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Immigration Breaking Point?
With Democratic control of the White House and Congress for most of the last 14 years, I am surprised that there has not been more of an overt push to legalize the 12 million illegal aliens. A conservative Supreme Court majority remains our most important first line of defense against what I have long expected—some federal judge concocting a ruling that it is imperative that illegals be given full citizenship.
Many assumed we were headed that way as a result of the 1975 decision in Plyer v. Doe (5-4 majority opinion by Brennan) holding that Texas had to admit children of illegals to public schools under the Fourteenth Amendment because equal access applies to “people” not “citizens.” Because the feds were clearly not enforcing the immigration laws, the court decided to make policy concerning children in the country illegally through no fault of their own. The justices openly opined that if we are not going to kick them out, there is no benefit in keeping them uneducated (even if it is patently unfair to dump the additional cost of federal failures on a state budget).
From that decision, we soon got the universal policy of not being allowed to ask about citizenship status by any federal, state, or local government agency. A foreigner can crash the border and thus say “screw you” to American law and policy and immediately demand and receive social welfare benefits for an indefinite period of time.
The US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO used to agree that a large pool of unskilled illegal immigrant labor has a downward ratchet effect on wages. The Chamber tacitly approved the supply of illegal labor by opposing measures to make employers liable for hiring illegals. In contrast, the AFL-CIO wanted more accountability on employers to protect wages and opportunities for American workers. But now the AFL-CIO is increasingly in service to the Democratic Party instead of its members and has therefore softened its stance considerably.
Like big business and organized labor, most of our country’s largest organized interest groups now tend to favor tolerance for illegal immigration even though the great majority of Americans recognize that it is not in their interest nor in the national interest to let this continue. As with an increasing number of other issues, the will and interests of the people are not respected by institutions and persons with political power when it comes to illegal immigration.
The Biden administration is apparently counting on the same logic as the Plyer court—it is too hard to send them back so we will just have to accept them and ultimately let them leak onto the voting rolls. The new wave seems designed to break resistance through sheer numbers. From today’s column by Byron York.:
The big number is that the Biden administration has admitted 1,049,532 illegal border crossers into the United States in the time it has been in office. That is greater than the population of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, D.C., and of the president’s home state of Delaware. It’s a lot of people. And remember, it is the total number of illegal border crossers allowed to stay in the United States, not the total number caught at the border.
Stunning.
Is it too late to change course, enforce the law and undo the incentives to cross illegally? The world economy may well be headed for a crash so the attraction of gate-crashing the USA may increase in the coming months. Will the size of the illegal tide wake people up or will we give up?
It is not impossible to tighten hiring laws and end asylum application abuse. It is not impossible to tighten border security. It is not impossible to significantly reduce the incentives to enter the USA illegally. Such changes would be consonant with the will of the majority and the national interest but can we overcome the entrenched ideological and financial interests that are in the way?
How did it get this way?
Published in General
One of the methods used to squash outrage by people in those individual states facing huge expenses that must be born whenever millions of people infiltrate a given state was the Fed government’s assurances that the states would have a good deal of those expenses paid off by the Fed government.
But then lo and behold – those payments always lagged behind the actual expenditures.
When amnesty proposals were approved, again on the federal level, then the “illegal immigrants” were no longer considered to be illegal, and since payments as refunds were to be made only regarding expenditures on illegal populations, the Feds weaseled out of ever making payments.
Way back circa the early 1990’s, this meant that Calif missed out on some 28 billion dollars of refunds.
The Left has proven over and over again that it has no interest in the will of the people. Even when polling results are disastrous, they keep muddling along, oblivious to the destruction they are causing and the number of people they are alienating. And those things you mention that you believe are not impossible–dealing with them would be such a monumental task that I can’t imagine their happening. Sigh.
It is not that hard to imagine. A GOP President and Congress could:
With time limits on benefits and a free federal subsidy for transportation to leave voluntarily the incentives drop. Lastly, we could do something like the last amnesty effort for those who have been here for years–step up and confess for a nominal criminal record that bars voting or holding public office but no fines or jail time or deportation if no record of other criminal activity–a permanent alien. Don’t step up and get caught after that? Then get deported.
Just spitballing here but there are options none of which seems impossible.
Ohh-h-hhhhh. You mean with the GOP in charge. Yes, I like your ideas very much. We would just have to hope that our guys were not concerned about hurting the feelings of the Left. . . .
Also, outlaw or heavily tax remittances from the US to major sources of illegals, like Mexico and the Central American countries. Plus, actually penalize employers caught with illegal workers in their employ. Oh, and require both voter ID and one-day in-person polling places to vote.
The upside of Biden’s in-your-face open borders policy is that it is such a disaster and such a departure from anything resembling a consensus policy is that accommodating Democratic feelings is much less of a priority than it might have been otherwise.
Not to get too cynically partisan but I would have fewer qualms than most Republicans by stressing the point that undereducated inner-city youths desperately need the kind of entry-level work experience that illegals have scarfed up and whose presence depresses wages. The idea that the Black Caucus should be pro-illegal influx is nuts. They should pay a price.
Under-educated city youth make such incredible fortunes via their gangsta activities that many inner city police chiefs are in on the game. Without that being the case, the gangs in America’s cities would have been busted apart long ago.
Have you ever watched the news and heard that such and such an indigent Afr American family lost their 2 year old to a drive by, and no one in the neighborhood saw what kind of car drove by, who drove it, or whether or not the family had a teen or two which a local gang desired to teach a lesson?
Novelist Elizabeth George tackled this scenario in her masterpiece: “What_Came_Before_He_Shot_Her”
(Full description is at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31364.What_Came_Before_He_Shot_Her )
Despite the success of her prior novels, George had to wage quite a fight with her editors to persuade them that this needed book was one she would write, with or without their endorsement.
In the end the editors folded. And so some very important truths were revealed.
Let’s call it 20 million, not 12. Biden might add 8 million in his 4 years. Title 42 is ending and there are food riots on 4 continents with the bad harvests ahead of us. Buckle up and watch your Corn(yn)-hole.
Republicans have controlled the House for 8 of those 14 years.
Coryn if proof the GOP does not care. Does not care. They don’t want to stop it.
Some good news.
National Review.
You get the feeling that there may be some critical mass building. RINOs no longer believing Dem propaganda about inevitable minority status for the GOP unless they rapidly caved to identity politics, no longer being terrified of being called xenophobes and racists for endorsing rational border enforcement.
“Latinx” voters are not drinking the Koolaid.
At the present rate if trends continue, the GOP will be far more diverse and the Dems will be exposed as a tool of corrupt privileged, entitled white people propped up by a dwindling mass of exploited poor black suckers.
Open borders, high crime, economic destruction and kindergartners exploring sexual identities with the help of drag queens is not an agenda that will sustain support from any newcomers.
Victor Davis Hanson, reporting on conversations with random Mexican immigrants living and working in the area near his farm, says that these immigrants are getting royally fed up with the Democrats. (Source: VDH’s podcasts.)
Paywall
Basically, the article notes that more GOP candidates are taking a tougher line, winning primaries and polling well. The 2012 Romney cringe on immigration is no longer seen as politically prudent or necessary. The move by Hispanic voters away from Dems has had a profound impact on GOP candidates who now feel free to take stands that are both objectively better policy and popular.
What’s weird is Democrats touted for years that non-white voters were their key to a permanent political majority. Obama admitted that it was his strategy to abandon white working class voters and build a coalition around minorities and college-educated white women.
But now they claim “Demographic Replacement” is a racist conspiracy theory.
The inner-city talk radio I hear is not in favor of illegals. “Why’s the city hiring Mexicans for construction rather than some brothers?”
Hahahaha, I can answer that one. They aren’t applying for the jobs, have zero skills and I’m sure a well honed sense of entitlement.
In polls, 65% of Hispanic Americans want zero immigration. Not a curtailment or a crackdown–they want a full stop. The GOP should do what is right, what the people want and not what the Dems tell them people want. Get out of DC and talk to some real people doing real work.
I am all for stopping illegal immigration. But at a time when a lot of Americans don’t want to work and many businesses have had to cut back their hours, cut back services, or even close down permanently due to lack of employees, shouldn’t we also be increasing the number of legal immigrants we take in?
I know the argument that if there are more workers wages go down. But if there aren’t enough workers, that stifles the economy and leads to less opportunity and prosperity for everyone.
We are taking a lot of new immigrants:
Source HHS.
Oddly enough the supposedly racist Trump Administration did not slow the rate of new Americans being added, even though they are increasingly of non-European ethnicities. Those new Americans tend to be highly productive, law-abiding, educated, and less likely to rely on public resources. None of that can be said of illegals on average. People who follow the rules and the process (and ICE is not known as a consumer-friendly agency, my immigrant biologist sister-in-law always dutifully complied as was often jerked around) on the whole are great additions to the country.
The couple men I have known who have married a foreigner (one from Poland, one from Costa Rica) and brought her back to the U.S. have said the amount of red tape is incredible.
My sister-in-law was a UK citizen married to an American and had four native-born American children, an advanced science degree, a sparkling employment record, and no criminal record. She filed all the forms on time. Once, they failed to process her form for over two months after they received it. In the interim they had switched from 14-inch to 12-inch paper forms and the old 14-inch form was no longer accepted. They informed her that since they could not use the old form she had submitted (on time) and that she had missed the deadline to make the same filing with the right form, she might be subject to deportation. How ‘Washington bureaucrat’ is that? Took lots of worry and many hours on the phone to fix that. Non-citizens can’t call their Congressman when a bureaucracy is out of control so there is more of a blank check for immigration clerks.
It is very true that Latinx individuals are not willing to drink the Kool Aid.
Before the great Covid shut down of 2020 to 2022, I was used to having various women come up to me when I was at our local mini mall and ask me what I thought about immigration. I told them honestly what I felt.
These were women who had come here in the 1980’s or early 1990’s, with their parents. Once I briefly explained my stance on the current situation regarding immigration in Calif, they would nod in agreement.
Then they would explain why the the current situation under Gavin Newsom enraged them.
“My parents came here when I was just a kid. They both worked hard and pursued every opportunity that came their way in terms of employment. But they did not participate in food stamps or other welfare “entitlements” when they first arrived.
“I believed my parents message that life here would be better for me than it was for them. Tht all this better life required would be my working hard. But now I am in my 30’s (slight edit: some women would say “in my 40’s”) and I realize that I will never afford a house. My rent is already sky high and if more people move here, of course then rents will go even higher.
“My kids are in HS and I have no idea how I will have the money to get them into college.
“But Newsom offer new arrivals everything – housing vouchers, food stamps. And free medical insurance, with free health care. And now he offers free college tuition at the very pricey UC schools! Why for them and not for us?”
I could only nod in agreement, as between the two of us, there were no solutions.
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Dr Jordan Peterson at the University of Toronto, discussing several reasons why borders are perfectly reasonable.
He also talks about the value of political dialogue between liberals and conservatives on the nature of controlling immigration.
This is an excerpt from a talk Dr. Peterson gave on June 15/17. The title of the lecture is: 12 principles for a 21st century conservatism.
Watch the full lecture here (highly recommended):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyw4rTywyY0&t=1993s