftist voters.

Its no coincidence that the open-borders lobby has found a permanent home with leftists. It means pure political power. Look no further thanCalifornia as Exhibit A.

So, what can the Biden administration do with a House and Senate controlled by the far left? First, it can seek to legalize all illegal aliens within the U.S., with token exceptions for some hardened criminals.

Keep in mind that the U.S.doesnt even know how manyillegal aliens are here, in part because theleft has opposed any effortto try to better understand that number. TheBiden team claims it is around 11 million, but other estimates top 22 million.

Such anamnestyeffort would not make any attempt at assimilating illegal aliens into the U.S. mainstreamadopting our language, culture, and patriotism.

Second, the borders would be open and overrun. Promising amnesty has already resulted in a run on the border, or the Biden Effect. Once the wheels start moving toward the largest amnesty in our history, the Border Patrol would be overwhelmed by illegal aliens seeking to get their claim to the most prized passport in the worldand all the government benefits that come along with it.

Couple this green light with stand-down orders to the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and you have a recipe for absolute disaster without any limiting principle. A recent Gallup poll found that more than 158 million adults would migrate to the United States if they could.

With aBiden presidency and a leftist-controlled Congress, what will be able to stop them?

Third, scarce resources would be directed away from current Americans and toward amnestied immigrants. This means it would be open season on the buffet of federal government welfare programs, as well as the continued strain on Americas job availability, education budgets, health care costs, andpublic safetyresources.

Translation? Americans forced to compete for employment opportunities as wages decrease, crowded schools with burgeoning numbers of students who dont speak English, rising health care costs, increased COVID-19 spread, and more gang-related crime, as Americans have seen from the ruthless MS-13 where it has taken hold.

But asBiden says of illegal immigrants, We owe them.

Americans are directly affected by immigration policy in many important aspects of our livesjobs, the economy, education, health care, crime, and national security.

Americans and lawful immigrants want our immigration laws enforced and our borders secured.

Yet, we are on the verge of having neither. With the White House and Congress under single-party leadership, it will be up to the American people to frequently and loudly voice their opinion that open borders and amnesty are wrong for America.

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America May Soon Face Unlimited Illegal Immigration - Heritage.org