If the Biden administration were trying to convince Americans it had little sympathy for the economic distress, growing shortages, and job uncertainty many are facing, one way to do it would be to offer an extreme amount of money to illegal immigrant families who claim they were victims of separations under Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy.
This sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Brace yourself. This is what the Biden administration has been trying to accomplish.
Perhaps extreme is too strong a word.
The following are the Wall Street Journal(emphasis in added)
Biden’s administration has reached out to immigrant families who were separated by Trump during his administration and are interested in offering them around. Compensation: $450,000 per person, according to people familiar with the matter, as several agencies work to resolve lawsuits filed on behalf of parents and children who say the government subjected them to lasting psychological trauma.
U.S. The U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services consider payments This could add up to nearly $1 million per familyPeople familiar with the situation said that although the numbers may change, they are likely to remain the same. People said that most families who illegally crossed from Mexico for asylum sought refuge in the U.S. with one parent or one child. The people stated that many families will likely receive smaller payments depending on their situation.
Although the numbers aren’t final, the payout could reach the staggering amount of more than $1 billion.
That’s a whole lot of cheese for what the families say were health, mental and otherwise, problems caused by actions they themselves decided to inflict on their children when they made the decision to enter the country illegally.
Nonetheless, in a “complicated [and] complex piece of litigation,” 940 legal claims have been filed by families who say they were “forcefully broken up” after crossing into the United States from Mexico. The families filing the claims say their children were traumatized and suffered from a range of ailments — including “anxiety” and a “fear of strangers” — all apparently justifying the average claim of $3.4 million payout per family.
Although the Biden administration is currently in negotiations to come to an agreement regarding the claims, some are still having trouble stomaching that payouts exceed what 9/11 victims received.
Other people said senior departmental officials were in alignment on the amount and disputed the 9/11 comparison, given that the U.S. government hadn’t been responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The 9/11 victim compensation fund averaged awards to the dead of around $2 million, tax-free, at the time an unprecedented payout, the administrator of the fund has said.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), representing at least one of the families in the case, believes the payout isn’t enough; the families should also be given a pathway to remain in the country past the three year grace period they’ll be afforded should the deal go through.
“President Biden has agreed that the family separation policy is a historic moral stain on our nation that must be fully remedied,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s immigrant-rights project and a lead negotiator on one of the lawsuits. “That remedy must include not only meaningful monetary compensation, but a pathway to remain in the country.”
Meanwhile, Americans are staring at increasingly empty store shelves; being told to lower their consumer expectations; are being fired or forced to quit their jobs over vaccine mandates; and watching helplessly as the Biden administration attempts to address the massive supply chain problem by fining cargo ships stuck offshore, all while Biden’s Secretary of Transportation finally deigns to make an appearance after months on leave.
An opportunist might think that giving people who violate the law large sums of money could actually encourage them to break more laws and make it easier for others to do the same. An intelligent person may agree.
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