Texas Governor Sends First Buses of Migrants to Chicago
Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent a bus full of migrants to Chicago this week to protest what he calls President Biden’s “inaction at the border.”
Two buses carrying more than 60 asylum seekers arrived at Chicago’s Union Station on Wednesday night.
Since April, Abbott has bussed more than 7,000 asylum seekers to Democratic cities on the East Coast to pressure Biden to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a statement, Abbott said Chicago will join Washington D.C. and New York City as an additional “drop-off location.”
Australia Raises Permanent Resident Cap by 35,000
The Australian government announced Friday it would increase its intake of permanent residents to 195,000, up by 35,000, as the country battles with a widespread labor shortage.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated staffing shortages across numerous industries, particularly in health care and agriculture, and workers from other countries are needed to fill open positions, the government said.
“Our focus is always Australian jobs first… but the impact of Covid has been so severe that even if we exhaust every other possibility, we will still be many thousands of workers short, at least in the short term,” Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said.
The increase will go into effect this fiscal year ending June 2023.
Immigration will drive all U.S. population growth by 2043
A new report by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that U.S. population growth will be fueled entirely by immigration in two decades’ time.
According to the report, by 2043, deaths will outnumber births in the United States, and immigration will account for all of the country’s population gain.
The report predicts that net immigration — the number of immigrants leaving the country in a year subtracted from the number of immigrants entering the U.S. that same year — will increase from 950,000 over the next decade to around 1.1 million by 2052.
Filipino Schools Resume In-Person Learning After Years of Shutdowns
Students in the Philippines fully resumed in-person learning for the first time in over two years, ending one of the world’s longest pandemic-related school shutdowns.
Philippine government officials and parents were wary of reopening classrooms because students could bring the virus back to their multi-generational homes, which could impact an already strained health care system.
Even pre-pandemic, Philippines school systems lacked resources, from a shortage of classrooms and teachers, to low wages for teachers, leaving millions of children who rely on the public school system with inadequate teaching.