Saturday, June 29, 2019

ANN COULTER - THE STAGGERING COST OF ALL THAT 'CHEAP' LABOR

Ann Coulter: Surprise! That 'cheap' immigrant labor costs us a lot



Ann Coulter: Surprise! That 'cheap' immigrant labor costs us a lot
© Getty Images


© Getty Images
We could pay for every idiotic boondoggle proposed by the 300 Democratic presidential candidates if the current president would simply keep his central campaign promise to build a border wall and deport illegal aliens. (Back off — “illegal alien” is the term used in federal law.) 

BLOG: JUDICIAL WATCH ESTIMATES THAT THE INVASION COST US $135 BILLION JUST IN WELFARE. THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE THE MEXICAN CRIME TIDAL WAVE OR $50 BILLION IN REMITTANCES.

A 2017 study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found that illegal aliens cost the American taxpayer — on net — $116 billion a year.
That’s pretty high, but the actual number is more likely triple that.
Straight out of the chute, FAIR assumes that there are only 12.5 million illegal immigrants in the country, approximately the same number we’ve been told for the last 15 years as we impotently watched hundreds of thousands more stream across our border, year after year after year.
The 12 million figure is based on the self-reports of illegal aliens to U.S. census questionnaires. (Hello! I’m from the federal government. Did you break the law to enter our country? Now tell the truth! We have no way of knowing the answer, and if you say yes, you could be subjecting yourself to immediate deportation.)


BLOG: NOW DO THE MATH!
More serious studies put the number considerably higher. At the low end, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale study last year put the number of illegals at 22 million. Yet Bear Stearns investment bank had it at 20 million back in 2005, and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele reported in 2004 that 3 million illegals were crossing each year — so simple math would put it at well over 60 million today.
So, right there, the FAIR study underestimates the tab for illegal immigration by at least a factor of three, meaning the real cost is about $350 billion a year. That’s triple what Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) free college tuition plan will cost in a decade.
I don’t mean to bash FAIR. It’s sweet how immigration restrictionists always bend over backward to be impartial. But their circumspection doesn’t mean the rest of us have to ignore reality.
Journalists’ usual method of determining the cost of “unauthorized entries” — as they say — is to phone some fanatically pro-illegal immigration group, such as Cato or CASA, and get a quote sneering at anyone else’s estimate of the costs.
In a deeply investigated 2017 Washington Post article, for example, the Post cited the “belief” that illegal aliens “drain government resources.” Without looking at any facts or figures, the reporter disputed that “belief” with a quote from Cathryn Ann Paul of CASA: "It's a myth that people who are undocumented don't pay taxes."
So there you have it! Cathryn Ann Paul says it’s a “myth.” Now let’s move on to the vibrant diversity being gifted to us by illegal aliens.
Earlier this year, The New York Times mocked President Trump’s tweet saying illegal immigration costs "250 Billion Dollars a year" by quoting big-business shill Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute: "There's no basis to any of those numbers about the fiscal cost." Am I doing OK, Mr. Koch?
The Times further explained that Trump’s figure “did not take into account the economic benefits of undocumented immigrants” — for example, the surprisingly affordable maids of some reporters.
Randy Capps of the Migration Policy Institute told the Times that studies of the cost of illegal immigration count only the costs or only the benefits. “They tend to talk past each other, unfortunately,” he said.

BLOG: THE TAX-FREE MEXICAN ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY ALONE IS ESTIMATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2 BILLION YEARLY. THIS SAME COUNTY HANDS ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS MORE THAN $1 BILLION YEARLY IN WELFARE.
Well, the FAIR study counted both. For every dollar illegal immigrants pay in taxes — fees, Social Security withholding taxes, fuel surcharges, sales and property taxes — they collect $7 in government benefits: schooling, English as a second language classes, hospital costs, school lunch programs, Medicaid births, police resources and so on.
A few years ago, the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector looked at the winners and losers under our government redistribution system and found that in 2010, households headed by illegal immigrants received $14,387 more in government services than they paid in taxes.
Legal immigrant households also were big winners, receiving $4,344 more in government services than they paid in taxes. (Our government does a fantastic job deciding who can immigrate here.)
Only with nonimmigrant households does the government almost break even, doling out a mere $310 more in benefits than those households pay in taxes. (Surprise! The deficit is on track to hit $1 trillion next year.)
Like FAIR estimates, Rector’s study accepted the U.S. Census Bureau’s allegation that we’ve had the same number of illegal aliens in this country since the beginning of the Bush administration. Also like the FAIR study, Rector’s examination counted only the obvious costs imposed on us by illegal immigrants — things such as health care, education, fire and police protection, parks, roads, and bridges.
But there are all sorts of costs that no one ever 

counts. What about Americans’ lost wages to 

illegal immigrants who are willing to work for 

$7 an hour? Even if they don’t apply for 

unemployment insurance, how do we count the 

cost of suicide, opioid addiction or other anti-

social behavior? 
Why not count the lost wages themselves? We want to know the cost-benefit ratio to those already here, not to the new total that includes the illegal immigrants. If it's a net negative to those already here — well, that's the point.
And what was the tab of illegal immigration to the family of Kate Steinle, the young woman shot dead by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco in 2015? There were obvious, tragic costs, of course — but there also are hidden costs, such as the lost productivity of the people close to Kate for years to come, the additional police presence around the San Francisco pier where she was killed and the reduction in tourist dollars.
We hear about the great largesse bestowed upon us by illegal immigrants all day long. The only hidden benefits are the warm feelings of self-righteousness that the CASA spokesman gets when bleating about illegals and the happiness that cheap servants bring to the top 10 percent.
In Maine, overdose deaths from opioids, mostly Mexican heroin, have skyrocketed in the last decade, up from an already catastrophic 100 to 200 deaths per year to more than double that — 418 in 2018. What is the cost of the state legislature spending weeks debating a bill to provide heroin addicts with Narcan? The cost of more crime and more police?
This isn’t to gratuitously mention the fact that completely unvetted, self-chosen illegal immigrants can, in fact, be rapists, drug dealers and cop-killers. It is to say that no analysis of illegal immigration’s cost can ever capture the full price.
Ann Coulter is a lawyer, a syndicated columnist and conservative commentator, and the author of 13 New York Times bestsellers. The most recent, “Resistance Is Futile! How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind,” was published in 2018.

 JUDICIAL WATCH:


America builds the La Raza “The Race” Mexican welfare state

Illegal Immigration Costs U.S. Taxpayers a Stunning $134.9 Billion a Year


ILLEGALS & WELFARE
WE CAN’T TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN, AND YET WE LET MEXICO BUILD THEIR BILLION DOLLAR WELFARE STATE ON OUR BACKS!!!

70% OF ILLEGALS GET WELFARE!
 “According to the Centers for Immigration Studies, April '11, at least 70% of Mexican illegal alien families receive some type of welfare in the US!!! cis.org”

So when cities across the country declare that they will NOT be sanctuary, guess where ALL the illegals, criminals, gang members fleeing ICE will go???? straight to your welcoming city. So ironically the people fighting for sanctuary city status, may have an unprecedented crime wave to deal with along with the additional expense.
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$17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
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$12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English.
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$22 billion is spent on (AFDC) welfare to illegal aliens each year.
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$2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as (SNAP) food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
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$3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. Does not include local jails and State Prisons.
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2012 illegal aliens sent home $62 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. This is why Mexico is getting involved in our politics.
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$200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.


THE DISUNITED STATES: The world’s welfare office!

 America is a nation with a severe housing crisis, a million legals who are homeless, tens of millions of legals who have given up finding a job that pays living wages and yet the borders are wide open to keep the hordes coming simply to keep wages DEPRESSED.

THE SLOW DEATH OF CALIFORNIA, A WELFARE STATE AND COLONY OF MEXICO
With crime soaring, rampant homelessness, sanctuary state status attracting the highest illegal immigrant population in the country and its “worst state in the U.S. to do business” ranking for more than a decade, California and its expansive, debt-ridden, progressive government is devolving into a third-world country. JANET LEVY


AMERICA: THE WORLD’S WELFARE OFFICE
With crime soaring, rampant homelessness, sanctuary state status attracting the highest illegal immigrant population in the country and its “worst state in the U.S. to do business” ranking for more than a decade, California and its expansive, debt-ridden, progressive government is devolving into a third-world country. JANET LEVY

"This is how they will destroy America from within.  The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants.  They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers.  These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY
"Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become." FAIR President Dan Stein

WE SAT AND WATCHED WHILE THEY DESTROYED OUR COUNTRY!
We are now in the process of destabilizing our own country. FROSTY WOOLDRIGE

Welfare for Refugees Cost Americans $123 Billion in 10 Years ….YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK!

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/10/frosty-wooldridge-let-us-open-us.html

 

THE CONSPIRACY TO SABOTAGE HOMELAND SECURITY

The Democrat Party’s secret agenda for wider open borders, more welfare for invading illegals, more jobs and free anything they illegally vote for…. All to destroy the two-party system and build the GLOBALISTS’ DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/11/frontpage-hidden-agenda-of-pueblo-sin.html

 

Demonstrably and irrefutably the Democrat Party became the party whose principle objective is to thoroughly transform the nature of the American electorate by means of open borders and the mass, unchecked importation of illiterate third world peasants who will vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrats and their La Raza welfare state. FRONTPAGE MAG
AMERICA, THE ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE STATE
“Through love of having children we're going to take over."  Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S. citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96
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“The children of illegal aliens are commonly known as “anchor babies,” as they anchor their illegal alien and noncitizen parents in the U.S. There are at least 4.5 million anchor babies in the country, a population that exceeds the total number of annual American births.”   JOHN BINDER
MARK LEVIN:
‘Unbridled Immigration, Legal and Illegal, Is Taking the Country Down’
 “Through love of having children we're going to take over."  Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S. citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96
This annual income for an impoverished American family is $10,000 less than the more than $34,500 in federal funds which are spent on each unaccompanied minor border crosser.

study by Tom Wong of the University of California at San Diego discovered that more than 25 percent of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens in the program have anchor babies. That totals about 200,000 anchor babies who are the children of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens. This does not include the anchor babies of DACA-qualified illegal aliens. JOHN BINDER

 “As Breitbart News recently reported, there are more anchor baby births in the Los Angeles, California metro area than the total U.S. births in 14 states and the District of Colombia. Every year, American taxpayers are billed about $2.4 billion to pay for the births of illegal aliens.” JOHN BINDER
THE INVASION:
“The radicals seek nothing less than secession from the United States whether to form their own sovereign state or to reunify with Mexico. Those who desire reunification with Mexico are irredentists who seek to reclaim Mexico's "lost" territories in the American Southwest.” Maria Hsia Chang Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada Reno

"Mexican president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for mass immigration to the United States, declaring it a "human right". We will defend all the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said, adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job, welfare, and free medical in the United States."

"Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador has previously proposed ranting AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added."

All that “cheap” labor is staggeringly expensive!
"Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become." FAIR President Dan Stein.
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Californians bear an enormous fiscal burden as a result of an illegal alien population estimated at almost 3 million residents. The annual expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for that population is $25.3 billion. That total amounts to a yearly burden of about $2,370 for a household headed by a U.S. citizen.
THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CHIPS IN MORE THAN ONE BILLION PER YEAR FOR MEX ANCHOR BABY BREEDING OF FUTURE DEMS!

JUDICIAL WATCH:

America builds the La Raza “The Race” Mexican welfare state

Illegal Immigration Costs U.S. Taxpayers a Stunning $134.9 Billion a Year



AMNESTY: THE HOAX TO KEEP WAGES FOR LEGALS DEPRESSED!

 "Critics argue that giving amnesty to 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. would have an immediate negative impact on America’s working and middle class — specifically black Americans and the white working class — who would be in direct competition for blue-collar jobs with the largely low-skilled illegal alien population." JOHN BINDER

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"Additionally, under current legal immigration laws, if given amnesty, the illegal alien population would be allowed to bring an unlimited number of their foreign relatives to the U.S. This population could boost already high legal immigration levels to an unprecedented high. An amnesty for illegal aliens would also likely triple the number of border-crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border." JOHN BINDER
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“At the current rate of invasion (mostly through Mexico, but also through Canada) the United States will be completely over run with illegal aliens by the year 2025. I’m not talking about legal immigrants who follow US law to become citizens. In less than 20 years, if we do not stop the invasion, ILLEGAL aliens and their offspring will be the dominant population in the United States”…. Tom Barrett 

 

(TOP – WELFARE, LA RAZA MALKIN, HOSPITAL COST, CASE STUDY,)
HERITAGE FOUNDATION:
AMNESTY WILL ADD ANOTHER 100 MILLION IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS


HEAR THAT SUCKING SOUND?
IT’S MEXICO SUCKING THE BLOOD OF AMERICA…. HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS FOR WELFARE, “FREE” HEALTHCARE, HEROIN SALES, CRIME COST AND THEN THEY SEND TENS OF BILLIONS BACK TO NARCOMEX

“In the U.S. the remittances that come of illegal immigration drive down U.S. wages, particularly of those on the lowest-skilled parts of the ladder, and as money flows out from local communities, leaves them underinvested and run-down. Nobody can live two places at once. Illegal immigrants live here but their money lives in Mexico. And it's often untaxed.” MONICA SHOWALTER
Who ultimately really pays for all the true cost of all that "cheap" labor?

THE DEVASTATING COST OF MEXICO’S WELFARE STATE IN AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS


“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”.  DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE 
LA RAZA DOUBLED U.S. POPULATION AND VOTED TO SURRENDER AMERICAN BORDERS FOR EASY PLUNDERING BY NARCOMEX.
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“Through love of having children we're going to take over." Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S. citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96
 “The cost of the Dream Act is far bigger than the Democrats or their media allies admit. Instead of covering 690,000 younger illegals now enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s 2012 “DACA” amnesty, the Dream Act would legalize at least 3.3 million illegals, according to a pro-immigration group, the Migration Policy Institute.”

THE NEW PRIVILEGED CLASS: Illegals!

This is why you work From Jan - May paying taxes to the government ....with the rest of the calendar year is money for you and your family.

Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for $5.00 or 6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, with his fake Social Security number, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200..... free.

He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.

He qualifies for food stamps.

He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.

His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.

He requires bilingual teachers and books.

He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.

If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.

Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense.

He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.

Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material.

He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits.

Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour left after Paying their bills and his.

The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up.



Cheap labor? YEAH RIGHT! Wake up people! 


JOBS:

FLOODING AMERICAN WITH FOREIGNERS HELPS KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND BILLIONAIRES HAPPY!

“Washington, D.C. (May 22, 2018) – The Center of Immigration Studies analysis of new Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the first quarter of 2018 shows that the labor force participation rate has not returned to pre-2007 recession levels, and relative to 2000 the rate looks even worse. Things are particularly bad for those without a college education. The problem is not confined to one area of the country; in virtually every state, labor force participation is lower in 2018 than in 2007 or 2000 among the less-educated.”

JOE LEGAL v LA RAZA JOSE ILLEGAL
Here’s how it breaks down; will make you want to be an illegal!
THE TAX-FREE MEXICAN UNDERGROUND ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY IS ESTIMATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2 BILLION YEARLY!
Staggering expensive "cheap" Mexican labor did not build this once great nation! Look what it has done to Mexico. It's all about keeping wages depressed and passing along the true cost of the invasion, their welfare, and crime tidal wave costs to the backs of the American people!
AMERICA: YOU’RE BETTER OFF BEING AN ILLEGAL!!!
This annual income for an impoverished American family is $10,000 less than the more than $34,500 in federal funds which are spent on each unaccompanied minor border crosser.
study by Tom Wong of the University of California at San Diego discovered that more than 25 percent of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens in the program have anchor babies. That totals about 200,000 anchor babies who are the children of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens. This does not include the anchor babies of DACA-qualified illegal aliens. JOHN BINDER

“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”.  DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE 

 

As Breitbart News has reported, U.S. households headed by foreign-born residents use nearly twice the welfare of households headed by native-born Americans.

Simultaneously, illegal immigration next year is on track to soar to the highest level in a decade, with a potential 600,000 border crossers expected.

“More than 750 million people want to migrate to another country permanently, according to Gallup research published Monday, as 150 world leaders sign up to the controversial UN global compact which critics say makes migration a human right.”  VIRGINIA HALE

For example, a DACA amnesty would cost American taxpayers about $26 billion, more than the border wall, and that does not include the money taxpayers would have to fork up to subsidize the legal immigrant relatives of DACA illegal aliens. 

Exclusive–Steve Camarota: Every Illegal Alien Costs Americans $70K Over Their Lifetime



JOHN BINDER
 Every illegal alien, over the course of their lifetime, costs American taxpayers about $70,000, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steve Camarota says.
During an interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Camarota said his research has revealed the enormous financial burden that illegal immigration has on America’s working and middle class taxpayers in terms of public services, depressed wages, and welfare.
“In a person’s lifetime, I’ve estimated that an illegal border crosser might cost taxpayers … maybe over $70,000 a year as a net cost,” Camarota said. “And that excludes the cost of their U.S.-born children, which gets pretty big when you add that in.”
LISTEN: 
“Once [an illegal alien] has a child, they can receive cash welfare on behalf of their U.S.-born children,” Camarota explained. “Once they have a child, they can live in public housing. Once they have a child, they can receive food stamps on behalf of that child. That’s how that works.”
Camarota said the education levels of illegal aliens, border crossers, and legal immigrants are largely to blame for the high level of welfare usage by the f0reign-born population in the U.S., noting that new arrivals tend to compete for jobs against America’s poor and working class communities.
In past waves of mass immigration, Camarota said, the U.S. did not have an expansive welfare system. Today’s ever-growing welfare system, coupled with mass illegal and legal immigration levels, is “extremely problematic,” according to Camarota, for American taxpayers.
The RAISE Act — reintroduced in the Senate by Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), David Perdue (R-GA), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) — would cut legal immigration levels in half and convert the immigration system to favor well-educated foreign nationals, thus relieving American workers and taxpayers of the nearly five-decade-long wave of booming immigration. Currently, mass legal immigration redistributes the wealth of working and middle class Americans to the country’s top earners.
“Virtually none of that existed in 1900 during the last great wave of immigration, when we also took in a number of poor people. We didn’t have a well-developed welfare state,” Camarota continued:
We’re not going to stop [the welfare state] tomorrow. So in that context, bringing in less educated people who are poor is extremely problematic for public coffers, for taxpayers in a way that it wasn’t in 1900 because the roads weren’t even paved between the cities in 1900. It’s just a totally different world. And that’s the point of the RAISE Act is to sort of bring in line immigration policy with the reality say of a large government … and a welfare state. [Emphasis added]
The immigrants are not all coming to get welfare and they don’t immediately sign up, but over time, an enormous fraction sign their children up. It’s likely the case that of the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, more than half are signed up for Medicaid — which is our most expensive program. [Emphasis added]
As Breitbart News has reported, U.S. households headed by foreign-born residents use nearly twice the welfare of households headed by native-born Americans.

Every year the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals, with the vast majority deriving from chain migration. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder


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DACA Amnesty Would Render Border Wall Useless, Cost Americans $26B


Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty- mages
11 Dec 20181,846
5:36

A deal in which President Trump accepts an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in exchange for minor border wall funding would be counterproductive to the “America First” goals of the administration, depressing U.S. wages in the process ahead of the 2020 election.

As Breitbart News has extensively chronicled, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ended the DACA program last year, although it’s official termination has been held up in court by left-wing judges.
Since then, a coalition of establishment Republicans and Democrats have sought to ram an amnesty for up to 3.5 million DACA-enrolled and eligible illegal aliens through Congress, an initiative supported by the donor class.
CLOSE | X
Such a plan, most recently, has been touted in an effort to negotiate a deal in which Trump receives anywhere between $1.6 tand $5 billion for his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall in exchange for approving a DACA amnesty for millions.
The amnesty would render the border wall useless, as it would not only trigger increased illegal immigration at the border — which is already set to hit the highest annual level in a decade next year — but increased legal immigration to the country.
Last year, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen admittedthat even discussion of a DACA amnesty increased illegal immigration at the southern border, as migrants surge to the U.S. in hopes of making it into the country to later cash in on the amnesty.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach previously predicted that a DACA amnesty would trigger an immediate flood of a million illegal aliens arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2014, when Obama enacted DACA by Executive Order, the temporary amnesty caused a surge at the southern border, as noted by the Migration Policy Institute.
In terms of legal immigration, a DACA amnesty would implement a never-ending flow of foreign relatives to the DACA illegal aliens who can be readily sponsored for green cards through the process known as “chain migration.”
According to Princeton University researchers Stacie Carr and Marta Tienda, the average number of family members brought to the U.S. by newly naturalized Mexican immigrants stands at roughly six. Therefore, should all 1.5 million amnestied illegal aliens bring six relatives each to the U.S., that would constitute a total chain migration of nine million new foreign nationals entering the U.S.
If the number of amnestied illegal aliens who gain a pathway to citizenship under an immigration deal were to rise to the full 3.3 million who would be eligible for DREAM Act amnesty, and if each brought in three to six foreign family members, the chain migration flow could range from 9.9 million to 19.8 million foreign nationals coming to the U.S.
At this rate of chain migration solely from a DACA amnesty, the number of legal immigrants arriving to the U.S. with family relations to the amnestied population would potentially outpace the population of New York City, New York — where more than 8.5 million residents live.
Should the goal of Trump’s proposed border wall be to reduce illegal immigration and eventually incentivize lawmakers to reduce legal immigration levels — where the U.S. imports 1.5 million immigrants every year — to raise the wages of America’s working and middle class, a DACA amnesty would have the opposite impact, increasing illegal and legal immigration levels.
The president has also touted the wall as a benefit to American citizens in terms of cost. A border wall is projected to cost about $25 million, a tiny figure compared to the $116 billion that illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers every year.
A DACA amnesty, coupled with a border wall, would have steep costs for American citizens — wiping out the cost-benefit to taxpayers of the wall.
For example, a DACA amnesty would cost American taxpayers about $26 billion, more than the border wall, and that does not include the money taxpayers would have to fork up to subsidize the legal immigrant relatives of DACA illegal aliens. And because amnesties for illegal aliens tend to be larger than initially predicted, the total cost would likely be even higher for taxpayers.
Additionally, about one in five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in seven would go on Medicaid, the CBO has estimated.
The number of DACA illegal aliens who will go on Medicaid following an amnesty is likely to be much larger than what the CBO reports.
Previous research by the Center for Immigration Studies indicates that the average immigrant household in the U.S. takes 44 percent more Medicaid money than the average American household. The research also noted that 56 percent of households led by illegal aliens have at least one person on Medicaid.
Another study, reported by Breitbart News, indicates that the CBO estimate of DACA illegal aliens who would end up on Medicaid after an amnesty is the lowest total possible of illegal aliens who would go on the welfare program.
Meanwhile, a DACA amnesty would drag increasing U.S. wages down for the country’s working and middle class, delivering benefits to the business lobby while squashing the intended goals of the Trump administration ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The plan is also likely to hit the black American community the hardest, as they are forced to compete for blue collar jobs against a growing illegal and legal immigrant population from Central America.
On Tuesday, Trump said he would be willing to shut down the federal government in order to secure funding for his proposed border wall. Democrat leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have previously indicated that they would be willing to swap an amnesty in exchange for funding border “security measures.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

THE INVASION THAT AMERICA INVITED


Simultaneously, illegal immigration next year is on track to soar to the highest level in a decade, with a potential 600,000 border crossers expected.

“More than 750 million people want to migrate to another country permanently, according to Gallup research published Monday, as 150 world leaders sign up to the controversial UN global compact which critics say makes migration a human right.”  VIRGINIA HALE

Census Confirms: 63 Percent of ‘Non-Citizens’ on Welfare, 4.6 Million Households 

By Paul Bedard 


“Concern over immigrant welfare use is justified, as households headed by non-citizens use means-tested welfare at high rates. Non-citizens in the data include illegal immigrants, long-term temporary visitors like guest workers, and permanent residents who have not naturalized. While barriers to welfare use exist for these groups, it has not prevented them from making extensive use of the welfare system, often receiving benefits on behalf of U.S.-born children,” added the Washington-based immigration think tank.

The numbers are huge. The report said that there are 4,684,784 million non-citizen households receiving welfare.
. . .
Their key findings in the analysis:

* In 2014, 63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen reported that they used at least one welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native-headed households.

*Compared to native households, non-citizen households have much higher use of food programs (45 percent vs. 21 percent for natives) and Medicaid (50 percent vs. 23 percent for natives).

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/census-confirms-63-percent-of-non-citizens-on-welfare-4-6-million-households 


Let’s Shrink Illegal Alien Population, Save Billions at Same Time



 By David North |


The usually discussed techniques for lowering the size of the illegal alien population are two in number:
  • Reducing the inflow of illegals, such as by building a wall; and
  • Mandating the departure of others through deportation.
There is a third variable, rarely discussed, that reaches the same goal without coercion and could be something that Democrats and Republicans might agree on: the subsidized and voluntary departure of some of the undocumented and other aging, low-income foreign-born. It probably would require an act of Congress.
I am thinking of a technique for selectively encouraging the emigration of those among the foreign-born who are most likely to become welfare users in the future. It would save billions and billions of federal dollars a year, and some state funds as well.
It is based on, among other things, the fact that most of the illegals are from warmer climates than our own, and reminds me of a conversation I had years ago on this subject with a Jamaica-born resident of the United States who told me of her fond memories of the warmth of that island: "Don't forget, old bones are cold bones."
Hence, the proposed Return to Warmth (RTW) program, which would directly subsidize the departure of numerous foreign-born persons, many of them here illegally, and would indirectly help the economies of the nations from which they migrated. That would be the genial face of the RTW program, which fits with its deliberately friendly name.
Meanwhile, it would prevent large numbers of these migrants from participating in our Medicare program and other (less expensive) income transfer programs, saving billions a year, and thus making RTW attractive to conservatives.
Let's look at some specifics.
In the following table, we show the roughly estimated 2017 per capita costs to the United States of the foreign-born Social Security beneficiaries while in the United States, and while in their home countries. It is drawn from government data easily available on the internet, such as the Medicare budget (which was $720 billion in 2017) and on similar sources for the numbers of beneficiaries.
The table is also based on the fact that many Social Security beneficiaries, including many of the foreign-born, can draw their checks in most of the rest of the world, but would not be able to participate in other programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and Supplemental Security Income. All four require residence in the United States.
Given the information above, one might assume that virtually no one would want to take their Social Security benefits abroad. That is not the case.
More than 650,000 Social Security checks are mailed overseas each month and this number (and the percentage of retirees who do this) is slowly but steadily increasing, according to various issues of the of the Social Security Administration's Annual Statistical Supplement. Here are the totals and the percentages of all beneficiaries for three recent years:
During the early 1990s the percentage was about 0.75 percent.
Clearly this is an arrangement that is, slowly, growing in popularity. My suggestion is that we deliberately increase its size.
The evidence, incidentally, suggests strongly that most of these checks are notgoing to wealthy people who have decided to retire to the Riviera rather than Boca Raton. Average annual payouts of Social Security benefits were $15,208 nationally in 2017, and only $8,178 for those getting their checks abroad. Thus, the overseas checks were only 54 percent of the national average, reflecting the substantially lower lifetime incomes of those who retired abroad. This is not a rich population.
While I cannot document it, I learned some years ago, in a conversation with a SSA staffer, that more than 90 percent of those getting checks overseas were not born in the United States.
Proposal
The U.S. should create a new program (RTW) to encourage these movements back to the home countries, providing a range of new benefits to stimulate such returns, but designing them in such a way that the returnees will tend to stay returned once they have left.
If the United States can save $17,000 a year on each of hundreds of thousands of people, and all of them will stop making the impact that the rest of us do on the environment, this country will be making major progress, without using any coercion at all. And the savings of some $17,000 a year, per capita, means that it would be appropriate to offer some really enticing rewards to those thinking about leaving the country.
Who Would Qualify? Since a major part of the motivation is to reduce the illegal alien population, such persons would not be disqualified. I would limit it to foreign-born persons who qualify now, or will soon, for Social Security retirement, of whatever civil status, from illegal to citizen. It would only apply to people wanting to return to their native lands, and might not apply to a comparative few whose homes are within, say, 300 miles of the U.S. borders. (These people would be tempted to live secretly in the United States while collecting abroad.)
Dependents of the beneficiary could qualify, at any age, but the principals would have to be 61 years of age or older.
The Reward Package. This has to be enticing enough to encourage Social Security beneficiaries to seek it, despite the basic math outlined above (which many of them might sense, even without knowing the details.) Such a package might include:
  • Retirement benefits at the age of 61, instead of the usual 62;
  • A 10 percent bonus on the Social Security benefit while the beneficiary is abroad;
  • Free one-way plane tickets for the principal and the dependents; and
  • Checks totaling $5,000, half on arrival in the home country, and the other half a year later, but only paid in person, at a U.S. consulate or embassy.
Holy cow, some might say, you are going to be giving some illegals 10 percent more in Social Security for the rest of their lives! Isn't that an extravagant waste?
The 10 percent increase, based on current Social Security data, would mean that the overseas individual would get an additional $818 a year. That would be more than balanced by the Medicare savings of $10,778 a year; maybe we should set the Social Security benefit increase at 25 percent or more.
The monthly checks would have to be cashed in the home country, in person, by the beneficiary, and within 60 days of their issuance. Further, such checks would need to be endorsed by the beneficiary along with a thumb print of that person, and a note on the back of the check indicating the name of the cashier who accepted the check, and the date thereof. Banks that showed a pattern of check abuse would be barred from depositing these checks in the future.
All receiving any part of the bonus package would have to agree in writing to not seek to return to the United States under any circumstances for three or five years; if they did (or their checks were cashed in the United States), the government would halve the future benefit checks until the bonuses had been repaid. If they came back to the United States twice within those years, the beneficiary would be no longer be eligible for SSA retirement checks unless, perhaps, they were citizens, in which case a milder penalty would be exacted. (No one using the RTW benefits would be eligible to apply for naturalization, or any other immigration benefit.)
The benefit package suggested above is not set in stone; it could be altered, but it would have to offer the foreign-born a substantial benefit. Provisions should be made to use tax funds to compensate the Social Security system for its additional costs.
The benefits should be made available to those in deportation hearings, if they were otherwise eligible, thus reducing the backlogs in the immigration courts.
Someone who had received the rewards described above could ask to be excused from the program by voluntarily returning the extra moneys; but this would be rare, and would be available to only those who had been in the United States legally at the time of retirement.
Other Advantages of RTW. Other advantages to the government of RTW would be lowering pressure on energy assistance plans for the poor; on public housing, which in many cities includes special housing for the elderly; and on non-public food banks and the like. In addition, there would be the less obvious advantages of a lower population and less wear and tear on the built environment.
In the specific instance of shutting down Temporary Protected Status for people from some nations, it would ease the departure of the older ones. Perhaps some TPS beneficiaries within a year or two of the RTW minimum age could be given special dispensations.
As for the returnees, the principal advantage to them would be the lower costs of living in the homelands, as opposed to those costs in the United States. There would also be the previously cited warmer weather (for most), the ease of returning to a situation where everyone uses one's native language, and for many, losing the fear of deportation. In short, a win-win situation.
This suggestion takes a long view of the question of migrant utilization of our income transfer programs and would impose some short-term costs on the government (the reward packages) in exchange for steady savings in the future. It certainly would be subject to attempted abuse, but in the long run it would start saving us $17,000 a year times hundreds of thousands of people.
It would be a quiet program, in contrast to the wall and border skirmishes, but it would inevitably lead to fewer illegal aliens in the nation, and lower welfare costs.
Why not try it for a while?
David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, has over 40 years of immigration policy experience.
Editor's Note: This piece was originally published by the Center for Immigration Studies.

Study: More than 7-in-10 California Immigrant

Welfare


US Customs and Border Patrol
 4 Dec 201811,383
2:45



More than 7-in-10 households headed by immigrants in the state of California are on taxpayer-funded welfare, a new study reveals.

The latest Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that about 72 percent of households headed by noncitizens and immigrants use one or more forms of taxpayer-funded welfare programs in California — the number one immigrant-receiving state in the U.S.
Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of households headed by native-born Americans use welfare in California.
All four states with the largest foreign-born populations, including California, have extremely high use of welfare by immigrant households. In Texas, for example, nearly 70 percent of households headed by immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare. Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of native-born households in Texas are on welfare.
In New York and Florida, a majority of households headed by immigrants and noncitizens are on welfare. Overall, about 63 percent of immigrant households use welfare while only 35 percent of native-born households use welfare.
President Trump’s administration is looking to soon implement a policy that protects American taxpayers’ dollars from funding the mass importation of welfare-dependent foreign nationals by enforcing a “public charge” rule whereby legal immigrants would be less likely to secure a permanent residency in the U.S. if they have used any forms of welfare in the past, including using Obamacare, food stamps, and public housing.
The immigration controls would be a boon for American taxpayers in the form of an annual $57.4 billion tax cut — the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5 million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.
As Breitbart News reported, the majority of the more than 1.5 million foreign nationals entering the country every year use about 57 percent more food stamps than the average native-born American household. Overall, immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households and 44 percent more in Medicaid dollars. This straining of public services by a booming 44 million foreign-born population translates to the average immigrant household costing American taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

NON-CITIZEN HOUSEHOLDS ALMOSTTWICE AS LIKELY TO BE ON WELFARE


December 3, 2018


Some truths are just basic and obvious. Yet the media insists on shoveling out nonsense about how Elon Musk and Sergey Brin are representative of the average immigrant. They're not. They used to be more representative before Ted Kennedy decided to replicate the ideal political ecosystem of the Democrats across the country. And so now here we are.
Skilled immigration is tough to manage. Unskilled migration is everywhere. With the inevitable results shown in his CIS study.
In 2014, 63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen reported that they used at least one welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native-headed households.
Welfare use drops to 58 percent for non-citizen households and 30 percent for native households if cash payments from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are not counted as welfare. EITC recipients pay no federal income tax. Like other welfare, the EITC is a means-tested, anti-poverty program, but unlike other programs one has to work to receive it.
Compared to native households, non-citizen households have much higher use of food programs (45 percent vs. 21 percent for natives) and Medicaid (50 percent vs. 23 percent for natives).
Including the EITC, 31 percent of non-citizen-headed households receive cash welfare, compared to 19 percent of native households. If the EITC is not included, then cash receipt by non-citizen households is slightly lower than natives (6 percent vs. 8 percent).
Mass migration, of the kind that the Left champions, is dangerous and destructive. It's also hideously expensive. As unskilled migration continues, American competitiveness declines to match those countries where the migrants originate from. 
We're losing our work ethic, our skill sets and our reputation for innovation.
And meanwhile we sink ever deeper into a welfare state of the kind that the Democrats can always run and win on.

ABOUT DANIEL GREENFIELD

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.


A sign in a market window advertises this store accepts food stamps in New York, on Oct. 7, 2010. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Majority of Non-Citizen Households in US Access Welfare Programs, Report Finds

 HTTPS://WWW.THEEPOCHTIMES.COM/NEARLY-TWO-THIRDS-OF-NON-CITIZENS-ACCESS-WELFARE-PROGRAMS-REPORT-FINDS_2729720.HTML?REF=BRIEF_NEWS&UTM_SOURCE=EPOCH+TIMES+NEWSLETTERS&UTM_CAMPAIGN=6D

BY ALYSIA E. GARRISON

 

Almost 2 out of 3 non-citizen households in the United States receive some form of welfare, according to a report released by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
The report, released Dec. 2, found 63 percent of non-citizen households in the United States tap at least one welfare program, compared with 35 percent of native households. The findings are based on the Census Bureau’s latest 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation.
Non-citizen households are using welfare food programs and Medicaid at twice the rate of native households, the study found. There are a total of 4.68 million non-citizen households receiving some form of welfare and the numbers don’t improve over time. For non-citizens who remain in the country for more than 10 years, the percentage of welfare recipients rises to 70 percent.
In this study, non-citizens are defined as long-term temporary visitors, such as guest workers and foreign students, permanent residents who haven’t yet naturalized (so-called green card holders), and illegal immigrants.
“Of non-citizens in the Census Bureau data, roughly half are in the country illegally,” the CIS estimates.
The new analysis supports President Donald Trump’s worry that immigrants—both legal and illegal—impose tremendous fiscal costs on the nation.
Legal immigrants are initially barred from many, but not all, welfare programs; after a period of time in the United States, they are able to qualify. Today, most legal immigrants have lived in the U.S. long enough to qualify for many welfare programs. Some states provide welfare to new immigrants independent of the federal government.
The biggest avenue non-citizens use to access welfare is through their children.
“Non-citizens (including illegal immigrants) can receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children who are awarded U.S. citizenship and full welfare eligibility at birth,” the CIS notes.
Although a number of programs were examined in the report, no single program accounts for the discrepancy in the use of welfare programs between citizens and non-citizens. For example, the CIS said when “not counting school lunch and breakfast, welfare use is still 61 percent for non-citizen households, compared with 33 percent for natives. Not counting Medicaid, welfare use is 55 percent for immigrants compared with 30 percent for natives.”
The CIS report suggests that a lack of education is the primary cause of immigrants’ high rate of welfare use.
“A much larger share of non-citizens have [a] modest level of education,” CIS says, and therefore “they often earn low wages and qualify for welfare at higher rates.”
To support this claim, the CIS said 58 percent of all non-citizen households are headed by immigrants with no more than a high school education, compared with 36 percent of native households. Of these non-citizen households with no more than a high school education, 81 percent access one or more welfare programs, versus only 28 percent of non-citizen households headed by a college graduate.
In an effort to reduce the rate of welfare use among future immigrants, the Trump administration has issued new “public charge” laws. These laws expand the list of programs that are considered welfare, so that receiving these benefits may prevent prospective immigrants from receiving a green card. However, these changes “do not include all the benefits that non-citizens receive on behalf of their children and many welfare programs are not included in the new rules,” according to CIS.
The CIS recommends using education levels and potential future income to determine the likelihood of future welfare use for potential green-card applicants, to reduce welfare use among non-citizens.

It Pays to be Illegal in California

It certainly is a good time to be an illegal alien in California. Democratic State Sen. Ricardo Lara last week pitched a bill to permit illegal immigrants to serve on all state and local boards and commissions. This week, lawmakers unveiled a $1 billion health care plan that would include spending $250 million to extend health care coverage to all illegal alien adults.
“Currently, undocumented adults are explicitly and unjustly locked out of healthcare due to their immigration status. In a matter of weeks, California legislators will have a decisive opportunity to reverse that cruel and counterproductive fact,” Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula said in Monday’s Sacramento Bee.
His legislation, Assembly Bill 2965, would give as many as 114,000 uninsured illegal aliens access to Medi-Cal programs. A companion bill has been sponsored by State Sen. Richard Lara.
But that could just be a drop in the bucket. The Democrats’ plan covers more than 100,000 illegal aliens with annual incomes bless than $25,000, however an estimated 1.3 million might be eligible based on their earnings.
In addition, it is estimated that 20 percent of those living in California illegally are uninsured – the $250 million covers just 11 percent.
So, will politicians soon be asking California taxpayers once again to dip into their pockets to pay for the remaining 9 percent?
Before they ask for more, Democrats have to win the approval of Gov. Jerry Brown, who cautioned against spending away the state’s surplus when he introduced his $190 billion budget proposal in January.
Given Brown’s openness to expanding Medi-Cal expansions in recent years, not to mention his proclivity for blindly supporting any measure benefitting lawbreaking immigrants, the latest fiscal irresponsibility may win approval.
And if he takes a pass, the two Democrats most likely to succeed Brown – Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – favor excessive social spending and are actively courting illegal immigrant support.

Immigration Funds Bigger Government, Says 2020 Democrat Buttigieg




NEIL MUNRO
  22 Apr 201971
7:51

Extra immigration will fund the oversized government in the Indiana city of South Bend, Mayor Pete Buttigieg claimed during a campaign stop with pro-immigration Asian and Latino advocates in Des Moines, Iowa.

 

Exclusive–Steve Camarota: Every Illegal Alien Costs Americans $70K Over Their Lifetime



Loren Elliott / AFP / Getty
JOHN BINDER
 11 Apr 20191,671
3:39

Every illegal alien, over the course of their lifetime, costs American taxpayers about $70,000, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steve Camarota says.

During an interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Camarota said his research has revealed the enormous financial burden that illegal immigration has on America’s working and middle class taxpayers in terms of public services, depressed wages, and welfare.
“In a person’s lifetime, I’ve estimated that an illegal border crosser might cost taxpayers … maybe over $70,000 a year as a net cost,” Camarota said. “And that excludes the cost of their U.S.-born children, which gets pretty big when you add that in.”
LISTEN: 
“Once [an illegal alien] has a child, they can receive cash welfare on behalf of their U.S.-born children,” Camarota explained. “Once they have a child, they can live in public housing. Once they have a child, they can receive food stamps on behalf of that child. That’s how that works.”
Camarota said the education levels of illegal aliens, border crossers, and legal immigrants are largely to blame for the high level of welfare usage by the f0reign-born population in the U.S., noting that new arrivals tend to compete for jobs against America’s poor and working class communities.
In past waves of mass immigration, Camarota said, the U.S. did not have an expansive welfare system. Today’s ever-growing welfare system, coupled with mass illegal and legal immigration levels, is “extremely problematic,” according to Camarota, for American taxpayers.
The RAISE Act — reintroduced in the Senate by Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), David Perdue (R-GA), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) — would cut legal immigration levels in half and convert the immigration system to favor well-educated foreign nationals, thus relieving American workers and taxpayers of the nearly five-decade-long wave of booming immigration. Currently, mass legal immigration redistributes the wealth of working and middle class Americans to the country’s top earners.
“Virtually none of that existed in 1900 during the last great wave of immigration, when we also took in a number of poor people. We didn’t have a well-developed welfare state,” Camarota continued:
We’re not going to stop [the welfare state] tomorrow. So in that context, bringing in less educated people who are poor is extremely problematic for public coffers, for taxpayers in a way that it wasn’t in 1900 because the roads weren’t even paved between the cities in 1900. It’s just a totally different world. And that’s the point of the RAISE Act is to sort of bring in line immigration policy with the reality say of a large government … and a welfare state. [Emphasis added]
The immigrants are not all coming to get welfare and they don’t immediately sign up, but over time, an enormous fraction sign their children up. It’s likely the case that of the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, more than half are signed up for Medicaid — which is our most expensive program. [Emphasis added]
As Breitbart News has reported, U.S. households headed by foreign-born residents use nearly twice the welfare of households headed by native-born Americans.

Every year the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals, with the vast majority deriving from chain migration. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

 

63% of Non-Citizen Households Access Welfare Programs

Compared to 35% of native households



By Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler on November 20, 2018

Steven A. Camarota is the director of research and Karen Zeigler is a demographer at the Center.

New "public charge" rules issued by the Trump administration expand the list of programs that are considered welfare, receipt of which may prevent a prospective immigrant from receiving lawful permanent residence (a green card). Analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) shows welfare use by households headed by non-citizens is very high. The desire to reduce these rates among future immigrants is the primary justification for the rule change. Immigrant advocacy groups are right to worry that the high welfare use of non-citizens may impact the ability of some to receive green cards, though the actual impacts of the rules are unclear because they do not include all the benefits non-citizens receive on behalf of their children and many welfare programs are not included in the new rules. As welfare participation varies dramatically by education level, significantly reducing future welfare use rates would require public charge rules that take into consideration education levels and resulting income and likely welfare use.
Of non-citizens in Census Bureau data, roughly half are in the country illegally. Non-citizens also include long-term temporary visitors (e.g. guestworkers and foreign students) and permanent residents who have not naturalized (green card holders). Despite the fact that there are barriers designed to prevent welfare use for all of these non-citizen populations, the data shows that, overall, non-citizen households access the welfare system at high rates, often receiving benefits on behalf of U.S.-born children.
Among the findings:
·         In 2014, 63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen reported that they used at least one welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native-headed households.
·         Welfare use drops to 58 percent for non-citizen households and 30 percent for native households if cash payments from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are not counted as welfare. EITC recipients pay no federal income tax. Like other welfare, the EITC is a means-tested, anti-poverty program, but unlike other programs one has to work to receive it.
·         Compared to native households, non-citizen households have much higher use of food programs (45 percent vs. 21 percent for natives) and Medicaid (50 percent vs. 23 percent for natives).
·         Including the EITC, 31 percent of non-citizen-headed households receive cash welfare, compared to 19 percent of native households. If the EITC is not included, then cash receipt by non-citizen households is slightly lower than natives (6 percent vs. 8 percent).
·         While most new legal immigrants (green card holders) are barred from most welfare programs, as are illegal immigrants and temporary visitors, these provisions have only a modest impact on non-citizen household use rates because: 1) most legal immigrants have been in the country long enough to qualify; 2) the bar does not apply to all programs, nor does it always apply to non-citizen children; 3) some states provide welfare to new immigrants on their own; and, most importantly, 4) non-citizens (including illegal immigrants) can receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children who are awarded U.S. citizenship and full welfare eligibility at birth.
The following figures include EITC:
·         No single program explains non-citizens' higher overall welfare use. For example, not counting school lunch and breakfast, welfare use is still 61 percent for non-citizen households compared to 33 percent for natives. Not counting Medicaid, welfare use is 55 percent for immigrants compared to 30 percent for natives.
·         Welfare use tends to be high for both newer arrivals and long-time residents. Of households headed by non-citizens in the United States for fewer than 10 years, 50 percent use one or more welfare programs; for those here more than 10 years, the rate is 70 percent.
·         Welfare receipt by working households is very common. Of non-citizen households receiving welfare, 93 percent have at least one worker, as do 76 percent of native households receiving welfare. In fact, non-citizen households are more likely overall to have a worker than are native households.1
·         The primary reason welfare use is so high among non-citizens is that a much larger share of non-citizens have modest levels of education and, as a result, they often earn low wages and qualify for welfare at higher rates than natives.
·         Of all non-citizen households, 58 percent are headed by immigrants who have no more than a high school education, compared to 36 percent of native households.
·         Of households headed by non-citizens with no more than a high school education, 81 percent access one or more welfare programs. In contrast, 28 percent of non-citizen households headed by a college graduate use one or more welfare programs.
·         Like non-citizens, welfare use also varies significantly for natives by educational attainment, with the least educated having much higher welfare use than the most educated.
·         Using education levels and likely future income to determine the probability of welfare use among new green card applicants — and denying permanent residency to those likely to utilize such programs — would almost certainly reduce welfare use among future permanent residents.
·         Of households headed by naturalized immigrants (U.S. citizens), 50 percent used one or more welfare programs. Naturalized-citizen households tend to have lower welfare use than non-citizen households for most types of programs, but higher use rates than native households for virtually every major program.
·         Welfare use is significantly higher for non-citizens than for natives in all four top immigrant-receiving states. In California, 72 percent of non-citizen-headed households use one or more welfare programs, compared to 35 percent for native-headed households. In Texas, the figures are 69 percent vs. 35 percent; in New York they are 53 percent vs. 38 percent; and in Florida, 56 percent of non-citizen-headed households use at least welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native households.

Methods

Programs Examined. The major welfare programs examined in this report are Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food program, free or subsidized school lunch and breakfast, food stamps (officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP), Medicaid, public housing, and rent subsidies.
Data Source. Data for this analysis comes from the public-use file of the 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which is the newest SIPP data available.2 The SIPP is a longitudinal dataset consisting of a series of "panels". Each panel is a nationally representative sample of U.S. households that is followed over several years. The survey was redesigned for 2013 with 2014 as the second wave of the new panel. We use the 2014 SIPP for this analysis. Like all Census surveys of this kind, welfare use is based on self-reporting in the SIPP, and as such there is some misreporting in the survey. All means and percentages are calculated using weights provided by the Census Bureau.
Why Use the SIPP? The SIPP is ideally suited for studying welfare programs because, unlike other Census surveys that measure welfare, the SIPP was specifically designed for this purpose. As the Census Bureau states on its website, the purpose of the SIPP is to "provide accurate and comprehensive information about the income and program participation of individuals and households."3 In addition to the SIPP, the only other government surveys that identify immigrants and at the same time measure welfare use for the entire population are the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Current Population Survey's Annual Social and Economic Supplement, often abbreviated as CPS ASEC or just ASEC. The ACS is a very large survey, but only asks about a few programs. The ASEC is released on a more timely basis than the SIPP and asks about more programs than the ACS, but it does not include the EITC; the ASEC also is not specifically designed to capture receipt of welfare programs. As we discuss at length in a prior study published in 2015, based on 2012 SIPP data, there is general agreement among researchers that the SIPP does a better job of capturing welfare use than other Census Bureau surveys, including the ASEC and ACS.4 More recent analysis confirms this conclusion.5
One recent improvement in the SIPP that was not available when we conducted our 2015 study is the inclusion of a question on use of the EITC, making for even more complete coverage of the nation's welfare programs. The EITC is by far the nation's largest cash program to low-income workers, paying out nearly $60 billion in 2014.6 Unfortunately for immigration research, the SIPP survey for 2014 no longer asks respondents about their current immigration status.7 As other researchers have pointed out, individuals in prior SIPPs who are non-citizens and report that they are currently not permanent residents are almost entirely illegal immigrants, with a modest number of long-term temporary visitors (e.g., guestworkers and foreign students) also included.8
As we showed in our 2015 analysis using the 2012 SIPP, 66 percent of households headed by non-citizens who do not have a green card, and who are mostly illegal immigrants, have very high welfare use rates — excluding the EITC.9 With the new 2014 SIPP, we can no longer identify likely illegal immigrants with the same ease. However, we do know that about half of non-citizens in Census Bureau data are illegal immigrants, which we would expect to make welfare use for non-citizens in general low, as those in the country without authorization are barred from almost all federal welfare programs.10 But like our prior analysis using the 2012 SIPP, this report shows that welfare use by households headed by illegal immigrants must be significant for the overall rate of welfare use among non-citizens to look as it does in this report.
Examining Welfare Use by Household. A large body of prior research has examined welfare use and the fiscal impact of immigrants by looking at households because it makes the most sense. The National Research Council did so in its fiscal estimates in 1997 because it argued that "the household is the primary unit through which public services are consumed."11 In their fiscal study of New Jersey, Deborah Garvey and Thomas Espenshade also used households as the unit of analysis because "households come closer to approximating a functioning socioeconomic unit of mutual exchange and support."12 Other analyses of welfare use and programs, including by the U.S. Census Bureau, have also used the household as the basis for studying welfare use.13 The late Julian Simon of the Cato Institute, himself a strong immigration advocate, pointed out that, "One important reason for not focusing on individuals is that it is on the basis of family needs that public welfare, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and similar transfers are received."14
The primary reason researchers have not looked at individuals is that, as Simon pointed out, eligibility for welfare programs is typically based on the income of all family or household members. Moreover, welfare benefits can often be consumed by all members of the household, such as food purchased with food stamps. Also, if the government provides food or health insurance to children, it creates a clear benefit to adult members of the household who will not have to spend money on these things. In addition, some of the welfare use variables in the SIPP are reported at the household level, not the individual level.
Some advocates for expansive immigration argue that household comparisons are unfair or biased against immigrants because someday the children who receive welfare may possibly pay back the costs of these programs in taxes as adults. Of course, the same argument could be made for the children of natives to whom immigrants are compared in this analysis. Moreover, excluding children obscures the fundamental issue that a very large share of immigrants are unable to support their own children and turn to taxpayer-funded means-tested programs. In terms of the policy debate over immigration and the implications for public coffers, this is the central concern.
















End Notes

1 Of the 4,684,784 million non-citizen households receiving welfare, 93 percent or 4,370,385 have at least one worker. Among the 37,195,644 million native-headed households receiving welfare, 76 percent or 28,238,540 have at least one worker. Of the total (7,489,098) non-citizen households in the country, 92 percent or 6,923,931 have at least one worker. Of all native households (107,454,456), 76 percent or 81,928,626 have at least one worker.
2 The SIPP does not cover the institutionalized population. It does include a small number of people living in group quarters. By focusing on households we are excluding those in group quarters.
3 "Survey of Income and Program Participation", U.S. Census Bureau, last revised February 29, 2016.
4 A detailed discussion and summary of the research showing that the SIPP is the most accurate survey of welfare use can be found in the Methodology section under subsections "Why Use the SIPP" and "The Superiority of SIPP Data" in our 2015 report on immigrant welfare use: Steven A. Camarota, "Welfare Use by Immigrant and Native Households: An Analysis of Medicaid, Cash, Food, and Housing Programs", Center for Immigration Studies, September 2015.
5 A recent National Bureau of Economic Research report examining food stamps finds better coverage from the SIPP than any other survey. See Bruce D. Meyer, Nikolas Mittag, and Robert M. Goerge, "Errors in Survey Reporting and Imputation and their Effects on Estimates of Food Stamp Program Participation", NBER Working Paper No. 2514, October 2018. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has conducted an evaluation of the SIPP, which was redesigned in 2013. The academies find that in general the survey produces estimates similar to prior versions of the survey. See National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The 2014 Redesign of the Survey of Income and Program Participation: An Assessment, Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2018.
6 An additional $9.7 billion was received from the credit in the form of a refund to low-income taxpayers as EITC recipients do not pay federal income tax. The remaining roughly $60 billion received annually by recipients is not a refund of their income tax, but is simply a cash payment from the government. See Gene Falk and Margot L. Crandall-Hollick, "The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC): An Overview", Congressional Research Service, April 18, 2018.
7 In earlier versions of the survey, respondents were first asked if they entered as a permanent resident and second if their status had changed. Now the survey only asks respondents if they entered as a permanent resident.
8 See James D. Bachmeier, Jennifer Van Hook, and Frank D. Bean, "Can We Measure Immigrants' Legal Status? Lessons from Two U.S. Surveys"International Migration Review, Summer 2014; Jeanne Batalova, Sarah Hooker, and Randy Capps, "DACA at the Two-Year Mark: A National and State Profile of Youth Eligible and Applying for Deferred Action", Migration Policy Institute, August 2014.
9 See Table 1 in Steven A. Camarota, "Welfare Use by Immigrant and Native Households: An Analysis of Medicaid, Cash, Food, and Housing Programs", Center for Immigration Studies, September 2015.
10 In its 2014 estimate of the illegal immigrant population, the most recent available, the government estimated that there were 12.1 million illegal immigrants in the country, about 11 million of whom were in the American Community Survey (ACS). See Table 2, in Bryan Baker, "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2014", DHS Office of Immigration Statistics, July 2017. The total number of non-citizens in the 2014 ACS, on which the DHS estimates are based, was 22.3 million. So about half of the non-citizens in the survey are illegal immigrants. The 2014 SIPP shows slightly fewer non-citizens (20 million) than the ACS. The primary reason the SIPP does not show as large a non-citizen population as the ACS is that the SIPP does not include those in institutions, as does the ACS. Also the non-citizen population grows slightly each year, and the first panel of the SIPP was in 2013, making for a slightly smaller non-citizen population in the 2014 SIPP. But overall it is still the case that roughly half the non-citizens in the SIPP used for this analysis are in the country illegally.
11 James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston, eds., The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1997. See pp. 255-256.
12 Deborah Garvey and Thomas J. Espenshade, "State and Local Fiscal Impacts of New Jersey's Immigrant and Native Households", in Keys to Successful Immigration: Implications of the New Jersey Experience, Thomas J. Espenshade, ed., Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 1997.
14 For this reason, Simon examined families, not individuals. While not exactly the same as households, as Simon also observed, the household "in most cases" is "identical with the family." See Julian L. Simon, "Immigrants, Taxes, and Welfare in the United States 1984", Population and Development Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, March, 1984, pp. 55-69.

 

GAVIN NEWSOM HEADS TO EL SALVADOR TO AID THE SALVADORIAN INVASION OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE OF CALIFORNIA… It’s your Democrat Politician at work… FOR ILLEGALS!
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Last year in fact, that game was going full speed. El Salvador's remittances hit arecord $5.47 billion. Literally one out of six Salvadorans now lives in the U.S., and 680,000 of those make their home in benefit-rich California. Salvadoran politicians actually campaign for office in California, owing to the sizable number of Salvadoran voters, many of whom are here illegally., signaling that there's a lot of work to be had for the newest (and least likely to be legal) migrants in the states now, most of which is coming from California.
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Here come Big Daddy, the California governor, the gringo who's already laid out a banquet of goodies for Salvadorans in California, from free health care to free education, to sanctuary state protections to enable illegals to work, coming there supposedly to find out how he can offer ... even more goodies to Salvador's uneducated lower middle classes. The idea of course is to get even more of them to come over. Big Daddy comes down with the Santa sack full of goodies. MONICA SHOWALTER

Feds ‘Actively Working’ on Crackdown on Welfare-Dependent Immigration



JOHN BINDER

Federal immigration officials at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency are “actively working” to enforce President Donald Trump’s recent crackdown on welfare-dependent legal immigration to the U.S.

In a memo last week, Acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli said that staff would “develop and implement guidance” on Trump’s presidential memorandum signed last month that mandates American taxpayers be reimbursed when a legal immigrant uses public welfare.
The order signed by Trump will enforce existing 1996 laws known as the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act” and “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,” which were signed by then-President Bill Clinton.
Cuccinelli’s memo to staff reads:
As part of USCIS’ implementation of this memorandum, USCIS officers will now be required to remind individuals at their adjustment of status interviews of their sponsors’ responsibilities under existing law and regulations. Our officers must remind applicants and sponsors that the Affidavit of Support is a legal and enforceable contract between the sponsor and the federal government. The sponsor must be willing and able to financially support the intending immigrant as outlined by law and regulations (see INA 213A and 8 CFR 213a). If the sponsored immigrant receives any federal means-tested public benefits, the sponsor will be expected to reimburse the benefits-granting agency for every dollar of benefits received by the immigrant. [Emphasis added]
Over the next several months, federal agencies will develop and implement guidance on the presidential memorandum to make sure that agencies enforce these requirements. USCIS will do our part, and we are actively working to implement the President’s directive with our federal partners, including by updating policies and regulations. We continue to advance the President’s directive to enforce the public charge ground of inadmissibility, which seeks to ensure that immigrants are self-sufficient and rely on their own capabilities and the resources of their families, their sponsors, and private organizations rather than public resources. [Emphasis added]
“Despite it being required under long-standing law, sponsors have never been held accountable for the public benefits taken by immigrants,” an administration official told Breitbart News. “This should be a reminder that signing an affidavit of support as a sponsor is both a promise and responsibility the government takes very seriously and will carry real consequences so that taxpayers don’t bear this burden for them.”
The first function of the order mandates that a family member or business sponsor of a legal immigrant looking to permanently resettle in the U.S. is responsible for paying back the welfare costs previously used by that immigrant.
For example, if a visa holder has used $10,000 in food stamp benefits while living in the U.S., when a family member sponsors them for a green card, that family member will be notified of the legal immigrant’s welfare costs to taxpayers and obligated to pay back the amount.
If the sponsor of a legal immigrant does not pay the welfare cost, the Treasury Offset Program will take the money out of the sponsor’s taxes for that year. Federal officials said implementation of this order would begin in September.
Study: Migrants Using Nearly 2X the Welfare of Native-Born Americanshttps://t.co/70GkxRA38t
via 
@BreitbartNews @JxhnBinder
— Immigration Reform Law Institute (@IRLILaw) March 13, 2019
The second function of the order ensures that the income a sponsor to a legal immigrant is taken into consideration when a legal immigrant is applying for federal welfare.
Currently, only the income of legal immigrants is considered by federal agencies when the national is applying for public benefits. Under the rules set out by Clinton’s 1996 law, the Trump administration will make certain that the income of both the legal immigrant and their sponsor is considered when applying for benefits.
The order also seeks to ban illegal aliens from receiving public welfare benefits at the American taxpayers’ expense.
Legal immigration controls that would prevent welfare-dependent nationals from permanently resettling in the U.S. — a rule set to be enforced sometime this year — would be a boon for American taxpayers in the form of an annual $57.4 billion tax cut. That is the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.2 million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.
As Breitbart News reported, the majority of foreign nationals entering the country every year use about 57 percent more food stamps than the average native-born American household. Overall, immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households and 44 percent more in Medicaid dollars. This straining of public services by the foreign-born population translates to the average immigrant household costing American taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

 

 

 

 

The 2020 Democratic Candidates and Their Redefinition of American Citizenship


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New citizens stand during a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) naturalization ceremony at the New York Public Library, July 3, 2018. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

Making the click-through worthwhile: How the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates want to make being an American citizen simply a matter of location and desire, instead of law; another allegation of hideous behavior from Donald Trump from the mid 1990s; the promised big roundup of thriller novels; and a heartfelt “thank you” to you, the readers.
The 2020 Democrats Want to Redefine Citizenship
Sometimes our political debates are furious and deeply divided because of demagogues, clickbait media, and hype. But sometimes our political debates are furious because they reflect a conflict of fundamentally opposed worldviews, where no compromise is feasible.
Many of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates want to fundamentally redefine who is American — that is, if you show up from another country and want to be here, you ought to enjoy the full rights of citizenship and all of the benefits provided to American citizens.
Bernie Sanders put it clearly: “We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and open that to the undocumented.” In other words, if are a citizen of another country and you want a free college education, all you have to do is show up in the United States and get accepted at any one of the 1,626 public colleges in the United States.
Needless to say, if enacted, this would bring a flood of people from all around the world, eager to enjoy the benefits of a college degree, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. (In case you’re wondering, there are a handful of other countries in Europe that offer very low or nominal tuition rates to American students, but at most of those schools, competition for the limited slots is high.)
It is not only Sanders. Beto O’Rourke says that the United States should contemplate eliminating the citizenship exam because it is a structural barrier to immigrants. Indeed, it is meant to be a structural barrier to those who lack English proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing, and civics knowledge. There was once a broad consensus that English proficiency and civics knowledge were required to be a good American citizen. The 2020 Democrats no longer believe this to be true.
Ten candidates, including Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren believe that crossing the border or entering the country without permission should no longer be a crime. On May 7, 2018, the Department of Justice announced they would prosecute all adult aliens apprehended crossing the border illegally, with no exception for asylum seekers or those with minor children. (If that policy was repealed, border crossers would still go through a civil legal process that could lead to their deportation.)
Booker, Steve Bullock, Bill de Blasio, Kirsten Gillibrand, Marianne Williamson, and Andrew Yang believe the federal government should NOT require the use of E-Verify to check the legal status of all hires by private employers. Another nine candidates said they only support that idea as part of a “compromise” on immigration reform.
Sanders contends that adding the question “Are you a U.S. citizen?” to the 2020 census would constitute “absolutely bigoted language.” Amy Klobuchar contends that if the question is included, she would, as president, require a “recount” and O’Rourke threatens that if it is included, he will re-do the entire census a second time without the question. Even John Hickenlooper, allegedly one of the centrists in the swarm of candidates, contends that asking the question on the census for is “ corrupt and illegal.”
We all have our notions of what constitutes an injustice. To many Democrats, the longstanding practice of enforcement of immigration law — policies in place throughout the Obama administration — is an inherent injustice. In their minds, being an American citizen is simply a matter of wanting to be here.
Yet Another Ugly Accusation against Donald Trump
No doubt, Trump’s history with women is sordid and scandalous and full of crass, crude, and objectifying behavior. On the other hand, we just went through a Supreme Court nomination fight that illustrated the limited options for a man who is accused of sexual assault with no evidence. We also know how conditional the “believe all women” rallying cry is.
In Carroll’s account, sometime in “the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996” she ran into Trump in the early evening at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store based on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. After some small talk, she agreed to try on lingerie in front of Trump for fun. She said there were no other customers or sales attendants in the Bergdorf Goodman lingerie department, and no other potential witnesses. She writes that she has checked and that the department store did not keep security tapes from that time. She describes herself as laughing through much of the experience. “I don’t remember if any person or attendant is now in the lingerie department. I don’t remember if I run for the elevator or if I take the slow ride down on the escalator. As soon as I land on the main floor, I run through the store and out the door — I don’t recall which door — and find myself outside on Fifth Avenue.” Carroll says did not report it to the police but told it to two friends. The two friends, contacted by New York magazine and not identified, confirmed Carroll described an experience like this.
Carroll is not seeking a police investigation or criminal charges. She insists this is not just a ploy to sell books; if it were, the book would be all about the president instead of the variety of creeps she’s encountered in her life. She appears to believe that the country should know about her experience and act accordingly.
 “You don’t feel like a victim?” Cooper asked.
“I was not thrown on the ground and ravished which the word rape carries so many sexual connotations. This was not sexual. It hurt. It just — it just — you know,” Carroll responded.
“But I think most people think of rape as — it is a violent assault. It is not — ,” Cooper began.
“I think most people think of rape as being sexy,” Carroll said.
“Let’s take a short break,” Cooper said.
“Think of the fantasies,” Carroll interjected.
“We will take a quick break if you can stick around. We’ll talk more on the other side,” Cooper continued.
“You’re fascinating to talk to,” Carroll said.
Do most people think of rape as being sexy?
In her account, Carroll wrote, “the struggle might simply have read as ‘sexy.’”
The Big Thriller Roundup
Last week on vacation, I finished Mark Greaney’s Agent in Place, the 2018 addition to his wildly popular series about Court Gentry, the CIA-trained “Gray Man” who can blend in just about anywhere and who has the skills and instincts to survive just about any situation. I had heard good things about the Gray Man Series, but until recently I was a bit wary: the strong, silent, brooding loner assassin protagonist can be a little tough to warm up to and enjoy. But what Agent in Place does particularly well — besides terrific research about the horrific situation in Syria as its civil war winds down, the Syrian exile community in France, and the glamorous halls of the high life in Paris – is set up a situation where the hero goes against his better judgment and agrees to pursue a mission that is one step short of suicidal. Greaney puts Gentry into a circumstance where any rational person would say, “Nope, sorry, I can’t help you, I’d like to, but doing this will almost certainly get me killed.” It’s the most desperate situation imaginable, the risks are just a Dagwood sandwich of various dangers and menaces and precarious gambles, his few allies are unreliable, and it requires sneaking into probably the single most dangerous location on earth. But the life of an innocent child hangs in the balance . . .  and Gentry would have to look at himself in the mirror if he choose to not try to save the child.
Back in May, I reviewed Matthew Betley’s Overwatch, which established his recovering-alcoholic Marine officer Logan West and an ever-changing realm of national-security threats that he and his out-of-retirement comrades must chase. That’s the first in his series; the fourth book in the series, Rules of Warhits stores and ships in mid-July. With a ripped-from-the headlines relevancy, much of Rules of War is set in a rapidly-deteriorating Venezuela. Betley told me, “I wanted to set it in a crumbling third-world country, and there’s no better example of that today than Venezuela.” Last week on Dana Perino’s program on Fox News, he talked a bit about the book, and a class action lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs and his recent experiences with the VA, attempting to get coverage for lung problems stemming from the burn pits in Iraq.
Also last week, I finished John A. Daly’s Blood TradeSet shortly after 9/11, Sean Coleman is another protagonist who’s overcoming his battles with the bottle, looking for a second chance and redemption for past mistakes. Blood Trade has a lot of atmosphere, high in the Colorado mountains, with a mood of foreboding hanging over much of the action. (Those who know my favorite television series will know I’m inclined to like stories of rural small towns with secrets behind every door.) Daly takes what looks like a mundane missing-persons stories and gradually reveals a chillingly plausible plot with, a deeply relatable motive for the story’s villains, and a vivid illustration of just how far some people will go to safe a life. This book is accurately titled. Daly’s next is Safeguardcoming in October, featuring Coleman guarding a defunct nuclear silo . . . and apparently attracting the attention of a local cult.
Then there’s arguably the most anticipated thriller of the summer, Brad Thor’s Backlash featuring Scot Harvath, who’s ended up working for the U.S. Secret Service, Navy SEALs, and as a CIA contractor over the course of 18 novels. As mentioned yesterday, not only does it live up to the hype, it’s really striking for how different a story this is from the previous books in this series. The last few Harvath novels have featured him and usually a small team investigating or uncovering some sinister plot by jihadists, or China, or the Russians. Backlash blows up that familiar rhythm and is reminiscent of that Liam Nesson movie The Grey, and the classic The Fugitive, and some of Jack London’s classic survival-in-the-most-hostile-wilds stories. Almost the entire story takes place in a remote corner of the world that I suspect has never been featured in a thriller before, and the story focuses as much on Harvath’s challenge to survive psychologically intact as physically. Thor is to be saluted for willing to experiment and move away from familiar territory, both literally and figuratively.
And these are just the thriller novels I’ve gotten my hands on recently. Daniel Silva’s The New Girl comes out July 16, with Israeli spymaster Gabriel Allon crossing paths with a ruthless Saudi prince who is likely to be compared to the real-life Mohammed bin Salman.
ADDENDA: You guys really are the best readers in the world. Yesterday I mentioned that reviews on Amazon help a book find an audience, and this morning I find 27 reviews on the page, each one kind and offering some sort of insightful observation. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Someone said to me recently that I shouldn’t have said the book isn’t that political, because it covers some big topics adjacent to our modern politics — “questions of heroism, of identity, and of faith” as one reviewer put it, and “the fragile line between chaos and sanity in a society” as another described it. This is what happens when you start the creation of your villains with, “what frightens me?”

 

 

 

What a Border Crisis Looks Like

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Migrants from Central America cross the Rio Bravo river to enter illegally into the United States at El Paso, Texas, June 11, 2019.(Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters)This is a similar border crisis to the one Obama faced in his second term, with similar challenges.
News flash: There’s a crisis at the border.  
This was discovered again over the past few days when immigration attorneys talked to reporters about appalling conditions at a Border Patrol facility detaining migrant minors in Clint, Texas.
According to the lawyers, many of the kids had to sleep on the concrete floor, failed to get proper adult supervision, and didn’t routinely take showers or brush their teeth. The details were hard to read. 
Assuming the account was accurate, one wonders how we could treat anyone this way, let alone children? But a lawyer who talked to the New Yorker mentioned a telling fact: The facility previously had a capacity of 104 and had never held children before. Yet it held roughly 350 children, apparently accommodated by placement of a new warehouse at the site. 
All this is consistent with vast numbers of migrants, many of them families and children, flooding the border and overtaxing facilities never meant for these kinds of numbers or this demographic of migrant. 
Indeed, the immigration lawyer mentioned to the New Yorker that the personnel at the Border Patrol facility were constantly receiving children and constantly transferring them over to a Health and Human Services site, and stipulated that the guards believed the children don’t belong there and should go someplace more appropriate. (Under the glare of publicity, they did.) 
The broader problem is that HHS, which is supposed to get custody of migrant children from Border Patrol in short order, is itself overburdened and backed up.  
Since it’s 2019, what should be properly attributed to dire circumstances and limited capacity is instead taken as evidence of President Donald Trump’s malice. 
If what’s happening at the border is a product of Trump policy, it would have to involve an intricate and well-executed plan. The White House would have to convince the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan — who served as deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection under President Barack Obama — to send word down through the bureaucracy to treat children as callously as possible and not to leak word of this explosive guidance.
In the real world, a migrant influx will test even an administration more favorably inclined toward immigration. The reason that the Left can’t keep their viral images straight — often misattributing to Trump photos of kids in steel-cage holding pens during the Obama years — is that this is a similar crisis to the one Obama faced in his second term, with similar challenges. 
A viral video of a Justice Department lawyer arguing before a panel of judges last week that kids don’t need toothbrushes and soap to meet the standard for “safe and sanitary” detention under the so-called Flores settlement has caused outrage. But few have stopped to note that the underlying case had to do with a district court finding that the Obama administration in 2015 was in material breach of the Flores standard (or that the DOJ lawyer was offering a technical legal argument — not a defense of mistreating kids).
All that said, once these migrants are under our care, it is our responsibility to make sure they are treated as humanely as possible. The border needs more resources. The Trump administration has been asking Congress to pass a funding package, and it should do so forthwith. To address the root cause of the crisis, it should also change the bizarre asylum rules that have forced us to release family units from Central America into the country, creating an incentive for more to come. 
As long as that’s the case, we aren’t going to be able to control the border or process people coming across it in an orderly fashion. What we’re seeing is what a border crisis looks like. If we don’t like it — and we shouldn’t — it’s time for Congress to act to begin to bring it to an end. 

 

 

 

The Border as an ‘Attractive Nuisance’

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection border-patrol agent talks to people on the Mexican side of the border wall in San Diego, Calif., November 28, 2018. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)
If you have a swimming pool, you can be held liable if a trespassing child falls in and drowns unless you’ve taken reasonable steps to keep children from getting to the pool, like a fence. An unfenced pool (or trampoline or a discarded refrigerator that locks from the outside, among other potentially dangerous things) is thus called an attractive nuisance.
The loopholes in our asylum laws make our nation’s borders an attractive nuisance, as well. Of course, no matter what we do, there will always be people who will try to illegally infiltrate our borders, and it’s inevitable that some of them will die in the process — whether by drowning, exposure, dehydration, or other causes. But when we fail to take the most elementary steps to dissuade people from trying to sneak in — heck, when we reward people for sneaking in with kids in tow and making bogus asylum claims — we share the responsibility for those deaths.
The heart-wrenching photograph of a Salvadoran father and daughter who were found drowned Monday on the banks of the Rio Grande forces us to face this issue. Julian Castro was right when he said at last night’s Democratic debate, watching that image of Oscar and his daughter, Valeria, is heartbreaking. It should also piss us all off.
But once pissed off, how to respond? How do we make our border not be an attractive nuisance?
Castro’s answer — and the approach of virtually all Democratic candidates and elected officials — is open borders. And I no longer mean that Democrats are, in effect, calling for open borders. At last night’s debate there was no longer any pretense. Castro took the lead, followed by the rest, in calling for repeal of the criminal law against border infiltration, ending the practice of making asylum claimants take a number at ports of entry and wait their turn, the complete abolition of immigrant detention, and amnesty for every foreigner who manages to get past the border so long as they don’t commit a serious” crime (whatever that means today).  Though she wasn’t on the stage Wednesday, the party’s leader, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, made clear that she’s on board, asking at an event Monday What’s the point? of enforcing immigration laws inside the United States. What all this represents is the abolition of immigration limits.
This would certainly end the attractive-nuisance problem. It would also lead to a rush for the border that would make the 2015 border crisis in Europe (sparked by the photo of another drowned child) pale by comparison. Gallup reported earlier this year that 42 million people in Latin America want to move here, and the share that would actually follow through would be a lot higher than now if we were to formally convert the Border Patrol into a welcome wagon, as the Democrats propose. And that’s not counting the AfricansMiddle Easterners, and other extra-continental migrants we’re seeing.
The other approach to ending the attractive-nuisance problem is to fence off the swimming pool, as it were. In some places that might actually mean a literal fence, but that won’t address the reasons for the current surge. At the very least, that would require plugging the three most serious legal loopholes incentivizing people to cross the border. It also would entail actually deporting people who’ve exhausted their due process, been turned down for asylum, and received a deportation order from a judge; until people in Central America see their fellows glumly stepping off the plane, their asylum ploys having failed, they’ll rightly figure the trip is worth it. More broadly, mandating the use of E-Verify, at least for new hires, is imperative, to fence off the labor market.
There are two ways the United States can limit its responsibility for deaths on the border: Unlimited immigration, or limits that are actually enforced.  The Democrats have made their choice. They should be made to answer for it.


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