Covid? What Covid? Biden slammed for saying priority would be bill to guide 11 million undocumented people to citizenship
President-elect Joe Biden was denounced on Tuesday, November 24, for saying in an interview that presenting an amnesty bill for people living in the country illegally would be a top priority but not mentioning the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden made the statement in an interview with NBC News. "I am going to make a commitment in the first 100 days, I will send an immigration bill to the United States Senate with a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people in America," the Democrat said.
Shortly after Biden's interview, newly-elected congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican from Staten Island, slammed the president-elect's statement in an interview with Fox News guest host Mark Steyn on Wednesday, November 25. "It is disheartening that this is his focus. It's not providing relief to the millions of Americans that are struggling right now, during this pandemic," Malliotakis said. The congresswoman recently unseated Democratic Representative Max Rose in the district representing Staten Island and certain parts of Brooklyn.
"It's not insuring that we help those small businesses that are hanging on by a thread due to government restrictions and mandated shutdowns. It's not how are we going to get this vaccine distributed to our front-line workers and our most vulnerable across the states. It is actually a policy that would help the citizens of other countries and not Americans. And it's very sad that he wants to dismantle the policies put in place by President Trump that have been effective in stemming the tide of illegal immigration," the congresswoman continued.
Malliotakis, a daughter of immigrant parents, also criticized Biden for other statements he had made before, suggesting that the Democrat wants to suspend deportations and stop any work on the southern border wall. "He is going to get a fight from the Republicans in Congress, who are very much pleased with the progress we've made under President Trump and don't want to unravel that," she vowed.
The President-elect, in his interview on Tuesday, also suggested that climate change and speeding federal financial assistance to state and local governments would also be a priority in his first 100 days of the presidency.
Other conservatives also denounced Biden's remark about his top priorities, including commentators in a Fox News panel on The Ingraham Angle. Pete Hegseth took an aim at Biden as "open borders and amnesty, climate shaming with John Kerry running around the world in his jets, and then bailouts for blue states."
Hegseth, a Fox & Friends weekend co-host, said: "He is the vehicle for the left... he has a list of things he needs to pay out to begin with." Podcast host Sara Carter added: "This is about America Last" making a reference to President Donald Trump's 'America First' policy. "This is putting America last and putting globalism forward," she added.
Biden, who has vowed to undo several of Trump's restrictive immigration policies, intends on his first day of the presidency to rescind Trump's travel bans targeting people from 13 countries, which are mostly either Muslim-majority nations or African nations.