President Biden's First 100 Days

FAIR's Preston Huennekens, Spencer Raley, and Matthew Tragesser discuss the first 100 days of the Biden administration and how American immigration policy has been impacted by the president's administration's actions.

Show Notes

★ Support this podcast ★

What is FAIR Immigration | Understanding Immigration?

The Federation for American Immigration Reform's podcast bringing you the most important updates about U.S. immigration. Featuring special guests including members of Congress, journalists, and experts in the field.

Intro:
Today on Understanding Immigration President Biden's first 100 days.

Preston:
Welcome back to another episode of FAIR’s Understanding Immigration podcast. This is Preston Huennekens FAIR’s government relations manager and I’m joined today by our press secretary Matthew Tragesser and our research director Spencer Raley. April 30th will mark 100 days since Joe Biden became President of the United States on January 20th 2021. A lot has certainly happened since then, since taking office President Biden has upended the immigration system in his administration's own image with a number of moves that clearly delineate himself from his predecessor President Donald Trump. Today we're going to take you through the first 100 days of Biden's presidency focusing exclusively on immigration issues. FAIR has a timeline published on our website that we encourage everyone listening to check out as it has some great information highlighting the steps that the Biden administration took since coming to office. So, Matthew, let's start from the beginning January 20th, 2021 Biden is inaugurated as our 46th President, he really hit the ground running, didn't he?

Matthew:
Preston he really did hit the ground running it was clear from day one that President Biden wanted to make immigration his top priority over our COVID-19 response, over our economic response and he really became infatuated with this immigration issue and our timeline that we have published on our website obviously goes into more in depth with what he actually did during these first few months but I’ll go over specifically what he did in January what I thought to be was the most notable in which the first being the suspension of the Migrant Protection Protocols the MPP or also known as the Remain in Mexico program and this was a huge border security tool that was implemented by the Trump administration in 2019 that required migrants that are seeking asylum in our country to wait in Mexico, northern Mexico until their court hearing arrived in the U.S. and this helped end the concept of ‘catch and release,’ it helped deter illegal migration, it helped curb asylum abuse. Within just a few days of entering the oval office president Biden suspended all new enrollments effectively ending the program and this led ultimately to more than 25,000 migrants to be released into the interior of our country. Aside from the MPP suspension let's not forget President Biden and the White House introduced to Congress the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 and this was arguably one of the most radical pieces of immigration legislation in U.S. history. It greatly expanded our legal immigration numbers including guestworker programs, it provides amnesty to virtually every single illegal alien in our country which as FAIR has noted recently it could be as many as 14 million illegal aliens, it eviscerates all interior immigration enforcement and another thing is and I’ve studied this kind of concept extensively now is this concept of foreign aid to the northern triangle countries and this citizenship act provided or provides four billion dollars to address the so-called root causes of migration in the northern triangle and it's just proven over time that these types of foreign aid packages don't work, they don't help deter illegal migration for instance President Obama in 2014 when he was overseeing a similar border surge his administration spent 750 million dollars in northern triangle countries to address these so-called root causes and then within the next five years from 2014 to 2019 apprehensions just soared they did little to deter illegal migration and in my mind just a complete waste of money a lot of a lot of times this money ends up in the wrong hands of corrupt officials in the northern triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador so this is another component of this massive immigration bill the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 that was introduced by President Biden in the White House to Congress it's not yet implemented but it shows you the just the radical priorities they had as soon as they entered the Oval Office. So I think the MPP, this U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 were huge items that were initiated by the Biden administration let's also not forget the 100-day deportation freeze the memorandum on this that President Biden and his campaign pledged to do as soon as he entered the Oval Office and he did do this, this called for 100-day freeze of deportations for many classes of illegal aliens now thankfully this eventually was overturned by a federal judge and struck down so never got fully implemented but again, it shows you what his priorities were in that first month and I can't think of any administration who has developed a policy like this so that was a very notable thing that happened in January and lastly in terms of memos I’ll touch on the Zero Tolerance Memorandum this was the same time period the month of January where the administration officially rescinds the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy this was thought to be a tool that would deter illegal migration and help better secure our southern border but this was the month where it was officially rescinded so I know there's a lot more to say obviously it's on our timeline on the website it's on the main rotator now but Spencer I believe you'll be talking about what happened in February the month after their second month in the Oval Office and I'm sure our listeners realize that nothing really improved at all during this month.

Spencer:
Yeah Matthew and honestly just February builds on a lot of what you were talking about things just got worse and really you started to see the impact of all the actions that the Biden administration took in the first day on the first day or in the first week just to go over a few of these things first of all February is the first month when you really saw apprehensions grow significantly in reality you could look even before he took office as soon as he won the election, migrant caravans formed and started coming to the United States because… and media members interviewed migrants and asked them why are you coming down they said because Biden was elected he said he's not going to deport us he said if we get into the country we can stay he said he's going to offer amnesty so you saw apprehensions go up from 65-70,000 to 80,000 and then up closer to 90,000 after he took office it bloomed extensively to over 100,000 in February so it's when you really started to see the tangible effects of all of the talk, all of the policy that he promised put into place and honestly at least for those of us who work on this issue none of that surprised us we all knew that would be the impact and quite frankly the Biden administration knew that would be the impact as well but just to get into a few more of the things that he started putting together in the month of February let's look specifically at some of these executive orders some of these policy changes such as the reunification task force which was again based largely on the myth that former President Trump had separated large numbers of innocent families, this has been proven false time and time again and what really concerns me specifically about this policy proposal is that it didn't provide any substantial method to ensure that minors are not being paired or in Biden's words reunified with human smugglers or those that they aren't related to that was a significant issue that we saw under the Trump administration, we saw a number of statistics showing out coming out showing that human traffickers, drug members, cartel members and other unsavory characters were using minors and children as an opportunity to get into the United States knowing that they would then be released into the country that's a very problematic thing and so if you're going to come up with some sort of task force as Biden calls it to ensure that families aren't being needlessly separated in conjunction with that you need to come up with something that ensures that people are actually family members and in addition to that as FAIR has noted a number of times in order to prevent this from becoming a situation that just encourages additional illegal immigration it's important that those individuals are reunited in their home countries not in the United States furthermore and kind of along with this you also saw the commission of a study into what's causing illegal immigration in the United States as if it isn't a pretty simple issue and the name I just I get a kick out of the name it's called the ‘Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework to Address the Causes of Migration to Manage Migration Throughout North and Central America and to Provide a Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border’ that's a that's a bureaucratic title if you've ever seen one and so far based on this really apparently groundbreaking and complex study the bright idea of the Biden administration has been to send billions of dollars to Central America like we've never done things like that before and to also send millions of vaccines to Central Americans instead of using them on American citizens that need them right now. Now you really don't have to be a history expert to know that we have tried sending money to corrupt and broken governments in the past and has done nothing has only made problems worse basically what Biden is doing here is at best he's giving potential migrants the cash they need to illegally migrate to the United States and at worst he's putting money into the hands of corrupt governments that will use those for corrupt purposes and again same result make the situation worse so this really makes no sense there's no pressure being applied on these governments to either give in some of the corruption that is that's plaguing their countries or else to help them build economies in their country that would keep individuals from wanting to leave those countries it just seems like it will throw money at you and hope that solves the problem and it's a really irresponsible proposal and history has shown us time and time again that it's not going to end well for those countries, for the individuals in those countries, or for the United States if he follows through with that. The other executive order that he put out was to promote legal immigration and integration and the idea of this executive order was to streamline the process to legally immigrate into the United States but I think what we all know is that's just simply code for making it easier to come to the United States regardless of merit or need in the United States and once again it's just that I know it's starting to sound like a parroted narrative at this point but it's just another effort to make it easier for people to come to the United States whether that's legally or illegally it really doesn't serve the best interests of the United States any better if we stop people from coming to the United States illegally but then say hey come on in here we'll give you a we'll rubber stamp a green card you can come to the United States and do the same thing there really needs to be a process to this we need to look at what are the needs of the United States, what are the needs of American citizens in the United States and what individuals from other countries can meet those needs? This program does not do that it does not serve the interests of the American community in that way and again it just seems like something where the Biden administration thought oh we need to repeal whatever the evil Donald Trump did and come up with whatever was polar opposite of that and that's what they did and we're already starting to see the negative impacts of that. Kind of hand in hand with that executive order was one that quite frankly baffles me the most and that was a investigation into how to resettle more refugees due to the impacts of climate change and this is just as absurd as it sounds there have been a number of studies that have shown that when you transplant someone from another country to the United States their carbon footprint increases significantly and often it increases to a point even above and beyond the average American citizen so that would not do anything to solve the issue of climate change and furthermore there is very little evidence to suggest that many of the refugees that would be admitted under such a program would actually be demonstrably impacted by climate change themselves and if they were let's say that something comes out to show that climate change is causing a drought in a certain area and those individuals are having a hard time feeding themselves bringing them into the United States versus trying to help solve the issue in their own country would only make the situation worse because as I already mentioned they'll come to the United States it'll exasperate the problem which will make it worse in the country they came from which will make it worse for the people in that country which means more of them will want to come to the United States and so essentially what you're doing is you're putting a band-aid on the wound and then once that wound gets infected you take that band-aid off you put another band-aid on you just keep treating the symptom until there is no solution to the issue.

Preston:
Yeah and this I mean climate refugees and climate migrants is a very kind of in-vogue topic among some of the more woke countries in the west I know that New Zealand decided they were gonna do this a few years ago with some of the pacific islanders who they say that climate change is gonna destroy these islands and that New Zealand needs to take them all but this is an issue that's been getting a lot of traction in the U.S. and it doesn't surprise me at all that an administration like joe Biden is able to pair two of their favorite talking points one being climate change you have John Kerry our climate czar and then you're able to pair that with increasing more immigrants to the United States which is another pet issue of his so that doesn't surprise me at all and I think we'll see more of this down the road for sure.

Spencer:
Yeah from a logical standpoint of the issue it makes no sense but from a tactical standpoint it's kind of ingenious because not only are you serving your purpose of trying to bring more migrants into the United States you're also touching on a very popular buzz topic with a large subsection of your constituency that's going to get really excited about this they can pretend that they're doing something to solve climate change and help supposed refugees at the same time like I just mentioned it's really doing nothing to help the situations in those countries it's just making it worse. Another thing in kind of in hand in hand with foreign legal immigration is the efforts and the moves that the Biden administration has made to rescind the changes to the H-1b visa program that the Trump administration put into place along with the immigration pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic and reversing these right now really make no sense for the simple reason that the unemployment rate is still extremely high in the United States, Americans are still struggling to find work and so that makes it problematic for an economic recovery because these big businesses of course are going to want to continue to prioritize cheap labor over paying American citizens the going market rate for that kind of work but I do want to stress that even outside of pandemic times we saw big businesses firing American citizens in favor of cheap foreign labor so of course while it's especially problematic right now during a pandemic I do think it's still important to note that this would be a bad move even during normal times as well it simply shows that President Biden is in the camp of big business and the open borders lobby and not the American people so again we've already talked about we're starting to see the results of all of these problematic rescinding of orders that the Trump administration put into place to protect American workers and implementing new policy that just exasperates the problem we already talked about the drastic increase in apprehensions along the southern border, you're seeing you're seeing these both temporary tent cities put up to help manage the incoming migrants becoming vastly overloaded by you're talking by thousands of percent in some cases you're seeing massive COVID-19 outbreaks occurring, you're seeing illegal aliens being released into the country without a notice to appear meaning that they're gone you're not going to find them you won't even know where to send their notice to appear if you ever get caught up on everything which is unlikely and of course now you've seen Vice President Harris tapped as the border czar and she is nowhere to be found which I guess you could debate might be a good thing considering that she has a history of saying terrible things about our law enforcement officers along the border and suggesting that we should essentially just open up the border and let everyone in so could probably call that a blessing in disguise.

Preston:
Yeah that's for sure that's in many ways February was very big for the Biden administration this is where they really rescinded most of the Trump administration policies and Spencer you kind of hit on this earlier that they did this pretty much just because orange man bad so even in instances where the policy made sense they got rid of it simply because they had promised their supporters everything that Trump did, we're gonna get rid of but Matthew let's go back to you and start talking about what was going on in March so by March the border crisis was in full swing CBP at this point had apprehended over 172,000 illegal aliens during this month after they had apprehended over a hundred thousand in February and at this point we were pretty much just seeing the Biden administration just bury its head in the sand and continually deny that there was any kind of crisis going on at the southern border so this kind of goes without saying but March was another big month for immigration in the Biden administration, isn't that right?

Matthew:
Yeah in fact I’d say it's arguably the worst month so far not only from a policy standpoint but from a public appearance standpoint if you will so this was the month in March where DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas went on national television on numerous occasions denying the very existence of a southern border crisis he doubled down tripled down had no remorse about anything he stood there on live television just again downplaying the severity of what was happening at the southern border in fact he was so confident in his responses that he appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee to do the same thing to deny that the situation at the southwest border constituted a crisis so I’m thinking okay if this is the leader of many of our nation's immigration agencies ICE, CBP, Border Patrol, USCIS and you're someone who's working in one of these agencies and you see your leader saying this kind of stuff to lawmakers, to the media and doubling and tripling down I mean it's just how can you have any trust or respect for the guy and so from a public appearance standpoint this is a really bad month for DHS, for the Biden administration because you have Mayorkas again just not acknowledging and respecting what's going on at the southwest border and it wasn't just Mayorkas either, let's not forget President Biden had his first press conference this month, this was the first press conference he had live since he since he entered the Oval Office and he was asked of course a number of questions regarding the border crisis regarding immigration and again he had the same kind of defiant attitude denying the severity of what was happening blaming actually the Trump administration's immigration policies for facilitating this border crisis and also the fact that he again offered not really any solutions to anything and also I think he kept using the phrase oh this is just a usual seasonal increase that we're seeing so a complete disaster on that front.

Preston:
I was gonna say that press conference was a nightmare I remember watching it and he pretty much the whole time he was trying to kind of deflect from the border and talk about the vaccine rollout, but the reporters obviously were there to talk about what was happening at the border which was by far the biggest issue that week and it was Matthew it was stunning to see him just deflect again and again and again and blame it on Trump and blame it on everything else but his own policies.

Spencer:
Which you can tell he was coached to do because his approval numbers when it comes to the borders are down in the 30s and 20s now which are which is in ridiculously bad for someone in their first 100 days in office you typically on everything you have this kind of honeymoon period where Americans are like hey let's just give the guy a shot and see how he's doing but his actions on the border are so bad and so visibly bad that Americans are fed up with it and tired of it on the contrast polling shows that his actions on COVID-19 are being relatively well received so you can tell he just wanted to deflect off of that but in addition to just trying to pass it off as a seasonal thing that's not even accurate anyone who looks at the data can see that there is not a typical upward trend especially as steep as it has been during the months of January and February and March so I don't know what he was attempting to accomplish there and this is one of those very few situations where I’ll say kudos to the media for not letting him get away with it I don't know often we'll see that but for once...

Matthew:
I was going to say they actually were holding him accountable and asking really I thought fair questions which of course he didn't answer directly he meandered around them but from a third public appearance standpoint so we had Mayorkas doing a disaster job, Biden doing the same thing but also Kamala, this was the same month where I’m sure you guys have seen the clip 100 times where Vice President Kamala Harris is about to board a plane and a reporter asks her something to the effect of do you plan on visiting the border anytime soon and she basically laughs at that idea and as spencer mentioned before this was she was just appointed or nominated for this border czar position so here's someone who's expected to solve and help manage what's going on at the southwest border basically laughing at the premise of visiting it so I mean that was circulated all across the media that laughing clip but it was really a bad month for the administration with Kamala, with Biden and with Mayorkas kind of how they were appearing on media and in public regarding what was happening at the southwest border, now I’ll touch on one little policy thing that happened, so during this month last month the House of Representatives which we all know is dominated by Democrats they passed H.R.6 the American Dream and Promise Act as well as H.R.1603 the Farm Workforce Modernization act and this these pieces of legislation amnestied or amnesty nearly 5 million illegal aliens and President Biden was he absolutely loved this idea he tweeted support for both of these bills urging Congress to pass the legislation and again it shows you where his priorities are or not how can an amnesty to millions of illegal aliens be a top priority for him the White House and just the administration right now the borders are out of control this month in terms of border apprehensions saw the largest number of unaccompanied minors apprehended on record in history same with just border apprehensions in general for the month was the largest in 15 years so again it just shows you why is he encouraging Congress to pass this why isn't he encouraging Congress to pass legislation that secures our borders better or that funds detention centers to make them not in the terrible conditions that they are right now so March again not a very good month I know we we've said all these months have been bad but they have been bad so I know we're approaching the 100 day mark now and I think it's clear to us to the American people that what's happening with immigration is not good right now.

Preston:
Yeah that's right and it's really just kind of cascading and getting worse even into to April where we are now I mean our economy is coming back from covid I don't think anyone can deny that but there's still a number of people that are out of work a lot of people whose jobs that they had before the pandemic no longer exist and in spite of this President Biden decides to let the guestworker pause related to COVID-19 lapse and so now we're bringing back in tens of thousands of unskilled guestworkers we're bringing back in tens of thousands of H-1B workers to compete with Americans for jobs right towards the end of the kind of this economic disaster that we had with covid and this move made really no sense, I don't think there is a justification to lift that pause when there still are so many people out of work and so many people who are underemployed which is an important factor to consider as well it's not just that they have jobs but it's that they're not earning as much as they were before covid…

Spencer:
And then I want to touch on that just a little bit too one thing that you really need to consider even though the unemployment rate if you just look at the basic number is down to about six percent that's great we are recovering from the economic impacts of covid it's important to realize that people in the lower quarter of the economy, their unemployment rate is still I believe last I saw over 20 percent that's significant, that's the quadrant of American workers that have been impacted the most by covid and in terms of illegal immigration as we have shown in studies in the past most illegal immigrants take jobs in that sector so they're taking jobs from the slowest sector to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, so while overall it may look like hey things are getting better and they are, these moves by the Biden administration is making it extremely difficult for those who really couldn't afford to lose their jobs in the first place to find employment and to actually be able to recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic this is just slowing it down.

Preston:
Yeah and it's especially true with the H-2B workers that are coming in they are they work in landscaping, construction, hospitality, restaurants these are all jobs that got rocked by COVID-19 and by the shutdowns and so it makes really little sense to suddenly start importing these workers again and I know our Twitter account retweeted this a few days ago but there was a I believe a hotel union that was blasting this they were blasting Joe Biden for allowing this to happen because they were pointing out that even though 90% of the hotel jobs haven't been filled that you have some of the companies are bringing are still petitioning for these workers because it's entirely because they're cheaper, they're more compliant, they don't complain, they don't file lawsuits against the company things like that so it's really just a shame and think it really makes no sense and it's so indicative of the Biden administration's approach to immigration which has been to just do the opposite of the Trump administration regardless of what it costs because they don't want to be seen as ever lending credibility to anything that Trump did while he was in office.

Matthew:
Yeah I’m glad he brought that up Preston, I remember a few days ago Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia was talking about that exact concept where he feels that the Biden administration is just doing this like wholesale approach where we're going to wipe out everything that's what has the name Trump attached to it or that was developed by Trump no matter if it was effective or not and he even thought, as someone who's a prominent Democrat that like whoa we gotta put the brakes on this a little bit we gotta really analyze each individual policy and initiative before just wiping it out just so think even some Democrats are getting frustrated with what what's happening right now with the administration.

Preston:
Yeah no that's for sure and they should be because I think like you said there's obviously there are good policies outside of any stigma if there was one that the Trump administration had when it came to immigration the changes that he made to the H-1B process it makes really no sense for Biden to change that and to make it even cheaper to hire H-1B workers it makes no sense to end the guestworker pause when we're still at double the rate of unemployment that we were prior to covid it's things like this where, it makes no sense to rescind the Migrant Protection Protocols which were working in which were preventing a border crisis from happening and then of course as soon as he lifts those what happens? a border crisis happens and so it's very I don't know it's just very disheartening to see that the administration is focused more on dunking on President Trump than it is on actually solving policy issues.

Matthew:
Yeah and you saw it with just a few days ago with the refugee cap situation that they the administration wanted to keep it the same as what the Trump administration had it last year as and then they received a lot of blowback and they reversed course immediately and so like they are very sensitive to this and they want nothing attached to them whatsoever.

Spencer:
Yeah and that's gonna be I think a problematic thing we're gonna see time and time again throughout this administration unless something changes drastically is that in some ways the bind administration feels captive to the radical fringes of his constituency he has just seems to have no ability to tell them no so whenever they throw a fit about the refugee cap not being immediately raised to whatever number he had proposed in the past, even on the advice of experts in his own administration he feels like it's more important that he gives in to whatever the wishes are of the radical segment of his constituency and that's going to be problematic because those individuals do not have the interests of Americans at heart and that also begs the question of are we ever going to see any real solutions to this issue during the Biden administration some of them are real simple stop doing what you're doing re-implement MPP, continue working on the border wall a lot of these I think are pipe dreams, things that he could not do for fear of his base but I'm not sure you're going to see him make any effort at any of these solutions right now even though there is a lot that the administration itself could do right now today and the next hour if they wanted to, to solve the border crisis.

Preston:
Oh I mean they could end it by just by just reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols and renegotiating the Trump-era asylum agreements with the northern triangle but again like you brought up he's kind of captive to his base who loathed everything that ever happened under Donald Trump and so these policies even though they were working they had to go in the mind of Biden his administration.

Spencer:
And in some ways that's Biden brought this on himself because that was the entirety of his campaign platform is orange man bad and I will do everything whatever Trump did I will do the opposite it doesn't matter if what if what he was doing was popular and showing tangible results like MPP was, I have to do the opposite and it's interesting and I’m just really interested to see how long it's going to take for the American people to be completely fed up with it for them to completely turn on him and we're already seeing that on the immigration issue specifically but eventually it's that's going to overwhelm their ability to support him on other issues because unlike in so many situations in government he has nothing to hide behind on this issue he can't go out and say well I would do it but I can't get Republicans in Congress to get on board. This isn't a congressional issue, these are all executive actions that he took that his administration could reverse if they want to and not doing so is just not going to reflect well on the American people and it's interesting just to see I mean to me how long that's going to take before you have an outright revolt and once that happens, whether or not the Biden administration is going to be willing to I guess betray that radical segment of his constituency and appeal more to moderates and perhaps the center right and even the center left on a lot of these issues and try to come up with some sort of solution to stop the at least the direction of the crisis on the southern border.

Matthew:
Yeah my question is what is it going to take for them to just acknowledge fault and start reversing course? because apprehensions continue to soar they've shown no sign of slowing down it could arguably be actually better for migrants to travel or to migrate to the country in these next coming months because it's warmer weather for them so I mean I wonder is it like what is it going to take is it a certain number of apprehensions that they say okay well that's too many we got a reverse course or I don't know what it’s gonna take but…


Preston:
A million apprehensions in one month

Matthew:
It's a hypothetical but just I really don't know what event is going to make it or what yeah event is going to make them want to reverse course it's really bad.

Spencer:
Well, Biden already accidentally apparently called it a crisis so… his administration had to back off on that which again just boggles my mind like admit it already even some of the most radically open borders media outlets are acknowledging that this is a crisis at this point whether you're talking about the surge of COVID-19 cases, a lot of cases of sexual assault happening in these tent cities that the Biden administration put together, just tragedy after tragedy but even when he you could tell he knows it’s a crisis, his administration knows it's a crisis, but when he accidentally tells the truth on it they have to come out and go oh no we didn't mean to say that.

Matthew:
Do you guys think… I don't know if there's a right answer for this, but do you guys think that because the media have exposed what Biden has done at the border and it's clear what's happening that Americans are becoming oversaturated with what's going on down there and they're kind of going to become complacent and be like oh well what's been going on for three months, six months, nine months and not really want to take more decisive action put more pressure on the administration?

Spencer:
Well this is a situation I mean I think it's always possible, I love to quote Syndrome from The Incredibles where he says if everybody's super, no one's super, I like to say that if everything's a crisis, nothing's a crisis so in some ways yeah Americans can get desensitized to the issue but again I think this is in some ways relatively unique to compared to a lot of the things we get outraged about today in that it impacts the daily lives of Americans we're it's interesting to see again look at the border counties in Texas look at southern Florida look at a number of counties in Arizona in cities like San Diego that are trending away in terms of voting for these open borders proponents because it is impacting their daily lives. I was just reading an article the other day about individuals in San Antonio, Texas which is a very liberal city getting really concerned about increased gang violence occurring in the city and ever since the Biden administration took over and that's just going to continue to come into the interior of the country we're seeing migrants being flown up closer to the northern border just to house them, they're going to be released into those communities eventually it's going to harm those communities so in some ways yeah if it's just media coverage eventually we get used to the new normal which is every day a new crisis but this is a situation that impacts the daily lives of the American people whether it's losing your job or national security issues or maybe gang violence coming into your city it's one of those deals where you can't get away from it necessarily just by turning off CNN or Fox News.

Matthew:
Yeah no those are a great points I mean think a lot of Americans are obviously concerned because think about it, immigration we all know this impacts our country in so many different ways so many different levels so this is not an issue that can be easily forgotten or just as you said shut the tv off and that's it, no this is something that's really intertwined with our society and hopefully, I hope Americans don't become desensitized or just complacent to what's going on and we could really continue to put pressure on the administration.

Preston:
Yeah Matthew that's a really great point and I think that is probably a good of point as any to end on today. So for our listeners we hope that you've enjoyed today's episode and perhaps learned something about the Biden administration's America Last policies throughout these first 100 days as a reminder we'll be releasing a new episode every other Monday, our episodes are available on pretty much every platform including Spotify, Apple podcasts and Google podcasts, you can find it on our website fairus.org and our twitter handle @FAIRImmigration to access these episodes and to see other content so please spread the word and share the podcast with anyone who you think might be interested in learning more about immigration in the United States. Until next time this has been Understanding Immigration presented by FAIR.