By Ira Mehlman
FAIR
Legal immigrants to the United States, who often wait for years to be allowed to enter, undergo background checks, travel to a government agency to submit biometrics, and incur significant expenses, have resented the presence of large numbers of illegal aliens who flout the rules and get away with it.
Now, they are being joined by millions of long-settled illegal aliens who are crying foul. As the Biden administration hands out Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) to millions of recently-arrived illegal aliens seeking asylum (mostly without merit) and millions more parolees, more-established illegal aliens are saying, ‘Hey, what about us?’ As one illegal alien told The New York Times, “For those of us here a long time trying to do everything right, it’s just not fair that we are forgotten,” seemingly oblivious to the fact that getting away with living and working illegally in the U.S. does not mean he is doing everything right.
Likewise, employers who are also flouting laws that prohibit them from hiring illegal aliens are also lobbying the Biden administration to keep the government churning out EADs to all illegal aliens, not just the newcomers. “If President Biden can grant work permits to new arrivals, he can do it for people picking our crops, emptying bedpans and cleaning hotel rooms for more than 10 years,” asserted Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, a business-funded advocacy group.
The complaints of long-term illegal aliens and scofflaw employers appear to have found sympathetic ears in the Biden administration. None other than Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas seems to think they have a valid point. Earlier this month, Mayorkas agreed that the illegal aliens who have entered under his watch are being treated better than the ones who came earlier and that it may be time to ‘make things right.’
“I don’t think that we have ignored the voices domestically that have spoken of the fact that we have undocumented individuals in the United States who have been undocumented and without work authorization for years and years, and yet people who cross the border and make a claim of asylum can proceed for authorization within 180 days after filing their asylum claim,” said Mayorkas.
The only thing that may be holding him and the administration back at this point is that there is an election coming up in less than seven months. President Biden’s handling of the border and illegal immigration is already a huge political liability. The wholesale issuance of EADs to millions of illegal aliens would not only amount to a de facto amnesty, but would almost certainly trigger an even more massive wave of illegal immigration.
However, issuing EADs to just about everyone who is here illegally would be a patently illegal abuse of executive authority, rendering key provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) null and void. The intent of IRCA was to protect the employment opportunities of American workers, to eliminate the magnet of jobs in the U.S. by making it illegal for employers to hire illegal aliens, and to impose financial and even criminal penalties on employers who do. The law has been largely ignored by every president since Ronald Reagan and, under Mayorkas’ tenure at DHS, not enforcing the employer sanctions provisions of IRCA is official policy. But granting illegal aliens permission to work would represent a whole new level of contempt for IRCA and the American workers it was meant to protect.
While it may be unlikely that the administration will yield to demands to grant EADs to long-term illegal aliens before the elections, Mayorkas’ statement could portend what might happen in a second Biden administration. Powerful mass amnesty advocacy groups are already demanding that the president grant parole and EADs to millions of illegal aliens who are already present in the United States. “Parole is a powerful tool for the U.S. president that some argue could be used to protect undocumented individuals already within the U. S,” opined the National Immigration Forum, last year. “[P]arole, and parole-in-place more specifically, is part of the conversation regarding ways that would allow undocumented people to access temporary protections,” NIF continued.
As FAIR has documented, Mayorkas and the administration he serves, have systematically ignored or subverted countless immigration laws and replace them with their own ideologically-driven policies – none more so than the administration’s unprecedented abuse of parole authority to create what amounts to a shadow immigration system.
Under the rubric of ‘fairness’ for more established illegal aliens, the idea of EADs for everyone cannot be ruled out.
