Winfree’s comments reflect the Republican Party’s general panic around immigration, and immigrants themselves.
Now, as Fox News reports, a conservative watchdog group is criticizing the program’s existence, saying that since the funds came from the federal government, the Biden Administration essentially subsidized the fund. Paul Winfree, the president and CEO of the Economic Policy Innovation Center, told Fox News, “The Senate is releasing a budget supplemental that includes a bipartisan deal on the border. However, the administration has been actively encouraging illegal immigration by using COVID money from the SLFRF to provide cash assistance, housing, legal aid, and other benefits to undocumented immigrants.” Winfree continued, “Until Congress claws back this money, it will continue to serve as a magnet for illegal immigration.”
Winfree’s comments reflect the Republican Party’s general panic around immigration and immigrants themselves. The report closes by making a rather strange request, tying together border security spending and emergency funds for Israel. “Congress would be wise to stop the waste and abuse in the Bidenomics Slush Fund, turn off the spending spigot subsidizing undocumented immigration, and use the rescinded budget authority to pay for its other priorities like emergency spending for Israel and real border security.”
Activists like Maria Teresa Kumar, president and chief executive of Voto Latino, understand the danger in that kind of rhetoric. Kumar told The Guardian via email: “Trump may say the quiet parts loud, but he’s far from alone…Today, we see elected Republicans use rhetoric and policies for political expediency at the cost of unification. There is no doubt that we are living in a multicultural democracy – the first in history. Instead of embracing this superpower that will serve us well on the world stage, they choose division that hurts millions of fellow citizens.”
Source: Black Enterprise
