That little billionaire scamp Elon Musk is using Twitter, the social media platform he bought, ruined, and rebranded, to spread lies again. This time he’s spreading a rightwing conspiracy theory about immigration and insisting it means Joe Biden did TREASON. Of course, Joe Biden gets accused of treason at least 20 times daily by Republicans in Congress, so the impact of the accusation is a mite diluted.
As Judd Legum details in his Popular Information newsletter, Musk amplified a rightwing “news” tweet that lied about a completely legal immigration program, adding additional lies and an extra bogus claim about undocumented foreigners voting, even though nearly every bit of it was a lie. The punctuation appears to be blameless, maybe.
So here’s Musk’s retweet, all of which is bullshit.
Musk repeated a story from serial fabulist Colin Rugg, who co-owns wingnut news aggregation / aggravation site “Trending Politics.” Rugg claimed that Joe Biden has “secretly flown 320,000 illegal immigrants from Latin American airports to 43 U.S. cities” and called it “Treason.” Musk added his own spin:
“Treason indeed! Ushering in vast numbers of illegals is why Secretary Mayorkas was impeached by the House.
“They are importing voters. This is why groups on the far left fight so hard to stop voter ID requirements, under the absurd guise of protecting the right to vote.”
Let’s just clear up the lies one by one, shall we?
1: Rugg is lying about a completely not-secret “expanded humanitarian parole program” allowing immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to legally come to the US for two years and get work permits. The program is so “secret” that Joe Biden announced it at the White House on January 5, 2023.
“Parole” in the immigration context means “temporary permission to be in the USA.” It has nothing to do with the criminal sense of “parole,” no matter how loudly idiots on Twitter scream.
Secret programs aren’t generally listed on the White House website, nor are they announced by press releases (both from the White House and Homeland Security) that are then covered in the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Nor are secret programs included among the scrolling set of news alerts at the top of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services home page.
2: People in the program have to have a US sponsor and pass a security background check. They apply using the “CBP One” phone app. (To avoid confusion: That app is also used to let people outside the US apply for appointments to claim asylum at the border, but the humanitarian parole program isn’t itself the same as asylum. Those granted parole can apply for asylum while they’re here, though.)
3: Musk’s claim that “they are importing voters” is of course bullshit too. Oh, we’ve been over that so many times. Noncitizen voter registration is vanishingly rare, and the few times it happens (almost always by accident) it’s easily detected. Noncitizen voting is pretty much nonexistent. Rightwing claims that it’s common, however, are endemic.
4: Despite some scary photoshoops showing a vast armada of airliners supposedly full of illegal immigrants (again, these folks are here legally), Joe Biden isn’t shipping anyone to the US. Those who qualify for the program have to pay for their own flights on scheduled commercial airliners. No chartered flights or mass migration.
If Musk got his wish in the tweet below, video of people in the program would simply show an international arrivals terminal at a US airport. You’d have no idea which travelers have what paperwork unless the camera zoomed in on it.
At least that tweet got flagged with a “community note” pointing out that it’s all lies, so hooray for that.
As Legum pointedly points out, “The reason why no one noticed all the planes chartered by the Biden administration is that they don’t exist.”
5: Musk also lied in a follow-up tweet that
“This administration is both importing voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants.
“It is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11. Just a matter of time.”
Again, as Legum points out, those granted parole are indeed screened. They’re probably given more scrutiny than half the idiots with blue checkmarks on Twitter. And in case you needed the reminder, the 9/11 terrorists entered the US on ordinary travel visas, and we’ve completely revamped vetting of both tourists and immigrants since then. That was the whole point of creating the Department of Homeland Security and putting the immigration system inside it!
And finally, for all the whining that Traitor Joe Biden is doing Treason, humanitarian parole is entirely within a president’s powers under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the DHS secretary to
parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case‐by‐case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States.
As Legum notes, every president since 1952 has used it when there have been natural disasters, wars, and other troubles that would make it dangerous for foreign nationals to go home. Except Donald Trump, of course.
So let’s add it all up: Musk and other rightwing crazies are all twisted into a knot over legally admitted immigrants who are screened, have sponsors in the US to help them, have permission to work, and who pay for their own flights. They can’t vote, and are probably less likely to blow up a federal building with a daycare in it than your average militia loon.
It’s pretty outrageous, just not how Elon thinks it is.
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[Popular Information / Elon Musk photo via Steve Jurvetson, Creative Commons License 2.0, modified using DreamStudio AI.]
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