Seismic change: How Covid-19 altered world events in 2020
By Helier Cheung
The year 2020 has been like no other. The coronavirus infected more than 67 million people, impacted 80% of jobs, and placed billions in lockdown.
It s tempting to imagine how 2020 would have turned out differently without a pandemic. What extra time would we have had with loved ones? What birthdays, weddings and milestones did we miss?
And while the crisis affected all of us personally, it also shaped news events around the world, with knock-on effects for millions.
Here are just four political issues, from four continents, which were altered by the pandemic.
Sen. Cruz Blocks Bill that Would Create TPS Pipeline from H.K.
12:22 pm EST
Late last Friday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz blocked a current bill that would effectively create an asylum pipeline for millions of Hong Kong citizens to come to the U.S. under Temporary Protection Status.
Sen. Cruz prudently stated that the legislation while helping some refugees flee persecution would pose a grave national security risk by allowing the Chinese Communist Party to exploit the system and insert spies and other communist actors into the U.S. population.
Cruz added that the legislation was part of a current political and big business movement to open U.S. borders, flood the already loose labor market, and would be used “to advance their long-standing goals on changing [US] immigration laws.”
19 Dec 2020
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), at the last minute on Friday, blocked a Democrat-backed bill that would have created a pipeline for Hong Kong citizens to come to the U.S. under Temporary Protection Status or asylum, which virtually would allow for a massive transfer of migrants into the country.
The bill, the Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act, Cruz said, would allow Democrats “to advance their long-standing goals on changing [US] immigration laws.”
Cruz said that the legislation would not only help refugees flee persecution but allow the Chinese Communist Party to exploit the system and insert spies into the U.S. population.
Was this anticipated?
While Cruz’s stance on immigration is known, this particular bill had been sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans and had moved through consensus in the US House of Representatives, so his objections may have been unexpected. China and Hong Kong are a few issues that lawmakers from both political parties in Washington find themselves agreeing upon and observers have noticed increasing bipartisan unity on these specific issues.
This bill was among the several moves that Washington D.C. was making against what it perceived as Beijing’s increasing control and violation of human rights, particularly in the case of Hong Kong. Cruz himself has called for more pressure on Beijing and had expressed solidarity with pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong in the past.
RTHK: Activists urge US to act on HK migration 7thspace.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from 7thspace.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.