Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Great Reset

Many Migrants in Biden’s ‘Humanitarian’ Flights Scheme Coming in from Safe Countries and Vacation Wonderlands

Published

3 months ago

13 minute read

By Todd Bensman as published June 17, 2024 by the Center for Immigration Studies

In late 2022 and early 2023, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security launched one of the most unusual humanitarian programs in U.S. immigration history: it unilaterally began authorizing inadmissible Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (thus the shorthand name CHNV Program) and their immediate family members to fly commercially from foreign countries into more than 40 American airports.

The administration has used this legally dubious program to authorize more than 460,000 ostensibly endangered nationals of those four countries to fly directly from undisclosed airports abroad into some 45 U.S. airports from October 2022 through May 2024. They are then released on temporary humanitarian parole of renewable two-year periods with work permits, during which time they are assumed (but not required) to be applying for asylum.

From this massive “rescue” program’s inception, the Biden administration has claimed that its purpose was to provide temporary U.S. sanctuary “for urgent humanitarian reasons” for those facing persecution in their native countries, and thus reduce the incentive to pass through Mexico on “dangerous routes that pose serious risks to migrant’s lives and safety” on their way to illegally cross the U.S. border.

But new information that the Center for Immigration Studies has forced from the government through litigation now reveals that, while all participants are nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, or Venezuela, many are flying to the United States from 73 other nations. (See the list of countries provided by DHS here.)

The departure country list casts serious doubt on whether the Biden administration has used the humanitarian rescue flights program as it was sold to the American public. In fact, the new departure country information shows that many migrants from these four nationalities have been heading to the U.S. from some of the safest, most prosperous nations on Earth, some heralded worldwide as vacation wonderlands. They could not have been suffering urgent humanitarian problems there, nor were they anywhere near dangerous migration trails.

Economic Giants and Vacation Hotspots

CHNV nationals are flying to the U.S. from Iceland and from Fiji and from Greece.

They are flying from the wealthy European Union countries of France and Germany, from Finland and Norway, from the Netherlands and Switzerland, and from Sweden and Italy. They are flying from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Presumably, many Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans have reached these countries to settle and work.

The government’s list of 77 departure countries shows that, yes, ostensibly rescue-worthy Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans are indeed flying in from their own troubled countries to take their U.S. humanitarian protection, as most observers would presume.

But they are also getting authorizations to fly from beautiful Caribbean vacation hotspots like Barbados, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Martinique, St. Lucia. St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The publicly stated purposes of the CHNV program, also called the Advanced Travel Authorization (ATA) program, are at odds with the reality that many are departing from models of prosperous stability and safety, whose own residents could never possibly qualify for U.S. humanitarian protection, nor would ask for it.

“I would say this data is evidence that the parole program is not being used to help aliens flee to safety but, rather, as a secondary immigration system that has not been authorized by Congress,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, Director of Regulatory Affairs for the Center for Immigration Studies, who served as Senior Advisor in the Office of the Chief Counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“The Biden administration is likely paroling in aliens who are already ‘firmly resettled’ in safe and orderly countries but are nevertheless benefitting under the guise of urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons,” Jacobs said.

Withholding the true purpose of a major government program in this way is a serious disservice to the American public, she added.

“Congress delegated DHS limited authority to use parole only for urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons,” Jacobs said. “Misleading the public on the administration’s use of parole prevents voters from understanding the real impact of the administration’s policies and may prevent voters from holding the administration accountable for their abuse of the nation’s immigration laws.”

Managing Border Disorder or an Unauthorized Admissions Program?

In addition to humanitarian rescues, the government also cited a “significant public benefit” to the United States for its foreign flights program, that inadmissible aliens authorized to fly over the border into the U.S. would be less likely to illegally cross the southern border, thus lessening the chaos there.

But never disclosed until now is that the Biden DHS is also authorizing untold numbers to depart on U.S.-bound flights from many safe countries so far away from the U.S. border and Latin America that beneficiaries would never need to march the dangerous trails and crowd the U.S. border.

Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Venezuelans the U.S. government has cleared for departure are flying in from far-flung prosperous, low crime countries nowhere near the migrant trails of Latin America or the southern border, like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

Some are departing from Israel. Before the war with Hamas.

They are flying from Australia.

And from the oil-rich states of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The government is authorizing some number to fly in from African nations like South Africa, Morocco, and Senegal. Were any of these threatening to add their number to the southern border’s congestion?

Even Vietnam is on the departure country list.

Dispersed Around the World

Immigrants from all four nations apparently have dispersed all over the world seeking work and improved lifestyles. Perhaps things weren’t working out so well in adoptive countries when the Biden administration threw them a lifeline in the flights program. Europe is a good example.

For several years now, thousands of Cubans have flocked to illegally cross the European Union’s external borders, claiming asylum while seeking to work just as they have in the United States. Many have entered the Balkan countries through Serbia or Greece, popular illegal immigration portals of late, seeking eventual resettlement in Spain, Germany, France and elsewhere. While Greece has cracked down somewhat with reported pushbacks of illegal immigrants to Turkey, plenty of Cubans have found long-term residence in other European countries like Italy.

Venezuelans made up about 6 percent of all EU asylum applications in 2023, amounting to about 60,000, mostly in Spain. Unlike the Cubans, Venezuelans can fly to Europe visa-free for tourism and probably need not have crossed borders illegally for their asylum claims. Nicaraguans also have been known to head for Europe in increasing numbers since 2018.

While Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans are rarely deported from the safety and social welfare systems of Europe, perhaps some of them saw surer economic or family reunification prospects when the Biden DHS launched its flights program and decided on a lifestyle upgrade by coming to the United States.

“This information suggests that these people are firmly resettled and if they need to seek protection, then they can seek it in the countries they’re living in,” said Andrew Arthur, a Center fellow and former immigration judge. “If they are coming from anyplace other than Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, they’re simply trading up from the third country that they’re coming from. This literally has nothing to do with asylum claims or anything else.”

The Government’s Fight for Secrecy

The CBP public affairs office did not respond to the Center’s emailed questions asking for an explanation about the surprising diversity of those rescued from often safe and prosperous departure nations. The cold shoulder is no surprise.

The obvious Grand Canyon between the administration’s public justifications for its humanitarian flights program and what it is really doing might explain why the Biden government has fought hard in court to keep the list of departure nations under wraps.

For more than a year, CBP has refused to comply with a Center for Immigration Studies Freedom of Information Act request to name them. CBP lawyers were so steadfastly opposed to their release that they forced the Center into a long and tedious lawsuit. The effort has finally produced only the names of departure countries but little else the Center requested, such as the specific departure airports and the numbers of people leaving each for American airports.

Government lawyers gave the list of 77 countries but refused during settlement negotiations with the Center to provide even a list in rank order of departure volume. In the end, the agency would only agree to disclose the 77 countries in alphabetical order.

The administration was equally secretive about which U.S. airports were receiving the immigrants, and has never agreed to release them to date, although the Center was eventually able to divine that most were flying into Florida. (See “The Florida Gateway: Data Shows Most Migrant Flights Landing in Gov. DeSantis’s Sunshine State”.) The House Homeland Security Committee, which obtained the airport locations by subpoena, later released the information.

Colin Farnsworth, the Center’s Chief FOIA Counsel, said the litigation is now settled and no more information will be forthcoming. He explained, “Although the government had no legitimate claims for withholding the foreign airports the participants of the ATA program were flying from, and their respective departure volumes, CIS determined it was in the public’s interest to quickly obtain the list of related foreign countries by settling the lawsuit, instead of allowing the government to extensively delay the release of any records through a lengthy legal process.”

Related Topics:

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

More from this author
Alberta / 3 hours ago

Alberta government should reform hospital funding to help shorten wait times

Addictions / 6 hours ago

‘We just hand out pills’, father of overdose victim tells MPs about safer supply programs

Censorship Industrial Complex / 6 hours ago

Chinese firms show off latest police-state surveillance tech at security expo

Censorship Industrial Complex

Chinese firms show off latest police-state surveillance tech at security expo

Published on September 27, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Angeline Tan

45 Chinese firms have showcased their latest police-state products and technologies, with one expert warning that the communist nation is doing so to normalize their method of surveillance and have it adopted abroad.

45 Chinese firms have showcased their latest police-state products and technologies, including state-of-the-art CCTV, precise DNA-testing technology and intrusive facial tracking software, at the inaugural Public Security Tech Expo in Lianyungang, located in China’s Jiangsu province.

Hosted by China’s First Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security, the 6-day tech expo which began on September 7 showed off advanced technologies in the domains of “criminal technology, police protective equipment, traffic management equipment, anti-terrorism rescue, and command and communication,” according to the forum’s website.

The website’s official description says “the main purpose of holding the Public Security Tech Expo (Lianyungang) under the framework of the Forum is to deepen technical exchanges and international cooperation in the field of public security science and technology equipment, share useful experience in the application of science and technology equipment to public security practice, and jointly improve the ability and level of maintaining public security.”

One firm participating in the expo, Caltta Technologies, featured a project aimed at “helping” the southern African nation of Mozambique establish an “Incident Response Platform,” extolling its abilities to harness data in “rapid target location.”

Tech giant Huawei was also at the expo, boasting that its “Public Safety Solution” is currently used in more than 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia. The United States sanctioned Huawei in 2019, castigating the firm as “an arm” of the Chinese surveillance state.

The expo also saw China’s Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science show off its new high-tech DNA testing technologies. In 2020, Washington banned the institute from accessing some U.S. technology after a number of Chinese firms decried the institute as being “complicit in human rights violations and abuses.”

In 2018, the U.S. Treasury stated that residents of Xinjiang “were required to download a desktop version” of the app “so authorities could monitor for illicit activity.”

Communist China has been slammed for jailing over one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang – claims Beijing vehemently denies. Nonetheless, critics have pointed out how China’s surveillance technologies have been used to draconically suppress dissidents in the Xinjiang province.

During the expo’s opening ceremony, China’s police minister praised Beijing for training thousands of overseas police officers this past year – and pledged to aid in the training of thousands more over the coming year.

According to UCA News, “China is one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, with millions of CCTV cameras scattered across cities and facial recognition technology widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression.”

The same UCA News article added:

Its police serve a dual purpose: keeping the peace and cracking down on petty crime while also ensuring challenges to the ruling Communist Party are swiftly stamped out.

Notably, various foreign police officers said they hoped to use Chinese surveillance technology to police their own countries.

“We can learn from China,” said Sydney Gabela, a major general in the South African police service, according to UCA News.

“We wanted to check out the new technologies that are coming out so that we can deploy them in South Africa,” Gabela said.

China’s notoriety for being a highly-surveilled state goes back a long way. In 2023, The Economist ran an article detailing how the prevalence of CCTV cameras in Communist China, many bedecked with facial-recognition technology, “leave criminals with nowhere to hide.” A September 2019 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) also disclosed  that “the Chinese government has increasingly employed advanced technology to amplify its repression of religious and faith communities.”

The executive summary of the same USCIRF report stated:

Authorities have installed surveillance cameras both outside and inside houses of worship to monitor and identify attendees. The government has deployed facial recognition systems that are purportedly able to distinguish Uighurs and Tibetans from other ethnic groups. Chinese authorities have also collected biometric information—including blood samples, voice recordings, and fingerprints—from religious and faith communities, often without their consent. The government uses advanced computing platforms and artificial intelligence to collate and recognize patterns in the data on religious and faith communities. Chinese technology companies have aided the government’s crackdown on religion and belief by supplying advanced hardware and computing systems to government agencies.

Continue Reading

Business

EXCLUSIVE: Investment Giants Leveraged Red State Universities’ Endowment Funds To Back Anti-Oil Agenda, Report Finds

Published on September 27, 2024

By

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jason Cohen

Several asset managers leveraged two major Texas university systems’ endowment funds to advance anti-fossil fuel shareholder proposals in 2022 and 2023, according to a report from the conservative watchdog group American Accountability Foundation (AAF).

BlackRock-owned Aperio Group, Cantillon, former Vice President Al Gore-chaired Generation Investment Management, GQG Partners and JP Morgan Asset Management collectively manage approximately $4 billion for The University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) as of July, which handles the university systems’ endowments. Despite the company’s policy against it and Texas’ status as the leading crude oil and natural gas-producing state, UTIMCO’s asset managers backed over 150 shareholder resolutions under the environmental, social and governance(ESG) umbrella, including proposals that could undermine the oil and gas industry, according to documents AAF obtained through a public records request and shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Once again, woke ESG ideology has infected a public institution and hijacked its money for their own purposes. This is an outrageous betrayal of the public’s trust,” AAF president Thomas Jones told the DCNF. “[Republican Texas] Gov. Greg Abbott must take immediate action to end this nonsense. He must shake up the leadership at UT/A&M that let this happen and use his influence with UTIMCO to ensure that it never happens again.”

UTIMCO told the DCNF that the ESG and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)-related votes violate “a long-standing policy that prohibits using the endowments’ economic power to advance social or political agendas” and that a review found they consist of 0.3% out of around 45,000 proxy votes in recent years. The endowment manager added that it has since modified its guidelines after finding the violative votes and will impose them on all of its third-party investment managers before future proxy votes, and revoking voting authority for those that cannot follow them.

The company’s asset managers voted in favor of a total of 159 shareholder proposals between them that include “racial and gender pay gap reports, efforts to defund conservative candidates and pro-business trade associations, radical climate policy, targeting of gun purchasers, and proabortion initiatives,” according to the watchdog.

UTIMCO oversees the largest public endowment fund in the U.S., managing over $76 billion as of Aug. 31.

“UTIMCO’s mission is to ‘generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University Systems,’ yet these votes endorse political agendas that run contrary to the Systems’ best interests,” American Energy Institute CEO and former Republican Texas state Rep. Jason Isaac told the DCNF. “By supporting proposals that harm American energy producers, UTIMCO’s fund managers are violating their fiduciary responsibility.”

Texas leads the nation in crude oil and natural gas production and in 2023 was responsible for 43% of crude oil output, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, AAF found many examples of UTIMCO’s asset managers voting in favor of proposals aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) emissions and other actions to mitigate so-called climate change, which the watchdog alleges comes at the expense of producing value for investors.

For instance, at ExxonMobil’s May 2023 yearly shareholder meeting, Aperio Group voted in support of a proposal to recalculate its GHG emissions to account for the assets it has sold. The resolution asserted that “the economic risks associated with climate change exist in the real world rather than on company balance sheets” and argues that the investments ExxonMobil sells may lower emissions on paper but that they fail to actually help achieve the goal of keeping global temperatures from rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius — which is an objective of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement — potentially exposing the company and its stakeholders to what it calls “climate risk.”

Some of Aperio Group’s clients have access to customize their individual proxy voting policy, according to BlackRock. BlackRock itself voted against this ExxonMobil proposal on behalf of most of its clients.

AAF’s “report on UTIMCO’s investment practices should alarm every Texan who values our state’s proud oil and gas industry,” Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian told the DCNF. “It’s outrageous to see Texas university investments being used to support radical ESG agendas, decarbonization, and dangerous policies like Net Zero and the Paris Accord, which threaten our energy independence and economy. We must put an end to the woke political agendas that undermine the very foundation of Texas’ success and ensure our investments align with the values of hard-working Texans.”

Moreover, at defense contractor Raytheon Technologies’ yearly shareholder meeting in May 2023, J.P. Morgan Asset Management backed a proposal urging the company to publish a report on efforts to reduce GHG emissions in alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement.

“Raytheon Technologies creates significant carbon emissions from its value chain and is exposed to numerous climate-related risks,” it states. “Failing to respond to this changing environment may make Raytheon less competitive and have a negative effect on its cost of capital and shareholders’ financial returns.”

Isaac told the DCNF that UTIMCO’s “managers are discriminating against fossil fuel” companies through ESG investing based on the definition of “boycott” in Texas’ Senate Bill 13, which Abbot signed in 2021 and the former representative said he helped create.

The bill defines boycotting energy companies as refusing to engage or ending business with a company involved in fossil fuels “without an ordinary business purpose.” It also specifies actions aimed “to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with a company because the company” does business related to fossil fuels and fails to “pledge to meet environmental standards beyond applicable federal and state law.”

Isaac added that the asset managers “should be held accountable and placed on Texas’ list of “financial companies that boycott energy companies,” which mandates Texas public investment entities subject to SB 13 “avoid contracting with, and divest from, these companies unless they can demonstrate this would conflict with their fiduciary duties.”

The S&P Global Clean Energy Index, which includes companies that engage in energy production from renewable sources, has fallen about 7% so far in 2024, while the S&P 500 Energy Index, which features many oil and gas companies, has risen close to 3% in that same time.

Louisianans’ pension funds were similarly leveraged to push climate-related proposals within publicly traded companies, the DCNF reported in April, based on another public records request by AAF.

“UTIMCO’s asset managers’ apparent promotion of leftist objectives, including ESG, is extremely troubling and contrary to Texas law banning boycotts and discrimination against fossil fuels. The legislature must exercise oversight and hold UTIMCO accountable,” Republican Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison told the DCNF. “Governmental bodies, including their proxies, should not pursue objectives that harm the Texas economy and go against our values.”

Cantillon, GQG Partners, Texas A&M and Abbot’s office did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. Aperio Group, Generation Investment Management, JP Morgan Asset Management and the University of Texas declined to comment.

Continue Reading

Trending

X