With just months left in office, the Biden administration is attempting to neglect low-income Americans in favor of illegal aliens one last time.
The White House recently issued a proposed rule that would make illegal aliens eligible to apply for government programs meant to assist low-income Americans struggling to pay for a college education. The rule, if enacted, would allow illegal aliens to apply for assistance through programs such as Talent Search, the Educational Opportunity Centers program, and the Upward Bound program, according to Breitbart News. All of these programs were enacted by elected U.S. legislators in order to support American citizens who needed help financing their education. Now, like other programs passed by Congress, they are being misused by the Biden administration to promote their anti-borders agenda.
It is not a secret that the extremely high costs of education are a huge obstacle for many Americans. The average college student in the United States currently spends more than $38,270 per year on tuition, books, supplies, and living expenses, according to the Education Data Initiative. The high costs of attending college in the United States have forced millions of American into insurmountable debt and prevented them from buying homes or starting families. Many young Americans rely on the aforementioned programs to help them cover some of these grueling costs, but will now have to compete with illegal aliens for these limited opportunities if this rule goes into effect. The proposal to allow illegal aliens access to programs meant for low-income Americans belies the oft-repeated canard that illegal aliens provide a net-economic benefit to the United States.
Anti-borders activists and politicians love to promote the claim that the importation of illegal aliens and low-skilled migrants grows the economy, while at the same time demanding their inclusion in government welfare programs, and even vehemently opposing efforts to make sure that immigrants allowed into the United States are not dependent on welfare. These contradictions exist not only at the national level, but also at the state and local levels, where sanctuary cities that spent years extolling the benefits of illegal immigration are now spending billions in taxpayer funds to care for illegal aliens.
The reality is that every nation has a finite amount of resources, even one as wealthy and prosperous as the United States. While left-wing activists and politicians will claim that the United States can afford to take care of its own citizens while also caring for large numbers of foreign nationals, the simple truth is that the more money and resources that the country devotes to illegal aliens, the less it is able to devote to its own citizenry. This is true when it comes to access to government programs as well as jobs and housing.
As Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi said last month, “We have a lot of immigrants coming into the country taking jobs,” which he claimed was driving down the country’s unemployment rate. These telling comments follow an analysis conducted in June, which found that immigrants have been the beneficiaries of roughly three-fourths of employment growth since the Covid-19 pandemic.
There is also evidence that the ongoing immigration crisis is one of the driving forces behind record increases in homelessness and skyrocketing housing prices. That importing millions of illegal aliens in a short period of time would siphon off employment and housing opportunities is common sense backed up by data. The same is true of government programs. If the Biden administration succeeds in expanding access to this trio of education-related programs to illegal aliens, it will mean less Americans receive the help they need to afford to attend college, and it will also mean more taxpayer largess going to illegal aliens.
Awarding government handouts to illegal aliens is bad policy and morally bankrupt, but it also perfectly fits the modus operandi of this administration. In 2022, the Biden White House terminated the public-charge rule, which prevented foreign nationals from accessing welfare programs. Earlier this year, the administration unilaterally expanded access to the Affordable Care Act to include illegal aliens, even though the original framers of the law swore this would never happen.
Programs meant to help improve access to healthcare and education for low-income American citizens would have never passed Congress or been supported by the public if they understood that these programs would later be abused by a lawless administration to benefit illegal aliens at the expense of Americans. Expanding these programs for illegal aliens is a bastardization of the original intent of these laws and a metaphorical middle finger to struggling Americans.
Instead of giving a hand-up to Americans in need, the Biden administration has consistently misappropriated welfare benefits to give handouts to illegal aliens they believe will benefit them politically in the future. This is a gross abuse of power and a slap in the face to the citizens they are supposed to be serving.
Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.
