The Biden administration remains committed to its open borders agenda as evidenced by its recent move to no longer carry out mass arrests of illegal aliens at workplaces.
According to CBS News, the Biden administration’s “enforcement efforts should focus on holding exploitative employers accountable.”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas published a memo outlining DHS’s policy priorities which include “combating illegal acts committed by ‘unscrupulous’ employers, whom he noted often pay workers substandard wages, subject them to unsafe working conditions and facilitate human trafficking and child exploitation.”
“Our worksite enforcement efforts can have a significant impact on the well-being of individuals and the fairness of the labor market,” Mayorkas stated. “Our accomplishments in this area make clear that we can maximize the impact of our efforts by focusing on unscrupulous employers who exploit the vulnerability of undocumented workers.”
This announcement from the Mayorkas-led homeland regime breaks from the policies the Trump administration pursued that involved large roundups at places of employment. For those with short term memory, the summer of 2019 witnessed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carry out the “largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history, arresting nearly 700 undocumented food processing plant workers in Mississippi,” according to Camilo Montoya-Galvez.
Mayorkas believes that the large arrest operations represent “misallocated enforcement resources” and discouraged illegal alien workers from cooperating in investigations at the workplace.
Matorkas’ memo forms a part of the Biden administration’s efforts to drastically limit the number of individuals who ICE can detain and deport. Currently, deportation agents have received instructions to stop arresting pregnant women, migrants who have suffered serious crimes, and illegal aliens who don’t have extensive criminal records.
In the memo, Mayorkas directed DHS leaders to not place illegal aliens who are victims of labor exploitation in deportation proceedings. Furthermore, Mayorkas wants these DHS officials to consider granting the illegal aliens temporary legal status. Mayorkas is of the belief that such actions will encourage illegal aliens to cooperate more with federal law enforcement.
On top of that, Mayorkas tasked the DHS with ensuring that E-Verify is not “misused” against workers who report abuse in the workplace. E-Verify is an online program that allows employers to check the legal status of prospective employees. National populists are very much in favor of this policy in order to tackle the use of illegal aliens as a form of cheap labor in the workplace.
Mass migration advocates have lauded the Biden administration’s decision to end mass workplace immigration operations. Most of the open borders crowd has criticized the Biden administration for not placing substantive restrictions on ICE’s ability to arrest and deport illegal aliens.
The Biden administration’s decision to stop workplace raids is a clear sign to Big Business that they can continue to import cheap, illegal labor. This is political, after all. Big Business helped get Biden installed in office in 2020, and it wants something back in return.
Liberty conservatives can take on the mantle of labor populism by demonstrating how mass migration puts downward pressure on American worker wages. There are broad swathes of the population who are negatively impacted by the current set of immigration policies, and any populist candidate who can cogently make the case for an immigration moratorium on labor grounds will make tremendous headway in electoral politics.
