But if you’re a Chinese national coming across the southern border, we’ll just wave you through.

NEW YORK — All dogs coming into the U.S. from other countries must be at least 6 months old and microchipped to help prevent the spread of rabies, according to new government rules published Wednesday.

 

The new rules require vaccination for dogs that have been in countries where rabies is common. The update applies to dogs brought in by breeders or rescue groups as well as pets traveling with their U.S. owners.

One must question how people from China and Rwanda (amongst other countries) made it all the way to our southern border by San Diego. That is not an inexpensive bit of travel. Who is funding this? Also, notice how it is just SOP now to let thousands of unvetted, unvaccinated, and unemployed people just breeze through and into the interior of our nation. We are losing our nation.

On the other side, visible through the gaps in the towering barrier, a group of more than 100 people – from countries including Ecuador, Colombia, China and Rwanda – huddled together, waiting to be let through on to US soil. This border point south of San Diego is now one of the busiest along the entire US-Mexico frontier, which stretches around 1,950 miles (3,140km) from here to eastern Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.

 

A record surge of illegal border crossings in recent years has fuelled the debate over immigration and border security, emerging as a key voter concern ahead of the US presidential election in November. While the border crisis has mostly centred on Texas, where Republican Governor Greg Abbott has waged a fight with President Joe Biden over his immigration policies, recent figures show the geography of the US migration problem is shifting west to border states like Arizona and California.

In San Ysidro, some 16 miles south of wealthy San Diego, crossings were up 85% in February from the previous year compared with Texas, which saw illegal entries dip during the same period. The BBC’s US partner CBS reported that in January, the border crossing in Del Rio, Texas, recorded a few hundred apprehensions a day – compared to 2,300 daily migrant crossings in December.

 

[…]

 

The sheer number of people arriving has overwhelmed resources in the San Diego area; after migrants are apprehended and processed at a facility near the border, local officials told the BBC that up to 1,000 people a day are being released at city train and bus stops.

 

[…]

 

Vargas tells the BBC her county had an effective solution for mitigating the crisis: migrant transitional centres, or short-term facilities where newly arrived migrants could access food and medical treatment, charge their phones, and plan their next steps: migrants arriving here are not staying. Instead, they’re moving on to other towns and cities across the US, where they have a network of family or friends.

Heh. Perhaps Biden will close the border to prevent the smuggling of greenhouse gasses if he won’t do it for fentanyl, criminals, diseases, child sex slaves, etc.

On March 4, 2024, California man Michael Hart became the first person to be arrested and charged with smuggling greenhouse gases across the border from Mexico into the United States.

 

This was the first U.S. prosecution to include charges associated with the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020 (AIM Act), according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The act prohibits importing hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) outside the restrictions imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

 

Hart allegedly hid HFC canisters under a tarp to smuggle them across the border. He intended to sell them on sites such as Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp, per the New York Times.

The EPA has restricted HFC manufacture, distribution, and use across various sectors. The goal is to gradually phase out these products. However, Mexico is not as far along as the United States in its usage reduction.

 

[…]

 

“It appears that a black market has arisen due to the regulatory scheme in the treaty which provides for differing phase-out schedules for the United States and Mexico.” They continued by saying this landscape “creates a significant price differential due to the restrictions on supply in the United States that do not exist in Mexico.”

Yes. More of this.

ATLANTA (AP) — Some Georgia senators want to punish cities and counties that they say are illegally harboring immigrants who are in the country without permission by cutting off most state aid to the local government and removing elected officials from office.

 

The Senate Public Safety Committee voted 4-1 on Wednesday to rewrite House Bill 301, with supporters saying the move is needed to enforce a 2009 state law that outlaws so-called sanctuary cities and counties.

 

It’s the latest measure proposed by Republicans after police accused a Venezuelan man of beating a nursing student to death on the University of Georgia campus.

I don’t think they should remove local elected officials. Leave that up to the voters. But they can’t leave unaddressed local governments that violate state laws.

Keep that door wide open, eh?

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona bill that would have made it a crime for noncitizens to enter the state through Mexico at any location other than a port of entry has been vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

 

The Republican-controlled Legislature approved the measure late last month along party lines. Arizona has emerged as a popular illegal border crossing point, and the bill would have let local law enforcement arrest non-U.S. citizens who enter Arizona from anywhere but a lawful entrance point. A violation would be a top-tier misdemeanor – or a low-level felony for a second offense.

 

In a letter to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen on Monday, Hobbs said the measure raised constitutional concerns and was expected to lead to costly litigation.

“This bill does not secure our border, will be harmful for communities and businesses in our state, and burdensome for law enforcement personnel and the state judicial system,” Hobbs wrote.

The only thing unusual about this story in Biden’s America is the scale. Illegals are being dropped off in communities all over the country.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Hundreds of migrants were dropped off Friday at a San Diego bus stop instead of at a reception center that had been serving as a staging area because it ran out of local funding sooner than expected, showing how even the largest city on the country’s southern border is struggling to cope with the unprecedented influx of people.

 

Migrants who previously had a safe place to charge phones, use the bathroom, eat a meal and arrange to head elsewhere in the U.S. were now left on the street as migrant aid groups scrambled to help out as best they could with makeshift arrangements.

 

Border Patrol buses carrying migrants from Senegal, China, Ecuador, Guatemala and many other countries arrived outside a transit center. Migrant aid groups said they would be bused from there to a parking lot where they could charge their phones and get a ride to the airport. The vast majority planned to spend only a few hours in San Diego before taking a flight or having someone pick them up.

“Are we in San Diego?” asked Gabriel Guzman, 30, a painter from the Dominican Republic who was released after crossing the border in remote mountains on Thursday. He was told to appear in June in an immigration court in Boston, where he hopes to earn money to send home to his three children.

 

Abd Boudeah, of Mauritania, flew to Tijuana, Mexico, through Nicaragua and followed other migrants to an opening in the border wall, where he surrendered to agents Thursday after walking about eight hours. The former molecular engineering student said he fled persecution for being gay and planned to settle in Chicago with a cousin who had been in the U.S. for 20 years.

I remember a time in Wisconsin when this kind of collusion was considered a threat to democracy.

Administration officials aren’t disengaged from the impeachment fight. President Joe Biden slammed the impeachment as “petty partisan games.” And aides are monitoring it closely, often elevating Republicans who have questioned the merits of impeachment.

 

But the administration is also leaning on allied outside groups to poke holes in the GOP’s case against Mayorkas and echo the message coming from Pennsylvania Avenue.

 

[…]

 

The Congressional Integrity Project has led the charge externally. The group launched in late 2022 — ahead of Republicans taking over the House — with the goal of combatting the investigative onslaught into the Biden administration. The organization has been tracking the targeting of Mayorkas closely, but as impeachment seemed increasingly likely, it ramped up that element of its operations.

 

Over the last six weeks, the Congressional Integrity Project has worked closely with advocates in the immigration policy space to defend Mayorkas and to paint the GOP effort as a “shameful” and unfounded partisan act tied to fringe conservatives, such as Georgia Rep. Majorie Taylor Green and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs.

 

The groups, including America’s Voice and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, have stayed in touch over a shared chat where they coordinate strategy, said Douglas Rivlin, communications director at America’s Voice. They have pushed various constituencies to speak out against the impeachment effort they’ve sought to frame as “unconstitutional.”

I give credit to the House Republican leadership for taking this to a vote. Shame on the anti-American swamp critters who failed to do their duty.

House Republicans failed to impeach Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas for his mishandling of the southern border crisis in a nail-biting vote that came down to the wire and sparked chaos on the floor.

 

The 214-216 vote marked the second of three major legislative failures of the day for House Republicans who remain deeply divided across the House and Senate.

No

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators on Sunday released a highly anticipated $118 billion package that pairs border enforcement policy with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, setting off a long-shot effort to push the bill through heavy skepticism from Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson.

 

[…]

 

If the number of illegal border crossings reaches above 5,000 daily for a five-day average, an expulsion authority would automatically kick in so that migrants are sent back to Mexico without an opportunity to make an asylum claim. If the number reaches 4,000, presidential administrations would have the option of using the expulsion authority.

There is so much bad about this bill, but that last quoted provision is the absolute deal killer. It effectively legalizes 1.8 million illegal aliens PER YEAR before we even really try to stop the flow. That is a nation-killing wave of illegal aliens that will crush our social safety nets and economy.

This is a terrible bill and it is terrible politics for Republicans. They are trying to hand Biden a giant “bipartisan” bill that pretends to fix our border problem during an election year. Terrible policy. Terrible politics. Every Republican who supports this bill should be run out of office like a Taco Bell squirt with as little compassion as they are showing the victims of violent illegal aliens.

People are flooding into our border because word is out that they will be able to stay. What this story misses is that this reality is not because of overwhelmed courts and border agents and whatnot. That is just another consequence. Illegals are allowed to stay because that’s how Joe Biden wants it. It is policy.

Today, people from around the globe are streaming across the southern border, most of them just as eager to work. But rather than trying to elude U.S. authorities, the overwhelming majority of migrants seek out border agents, sometimes waiting hours or days in makeshift encampments, to surrender.

Being hustled into a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle and taken to a processing facility is hardly a setback. In fact, it is a crucial step toward being able to apply for asylum — now the surest way for migrants to stay in the United States, even if few will ultimately win their cases.

[…]

In December alone, more than 300,000 people crossed the southern border, a record number.

It is not just because they believe they will be able to make it across the 2,000-mile southern frontier. They are also certain that once they make it to the United States they will be able to stay.

Forever.

And by and large, they are not wrong.

The United States is trying to run an immigration system with a fraction of the judges, asylum officers, interpreters and other personnel that it needs to handle the hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing the border and flocking to cities around the country each year. That dysfunction has made it impossible for the nation to expeditiously decide who can remain in the country and who should be sent back to their homeland.

“I don’t know anyone who has been deported,” Carolina Ortiz, a migrant from Colombia, said in an interview…

They voted for this. 

DenverCNN — 

This is what an overwhelmed city can look like: a preschooler sleeping under a bridge for a month; crowds lining up each night to get food and shelter; and the mayor calling out for help. And when that city is Denver in the winter, and the overnight temperatures sink below zero degrees Fahrenheit, the problems are life-threatening.

“Our city is really struggling,” Mayor Mike Johnston told CNN after he visited families in a makeshift encampment – a sign of the unfolding emergency triggered by the mass arrival of people from outside the city.

“This is both a humanitarian crisis for the individuals that are arriving, and it’s a fiscal crisis for the cities that are serving. Those two crises are coming to a head right now.”

[…]

Johnston is looking at Denver having to foot an annual bill of $180 million for migrant services, which would lead to major cuts in other city budgets, he said. “We don’t want to take police officers off the street. We don’t want to take firefighters off the street. We don’t want to not do trash pickup or not have our parks and recreation centers open.” But hard decisions are coming, he said.

[…]

Johnston said Texas Gov. Abbott had not returned his calls but if he could talk to him, he would empathize. “I understand they feel like they have this huge influx of people that they can’t handle in Texas alone. I agree with him that no one state or one city should need to solve this entire challenge. But I think there’s a way for us to work together to say, let’s create a coordinated plan where we send people to cities that have capacity, where they can be successful.”

No. Close the dang border. The fact that a bunch of people want to be in America is not a reason for us to allow them to enter illegally and crush our communities.

This is a terrible deal. Just. Close. The. Border.

Under the proposal, as described by two sources briefed on the talks, the president would be permitted to temporarily halt new asylum claims by foreigners who arrive in the United States anywhere other than an official port of entry if border crossings reach 4,000 a day over a two-week period. Federal officials could then quickly turn back those migrants to Mexico without a hearing. Such a “shutdown” would become mandatory if the daily number of crossings reached an average of 5,000 over a week or 8,500 in one day.

 

The US experienced about 10,000 border crossings per day in December, the latest month in which data is available.

 

Even in the event of a shutdown, the U.S. would continue to process 1,400 asylum claims per day by people who do arrive through an official port of entry. (According to one source, those migrants would count toward the 4,000 needed to trigger the president’s emergency powers.) There’s also a cap on the number of days the emergency authority can be used in a year, both sources said.

They are normalizing and mainstreaming the flood of illegal aliens.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine Gov. Janet Mills and a state lawmaker who immigrated from Somalia unveiled a proposal on Friday to try to resolve the state’s serious worker shortage by tapping swiftly growing immigrant communities.

 

Maine traditionally has had among the smallest immigrant populations in the country. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, only about 4% of the state’s residents were born outside the U.S.

 

That has been gradually changing as tens of thousands of residents descended from Somalia and other African countries have made homes in Portland and Lewiston, two of the state’s biggest cities. Those arrivals helped push up the percentage of foreign-born residents by about a percentage point between 2000 to 2022, according to census figures.

The Office of New Americans is proposed in a bill by state Rep. Deqa Dhalac, the first Somali immigrant to become mayor of a U.S. city in 2021, when she took office in South Portland. She was elected to the Maine Legislature last year. Dhalac and Mills say the bill would address shortages in critical industries including health care, education and construction.