On Tuesday President Biden gave his State of the Union address. During his speech, Biden focused on Congress’s need to pass mass amnesty for illegal immigrants, as well as spoke about his recent success in significantly lowering migrant numbers within a month. The Biden administration has frequently been criticized for its lack of border security and the record-high number of migrants entering the country illegally.
Biden said that it was time for immigration to become a bipartisan issue again and something that they would all work together on. In the previous fiscal year, there were 2.3 million migrant encounters and about 600,000 “gotaways” that had crossed into the country. In December alone there were 251,000 migrant encounters.
Republicans have been overtly critical of the administration and their decision to let many of the Trump-era border security measures expire or completely drop them. However, the Biden administration has maintained that the reason for migration is so high stems from the crisis in the other countries in that hemisphere.
The Biden administration’s new policies include an extended humanitarian parole program that would allow Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans to enter the country without crossing illegally. Under this program up to 30,000 immigrants coming from those countries would be allowed into the U.S.
Biden further used Tuesday’s speech to praise Border patrol staff and all of the work that they have done to help reduce the amount of fentanyl that enters the country. As Biden noted in just the last few months around 23,000 pounds of fentanyl has been seized.
