Ann
Coulter: Surprise! That 'cheap' immigrant labor costs us a lot
© Getty Images
BY ANN COULTER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
© 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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
*
$17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the
American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
*
$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.
*
$22 billion is spent on (AFDC) welfare to illegal aliens each
year.
*
$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.
*
$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.
*
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.
*
$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
*
“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.
A 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.
*
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
*
"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
*
“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.
*
“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!
|
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.
A 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
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.
///
DACA
Amnesty Would Render Border Wall Useless, Cost Americans $26B
Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty- mages
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.”
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
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.
Study: More than 7-in-10 California Immigrant
Welfare
US Customs and Border Patrol
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.
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.
63% of Non-Citizen Households Access Welfare Programs
Compared to 35% of native households
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.
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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.
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.
13 See Kanin
L. Reese, "An
Analysis of the Characteristics of Multiple Program Participation Using the
Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)" , Census Bureau
Working Paper 244, (undated); "Profile of the
Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2000", Census Bureau,
December 2001, pp. 23-206; and Robert Rector and Jason Richwine, "The
Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer", Heritage
Foundation, 2013.
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!
*
*
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.
*
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
via @BreitbartNews @JxhnBinder
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.
The
2020 Democratic Candidates and Their Redefinition of American Citizenship
·
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
I have no
idea whether or not to believe E. Jean Carroll’s claim that
President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990’s.
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 War, hits
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 Trade. Set
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 Safeguard, coming 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
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’
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 Africans, Middle 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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