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2020 Hopeful Jay Inslee Has A New Climate Change Plan — More Immigration

REUTERS/Stephen Lam

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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Washington Gov. Jay Inslee unveiled his plan to center all U.S. foreign policy around one goal — fighting global warming.

Inslee’s plan includes overhauling the U.S. immigration system to admit more asylum-seekers and refugees, particularly from Central America, which he claims is being ravaged by global warming.

“Governor Inslee’s plan will adapt America’s immigration policy to the reality of climate migration,” reads Inslee’s 50-page climate-centered foreign policy plan released Wednesday.

Inslee, who’s running for president, claimed Central American farmers were starving because climate change ruined crop yields, making them “climate change refugees.” The World Bank predicts 4 million Central American “climate refugees” by 2040, Inslee said.

“We know that we have mass migrations coming our way,” Inslee, a Democrat, said in a speech Wednesday. “Today, we are seeing climate migration on our southern border.”

Inslee launched his presidential bid completely centered on tackling global warming, which he called a “demon” in his speech. Inslee previously put out a $9 trillion plan to decarbonize the U.S. economy. (RELATED: Trump Spoke With Prince Charles For More Than An Hour. Here’s What They Talked About)

Democratic presidential candidate and Washington State Governor Jay Inslee speaks during the California Democratic Convention in San Francisco, California

Democratic presidential candidate and Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee speaks during the California Democratic Convention in San Francisco, California, June 1, 2019. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Much of Inslee’s immigration plan involved reversing Trump administration policies, including raising the cap on refugees the U.S. accepts every year and allowing migrants to remain in the U.S. while asylum claims are processed.

The Trump administration put these policies in place to clamp down on what it saw as abuses in the asylum-seeking process. A Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found many immigrants make false asylum claims in order to gain entry to the U.S.

Loopholes let “people with suspect asylum claims … make their way into the interior of the United States and disappear,” one expert told TheDCNF.

Immigration hawks say rampant abuse of U.S. asylum laws is tantamount to “open borders” — a label Democrats have rejected despite pushing policies to make it harder to control migration flows.

Inslee’s plan includes: “Raising the ceiling for annual refugee admissions to the United States to allow for the acceptance of historic numbers of refugees, meeting and eventually exceeding the target of 110,000 refugees that was set during the final year of the Obama Administration.”

Inslee also called for removing U.S. troops from the southern border, restoring temporary protected status for Central Americans, increasing asylum processing infrastructure and giving more foreign aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

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