You’re over sixty, your children are grown, and yet you’ve been told you have some “new dependents” that you are required to take care of. “I haven’t done anything to add any new dependents,” you say? Sorry, but if you voted for Biden, you have, in effect, given us all “new dependents.”
The general definition of a “dependent” is “a person who depends on, or needs, ‘someone’ or ‘something’ for aid, support, favor, etc.; someone who contributes all or a major amount of necessary financial support.” Since the 2020 election, you are that “someone” or “something” who will fund the “needs” of those millions who’ve crossed the Rio Grande River into our country carrying not much else, but the necessary wrist bracelet issued by a Mexican cartel.
Those cartels, incidentally, have made billions (yes, billions with a capital “B”) from the Biden administration’s open border policy.
From that moment on, they meet the general definition of being a “person who depends on someone or something for aid, support, favor,” etc.
The question is: Can taxpayers – who are and will be paying for them – deduct them as dependents on their tax returns?
While the IRS limits deductions for dependents to someone who is a “qualified child or relative,” it would be but a tiny step for the Biden administration’s IRS to include these border crossers as our/your dependents.
The other question is: How many of these “dependents” are there?
Well, here is what we think we know: In fiscal 2021 there were 2,265,174 “arrivals”; fiscal 2022: 3,372,732; fiscal 2023: 3,970,318. The cumulative number of border crossers reaches 10,075,177, if the first nine months of the Biden team’s time in office (February 2021-September 30, 2021) are counted.
That number is greater than the population of every state except California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina.
Add to that number the “encounters” and “gotaways” the Border Patrol isn’t quite sure of, and there may be an additional 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 more border crossers who’ve jumped the line in that time period.
Virtually all of whom can now be considered dependent upon your aid.
How does the Biden team count the number of “gotaways?” And, if they know the number, why were they not “encountered?
Who know? Certainly not Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who can’t and/or doesn’t offer any numbers to any Congressional question when asked.
Even if you read this piece in a quick five minutes, 38 additional dependents will have crossed the U.S. border.
All of them will now be dependents of state and local government.
In 2023, 91% were single adults, mostly men, with just 5% being families.
Where are they coming from?
The countries include Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Haiti, China, Angola, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and even Iran. I believe young males from as many as 130 of the 204 (or so) countries counted by the UN have crossed the southern border in the last three years.
Since the October 7 Hamas slaughter of some 1,400 men, women, and children in Israel, there have been 100 Syrians and 50 Iranians “encountered” at the border, while the number of “gotaways” is unknown, there were at least 100 terrorists listed among the “known.”
Taxpayers should remember that this president signed a Democrat-led legislation (Vice President Kamala Harris signed the deciding Senate vote, as all 50 Republican Senators voted against it) cynically calling itself the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, giving the president the ability to hire an additional 87,000 IRS agents, whose job, by the way, will not be trying to prevent border crossers.
Their job will be making sure you pay your “fair share” of your new dependents’ tax burden.
When you say THIS president, it suggests that our last president did something different.
No 2023 statistics are yet available but the following compares the last 2 years of the Trump Administration with first 2 years of the Biden Administration:
Total Arrivals:
Trump (FY 2020-2021): 6.4 million
Legal entries: 2.8 million
Apprehensions: 3.6 million
Biden (FY 2021-2022): 7.3 million
Legal entries: 2.4 million
Apprehensions: 4.9 million
Asylum Seekers:
Trump (FY 2020-2021): 427,000
Biden (FY 2021-2022): 344,000
Refugee Admissions:
Trump (FY 2020-2021): 57,000
Biden (FY 2021-2022): 17,800
Observations
Apprehensions:
Apprehensions increased under Biden, but are below the levels observed during the peak years of the Obama administration.
Asylum seekers:
The number of asylum seekers initially surged under Biden but has since declined. Overall Asylum seekers have increased significantly in recent years, with a peak under Trump in FY 2021.
Refugee admissions:
Refugee admissions remain significantly lower under Biden than Trump's early years.
Overall arrivals and legal entries have fluctuated over the past 20 years, with a peak in the mid-2000s and a decline since then.
The Asylum program needs to be revamped along with other immigration reforms. CONGRESS has the power to enact and amend immigration laws (who is eligible to immigrate to the United States, setting quotas for categories of immigrants, and creating pathways to citizenship). The extremists in both parties oversimplify the problem and fuel divisiveness which prevents Congress from legislating obvious reforms that the more responsible legislators on both sides of the aisle can agree are necessary. It's time we encourage/compel legislators to do the hard work of enacting informed, considered, meaningful bipartisan solutions to fix immigration policy rather than continue to to paralyze Congress with divisive identity politics.
If only there was a way to transport them immediately to the cities and precincts that voted for this...