Congress debates effects of U.S. immigration policies

By Christine Johnson
The Center Square

Abuses of the Department of Homeland Security’s Temporary Protection Status program allowing foreign nationals of specifically designated countries to come to and remain in the U.S. were debated Tuesday at a congressional hearing.

The Task Force for Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses held the hearing. Chairman Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, noted that illegal immigration is down over 90% since the Biden administration, during which at least 14 million noncitizens entered the U.S. illegally.

The Biden administration abused the Temporary Protection Status (TPS) program, a system created in 1990 to provide work permits and protection from deportation for a limited amount of time, witness Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, testified.

“At the start of the Biden administration, there were just about 410,000 TPS beneficiaries from 10 countries. In four years, that number increased by over a million to 1.4 million,” Gill said.

“The vast majority of the people covered under TPS entered the U.S. illegally …that includes an estimated 95% of all Venezuelan TPS holders, and 91% of all estimated Haitian TPS holders,” Gill continued.

Krikorian said the TPS system has been repeatedly abused, with both legal and illegal immigrants using the taxpayer-funded federal welfare system at a rate of over 50%.

“They have low levels of skill, which means they earn low incomes, which means they qualify for benefits at a much higher rate than others and so they end up becoming a burden on the taxpayer …” Krikorian said, adding that both Democrats and Republicans contributed to the abuse of the program.

“Over a period of decades, they have demonstrated that the executive branch simply cannot be trusted to exercise discretion responsibly in immigration matters,” Krikorian said.

Witness David J. Brier, the Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration Policy at the Cato Institute, countered that Trump’s immigration policies are negatively affecting affordability for American citizens, arguing that the have caused an increase in debt and a loss of food and services provided by these immigrants.

Rep. Lateefah Simon, D-Calif., stated that Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts have become so violent that U.S. citizens are being separated from their families and even attacked and murdered because of them. She cited a number of U.S. citizens who were killed during confrontations with ICE officers.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., said at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dallas, Texas, individuals are being illegally detained. She said that according to ICE data, 4,000 children under the age of 18 have been detained there, including a 9-year-old girl.

“As a mother, I am heartbroken. As an American, I am ashamed,” Pressley stated.

While there were minimal solutions presented during the hearing, Krikorian proposed three actions Congress can take: repealing the Temporary Protection Status program, putting a cap on the number of noncitizens put on parole, and prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security from giving work permits to noncitizens who don’t qualify.

Witness Matt O’Brien, deputy executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, called for accountability from Congress, stating that it has both the responsibility and authority to lawfully enforce immigration laws and that “all levels of government respect the constitutional separation of powers upon which our system depends.”

“Regardless of where one stands politically, we should all agree that immigration policy must be made through the constitutional process, not through unilateral executive action, selected enforcement or attempts by individual states to override federal law,” O’Brien concluded.