National Populist Newsletter
August 27th - Sept. 3rd
News:
United States
Immigration
A record number of migrant families streamed across the U.S.-Mexico border in August, The Washington Post reported. The U.S. Border Patrol arrested at least 91,000 migrants who crossed as part of a family group in August, exceeding the one-month record of 84,486 in May 2019 during the Trump administration. It’s worth remembering that August is usually a month of lower levels of migration due to the extreme heat, so the fact that this many are coming despite the weather is even more shocking. The Border Patrol made more than 177,000 arrests along the Mexico border in August, up from 132,652 in July and 99,539 in June. This is even though the Biden Administration has multiple programs to streamline the process for thousands of migrants that are not counted, like the mobile app that allows 1,450 migrants to come to the U.S. lawfully daily and another program that brings in 30,000 Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela applicants every month.
Biden’s new FERM program, which is supposed to fast-track deportations, has deported just 80 family members out of 136,000 that Border Patrol processed between May and June. (CBS News)
House Republicans have set a deadline for their Department of Homeland Security funding bill, including a massive foreign worker expansion, to be amended. The $91.5 billion funding bill, as currently written, loosens H-2A visa rules so that more industries related to the agricultural sector could import foreign workers and rewrite the program so that jobs do not have to be seasonal or temporary. If Republicans keep the expansion, it will come as more than 44 million Americans are out of the workforce. (Breitbart)
The Los Angeles City Council approved a motion asking the City Attorney's Office to investigate whether Texas Gov. Greg Abbott committed any crimes when he sent 42 migrants on a 23-hour bus ride to downtown L.A. in June. (ABC 7)
The FBI is investigating more than a dozen migrants from Uzbekistan and other countries who entered the U.S. illegally via Mexico and then sought asylum, as U.S. intelligence officials found that they traveled with the help of a smuggler with ties to ISIS. (CNN)
The Department of Homeland Security says it will launch a "national campaign" to help work-eligible migrants get employment authorization, just as Democratic politicians are pushing for the administration to expand work permits to migrants. (Fox News)
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has warned the Biden Administration that the Garden State cannot take any migrants from New York City. "I don't see any scenario where we're going to be able to take in a program in Atlantic City or elsewhere in the state," Murphy said. (Fox News)
Brandon Estrada De Leon, a 20-year-old, foreign national who overstayed his visa, has been charged with abduction and three counts of rape in Virginia. While many pundits are questioning how he overstayed his visa without being caught, the more important question is how he got a visa in the first place. He received a temporary permit in October 2020, when few were handed out because of the Coronavirus. (Fox News)
Economy
A new report from Lending Club found that 61 percent of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, slightly more than the 59 percent who said they were in that situation last year. (CNBC)
The Economist reported that home prices have continued to rise even as interest rates increase. For the median family buying the median home, mortgage payments doubled from roughly 14 percent of monthly household income in 2020 to nearly 29 percent in June, the highest since 1985. Locked-in U.S. homeowners have invested more in fixing up their current homes. Remodeling expenditures in 2022 reached almost $570 billion, or about 2 percent of GDP, up by 40 percent in nominal terms from 2019. While The Economist blames a lack of supply, a significant reason is the vast increase in demand due to immigration.