Tuesday, September 10, 2019

REP. STEVE KING - IS HE THE ONLY ONE IN CONGRESS WHO STANDS UP FOR AMERICAN WORKERS AND BORDERS?


Despite MSM, Cuckservatives, The Smart Money Is On Immigration Patriot Steve King
Iowa Rep. Steve King (NumbersUSA career grade A+) is a lonely man in DC. Banished by the Republican Party and anathema to Conservative Inc., King is almost a party of one in Congress. He still has friends in the House Freedom Caucus, but the GOP leadership wishes he were gone. As of Sunday night, the betting site Predictit was offering odds of 6 to 4 that King will not be re-elected. Yet the smart money is taking the bet.
King’s ostracism is not due to any personal scandal or lack of commitment to conservative principles (including fierce support of Israel, which curiously does not seem to have protected him at all). It’s all due to his Politically Incorrect comments on immigration and race. VDARE.com, which does not believe in abandoning the wounded, has had to defend King repeatedly—see hereherehereherehere, and here.
The good news: King’s constituents and local party still strongly support him. And a King victory in 2020 would be a tremendous triumph for immigration patriots and a defeat for the cuckservative GOP Establishment, to say nothing of its Main Stream Media handlers. Donald Trump has gone some way to remaking the GOP as a National Conservative party, but the treatment of King and fellow immigration patriots show there is still room for improvement.
It wasn’t too long ago that Rep. King was a respected figure in Republican politics. Several 2016 GOP presidential candidates begged for his support in the Iowa primary. Ted Cruz won the Iowa primary after receiving King’s endorsement [Ted Cruz Picks Rep. Steve King as a Campaign National Co-Chair, by Stephen Nuño-Pérez, NBC News, January 6, 2016]. King did not campaign for Trump in 2016, but the two men became close after the election and each praised the other [Steve King and Donald Trump: mutual fans and echoes, by Glenn Kesssler and Meg Kelly, The Washington Post, January 17, 2019]. “King may be the world's most conservative human being,” Trump said at a 2018 rally.
But things have changed since then. King has bravely spoken out against mass immigration and multiculturalism. However, statements he made before and after the 2018 election proved too much for spineless conservatives in the face of MSM huffing and puffing.
First, King endorsed VDARE contributor Faith Goldy’s bid to be Toronto mayor. Second, he met with members of Austria’s nationalist Freedom Party (which had won the election) while visiting Europe. During that trip, he questioned the value of diversity. This convinced many conservatives that King needed to lose to his Democratic opponent. Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, then-chairman of the Republican National Committee, condemned King, and the Weekly Standard (R.I.P.) called King “America’s most deplorable congressman.”
But the GOP and Trump stuck by King in the race as he pulled off a close victory. His win, however, did not quiet his nagging detractors. A week after the election, the Weekly Standard claimed King called immigrants “dirt.” In reality, he made a harmless joke that the defunct conservative outlet willfully misconstrued.
The final straw: an odd quote from King that appeared in the New York Times in January: "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?" he said.
That one sentence cost King the support of his own party. Congress passed a condemnation of his “hate,” GOP leaders stripped him of his committee assignments, and Conservative Inc. denounced him in the strongest terms possible. King insisted he was only defending western civilization and that the New York Times misquoted him. (No recording appears to exist.) It didn’t matter; he was now persona non grata with the GOP.
There’s no doubt that this has harmed King’s re-election chances. At least three primary challengers have announced they’re running, one of whom is a leading state senator in Iowa. King’s campaign is receiving few donations and had less than $20,000 on hand at the end of June [Steve King Is Broke And Has Been Abandoned by His Colleagues as He Runs for Re-Election, by Lachlan Markay, The Daily Beast, August 25, 2019]. He has received no donations from any PAC controlled by a sitting member of Congress and support from corporate interests groups has dried up. Instead, multiple corporate PACs are backing one of his primary challengers.
Only a handful of Republican lawmakers--such as Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar--have stood by King. ['It was a political lynch mob': Steve King pledges to fight GOP over his exile, by Melanie Zanona, Politico, June 5, 2019]. In one of his worst snubs, the notoriously cowardly Trump White House barred King from flying on Air Force One to an Iowa rally in June. [Steve King not allowed on Air Force One for Trump's trip to Iowa Tuesday, by Jeff Zeleny, CNN, June 11, 2019]. Yet King was the only Republican congressman from Iowa to survive the 2018 election..
King’s pariah status was reinforced last month after he made some odd comments about abortion. In an characteristically inarticulate statement, the Iowa representative defended the position that abortions in the case of rape and incest should be banned—which, of course, is in fact the traditional position of his Roman Catholic Church—by arguing that most people have ancestors who were the product of rape or incest. Once again, his comments drew widespread condemnation from his own party. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, entitled Republican royalty by virtue of being the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and a member of the House GOP leadership, said King’s comments showed why he doesn’t belong in Congress. [House GOP leaders condemn Steve King for 'appalling' rape comments, by Sarah Ferris, Politico, August 14, 2019]
The MSM has gloated about King’s travails. This week, it had a field day with his praise of the drinking water in border detention facilities. King, in typical form, was trying to prove a good point in the least optimal way possible. This time, he said the water he drank from the toilet was good. No, he didn’t actually drink from a toilet: the water fountain in these facilities is attached to the toilet. Regardless, journalists and Democrats had a good chuckle at King’s expense.
So the MSM/ Ruling Class hates King. The Republican Establishment hates him. Conservative Inc. hates him. Even though King is a staunch conservative on abortiongun rights, and nearly every issue imaginable, he’s too “racist” for conservatives.
But The Atlantic just visited King’s rural Iowa district and found voters back him and his Politically Incorrect comments [Why Steve King’s Supporters Are Staying Loyal, by Elaine Godfrey, September 6, 2019].
“If we bring people from another culture here and overpopulate this place with people from a different culture, we won’t build up American culture,” Ida County Republicans chair Mark Leonard told The Atlantic. “Most people aren’t going to have an appreciation for what these folks on my walls [Civil War generals] went through.”
Atlantic’s Godfrey went to a local fair and met two dozen ardent King supporters. She said the supporters stood by King’s immigration views and dismissed accusations that he is a racist.
What is a racist anymore?” Rocky DeWitt told her. “Racist in the liberal logic is just somebody that doesn’t agree with what you say.” DeWitt said that many of the immigrants who have come to his part of Iowa prefer their national flags instead of America’s.
Local residents said that a vote for King sends a message to the establishment and they’ve had enough of being called racists.
“We get ignored by Des Moines, we get flown over, and nobody pays attention to us. The manifestation of that is Screw you, here’s Steve King,” said a local newspaper editor who is no fan of King.
“By calling us stupid, deplorable, racist, and all those other names that they've come up with, it just turns you off,” another resident said
Local party officials reportedly back King, a factor that could him save him in a divided field. State law says that if no one wins at least 35 percent of the primary vote, the race goes to a convention. Those conventions are likely to be dominated by local party activists who still back King. The divided field itself may prevent one candidate from amassing all of the anti-King vote.
If King secures the nomination, the GOP’s infrastructure would likely support him—begrudgingly, however. The GOP is dumb, but it’s not dumb enough to sacrifice a crucial House seat for “muh principles.” Remember: Trump (if not the GOP Establishment) backed Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate run-off in 2017. King is free of political and sexual scandals. He will still have the support of the party if he wins the nomination.
FiveThirtyEight predicts that King will retain his seat if he wins the primary as his district is overwhelmingly Republican. [GOP Leaders Really Want Steve King Gone. Could He Lose In 2020?, by Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight, August 20, 2019] He won a nailbiter in 2018, but that year was a blue wave. 2020 looks to be a much better year for Republicans in deep-red districts. Trump will be on the ticket and will bring more Republican voters to the polls.
A King victory in 2020 would be a triumph for immigration patriots, but it’s ridiculous that it’s even in doubt. He should be cruising to re-election. The Republican Establishment’s betrayal of him shows how much the party needs to improve.
And King is not the only prominent immigration patriot to lack Establishment Republican support. Kris Kobach’s bid to be Kansas governor in 2018 was opposed by many powerful Republicans [Two Former Republican U.S. Senators Endorse Kobach’s Democratic Opponent, by Ed Kilgore, New York, September 18, 2018]. His campaign for Senate in this election cycle is receiving even more pushback: “He’s the worst possible Republican nominee and no one knows it better than the national Democrats,” David Kensinger, chief of staff to former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, has been quoted as saying [Could a Trump cheerleader and Republicans’ ‘worst possible nominee’ be the best for Democrats?, by Chris McGreal, The Guardian, August 8, 2019]. The National Republican Senate Committee and other powerful Republican groups are reportedly planning to undermine Kobach’s candidacy and help a more “electable” Republican. [Kansas’ Kobach is weighing a Senate bid. National Republicans are ready to stop him, by Lindsay Wise, Bryan Lowry and Jonathan Shorman, McClatchyDC, May 17, 2019]
Kobach nearly became Kansas governor in 2018. He lost due to that year’s blue wave and the failures of the last Republican governor, Sam Brownback. Yet, Establishment Republicans want to destroy a brilliant immigration patriot because they deem his views too “extreme”—i.e. distressing to the MSM/ Democrat complex (and, of course, to key GOP donors).
Trump won in 2016 by dispensing with Political Correctness and championing the policies King and Kobach have long advocated. Few Republicans were willing to stand strong on immigration in the pre-Trump era. Ironically, King’s political fortunes have soured in the era for which he paved the way. Sadly, Political Correctness is stronger than ever and Republicans still have not found their spines.
It’s imperative that King and Kobach win. Victory in the face of massive opposition may shake the GOP out of its cucked stupor. Both men would prove that populist-nationalism is bigger than Trump and the GOP would then have no other choice but to respond accordingly.
Middle America didn’t vote for Business First conservatism in 2016—they voted to put America First. Nobody exhibits this value more than Steve King and Kris Kobach.



WE COULD END THE MEX INVASION IN ONE DAY BY PUTTING THE EMPLOYERS OF ILLEGALS IN PRISONS BUILT ALONG THE NARCOMEX BORDER!

The mass employment of illegal aliens by hundreds of businesses, though, continues to go largely ignored by the law, as only 11 employers and no businesses have been federally prosecuted for hiring illegal aliens in the last year.

A 2018 investigation by the Immigration and Reform Law Institute (IRLI) discovered that there have been potentially 39 million cases between 2012 to 2016 wherein American citizens have had their identities stolen by illegal aliens.

Lawsuit: Illegal Aliens Worked for 10 Years Using Stolen Identities at Plant

Trump defends immigration raids as 'good deterrent'
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
3:21

Some illegal aliens arrested by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency last month in raids at five food processing plants worked illegally under stolen identities for more than 10 years, a lawsuit claims.

Last month, ICE agents conducted the largest workplace raid in more than a decade across five food processing plants in Mississippi, netting the arrests of 680 illegal aliens. That same day, though, ICE officials said they released about 300 of the illegal workers back into the U.S. on “humanitarian grounds” while more than 200 of the illegal workers had prior criminal records.
A lawsuit filed by Koch Foods Inc., one of the food processing plants raided by ICE, alleges that a number of illegal aliens who worked at the company had been doing so since at least a decade under stolen identities of American citizens.
For example, when Koch Foods handed over employee records to the federal government in 2008, some of those records included cases of illegal aliens who were employed under stolen identities. Some of those illegal aliens continued to work at Koch Foods until the ICE raid on August 7, 2019.
In one case of alleged identity theft, the lawsuit notes that an illegal alien woman from Guatemala had sought a job at Koch Foods after being released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the interior of the U.S. through the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. When she was not hired the first time around, the woman returned three weeks later with a stolen identity from an American citizen who lives in Texas and was given a job, the lawsuit claims.
Another case detailed in the lawsuit claims that an illegal alien woman obtained her job at Koch Foods by providing a fake ID and stolen Social Security number and thus cleared through the company’s E-Verify system — which is designed to ban employers from hiring illegal aliens over American citizens and legal immigrants.
The lawsuit alleges that since 2007, every employee has been put through a rigorous screening process which has included filling out an I-9 form, having their identity examined, and being put through the E-Verify system. Koch Foods claim indicates that every illegal alien hired by the company after 2007 used a stolen identity from an American citizen to obtain employment.


To date, none of the employers at the five food processing plants have been charged with hiring illegal workers over Americans by federal prosecutors. Likewise, only 40 of the 680 illegal workers arrested by ICE have had charges brought against them.
Today, there are at least eight million illegal aliens holding American jobs in the U.S. economy that would have otherwise gone to American workers and legal immigrants. In most cases, these illegal workers obtain fraudulent work authorization documents or steal American citizens’ identities in order to take jobs.
The mass employment of illegal aliens by hundreds of businesses, though, continues to go largely ignored by the law, as only 11 employers and no businesses have been federally prosecuted for hiring illegal aliens in the last year.
A 2018 investigation by the Immigration and Reform Law Institute (IRLI) discovered that there have been potentially 39 million cases between 2012 to 2016 wherein American citizens have had their identities stolen by illegal aliens.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

Report: California’s Middle-Class Wages Rise by 1 Percent in 40 Years


Justin Sullivan/Getty Images


3 Sep 2019172
6:24

Middle-class wages in progressive California have risen by 1 percent in the last 40 years, says a study by the establishment California Budget and Policy Center.

“Earnings for California’s workers at the low end and middle of the wage scale have generally declined or stagnated for decades,” says the report, titled “California’s Workers Are Increasingly Locked Out of the State’s Prosperity.” The report continued:
In 2018, the median hourly earnings for workers ages 25 to 64 was $21.79, just 1% higher than in 1979, after adjusting for inflation ($21.50, in 2018 dollars) (Figure 1). Inflation-adjusted hourly earnings for low-wage workers, those at the 10th percentile, increased only slightly more, by 4%, from $10.71 in 1979 to $11.12 in 2018.
The report admits that the state’s progressive economy is delivering more to investors and less to wage-earners. “Since 2001, the share of state private-sector [annual new income] that has gone to worker compensation has fallen by 5.6 percentage points — from 52.9% to 47.3%.”
In 2016, California’s Gross Domestic Product was $2.6 trillion, so the 5.6 percent drop shifted $146 billion away from wages. That is roughly $3,625 per person in 2016.
The report notes that wages finally exceeded 1979 levels around 2017, and it splits the credit between the Democrats’ minimum-wage boosts and President Donald Trump’s go-go economy.
The 40 years of flat wages are partly hidden by a wave of new products and services. They include almost-free entertainment and information on the Internet, cheap imported coffee in supermarkets, and reliable, low-pollution autos in garages.
But the impact of California’s flat wages is made worse by California’s rising housing costs, the report says, even though it also ignores the rent-spiking impact of the establishment’s pro-immigration policies:
 In just the last decade alone, the increase in the typical household’s rent far outpaced the rise in the typical full-time worker’s annual earnings, suggesting that working families and individuals are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. In fact, the basic cost of living in many parts of the state is more than many single individuals or families can expect to earn, even if all adults are working full-time.
Specifically, inflation-adjusted median household rent rose by 16% between 2006 and 2017, while inflation-adjusted median annual earnings for individuals working at least 35 hours per week and 50 weeks per year rose by just 2%, according to a Budget Center analysis of US Census Bureau, American Community Survey data.
The wage and housing problems are made worse — especially for families — by the loss of employment benefits as companies and investors spike stock prices by cutting costs. The report says:
Many workers are being paid little more today than workers were in 1979 even as worker productivity has risen. Fewer employees have access to retirement plans sponsored by their employers, leaving individual workers on their own to stretch limited dollars and resources to plan how they’ll spend their later years affording the high cost of living and health care in California. And as union representation has declined, most workers today cannot negotiate collectively for better working conditions, higher pay, and benefits, such as retirement and health care, like their parents and grandparents did. On top of all this, workers who take on contingent and independent work (often referred to as “gig work”), which in many cases appears to be motivated by the need to supplement their primary job or fill gaps in their employment, are rarely granted the same rights and legal protections as traditional employees.
The center’s report tries to blame the four-decade stretch of flat wages on the declining clout of unions. But unions’ decline was impacted by the bipartisan elites’ policy of mass-migration and imposed diversity.
In 2018, Breitbart reported how Progressives for Immigration Reform interviewed Blaine Taylor, a union carpenter, about the economic impact of migration:
TAYLOR: If I hired a framer to do a small addition [in 1988], his wage would have been $45 an hour. That was the minimum for a framing contractor, a good carpenter. For a helper, it was about $25 an hour, for a master who could run a complete job, it was about $45 an hour. That was the going wage for plumbers as well. His helpers typically got $25 an hour.
Now, the average wage in Los Angeles for construction workers is less than $11 an hour. They can’t go lower than the minimum wage. And much of that, if they’re not being paid by the hour at less than $11 an hour, they’re being paid per piece — per piece of plywood that’s installed, per piece of drywall that’s installed. Now, the subcontractor can circumvent paying them as an hourly wage and are now being paid by 1099, which means that no taxes are being taken out. [Emphasis added]
Diversity also damaged the unions by shredding California’s civic solidarity. In 2007, the progressive Southern Poverty Law Center posted a report with the title “Latino Gang Members in Southern California are Terrorizing and Killing Blacks.” In the same year, an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times described another murder by Latino gangs as “a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods.”
The center’s board members include the executive director of the state’s SEIU union, a professor from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the research director at the “Program for Environmental and Regional Equity” at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Outside California, President Donald Trump’s low-immigration policies are pressuring employers to raise Americans’ wages in a hot economy. The Wall Street Journal reportedAugust 29:
Overall, median weekly earnings rose 5% from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the same quarter in 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For workers between the ages of 25 and 34, that increase was 7.6%.


The New York Times laments that reduced immigration does force wages upwards and also does force companies to buy labor-saving, wage-boosting machinery. Instead, NYT prioritizes "ideas about America’s identity and culture.” http://bit.ly/2Zp2u2J 

NYT Admits Fewer Immigrants Means Higher Wages, More Labor-Saving Machines



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THE INVITED INVADING HORDES: IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!
"In the decade following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the capitalist class has delivered powerful blows to the social position of the working class. As a result, the working class in the US, the world’s “richest country,” faces levels of economic hardship not seen since the 1930s."

"Inequality has reached unprecedented levels: the wealth of America’s three richest people now equals the net worth of the poorest half of the US population."

Warren's core insight was fascinating: She argued that massive expansion of the labor force had actually created more stressful living and driven down median wages. BEN SHAPIRO

 

BLOG…. SO, WHAT DOES LA RAZA WARREN THINK WILL HAPPEN WHEN SHE HANDS 40 MILLION LOOTING MEXCIANS AMNESTY SO THEY CAN BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY???

 

How the Quest For Power Corrupted Elizabeth Warren

I first met Elizabeth Warren when she was a professor at Harvard Law School, in 2004. She was fresh off the publication of her bestselling book, "The Two-Income Trap." There's no doubt she was politically liberal -- our only face-to-face meeting involved a recruitment visit at the W Hotel in Los Angeles, where she immediately made some sort of disparaging remark about Rush Limbaugh -- but at the time, Warren was making waves for her iconoclastic views. She wasn't a doctrinaire leftist, spewing Big Government nostrums. She was a creative thinker.
That creative thinking is obvious in "The Two-Income Trap," which discusses the rising number of bankruptcies among middle-class parents, particularly women with children. The book posits that women entered the workforce figuring that by doing so, they could have double household income. But so many women entered the workforce that they actually inflated prices for basic goods like housing, thus driving debt skyward and leading to bankruptcies for two-income families. The book argued that families with one income might actually be better off, since families with two incomes spent nearly the full combined income and then fell behind if one spouse lost a job. Families with one income, by contrast, spent to the limit for one income, and if a spouse was fired, the unemployed spouse would then look for work to replace that single income.
Warren's core insight was fascinating: She argued that massive expansion of the labor force had actually created more stressful living and driven down median wages. But her policy recommendations were even more fascinating. She explicitly argued against "more government regulation of the housing market," slamming "complex regulations," since they "might actually worsen the situation by diminishing the incentive to build new houses or improve older ones." Instead, she argued in favor of school choice, since pressure on housing prices came largely from families seeking to escape badly run government school districts: "A well-designed voucher program would fit the bill neatly."
Her heterodox policy proposals didn't stop there. She refused to "join the chorus calling for taxpayer-funded day care" on its own, calling it a "sacred cow." At the very least, she suggested that "government-subsidized day care would add one more indirect pressure on mothers to join the workforce." She instead sought a more comprehensive educational solution that would include "tax credits for stay-at-home parents."
She ardently opposed additional taxpayer subsidization of college loans, too, or more taxpayer spending on higher education directly. Instead, she called for a tuition freeze from state schools. She recommended tax incentives for families to save rather than spend. She opposed radical solutions wholesale: "We haven't suggested a complete overhaul of the tax structure, and we haven't demanded that businesses cease and desist from ever closing another plant or firing another worker. Nor have we suggested that the United States should build a quasi-socialist safety net to rival the European model."
So, what happened to Warren?
Power.
The other half of iconoclastic Warren was typical progressive, anti-financial industry Warren. In "The Two-Income Trap," she proposes reinstating state usury laws, cutting off access to payday lenders and heavily regulating the banking industry -- all in the name of protecting Americans from themselves. While her position castigating the credit industry for deliberate obfuscation of clients was praiseworthy, her quest to "protect consumers" quickly morphed into a quest to create the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau -- an independent agency without any serious checks or balances. But despite her best efforts, she never became head of the CFPB, failing to woo Republican senators. The result: an emboldened Warren who saw her popularity as tied to her Big Government agenda. No more reaching across the aisle; no more iconoclastic policies. Instead, she would be Ralph Nader II, with a feminist narrative to boot.
And so, she's gaining ground in the 2020 presidential race as a Bernie Sanders knockoff. Ironically, her great failing could be her lack of moderation -- the moderation she abandoned in her quest for progressive power. If Elizabeth Warren circa 2003 were running, she'd be the odds-on favorite for president. But Warren circa 2019 would hate Warren circa 2003.
Ben Shapiro, 35, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller "The Right Side Of History." He lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles.

Munro: Cornell Study Shows Stagnant Wages Hurting Marriage in U.S.

Getty Images
 6 Sep 2019334
4:14

Fewer women get married when fewer men earn a decent salary in an unstable economy, says a study from Cornell University.

“Most American women hope to marry but current shortages of marriageable men—men with a stable job and a good income—make this increasingly difficult, especially in the current gig economy of unstable low-paying service jobs,” said lead author Daniel Lichter, a professor at Cornell University. He continued:
Marriage is still based on love, but it also is fundamentally an economic transaction. Many young men today have little to bring to the marriage bargain, especially as young women’s educational levels on average now exceed their male suitors.
The study looked at wages and marriage rates from 2008 to 2017, and concluded that “promoting good jobs may ultimately be the best marriage promotion policy,” says the study, which is titled “Mismatches in the Marriage Market,” and was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
The study is useful for the populist wing of the GOP, because it shows that rising wages for men in President Donald Trump’s low-immigration economy is good for women’s romantic aspirations and marriage rates. Other data shows that married people — especially women — are far more likely to vote GOP than single people.
Correspondingly, the bad news about wages and marriage is good news for the Democratic Party, which will get extra votes from women if federal policies continue to suppress wages for American men.
The study did not try to show how marriage rates have been impacted by the various federal policies which have flatlined men’s wages for 40 years.
For example, the federal policy of flooding the labor market with immigrants has flatlined wages nationwide for at least two decades. Also, President Barack Obama’s failure to curb opioids — and his reluctance to favor American workers over ‘DACA’ illegals — helped to push millions of Americans out of the workforce and many into their graves.
The Cornell study validated conservatives’ view that women are different from men, and prefer to marry men who earn a higher wage or salary. The press statement said:
The study’s authors developed estimates of the sociodemographic characteristics of unmarried women’s potential spouses who resemble the husbands of otherwise comparable married women. These estimates were compared with the actual distribution of unmarried men at the national, state, and local levels.
Women’s potential husbands had an average income that was about 58% higher than the actual unmarried men currently available to unmarried women. They also were 30% more likely to be employed and 19% more likely to have a college degree.
Middle-class women have the best chance of finding a man who earns more money, the study says.
Low-income women live among men with very little income, partly because they are in jail or are suffering from drugs. And the many women who earn above $40,000 a year face intense competition for the relatively fewer number of men who make more than $65,000 a year.
This shortage of prosperous men means that many high-income women must marry down, the study said. “Women may instead ‘settle’ for a marital match that falls short of their aspirations in a spouse ... This will be expressed in new patterns of marital hypogamy or downward marital mobility,” the study said. 
The problem is worse for women who seek husbands later in life, for example, after spending years in university education:
For example, older women on average were much less likely a suitable marital match ... This is especially true among women who were highly educated ... A 10% increase in age among women with a college degree was associated with a 24.48 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of a suitable match. In contrast, age mattered much less among the least-educated women—those with a high school degree or less who had only a 4.47  percentage point decrease in finding a match. One implication was that delaying marriage, for whatever reason but perhaps especially if pursuing college degrees, had the effect of reducing women’s local-area access to demographically suited marital partners.
Future studies will examine divorce rates among marriages where women recognize that they earn more than their husbands. 


Young Americans got a pay raise of 7.6 percent from late 2017 to late 2018 -- bigger than other groups -- b/c they are more likely to switch jobs in Trump's low-immigration economy. http://bit.ly/2lWHQUD 

Job-Hopping Young Workers Getting Huge Wage Gains, Says Business Center | Breitbart



EconomyImmigrationPoliticsimmigrationlabor marketmarriageMigrantmigrationwages







Migrant Apprehensions at Border Drop 30 Percent in August — Still Up 35 Percent over Aug. 2018

El Paso Sector Border Patrol agents apprehend 194 Central American migrant families and unaccompanied minors at the Antelope Well Port of Entry on August 18. (Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/El Paso Sector)
(Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/El Paso Sector
5:33

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials announced that the apprehension of migrants who illegally cross the border between ports of entry fell in August by 30 percent. This number is down by 62 percent from the May peak of 132,870, but up by 35 percent over August 2018’s 37,524.

U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 50,693 migrants who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico Border between ports of entry in August. This number represents a decrease of 30 percent from July’s 71,999 apprehensions and a 62 percent drop from May’s peak of 132,870, according to the August Southwest Border Migration Report released by CBP officials Monday afternoon. With one month to go in the fiscal year, Border Patrol agents apprehended a total of 811,016 migrants who crossed illegally into the U.S. This year’s total apprehensions are up by more than 145 percent over the same period in FY2018, the report indicates.
The apprehensions in FY 2019 include 457,871 Family Unit Aliens (FMUA), 280,272 single adults, and 72,873 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC). The apprehension of family units in FY 2019 compared to the same period in FY 2018 jumped by a staggering 406 percent, according to numbers provided by CBP officials. Unaccompanied minors also jumped by nearly 60 percent. Single adult apprehensions jumped by 28 percent to 280,272.
CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan credited this month’s drop in migrant apprehensions to “unprecedented” actions on the part of the Trump administration. Those actions include the Remain in Mexico program, increased immigration enforcement by Mexico’s newly formed National Guard, and others.
“Since Congress has failed and continues to fail to pass meaningful legislation to address the crisis at the border which would ultimately stop children from being used as passports and end the cartels’ ability to exploit this population as well as our laws, the Trump administration has taken a number of unilateral actions — unprecedented actions,” Commissioner Morgan said in a Monday press conference.
Morgan discussed the impact of Mexico’s newly created National Guard that is now focused on immigration enforcement within Mexico. He said Mexico deployed 10,000 troops to its southern border and 15,000 troops to its northern border with the United States.
“The international outreach to the governments of Central America is beginning to yield effective and positive results,” Morgan explained. “Particularly, the efforts to stem the surge of illegal migrants crossing the southwest border and to disrupt alien smuggling organizations. The Northern Triangle countries specifically, along with the government of Mexico, have really joined the United States as true partners for the first time. They really are seeing this as a true regional crisis that needs continuing coordination, cooperation, and effort. — that this is not just a United States problem.”
CBP officials listed the following numbers of Family Unit Aliens apprehended from Mexico and the Central American Northern Triangle region:
  • Guatemala — 182.467
  • Honduras — 182,449
  • El Salvador — 54,915
  • Mexico — 9,542
For Unaccompanied Alien Children:
  • Guatemala — 29,602
  • Honduras — 19,696
  • El Salvador — 11,593
  • Mexico — 9,542
For Single Adults:
  • Mexico — 136,658
  • Guatemala — 46,566
  • Honduras — 42,783
  • El Salvador — 19,804
The report from CBP does not detail the numbers of migrants from other nations who have also been apprehended in increasing numbers along the border.
Morgan also credited the reduction of migrant apprehensions to the Migrant Protection Program (MPP) where migrants can be returned and held in Mexico to await asylum hearings in the United States.
The MPP program “discourages the abuse and exploitation of U.S. laws and non-meritorious or false asylum claims,” the commissioner stated. “MPP also promotes a safer and more orderly process along the southwest border — freeing up the limited resources and helps free up time to devote to those migrants who legitimately have a merit-based claim.”
Morgan said that as of September 1, CBP returned more than 42,000 migrants to Mexico under the MPP program.
The commissioner praised Mexico for its cooperation and support but said, “they need to do more.”
“President Trump is making it clear,” Morgan stated in reference to deterrence, “if you come to the United States of American illegally, you will be removed.”
Morgan issued a warning to Congress. “Unless the laws change, these numbers will rise again next year, just as we’ve seen in the past,” the commissioner concluded. “We will again face the same kind of crisis we have for way too long.



Immigration Economics

How the modern welfare state fundamentally changed the incentives of immigration
February 23, 2017 Updated: March 1, 2017
Immigrants built America into a superpower, coming first from England, then from Germany, Ireland, France, Russia, and Eastern Europe.
America had open borders. Virtually anyone arriving by boat at Ellis Island was registered, then set free to make their way in the growing nation.
Today, we have complex laws regulating immigration, begging the question: If it was better in yesteryear, should we return to the open border system of the 19th century? Unfortunately, a simple yes or no won’t do for an answer.
The economics of immigration are complex and have changed from times past. In order to understand the advantages and disadvantages, one needs to understand the economic incentives of different immigration systems. 

Free Market Model


Mulberry Street market in New York in the early 1900s. Manhattan's Little Italy is a classic example of how immigrants from the same nation settled in clusters in their new land. (Library of Congress)
Mulberry Street market in New York in the early 1900s. Manhattan’s Little Italy is a classic example of how immigrants from the same nation settled in clusters in their new land. (Library of Congress)

In the past, the free market set the incentive structure and immigration served its purpose, though not without friction.
Today, incentives are dictated by the government and they create unintended economic consequences, and winners and losers.
If the objective of immigration is to strengthen a nation economically, then open borders served the rising United States well: It attracted workers, businessmen, and scientists from all over the world to add value to the emerging society of the United States.
However, this was only possible because of the incentive structure at the time.
In the 19th century, there was no welfare state. Immigrants arriving by boat would have to fend for themselves to make a living, thus adding economic value by definition. If he failed to do so, he would either die or have to leave. Criminal punishment was harsh, and many crimes carried the death sentence.
So immigrants either had to adapt to the prevailing customs, laws, and the culture, or they would not be able to create enough economic value to succeed.
“It acts as a filter, so you want to come and make it work. People made great sacrifices to come here, learn local customs, and become capitalists,” said Dan Oliver, director of the Committee for Monetary Research & Education, a New York-based think tank.
The original meaning of the term capitalist is someone who owns capital, either in the form of bank savings or business investments.
“People came with no capital, and they had to earn the capital. You moved here, no one gave you anything,” said Oliver.

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Your employer can hire people much easier. Even though you are worse off, your employer is better off. Your loss is your employer’s gain.
— GEORGE BORJAS, professor of economics, Harvard University
According to Harvard University economics professor George Borjas, who specializes in labor economics and immigration, a change in the laws making it difficult to immigrate after the 1920s smoothed out the effects of the mass immigration waves of the 1800s.
The Immigration Act of 1924 introduced a quota system based on the national origins of the people already in the United States. If there were 10 million people of German origin living in the United States, then a maximum of 2 percent of that number, or 200,000 Germans, could obtain a visa. 
“We changed policy to make it harder to immigrate. With the change in policy and the Depression in the 1930s, as well as World War II, we had a long period with few immigrants. And that gave the Ellis Island-era migration time to work itself through the system,” said Borjas.
Immigrants had time to learn English, adapt to the local laws and customs, and get an economic foothold. Their children could attend American universities before a new wave of immigrants, this time from Latin America, started arriving in the 1960s.

Welfare Incentives


Mexican farm workers in Colorado in 2011. Even though low-skilled migrants make little money in the United States, welfare programs and free schooling can make it easier and more appealing for migrants to raise families here than in their home countries.
Mexican farm workers in Colorado in 2011. Even though low-skilled migrants make little money in the United States, welfare programs and free schooling can make it easier and more appealing for migrants to raise families here than in their home countries. (John Moore/Getty Images)

In the United States today, the simple incentive structure for would-be immigrants has been distorted beyond recognition.
Legal immigration is now managed through a complicated visa system. Immigrants spend thousands on immigration lawyers, money that could be spent investing in a business or in education.

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Filing a petition for permanent residency costs between $205 and $1,100 in fees alone. The cost of immigration lawyers can easily add another $5,000 to $10,000.
Immigration that does not comply with these complicated laws, and is therefore illegal, is tolerated by the state. Citizens of lower-income countries see economic opportunity and welfare support in the United States and are coming in record numbers.
There were 11.1 million illegal immigrants in the United States in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center, with just over half coming from Mexico. 
The wages these workers earn can benefit the country. Borjas estimates there is a net benefit to the native U.S. economy of $50 billion each year, stemming from all migration to date, both legal and illegal, because of increased economic activity.
On the flip side, there is a redistribution of income from native workers to companies—worth $516 billion per year—through lower wages.
Who do you want to help? Not everybody can be better off. It’s a fact of government. When you are creating policies, not everybody benefits.
— GEORGE BORJAS, Harvard University

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“Your employer can hire people much easier. Even though you are worse off, your employer is better off. Your loss is your employer’s gain,” Borjas said. According to one of his studies, for every 10 percent increase in the number of workers, the wages in that industry decrease by 3 percent. Immigrants and local companies gain, local workers lose.
Most illegal immigrants work for cheap wages and aren’t eligible for welfare. But even the cheap wages offered by the private sector are better than what they can make at home.
Moreover, welfare available to U.S.-born children, privately funded support for immigrants, and the possibility of sending remittance payments back to their home countries all incentivize millions of poor and uneducated migrants to cross the border illegally.

Migrant workers from Mexico line up for flu shots at a farm in Colorado. Although most illegal migrants are limited to low-skill jobs, many feel they are better off than in their home countries, where gangs and violence may dominate work and public life. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Migrant workers from Mexico line up for flu shots at a farm in Colorado. Although most illegal migrants are limited to low-skill jobs, many feel they are better off than in their home countries, where gangs and violence may dominate work and public life. (John Moore/Getty Images)

“Immigration to the United States has been disproportionately low skill, and the welfare state is designed to provide assistance to low-skill workers,” said Borjas.
Because children born to illegal immigrants are citizens by default, even if the original migrant doesn’t receive any welfare, the children are eligible to access the resources of the state, including food stamps, free schooling, and Medicaid.

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According to Borjas, 42 percent of non-citizen households (3.7 million in total) received some form of welfare benefit in 2016.
Immigrant households, including both legal and illegal, received on average $6,234 in federal welfare benefits per year, which is 41 percent higher than the average of $4,431 per native household, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.
Unlike in the past, when providing for one’s family was a forced necessity, today if the head of the household is not able to provide through market wages alone, the state picks up the tab. It is therefore economically beneficial for people from low-income countries to migrate to the United States because raising a family here is much safer and cheaper.
It then becomes a question of how the government should divide its limited resources among the native population and immigrants and their families.
Because the welfare state enables immigrants to provide a better life for themselves and their families, more people come and stay than under the free-market system of the 19th century, when about 25 percent of those who came, ultimately went back home.

An immigration inspector performs eye examinations on immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in New York in the early 1900s. (National Archives)
An immigration inspector performs eye examinations on immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in New York in the early 1900s. (National Archives)

“In the old days, many things were different. You came, you didn’t make it, you went back,” said Borjas. 
The massive influx of people competing for cheap jobs then influences the labor market, and local labor is crowded out in some cases, though not in all, leading to a backlash from the native population.
Because of the nature of illegal immigration, immigrant clusters form. Integration into the rest of society is more difficult, and sometimes less desirable, compared to in earlier times.
In the past, competing for economic resources forced people to adopt the local language and the customs, or else they wouldn’t succeed. The welfare state provides different incentives.
“Now there is evidence that there’s less integration. The state pays for everything, so you don’t have to integrate,” said Borjas.
Also, in stark contrast to the 19th century, criminal punishments are now less severe and don’t automatically lead to deportation. So even criminal elements might prefer serving time in U.S. prisons, compared to living in violent communities back home, for example.

High-Skilled Labor

Skilled immigration through the visa system, while complex and costly, has the advantage that foreign workers get high-paying jobs and start adding value to the economy straight away.

Born in Bavaria, Germany, in 1829, Levi Strauss emigrated to the United States at the age of 18. After working in the family's dry goods business in New York City, he moved to San Francisco in 1853 to open the West Coast branch of the business, adding tents and jeans to the product line of what became the famous Levi Strauss & Co.
Born in Bavaria, Germany, in 1829, Levi Strauss emigrated to the United States at the age of 18. After working in the family’s dry goods business in New York City, he moved to San Francisco in 1853 to open the West Coast branch of the business, adding tents and jeans to the product line of what became the famous Levi Strauss & Co.

Immigrants from India, for example, are now the country’s wealthiest ethnic group, earning a median income of $100,547 in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This was almost double the median income for all Americans, $51,939. 
“Immigrants come in, they bring skill, they bring knowledge. But they also have an impact on the prevailing wage, it’s no different than illegal immigration,” said Borjas. “Do you think Mark Zuckerberg wants the H-1B visas for his foreign workers out of the goodness of his own heart?”
After President Donald Trump tried to temporarily ban immigration from seven countries, more than 120 companies, including Airbnb, eBay, Facebook, Google, Intel, Netflix, and Uber, filed a legal brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco emphasizing the importance of immigrants to the U.S. economy.

Born in southern Germany in 1879, Albert Einstein went to university in Zurich,  then emigrated to the United States to escape persecution in 1933. He spent the rest of his life teaching at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Born in southern Germany in 1879, Albert Einstein went to university in Zurich, then emigrated to the United States to escape persecution in 1933. He spent the rest of his life teaching at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

“Immigrants make many of the nation’s greatest discoveries and create some of the country’s most innovative and iconic companies,” the brief states.
From businessmen like Levi Strauss, to inventors and physicists Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein, as well as economists like Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter, immigrant geniuses have found the right environment in America, and the country has reaped the rewards.
“The United States has never been self-sufficient in science. There was always a great influx of scientific knowledge from the European technical universities,” said James Nolt, professor of international relations at New York University. “Without immigration, we have no high-tech industry.”

Born to Serbian parents in modern- day Croatia in 1856, Nikola Tesla attended the Graz University of Technology in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, studying physics, but never graduated due to a gambling addiction. In 1884, Tesla emigrated to New York and went on to invent the AC motor and make breakthroughs in the fields of electrical and mechanical engineering.
Born to Serbian parents in modern- day Croatia in 1856, Nikola Tesla attended the Graz University of Technology in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, studying physics, but never graduated due to a gambling addiction. In 1884, Tesla emigrated to New York and went on to invent the AC motor and make breakthroughs in the fields of electrical and mechanical engineering.

According to the Institute of International Education, nearly 75 percent of the 124,861 foreign faculty members in the 2014–15 academic year were in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). China, India, South Korea, and Germany send the most foreign scholars.
However, it is also true that the H-1B visa process, in particular, is highly complicated and favors big tech companies over smaller competitors and skilled local workers who are facing wage pressure.
“This is tech companies trying to keep their costs down. If Microsoft had to pay $60,000 instead of $40,000, its profits would be lower,” said Robert Brusca of consulting firm Fact and Opinion Economics.
So the fundamental theorem of more workers and lower wages also holds true in the high-tech and high-skill sector, especially for science and engineering. The immigrants and the big companies benefit, while local workers lose out.
Because of globalization and immigration, American high-skilled workers are now competing with people from China, India, and elsewhere in the world—a total labor pool of billions of people.
Even though India, for example, is still a developing country, the 2 million Indian-born immigrants living in the United States represent some of the best and brightest of a 1.25 billion populace.

The Culture Factor

The competition for skilled jobs starts even before immigration, however. Europeans, Chinese, and the best from India do much better in math and science than their American counterparts, starting in elementary school.
“There is a lot to be done to improve the schools in the United States. The level is pretty low in many areas. Some high schools don’t even offer calculus,” said Nolt.
According to Nolt, the low level of local expertise in science and engineering is also rooted in American culture.
“People don’t see engineering as an easy way forward in society. Think about TV shows and movies, for example. How many are about lawyers or police? How many shows are about doctors? And how many are about scientists and engineers?”
“When you have a system that overpays accountants, lawyers, and bankers and underpays engineers, then you have to import them from abroad,” said Oliver, from the Committee for Monetary Research & Education. 
According to the National Science Foundation, in 2010, 27 percent of workers in science and engineering were foreign born. 
Another study by the foundation indicates that native enrollment in science and engineering graduate degrees fell by 5 percent from 2008 to 2014, while foreign enrollment in the same degrees increased by 35 percent. By now, American universities have come to depend on foreign talent to fill those science spots.
In 2015, American public universities earned $9 billion in tuition and fees from foreign students, who represent 12 percent of the student population but paid 28 percent of total tuition fees, according to an analysis by SelfScore.  

Regulation

In addition to the structural problems in American education, and attitudes toward science and engineering jobs, there is also a problem of labor market regulation.
Because immigrants sometimes aren’t eligible for certain benefits and perks, in addition to earning lower wages, it’s more attractive to hire them.
For example, because the H-1B visas are tied to the original sponsor, the immigrant is more dependent on the company because he or she can’t just switch jobs like a local worker. The company has power over the worker.
“You have turned the labor market into a Japanese lunchbox, and that makes it hard to find the right person for the right spot. If you sweep those regulations away, the labor market looks more dynamic,” said Brusca.
In the end, when the economics of immigration aren’t governed by the free market, one without interference from the welfare state, any regulation will create winners and losers.
“Who do you want to help? Not everybody can be better off. It’s a fact of government. When you are creating policies, not everybody benefits,” said Borjas.
“Immigration creates a lot of issues, but if you care about immigrants, then we are helping a lot of poor people around the world. It’s the largest anti-poverty program in the world.” The question becomes if the native population is ready to pay the price.

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