by Paul Benson
Trump shutdown the government between December 22nd and January 25th, 2019, due to a lack of agreement on funding the U.S. – Mexico Border wall. So, Trump’s solution to get what he wants, despite the division he’s sowed, is to shut down the government. According to NPR.org and various other sources, this recent shutdown has lasted a full month and has been the longest shutdown in U.S. history. A government should not be designed to fail and the U.S. government shutdowns only started in 1980 under President Carter.
David Wessel, Director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, said on NPR that the government shutdown is costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars. According to the Department of Labor’s news release, Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims, “UI benefits filed by former Federal civilian employees totaled 25,419 in the week ending January 12.”
On January 25th, Outside the Oval Office, the day after the senate failed to come to an agreement on reopening the government, Trump announced he would sign a bill to temporarily reopen the government and to compensate the unpaid workers. But, if no funds are allocated to the building of a wall at the U.S. – Mexico border, Trump plans to shut down the government again on February 15th.
Luckily, Parkland College has been able to function moderately well without the federal government. That being said, complications have occurred for some.
Tim Wendt, Director of Enrollment Services, said, “the Department of Education hasn’t really been impacted…some agencies that work with Federal Student Aid (when applying for financial aid) were impacted, but most of those have been resolved now. The initial issues were with the IRS, for tax information, the Selective Service with registration confirmation, and the Department of Homeland Security for verification of eligible non-citizens. As I said, now we either have workarounds in place or the issues have been fixed.”
“All of our appointments were put on hold.”
More complications occurred for Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) testing.
Mike Behrens, Assessment Center Director, said about the first week of testing, “We received an email that said we would not be able to give any tests for FAA licensing that week. So all of our appointments were put on hold.” Behrens explained that some test takers came from hours away only to be told that they made the trip for nothing.
“Later on that week or the beginning of next week, we got a second email saying that the federal government said we can test, however candidates had to be aware that their licensing process might not be as fast or even possible during this government shutdown,” Behrens said. “The only problem now is that a testing candidate for the FAA, if they don’t have their previous score report from a past or a failed FAA test, they cannot get a new one due to the government shutdown. Which means they can’t go on and either renew or reapply for their FAA license.” Now that the government is temporarily open, FAA tests are fully available.
International students traveling to the U.S. may have been inconvenienced the most.
Parkland student, Rif Achmad, experienced what it was like to travel back to the U.S. during the government shutdown. Achmad said, “Seeing…more and more foreigners coming to immigration…the line just gets longer and longer and just doesn’t stop. From there I knew, it’s going to take a long time just for me to get through immigration.” Of Immigration Achmad said, “There were hundreds of people lining up and there’s only one TSA worker that’s working.” After 40 minutes of waiting in a stagnant line, Achmad remembered that he didn’t have to go through immigration since he was a U.S. citizen. For U.S. citizens the line was almost nonexistent. Achmad was in an airport in Nevada that he was rerouted to stop at instead of taking a nonstop flight to O’Hare. He had to rebuy bus tickets, because of the delay. To make matters worse, Achmad said, “I literally landed 12 hours before my classes started.” So, for Achmad and other students traveling back by plane, it’s been a rocky start to the semester with plenty of jet lag and confusion to go around.
In spite of many troubles, it’s relieving to know that Parkland was able to function and resolve minor federal complications during the government shutdown.
According to NPR, We started 2019 with 400,000 federal workers working without pay. Thankfully, the government is now reopened and, hopefully, it will stay open.
Now the questions remain: will Americans pay for the wall? Haven’t Americans paid enough already? Can politicians agree on anything? Only time will tell.
