Rep. Ilhan Omar, (D-MN), a founding member of the far-left “Squad” on Capitol Hill, declared Monday that all illegal immigrants in the United States should possess a pathway to citizenship.
We must create a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented people living here. Met with activists with @Chirla, who have been fasting for days to push for a pathway to citizenship. Immigrants get the job done,” Omar wrote on social media following her meeting with activists from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).
Omar was born in Somalia and fled the country’s civil war when she was eight. After the next four years, Omar lived in a refugee camp in Kenya and later moved to the U.S. in the 1990s. She settled in Minneapolis in 1997.
As Fox News notes:
The Pew Research Center estimated in April that the population of illegal migrants in the U.S. stabilized at 10.5 million in 2017. They also wrote that a rising share of illegal aliens came to the U.S. legally but overstayed their visas.
According to data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency “encountered 178,622 persons attempting entry” along the southwestern border in April of this year alone, up 3% from March.
Omar’s remarks come after the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it made approximately 900,000 encounters through May for fiscal year 2021.
Omar made headlines in January for leading dozens of House Democrat lawmakers in demanding for coronavirus relief measures to include recurring stimulus payments that extend to those with Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN), which includes illegal aliens.
The lawmakers wrote in a letter to President Joe Biden at the time:
These payments boosted the economy by increasing spending at all income levels, and the most among low-income people, who spent this infusion of disposable income primarily on food, rents, and utilities. This cash assistance was used very quickly, with low-income individuals spending more than forty percent of their payments within the first ten days. As aid ran out, up to eight million people, disproportionately Black and Latino adults and children, were forced into poverty.