In an economy that is spluttering, with inflation rising, with the supply chain in chaos, what does the Biden administration do? They instruct the Secretary of Homeland Security to make sure illegal aliens get jobs over American workers. That is arguably insane. Hans Von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation has the goods on Biden and Mayorkas.

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Von Spakovsky: Alejandro Mayorkas has been completely ineffective as the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The unprecedented border crisis and the resulting massive, unchecked, chaotic influx of illegal aliens and illegal drugs into the United States prove that beyond doubt.

But his latest directive on the employment of illegal aliens demonstrates his contempt for both the rule of law and the well-being of American workers. One key to deterring illegal immigration is enforcing the federal laws that bar illegal aliens from working and punish employers who knowingly hire them. As the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals pointed out in Texas v. U.S. (2015), Congress “forcefully made combating the employment of illegal aliens central” to federal immigration policy by “establishing an extensive employment verification system designed to deny employment to aliens who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

In fact, by outlawing the employment of illegal aliens, Congress was following its “stated goal of closely guarding access to work authorization and preserving jobs for those lawfully in the country,” i.e., citizens and legal immigrants.

Yet Mayorkas’s Oct. 15 directive to the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Customs Service instructs them to cease immediately all “mass worksite operations” against employers that result “in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers.”

Notice that Mayorkas cannot bring himself to admit that only those working illegally are arrested in these law enforcement actions. Rather, he complains that these “highly visible operations” are a “misallocation” of the department’s “enforcement resources.” In other words, stopping illegal employment, which cheats American citizens out of job opportunities, is a waste of time and money.

Rather than stop employers from knowingly hiring illegal aliens, Mayorkas insists DHS should direct “intense focus” to making sure that “exploitive” employers are not paying illegal aliens “substandard wages” or “imposing unsafe working conditions.”

With this directive, Mayorkas is giving employers a green light to hire as many illegal aliens as they want to. They will be safe from prosecution as long as the employers do not pay the aliens substandard wages or allow them to work under unsafe conditions.

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While Mayorkas deplores “unscrupulous” employers creating an “unfair labor market” by paying illegal workers substandard wages, he apparently has no concern for the “unfair labor market” he is creating for American workers by giving employers permission to violate the law and hire illegal aliens instead of qualified citizens.