THE
ALARMING FACTS ON THE AMERICAN WORKER vs THE “CHEAP” LABOR ILLEGAL INVITED OVER
OUR BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED
JOE
LEGAL v LA RAZA JOSE ILLEGAL
Here’s
how it breaks down; will make you want to be an illegal!
…. which one has it
good under the Dems???
70% OF ILLEGALS GET WELFARE!...... and
commit 70% of the murders, rapes and molestations.
“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”
CIS
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.
MOLESTATIN
Nearly One Million Sex Crimes
Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States.
Sources:
Center for Immigration Studies.
Federation for American Immigration Reform.
House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Investigations.
Inter-American Development Bank.
Violent Crimes Institute.
Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Immigration Studies Program.
Illegal Alien Crime Report.
Memorial to victims of Illegal Alien Crime.
education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of
English.
(SNAP) food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
countries of origin. This is why Mexico is getting involved in our
politics.
Federation for American Immigration Reform.
House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Investigations.
Inter-American Development Bank.
Violent Crimes Institute.
Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Immigration Studies Program.
Illegal Alien Crime Report.
Memorial to victims of Illegal Alien Crime.
Immigration Opinions, 6/30/17
Support the Center for Immigration Studies by donating on line here: http://cis.org/donate
This email includes a wide range of views, provided for educational purposes. Inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Hate Group” Fatwas from SPLC’s Ayatollahs Are Losing Their Sting
By Mark Krikorian
National Review Online, June 27, 2017
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/449028/splc-hate-group-smear-loses-steam
As Ericka Andersen points out below, Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz has been targeted as an “extremist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and is planning to sue the left-wing group for defamation. He’s crowdfunding the lawsuit, and he’ll need a big crowd, because the SPLC is sitting on a war chest of more than $300 million amassed via junk mail by its founder Morris Dees, a member of the Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame. (This hoard of cash is why my Center for Immigration Studies couldn’t sue when the SPLC added us to its “hate group” fatwa earlier this year; as Peter Thiel might say, small nonprofits have no effective access to our legal system.)
Whatever the outcome of Nawaz’s lawsuit, the SPLC — whose pronouncements were once accepted without question by right-thinking people — is clearly losing its luster. Perhaps that started when the SPLC’s chief hate-sniffer, Mark Potok, started openly and repeatedly acknowledging that the point of the “hate group” designation “is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.” Or when it became clear that the Nazis, skinheads, Klansmen, and other weirdos on the list were merely window dressing designed to taint the SPLC’s political opponents, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, added in 2007 (in response to the failure of the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill) and the Family Research Council in 2010 (as part of the push for gay marriage).
The SPLC’s most recent setback came this week as GuideStar, the nation’s leading clearinghouse for information on nonprofits, removed the recently added “hate group” designation from the profile pages of targeted groups. Here’s what the header on CIS’s profile page on this supposedly neutral, non-political site looked like until yesterday:
When you clicked on the information button, you saw this text: “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a respected [sic] hate group watchdog. There is disagreement on some of SPLC’s specific choices, but on balance GuideStar believes the analysis is strong enough to share. We leave it to you to come to your own conclusions.”
When my attorneys and I met with Guidestar a week and a half ago, the organization’s president, Jacob Harold, was adamant that they would not remove the SPLC scarlet letter. Ensconced in a liberal cocoon, he was soon taken aback by the furious backlash, including a scathing piece in the Wall Street Journal and objections from Guidestar’s own donors (it is itself a nonprofit). Harold did the Left’s blame-the-victim thing by claiming he was forced to remove the offending designation because of concern for “staff safety.”
Another sign of the weakening of the SPLC’s “hate” voodoo came last week from a former head of the ACLU. Yes, that ACLU. Nadine Strassen, president of the organization until 2008, was on a Washington Post Live broadcast recently alongside Ann Coulter, with columnist Charles Lane moderating. This excerpt is interesting, starting at about 10:00:
Coulter: ...but do not start saying to me “illegal alien” is the same as the N word, “slant” is the same as the N word – no, nothing is the same as the N word...that is how people shut down speech.
Strassen: There are also two different kinds of expression that you’re talking about, Ann. One is a face-to-face insult or insulting people by using a derogatory term. The other is an idea that people dislike, and that’s a whole different kettle of fish, right? And one of the things that really disturbs me, is how the H word – “hate” – which is being overused and abused, we’re hearing the term “hate speech” and even “hate crime” for policy positions that people dislike.
Lane: Well, sometimes it’s more than a mere policy...
Strassen: No, but, very often, seriously, people who take certain positions on immigration, who take certain positions on gay marriage, who take certain positions on abortion, even on voting. … There was actually a professor somewhere in California, not Berkeley, who actually said that voting for Trump was a “hate crime.” And she took pains to say I meant that literally. And there are many examples like that. And what scares me is that it’s not just rhetoric, right? There are consequences. Because if something is a crime – and somebody else said the whole election was “terrorism” – well we punish terrorists, we outlaw them. And I think that is the analogy that’s being made, is that there are certain ideas that are considered tantamount to violence, and therefore just as we outlaw and punish violence, we have to outlaw and punish those ideas, or take vigilante justice into our own hands.
Coulter: “Right. Or shoot them.”
Strassen’s point about vigilante justice is what I was getting at in describing the SPLC’s “hate group” designation as a hit list, a point that was underlined shortly after my post by James Hodgkinson.
Despite these promising signs, we’ll only really know the SPLC has been knocked off its pedestal when mainstream news media always, as a matter of editorial policy, insist that reporters put “hate group” in scare quotes, like “illegal immigrant” or “partial birth abortion” or “death tax.” An especially comical example of the current state of play in the media is an NBC piece from a couple of weeks ago, which put sharia law — an actually existing thing — in scare quotes, but did not put them around the made-up advocacy term of “hate group.” So we still have a ways to go.
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2.
Peeling Back Executive Overreach, One Layer at a Time
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, June 30, 2017
. . .
The most recent example of a half step comes to us courtesy of Obama's Executive Order (EO) 13597, which was a kind of stealth executive action that demanded that the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs up its visa production levels so much as to equate to quotas, including in countries that have traditionally shown themselves to have significant numbers of visa violators who fail to return home when their authorization to remain expires.
EO 13597 also required that at least 80 percent of all visas globally be adjudicated within three weeks (and damn the security implications). Given the hundreds of thousands of visa applications being juggled by consular officers worldwide at any one time, the mandate stopped just short of insisting that they cut corners and just "get to yes" right at the start of the visa application process. But the implication was clear.
When considered in light of the growing problem of visa violators, who now constitute nearly half of all aliens residing illegally in the United States, not to mention the adverse and potentially disastrous consequences to our homeland security, a rational argument can be made that mere issuance of EO 13597 amounted to official misfeasance, if not downright malfeasance.
On June 21, President Trump issued his own EO, amending the original EO 13597. By the stroke of a pen, he ended that portion involving the three-week deadline.
This is excellent news.
. . .
http://cis.org/cadman/peeling-back-executive-overreach-one-layer-time
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3.
Reintroducing a Bill to Tighten Up the Refugee Admission and Adjustment Processes
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, June 29, 2017
. . .
Rep. Labrador's bill is timely. As a nation, we have continued on auto pilot where refugees are concerned, all through the brouhaha over the president's "travel ban" executive order (EO), which has received a reprieve (of sorts) from the Supreme Court until it considers the matter in full this coming fall (see here and here). In the meantime, refugees continue to enter the United States and, although the figures may be down, as my colleague Nayla Rush has recently observed, we shouldn't invest too much confidence in those numbers remaining low or, frankly, in the quality of the screening that is being done prior to their admission.
What it comes down to is this: If this administration would do what it needs — and promised —to do, by obliging the Department of Homeland Security to re-think and overhaul its vetting processes, both generally and specifically where refugees are concerned, then the EO would fade into secondary importance.
. . .
http://cis.org/cadman/reintroducing-bill-tighten-refugee-admission-and-adjustment-processes
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4.
Two Immigration Enforcement Bills Are Introduced in the House
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, June 27, 2017
. . .
Significantly, the "No Sanctuaries" bill predicates eligibility for various federal enforcement funds and grants upon such cooperation. The bill lays out a requirement that the DHS secretary must annually prepare a list of noncompliant state and local governments, which list is to be reported to Congress. State or local governments determined to be noncompliant and placed on the list are ineligible for a multiplicity of programs administered by both the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security; those funds that cannot be allocated to a government because of noncompliance may be reallocated to other governments which have shown themselves to be cooperative with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
The bill also establishes new statutory language authorizing detainers issued by federal immigration authorities after a determination of "probable cause," a phrase that is defined in the bill. State or local governments that comply with the detainers are provided with immunity from suit. The bill also provides that in the event a lawsuit is filed, the proper defendant is the federal government, and not the state or local government (or its contracting detention entity) which honors the detainer. This is important because among the reasons some state or local enforcement agencies have become reticent to honor immigration detainers is not just fear of being sued, but also of being left high and dry by federal agencies responsible for immigration law enforcement and forced to fend for themselves in defending against such suits.
In addition, H.R. 3003 provides that when state or local governments fail or refuse to comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts, then DHS and its component agencies may similarly decline to turn over to them, aliens who are in federal immigration custody against whom state processes such as warrants, writs, or summonses have been issued.
Another section of the bill provides for a private right of action by victims or their survivors against a state or its political subdivision if that state or local government has released a removable alien from custody despite existence of an immigration detainer, if that alien goes on to commit murder, rape, or any felony, as defined by the state, for which the alien was convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment of at least one year.
. . .
http://cis.org/cadman/two-immigration-enforcement-bills-are-introduced-house
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5.
Taking Australia's Failed Asylum Seekers: Where's the Art of the Deal?
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, June 25, 2017
. . .
This was a rather bizarre deal struck by former President Barack Obama for reasons known only to himself. But why President Trump decided to stand by the deal is also unclear. There's no gain in it for the United States other than, perhaps, remaining true to an ally occupying a strategic position in an area where the People's Republic of China has become threatening and hegemonistic.
But there is no gratitude on the part of Australian premier Malcolm Turnbull who, as Rush notes, was caught in a "hot mic" moment making fun of Trump, even though by sticking with the deal Trump took Turnbull off the hot seat of a highly charged domestic issue and quite possibly saved his political bacon. Yet as I write this, it was announced that Australia is withdrawing air operations in Syria rather than get caught in a strategic squeeze between the United States and Russia after an American fighter downed a Syrian aircraft bombing U.S.-supported rebels fighting the Assad regime. (Given China's increasing militarism in his geopolitical area of the globe, Turnbull had better hope the United States is a more steadfast ally than he is proving to be.)
But back to the matter of accepting these migrants, many of whom have expressed disdain for the United States, as documented by Rush: The Australian government, in an attempt to put the turmoil over its establishment of offshore migrant detention centers behind it, has negotiated a class action lawsuit settlement in which it will pay the equivalent of US$53 million to the 1,905 detainees on Manus Island, site of one of the two centers.
. . .
http://cis.org/cadman/wheres-art-deal-more-thoughts-lopsided-decision-accept-australias-failed-asylum-seekers
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6.
Top Justice Official Scoffs at Immigrant Crime Reporting "Chilling Effect"
By Jessica Vaughan
CIS Immigration Blog, June 26, 2017
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week on the growth of the MS-13 gang and the nexus to immigration enforcement failures, a senior Department of Justice official strongly rebuffed assertions by two senators that cooperation between local police and ICE causes immigrants to fear reporting crimes.
This spurious claim, known as the "chilling effect", is the number-one rationale offered by sanctuary jurisdictions to try to justify their non-cooperation policies. The origins of the theory are unknown, but I first noticed it soon after stricter immigration enforcement measures were adopted in the wake of 9/11, particularly as they were applied to aliens from terror-associated countries. I have read every study I can find on this topic and explored voluminous government and law enforcement data to find evidence that crime reporting by immigrants suffers when local police cooperate with ICE, but it just isn't there; this is a myth created by anti-enforcement advocates. The most reliable academic studies and government data show that robust cooperation between locals and feds does not affect crime reporting by immigrants.
. . .
http://cis.org/vaughan/top-justice-official-scoffs-immigrant-crime-reporting-chilling-effect
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7.
Among the Working-Age in Tennessee, All Employment Gains Since 2007 Have Gone to Immigrants
By Steven A. Camarota
CIS Immigration Blog, June 26, 2017
Even though the election is more than a year away, the issue of immigration has come up repeatedly in the Tennessee governor's race. To put this debate into context, the Center for Immigration Studies has analyzed recent government data on employment in the state. The analysis shows that immigrants (legal and illegal) accounted for all of the net increase in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job in Tennessee between the first quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2017 — even though the native-born accounted for 77 percent of growth among the total working-age population. Prior analysis indicates that 30 percent to 40 percent of immigrants in Tennessee are in the country illegally. Of the 229,000 immigrants in the state working, 70,000 to 90,000 are likely to be illegal immigrants.
Among the findings:
* There were 47,000 more working-age (16 to 65) immigrants (legal and illegal) holding a job in Tennessee in the first quarter of 2017 than in the same quarter in 2007. The same data also shows 16,000 fewer working-age native-born Americans in the state working over the same time.
. . .
http://cis.org/camarota/among-working-age-tennessee-all-employment-2007-has-gone-immigrants
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8.
Trump Travel Order Reboot Set to Go into Effect
By Andrew R. Arthur
CIS Immigration Blog, June 29, 2017
The purpose of these suspensions was to provide the executive branch with time to review the screening procedures in place, and the evidence available, for adjudicating applications for immigration benefits and refugee status, essentially to ensure that aliens admitted to this country from the six countries do not pose a national security or public safety threat.
. . .
http://cis.org/arthur/trump-travel-order-reboot-set-go-effect
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9.
SCOTUS Grants Certiorari in Trump Travel Cases and Stays Injunctions in Part
By Andrew R. Arthur
CIS Immigration Blog, June 26, 2017
The Court warned, however, that "someone who enters into a relationship simply to avoid [section 2(c) of EO-2]" would not qualify for the injunction, explaining that "a nonprofit group devoted to immigration issues may not contact foreign nationals from the designated countries, add them to client lists, and then secure their entry by claiming injury from their exclusion."
The Court crafted this order, it asserted, by balancing the equities of the plaintiffs in the lower court cases (United States citizen family members of potential entrants whose entry was suspended by section 2(c) of EO-2, as well as the state of Hawaii, and students of the state university prevented from entry by that section) against the government's "interest in preserving national security".
. . .
http://cis.org/r/scotus-grants-certiorari-trump-travel-cases-and-stays-injunctions-part
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10.
Defining Immigrants, Noncitizens, Aliens, Nonimmigrants, and Nationals
Who's Who in Immigration Law?
By Andrew R. Arthur
CIS Immigration Blog, June 26, 2017
So, citizens are nationals of the United States, but not all nationals are citizens. Therefore, the term "noncitizen" includes aliens and nationals who are not citizens. But, nationals are not subject to removal proceedings under section 240 of the INA, only aliens are; therefore, any case that discusses whether or an individual is to be removed, unless it is a case involving contested citizenship, relates to an "an alien" not a "noncitizen".
What about immigrants? The term "immigrant" is defined in the negative, in section 101(a)(15) of the INA, as "every alien except an alien who is within one of the [specified] classes of nonimmigrant aliens". Thus, an "immigrant" is every alien who is not a "nonimmigrant". So what is a "nonimmigrant?"
. . .
http://cis.org/arthur/defining-immigrants-noncitizens-aliens-nonimmigrants-and-nationals
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11.
SCOTUS: Causation Required for Conviction Authorizing Denaturalization
By Andrew R. Arthur
CIS Immigration Blog, June 25, 2017
On Thursday, June 22, 2017, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Maslenjak v. United States.
The case involved Divna Maslenjak, who was convicted by a jury for having knowingly "procur[ed] contrary to law, [her] naturalization" in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a), and denaturalized by a federal District Court judge under section 340(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA); she was deported to Serbia last year.
Maslenjak is an ethnic Serb who resided in Bosnia during the civil war between Serbs and Muslims in the 1990s. In 1998, the Court stated, Maslenjak, her two children, and her husband Ratko Maslenjak applied for refugee status in the United States. Under oath, Maslenjak told an American official that she and her family had a fear of being persecuted in Bosnia from both the Serbs and Muslim Bosnians. In particular, she asserted, the Muslims would mistreat them because of their ethnicity, while the Serbs would be motivated to harm them, according to the Court, "because her husband had evaded service in the Bosnian Serb Army by absconding to Serbia — where he remained hidden, apart from the family, for some five years."
The Maslenjaks were granted refugee status and the family immigrated to the United States in 2000. Six years later, Ms. Maslenjak applied for naturalization.
. . .
http://cis.org/arthur/scotus-causation-required-conviction-authorizing-denaturalization
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12.
Can Natives Use Their English Literacy to Complement (Rather than Compete with) Immigrant Labor?
By Jason Richwine
CIS Immigration Blog, June 27, 2017
Why does this matter for immigration policy? Because the extent to which less-educated natives and less-educated immigrants compete for the same jobs is a matter of active debate among economists. The optimistic view is that natives can harness their superior knowledge of English by shifting to more language-intensive work. As a writer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis put it, "Inflows of foreign low-skilled workers allow increased specialization of labor, with immigrants assigned mainly to manual tasks and U.S. natives performing most jobs requiring proficiency in English." If true, less-educated immigrants and natives would complement each other by working in different parts of the labor market.
. . .
http://cis.org/richwine/can-natives-use-their-english-literacy-complement-rather-compete-immigrant-labor
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13.
Don't Read Too Much into the Drop in Refugee Arrivals Under President Trump
By Nayla Rush
CIS Immigration Blog, June 26, 2017
The number of refugees admitted in the last months of the Obama presidency (October 2016 to January 2017) is not representative of the Obama era. Before leaving office, President Obama wanted to admit as many refugees as possible (and he did). Those admissions, also, came following the Leaders' Summit on Refugees he hosted in New York in September 2016. During the summit, Obama urged world leaders to follow the United States in mobilizing resources for the refugee cause and committing to more resettlement.
We should, therefore, not be surprised if the first months of FY 2017 show higher number of refugee admissions — higher than those admitted under the Trump administration, but also previously under the "regular" Obama era.
. . .
http://cis.org/rush/dont-read-too-much-drop-refugee-arrivals-under-president-trump
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14.
Warning for Prospective Foreign Graduate Students in the U.S.
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, June 30, 2017
Foreign students seeking a master's degree in the U.S. should beware of inferior colleges. Students risk wasting substantial amounts of money if they sign up with universities that can provide only second-rate or third-rate access to the U.S. labor market. Different kinds of master's degrees, from different colleges, provide the alien graduate varying leverage in the U.S. job market, a distinction that the lesser colleges never discuss.
The best of the degrees offer foreign students two chances a year of winning the H-1B lottery (rather than one) and potentially provide three years of legal work without (or before) getting an H-1B job, rather than a single year.
The worst master's degree programs offer only one shot a year at the lottery, and only 12 months employment following graduation.
A three-layer system exists, involving alien students who are studying in one of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. The key variables: Is the college a nonprofit one (many are not), and does it currently have an accreditation from an entity that is currently recognized by the U.S. Department of Education (many do not).
. . .
http://cis.org/north/warning-prospective-foreign-graduate-students-us
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15.
The Trump Travel Ban: Let's Define "Bona Fide" Students Carefully
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, June 28, 2017
My suggestion is that the State Department should use the term "attending a university" strictly and allow the admission of only foreign students admitted to the United States by the date of the decision, June 24, and who had, additionally, started attending classes by that date.
That population, by definition, has not, or perhaps has not yet, done us any harm. They do have a "bona fide relationship with the United States because they have attended classes here.
The proposed definition would not cover those who have been admitted to a U.S. college, but who have not yet come to the United States, and it would prevent any further admissions of foreign students from those countries until such time as the Supreme Court could make a substantive decision about the proposed travel ban.
. . .
http://cis.org/north/trump-travel-ban-lets-define-bona-fide-students-carefully
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16.
Once Again, Somebody Other Than the Feds Goes After Infosys Hiring Practices
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, June 26, 2017
For the second time in a week, Infosys, the biggest user of the H-1B program and a huge Indian outsourcing company, has been zapped for its hiring practices by someone other than the federal government.
The first charge was filed by a former employee of the firm, saying that it grossly discriminates against all non-Indian job applicants.
The second charge, filed by a state official, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, was that Infosys was violating various laws by illegally employing workers (presumably from India) on visitors' visas. An alien is not supposed to hold a job in the United States on such a visa.
Let's put the shoe on the other foot.
. . .
http://cis.org/north/once-again-somebody-other-feds-goes-after-infosys-hiring-practices
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17.
SEC Files Another Suit Against Another EB-5 Attorney for Misuse of Funds
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, June 25, 2017
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed yet another suit against yet another EB-5 lawyer, contending that the Chicago lawyer in the case, Seyed Taher Kameli, "improperly commingled and otherwise improperly used portions of the $88.7 million investment ... and has spent a significant portion of the investment proceeds for his own benefit."
Usually these cases involve Chinese investors whose bids for a green card are endangered by the fraud. Usually they involve big city real estate deals, and usually they involve the SEC as the assertive cop on the beat. This case was no different, but it did have a slightly different tilt: Some of the investors were Iranians.
. . .
http://cis.org/north/sec-files-another-suit-against-another-eb-5-attorney-misuse-funds
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18.
It Looks Like Visa Mill History Is About to Repeat Itself in Northern Virginia
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, June 23, 2017
Once again it looks like a highly questionable educational institution in Northern Virginia is about to be closed down — it is said to provide lots of nonimmigrant visas and not much education — and the closing will not be forced by the federal agency that is supposed to handle such things, the Department of Homeland Security.
The first time this happened was a couple of years ago when a small state agency, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV), working with a non-illustrious, non-public accreditation entity, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), closed down a dismal little school called the University of Northern Virginia that had been abusing the immigration law for years. (More on ACICS later.)
UNV handed out migrant work permits to perhaps thousands of aliens, but seemed to have no more than four classrooms when I visited the tiny "campus" before it was closed.
. . .
http://cis.org/north/it-looks-visa-mill-history-about-repeat-itself-northern-virginia
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19.
Reality Check at HHS Exposes UAC-Gang Nexus
By Joseph J. Kolb
CIS Immigration Blog, June 27, 2017
An article in the Washington Times last week reported what many, especially in law enforcement, already know: A significant percentage of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from Central America have ties to gangs such as MS-13.
The article cites a survey conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) at their secure detention centers for UACs. This revelation comes in the wake of Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on June 21 where it was revealed the agency really has no idea how prevalent the gang problem is. According to the article, which only provides a "snapshot" of the issue, HHS looked at 138 teens and identified 39 with gang ties. Four of them were forced into cooperating with the gangs, while 35 voluntarily joined, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Some 2,233 are being held in unsecured facilities.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa) chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was shocked that no one from HHS could provide cogent data as to how many UACs have actually been recruited by MS-13 and other Central American gangs.
. . .
http://cis.org/kolb/reality-check-hhs-fuels-uac-gang-nexus
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20.
The Immigration Debate: A Battle for Nuance
By Benjamin Dierker
CIS Immigration Blog, June 25, 2017
. . .
We simply cannot tolerate people claiming that if we "reject" (read: don't bring in) refugees that we are killing people or subjecting them to war or violence. The truth is, before anyone comes here, they are safe and cared for, and we can continue to care for them at lower cost than bringing them here. Now, policymakers may still accept different numbers of refugees from different areas or for different reasons, but there must be nuanced understanding of the issues. The public discourse cannot remain in the fringes if intelligent debate is going to prevail. If the stakes are truly as life or death as both sides claim, we owe it to the taxpayer and to the immigrants and refugees to take the discussion seriously. Step one is getting beyond stereotypes, generalizations, and misinformation and asking hard questions.
. . .
http://cis.org/dierker/immigration-debate-battle-nuance
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21.
MS-13 and Immigration Policy Priorities
By Preston Huennekens
CIS Immigration Blog, June 25, 2017
It is hard to imagine an ideological schism presenting itself in a hearing regarding a high-profile criminal gang. However, it became clear that some members on the committee were far more concerned with partisan talking points than with the real problem at hand — the spread and violence of MS-13. Sens. Grassley, Kennedy, and Cruz asked important questions on the spread of the gang, its influence and attraction to unaccompanied alien children (UACs), the effect of sanctuary policies on law enforcement's ability to stymie gang activity, and the shortcomings the agencies face in fighting MS-13 and other transnational criminal organizations.
On the other hand, Sens. Franken, Blumenthal, and Durbin repeated each other's talking points almost line for line. The common themes? Immigrants fear police because of deportations in their communities, sanctuary policies benefit local law enforcement, and ... well, that's it. Faced with a trove of information from members of the law enforcement agencies responsible for addressing the MS-13 problem, these senators seemed to miss the point entirely and chose instead to question the recent encouragement and directives from the Trump administration for these agencies to do their job.
. . .
http://cis.org/huennekens/ms-13-and-immigration-policy-priorities
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22.
America’s Gang Crisis: Congressional Hearings Focus on MS-13
As with international terrorists, transnational gangs exploit immigration failures.
By Michael Cutler
FrontPageMag.com, June 28, 2017
. . .
The mainstream media that reported on these hearings all but avoided mentioning that multiple failures of the immigration system have enabled these violent criminals to enter the United States and that Border Security Is National Security.
The “journalists” also blithely ignore that Sanctuary Cities: Where Hypocrisy Rules, often harbor and shield criminal aliens from detection by immigration law enforcement personnel.
In point of fact, Opponents of Border Security and Immigration Law Enforcement Aid Human Traffickers. The most effective way to attack the human smugglers, who facilitate the entry of transnational gang members such as MS-13 is to have ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents work closely with local police and other law enforcement agencies to gain access to smuggled aliens who could then provide actionable intelligence to enable ICE and the Border Patrol to identify, locate and ultimately arrest human traffickers and dismantle their operations.
Shielding illegal aliens from detection by ICE also shields gang members and smugglers. It is nearly impossible to identify human traffickers without interviewing the aliens whom they smuggled into the United States.
Illegal aliens who cooperate with law enforcement authorities can be granted visas that enable them to remain in the United States and legally work- to encourage such individuals to come forward without fear.
. . .
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267105/americas-gang-crisis-congressional-hearings-focus-michael-cutler
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23.
Victory for Trump: SCOTUS Restores Vast Majority of Travel Ban
By David French
The Corner at National Review Online, June 26, 2017
. . .
Notably absent from the court’s decision is any analysis of Trump’s campaign statements. Moreover, the only dissenters from the opinion (justices Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas) wanted the injunctions vacated in their entirety. They are correct that the court’s ruling will invite further litigation as litigants test the boundaries of the “bona fide relationships,” but the difference between the dissenters and the six remaining justices was only over the proper extent of Trump’s legal victory. For now, the constitutional and statutory primacy of the executive and legislative branches over national security and immigration has been restored.
The judges in the courts below have been celebrated as heroic resistance figures. Yet now even the Supreme Court’s most liberal justices have rejected the lower courts’ overreach. The Trump administration is free to conduct its global review to determine whether foreign governments provide sufficient information about foreign nationals applying for entry to the U.S., it’s free for now to impose its new refugee caps, it’s free to temporarily pause entry from Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia, and it’s free to pause refugee entry (unless refugees and applicants for entry have a “bona fide” U.S. relationship). That’s a win for Trump.
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/448960/victory-trump-scotus-restores-vast-majority-travel-ban
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24.
Iraqi Christians Detained by ICE Shouldn’t Be Deported
There is no justification for sending a group of men and women almost certainly to their deaths.
By Ian Tuttle
National Review Online, June 24, 2017
. . .
Two weeks ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained some 200 Iraqi nationals residing in Michigan, transferring them to a detention center in Youngstown, Ohio, where they are now awaiting deportation. Most of them are Christians, generally Chaldean Catholics. It takes no special imagination to project their fates if returned to their native country.
. . .
In this particular case, there are other obvious reasons for leniency. The crimes of the aliens in question are generally years old, after which the individuals have maintained clean records; some have had the charges against them expunged. Also, many of these people have been in the United States for decades, some of them having built families since arriving. One petitioner, Usama Jamil “Sam” Hamama, 54 years old, has been in the United States since coming as a refugee – when he was four years old, according to the ACLU’s lawsuit. Those longstanding deportation orders mentioned above have almost all been deferred on previous occasions by immigration authorities, because deportation back to Iraq was dangerous. It should not escape the notice of federal authorities that the situation here is largely one of their own making.
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448941/iraqi-christians-deportation-ice-refugees-trump
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25.
Congress Must Pass Kate's Law and Make America Safer
By Jeff Sessions
Fox News, June 28, 2017
. . .
The No Sanctuary for Criminals Act would withhold certain federal grant money from jurisdictions that prohibit their officers from cooperating with ICE. Under this bill, American taxpayers will no longer be forced to subsidize jurisdictions whose policies effectively work to make us less safe.
The bill also contains a provision—known as Sarah and Grant’s law—which would ensure that illegal aliens are detained pending their removal proceedings. This provision was named after Sarah Root, a recent college graduate, who was killed by an illegal alien charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, and Grant Ronnebeck, who was killed by an illegal alien – a self-proclaimed member of the Sinaloa cartel – who had been released on bail pending his removal proceeding.
Congress can also make it harder for criminal aliens to repeatedly reenter the United States. Kate’s Law would do that by increasing the penalties for deported aliens who return to the United States. We must send a clear message that re-entering after having been previously deported will cease to be a minor matter, but will result in prison and deportation.
. . .
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/28/attorney-general-sessions-congress-must-pass-kates-law-and-make-america-safer.html
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26.
Trump's Travel Ban Victory Should Force Media to Examine Itself
By Jonathan Turley
TheHill.com, June 26, 2017
. . .
In the second round, the judicial decisions became even more problematic. The Trump administration brought in capable people who drafted the order correctly and defended it well. It addressed glaring errors in the original order like not exempting green card holders. It did not make a difference. The trial court in Hawaii even denied the ability of the administration to study and work on improving vetting procedures in the high-risk countries (part of the order later reversed in the Ninth Circuit).
In the Fourth and Ninth Circuits, judges brushed over the obvious improvements and again relied on Trump’s own comments and tweets. It seemed like sensational tweets were more important than long-standing precedent or official statements from the administration.
The level of reliance on campaign statements by the courts was wrong in my view, as I have repeatedly stated. The record had conflicting statements from Trump and his associates but courts seemed to cherry-pick statements, relying on those that fulfilled their narrative while ignoring those that did not. The analysis of the order should have turned largely on the face of the document. While such political statements can be relevant to analysis (particularly in areas like racial discrimination), the court has always minimized such reliance in favor of more objective textual analysis.
. . .
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/339523-opinion-trumps-travel-ban-victory-should-force-media-to
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27.
The Supreme Court Gives the Go Ahead for Trump’s Travel Ban, But What Does This Mean for the Circuit Judges?
By Mark Angelides
InvestmentWatch Blog, June 27, 2017
. . .
It could be argued that it was inevitable to go to the Supreme Court because it is an Executive Order from the President, but that doesn’t mean that the Justices had to vote 9-0. The reason they voted unanimously was because it is clearly within the scope of a President’s powers to do this (other Presidents have done it in the past and been declared legal), and when it is finally heard, odds are it will pass unanimously.
So what should be done about the Circuit Judges? They acted not in the interest of upholding the law, they acted in partisan interest based on their own personal feelings. There is little enough faith in the branches of government as it is (perhaps rightly so), and these Judges have done no favours in restoring the integrity of their office.
. . .
http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-supreme-court-gives-the-go-ahead-for-trumps-travel-ban-but-what-does-this-mean-for-the-circuit-judges/
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28.
The Winning on Immigration Continues
By Robert Carbery
InvestmentWatch Blog, June 27, 2017
The winning is too much! We are taking our country back. And we have the right guy in charge to do so. While we have admitted some refugees so far that could potentially be dangerous, President Trump has stuck to his promises in enforcing the law and bringing common sense immigration back. And there’s more good news to come.
. . .
Back during the Clinton years, work was a requirement for those on welfare. Trump’s proposal, if it became law, would add to a Clinton-era law that allowed for immigrants dependent on welfare to be deported. This is not cruel. This is not unusual. This is what most countries do and we would be wise to adopt this kind of legislation to save some money and to prioritize the most productive immigrants possible.
The Trump administration has also been getting a handle on our intake of refugees into the U.S. During the first three months of this new administration, the number of refugees admitted has been cut nearly in half compared with the final three months of the Obama administration.
. . .
Trump is looking to limit the number of refugees to 50,000 this year. But the courts will likely fight him on that as well. We need to be smart about who we let into our country. Sure, we need to let in who we can from areas of conflict around the world. But we also must remember that terrorists are embedding themselves in the hoards of refugees pouring out of the Middle East and elsewhere.
We don’t want to become Europe. We want a nation. We want law and order.
. . .
http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-winning-on-immigration-continues/
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29.
High Court Overrules Leftist Judicial Insanity
SCOTUS curbs lower courts’ encroachments on presidential national security powers.
By Joseph Klein
FrontPageMag.com, June 27, 2017
. . .
This case never should have had to go to the Supreme Court in the first place. The pretexts used by the lower courts to block President Trump's executive orders, both the original one and a modified version tailored to meet certain objections from the 9thCircuit Court of Appeals, were completely bogus.
President Trump acted well within his constitutional and statutory authority to issue both of his executive orders. “The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty,” the Supreme Court concluded in a 1950 case. “The right to do so stems not alone from legislative power, but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation. When Congress prescribes a procedure concerning the admissibility of aliens, it is not dealing alone with a legislative power. It is implementing an inherent executive power.”
. . .
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267111/high-court-overrules-leftist-judicial-insanity-joseph-klein
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30.
A Media Outlet Finally Asks: Has SPLC ‘Jumped the Shark?’
By Matt Philbin
MRC Newsbusters, June 28, 2017
. . .
The article also discusses at length SPLC’s financial shadiness, quoting another (liberal) critic saying “The organization has always tried to find ways to milk money out of the public by finding whatever threat they can most credibly promote.”
Conservative Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies – another SPLC-designated “hate group” – told Schreckinger, “I think SPLC has jumped the shark ... the idea that a think tank on K Street is comparable to some skinhead group is laughable.”
Yes it is. But what’s not funny is this, also from the piece: SPLC “pump[s] out reports that are regularly cited by just about every major mainstream media outlet, including Politico, and their researchers have become the go-to experts for quotes on those topics.”
. . .
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/matt-philbin/2017/06/28/media-outlet-finally-asks-has-splc-jumped-shark
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31.
The Freedom Center Beats the Southern Poverty Law Center
How the Guidestar battle was won.
By Daniel Greenfield
FrontPageMag.com, June 30, 2017
. . .
Post a conservative story on Facebook or search for it on Google and out pops Snopes, a partisan site, to warn you of wrongthinking. And, until recently, when you searched for a conservative organization on Guidestar, out popped the Southern Poverty Law Center to accuse you and it of being deplorable bigots.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and Snopes are left-wing partisan groups with no qualifications to do anything except hate conservatives. The SPLC’s list of hate groups includes numerous individuals, including me, also listed until recently as a hate group was a sign outside a Pennsylvania bar.
. . .
The FBI dumped SPLC’s scam artists, but Guidestar decided to help the left-wing group stifle speech.
Guidestar’s mission is providing information about non-profits. Instead its boss, leftist activist Jacob Harold, pursued a partisan agenda. 46 organizations were accused on Guidestar’s listings of being hate groups. According to Harold, the SPLC "has the most comprehensive information on hate groups".
. . .
The David Horowitz Freedom Center was among the conservative groups targeted by the SPLC/Guidestar collaboration. Having lost the White House and its access to the IRS, the left was looking for a new way to attack the finances of conservative organizations. Jacob Harold first dragged Guidestar into partisan waters with an election post that praised the Clinton Foundation and disparaged Trump.
Now he was looking to go after conservatives. But the Freedom Center didn’t let him get away with it.
The Freedom Center’s legal team warned Guidestar that it would be held accountable for these slanders. Other conservative groups joined the outcry. And before too long, Guidestar backed down.
The Guidestar attack was the latest manifestation of the left poisoning the open informational spaces of the internet with partisan agendas. Harold, a “social change strategist” was a veteran of left-wing organizing. He had participated in at least one anti-Trump rally. Even afterward, Harold had insisted in an editorial that Guidestar’s mission would still include attacks on “hate groups”.
. . .
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267147/freedom-center-beats-southern-poverty-law-center-daniel-greenfield
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32.
Is Immigration to the U.S. an Entitlement?
If a sympathetic backstory justifies breaking the law with impunity, then we have no rule of law.
By Jonathan S. Tobin
National Review Online, June 29, 2017
. . .
The notion that entry to the United States is not a privilege granted by the government but an entitlement is the underlying premise of two New York Times articles published the day after the Supreme Court ruling. One focused on the plight of those refugees who will be kept out of the country pending the review of the ban. The other story, a New York Times Magazine feature, depicted the condition of illegal immigrants who are deprived of proper medical care because of their worries about being caught. While these are legitimate inquiries, the assumption of both pieces is that any effort to further vet refugees or to enforce existing immigration laws is inherently illegitimate.
. . .
One needn’t be an immigration or asylum opponent to observe that the problems explored in these stories are rooted in an unwillingness to consider that entry to the United States is not a right. But that’s exactly what those blasting Trump seem to be advocating.
If we assure illegals that they won’t be held accountable for their status if they come into contact with the authorities — such as when seeking health care — then the laws they’ve broken are meaningless and may be flouted with impunity.
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449075/immigration-entitlement-universal-right-enter-united-states-means-end-law
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33.
What is a Sanctuary City?
By Dan Stein
ImmigrationReform.com, June 23, 2017
. . .
The fact is, proponents of Sanctuary Cities want both. Think of Sanctuary Cities as stepping stones to a larger agenda.
Sanctuary Cities are really jurisdictions that resist cooperating with federal immigration authorities. They fancy themselves political allies of lawbreakers, and their policies discourage local officials from checking immigration status with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or honoring “hold requests” made by federal officials when they want to pick up someone for removal proceedings. The result? Sanctuary Cities or “no-cooperation” cities mean criminal aliens go free even after contact with local enforcement officials.
President Donald Trump wants to end Sanctuary Cities and get all local jurisdictions to cooperate with DHS to discourage illegal immigration. Other components of the Trump plan include an expansion of the “everify” program – also known as E-Verify” – in order to ensure only those authorized to work get American jobs, and the Trump Wall. The Trump Wall would place a needed physical barrier at key points along the border to restore law and order to our long border with Mexico. And this is only the beginning of Trump’s plan.
. . .
http://immigrationreform.com/2017/06/23/what-is-a-sanctuary-city/
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34.
DACA Litigation Shoe Dropping? Is It POSSIBLE Trump Knows What He’s Doing?
By Peter Brimelow
VDare.com, June 29, 2017
. . .
Because it did not simultaneously rescind DACA, which Trump had famously promised to end “on Day One” but subsequently appeared to go squishy on, there was initially much gloating from the Treason Lobby, which assumed this meant DACA was safe. But unusually, and perhaps significantly, the Trump Administration took steps to correct this assumption [Fate of DACA remains uncertain after similar program officially ends, by Reeves Miller Zhang & Diza, AsianJournal.com, June 29, 2017].
Now it seems that the other litigation shoe is dropping. Legally, given the fate of DACA, it seems certain to prevail. It is even possible that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will decline to defend DACA at all—ironically, a technique pioneered by the Obama Regime with its sabotage of the Defense of Marriage Act.
For reasons that aren’t clear to me, there is certainly a lot of breast-beating about the recipients of DACA–the so-called DREAMers. Is it possible that Trump, in his messy intuitive way, has just been waiting until the courts took the problem off his hands?
. . .
http://www.vdare.com/posts/daca-shoe-dropping-is-it-possible-trump-knows-what-hes-dong
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35.
Health Care Failure May Mean Trump Immigration Pivot Against Ryanism Finally at Hand. It Better Be.
By James Kirkpatrick
VDare.com, June 29, 2017
. . .
As the Congressional Republicans indulge in their habitual incompetence by pushing a deeply unpopular health care bill, there are signs President Donald Trump may finally be returning to the immigration issue that put him in the Oval Office. Trump is boosting bills to end sanctuary cities and impose tougher penalties on deported criminals who re-enter the United States illegally [Trump to rally Congress on immigration after healthcare setback, by Pete Kasperowicz, Washington Examiner, June 28, 2017]. He’s also meeting with the victims of illegal immigrant crime finally to pressure the Republican leadership to act [Trump joins with victims of illegal-immigrant crime to urge Congress to act, by S.A. Miller, Washington Times, June 28, 2017]. Both passed tonight (June 29).[ House Passes ‘Kate’s Law,’ Votes to Defund Sanctuary Cities, by Dartunorro Clark, June 29, 2017 ]
. . .
http://www.vdare.com/articles/health-care-failure-may-mean-trump-immigration-pivot-against-ryanism-finally-at-hand-it-better-be
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36.
Strange Hispanic Media Silence on Muslim Girl’s Death at Hands of Unauthorized Immigrant
By Valentina Humphrey and Ken Oliver
MRC Newsbusters, June 28, 2017
. . .
As it turns out, the 22-year-old alleged killer, who is accused of beating the girl to death with a baseball bat as she left evening prayers at one of America’s largest mosques and then dumping her body in a pond, is not only unlawfully present in the land (and was employed as a construction worker ‘building the country’) but was also a member of the MS-13 gang, which has infested and spread their brand of extremely violent crime in various major U.S. metropolitan areas.
While the principal national evening newscasts of Univision and Telemundo have kept entirely mum on this crime, rival Azteca América actually did report on it. But notice how Azteca, also, hid from their report any mention of the illegal status of the alleged murderer.
. . .
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/valentina-humphrey/2017/06/28/strange-silence-muslim-girls-death-hands-unauthorized
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37.
Did Illegals Voting Give Hillary the Edge?
By Robert R. Owens
Canada Free Press, June 30, 2017
. . .
Democrats had extensive get-out-the-vote campaigns in areas heavily populated by illegal aliens
In 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there were 21.0 million adult noncitizens in the U.S., up from 19.4 million in 2008. It is therefore highly likely that millions of noncitizens cast votes in 2016.
And it was no accident. Democrats had extensive get-out-the-vote campaigns in areas heavily populated by illegal aliens. As far back as 2008, Obama made sure that those who wanted to vote knew it was safe, announcing that election records would not be cross-checked with immigration databases.
And last year, the Obama White House supported a court injunction that kept Kansas, Alabama and Georgia from requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. The message was sent, loud and clear: If you’re a noncitizen or here illegally, don’t be afraid. You’re free to vote. No one will stop you.
We don’t know the exact number of illegal votes. No one does. But the data that are available suggest that the number of illegal votes was substantial—probably in the millions, as Trump said—and likely had a significant impact on the election’s outcome.
. . .
http://canadafreepress.com/article/did-illegals-voting-give-hillary-the-edge
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38.
National Data: The VOX Pox Makes America Stupid On Immigration
By Edwin S. Rubenstein
VDare.com, June 28, 2017
. . .
VOX: “...even an immigration skeptic like George Borjas concedes that immigrants grow the economy and do not personally obtain 100 percent of the benefits of that growth — meaning their presence increases the overall level of resources available to the native population.” [Link in original]
VDARE.com: Size matters. Borjas does indeed concede that immigrants “grow the economy,” and do not obtain 100% of the benefits from that growth. But his number—97.8%—is damn close to 100%—it leaves only 2.2% of immigration’s economic benefits to people already living in the United States. [Immigration and the American Worker, By George Borjas, CIS.org, April 2013]
And even that small benefit, equal to a mere 0.24% of GDP, is overwhelmed by transfer payments—the cost of providing welfare, education, and other services to immigrants.
Despite the impression that Yglesias tries to leave, the consensus among economists is that immigration’s major impact on native-born Americansis distributional: it lowers the wages of native-born workers and raises the income of their employers and other upper-income native-born Americans who hire immigrants for personal services.
. . .
http://www.vdare.com/articles/national-data-the-vox-pox-makes-america-stupid-on-immigration
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39.
Has a Civil Rights Stalwart Lost Its Way?
By Ben Schreckinger
Politico Magazine, July/August 2017
. . .
In October, the SPLC faced explosive blowback when it included British Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz on a list of “anti-Muslim extremists.” The targeting of Nawaz—a former Islamist turned anti-extremism campaigner who is considered a human rights leader by many in the mainstream—even sparked critical coverage in the Atlantic, creating the unusual spectacle of a publication founded by abolitionists going after a group founded to fight the KKK. In December, after the SPLC urged Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer not to attend a dinner hosted by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, Dermer used his speech at the dinner to condemn the SPLC as “defamers and blacklisters.” In February, the group again raised eyebrows by adding to its list of hate groups the hard-line Center for Immigration Studies—an anti-immigration think tank criticized for pushing bogus claims about the dangers of immigrants, but which has also been invited to testify before Congress more than 100 times.
Is tough immigration control really a form of hate, or just part of the political conversation? Does rejecting a religion make you an extremist? At a time when the line between “hate group” and mainstream politics is getting thinner and the need for productive civil discourse is growing more serious, fanning liberal fears, while a great opportunity for the SPLC, might be a problem for the nation.
. . .
In the case of the Center for Immigration Studies, the think tank has long been considered to the right of the mainstream and has been consistently criticized for misleading methodology. The SPLC labeled it a hate group this year, saying, “The designation resulted primarily from their move to start publishing the work of discredited race scientist Jason Richwine … and their shocking circulation of an article from one of America’s most prominent white nationalist websites and another written by a fringe Holocaust-denier in their weekly newsletter.” But Mark Krikorian, president of the CIS, dismisses that reasoning as a weak pretext for a hate group designation and says he believes the label was motivated more by a desire to capitalize on political opposition to Trump than by sincere conviction.
. . .
Krikorian contends that it’s not just conservatives like him but that even liberals are now professing to him a growing skepticism of the SPLC’s labels. “If our being designated a hate group is a step along the way to their delegitimization,” he says, “then maybe it’s worth it.”
. . .
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/28/morris-dees-splc-trump-southern-poverty-law-center-215312
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40.
Two Anti-Immigrant Bills Attacking Sanctuary Cities and Criminalizing Immigrants Passed by the House
By Joshua Breisblatt
ImmigrationImpact.com, June 30, 2017
. . .
These bills now head to the Senate where the prospects for passage are very low. In 2016, the Senate rejected various versions of bills to punish sanctuary cities and people who illegally re-enter the country, so it is unlikely that the result will be different this time around. Hopefully, instead of wasting their time with punitive legislation that will not pass, Congress will focus on more meaningful immigration reforms that move our nation forward.
. . .
http://immigrationimpact.com/2017/06/30/house-passes-anti-immigrant-bills/
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41.
Sweden on the Brink of CIVIL WAR, National Police Chief: “HELP US, HELP US!”
By Nicolai Sennels
JihadWatch.org, June 25, 2017
Sweden is being torn to pieces by Muslim immigrants and refugees. Law enforcement is crying out for help, and it is only a question of time before the country will need military intervention from abroad in order to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.
A leaked report concludes that the number of lawless areas (commonly referred to as “no-go zones”) in Sweden now totals 61. That is up from 55 in just one year’s time. This increase includes not only the total number, but also the geographical size of these areas.
. . .
10News recently reported how the Swedish state has lost large areas to armed, religious groups best described as Islamist militias. Police chief Lars Alversjø says that, “There is lawlessness in parts of Stockholm (Sweden’s capital) now.” He also observed how, “The legal system, which is a pillar in every democratic society, is collapsing in Sweden.” Per Magnus Ranstorp, a researcher into terrorism and radicalization at the Swedish National Defense College, notes: “In the worst areas, extremists have taken over. The whole sense of justice and peace are threatened by the fact that the police is breaking down and it’s only getting worse. Sweden is in a disastrous situation.”
. . .
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/06/sweden-on-the-brink-of-civil-war-national-police-chief-help-us-help-us
Immigration Opinions, 6/30/17
Support the Center for Immigration Studies by donating on line here: http://cis.org/donate
This email includes a wide range of views, provided for educational purposes. Inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by the Center for Immigration Studies.
from the magazine
The War on Work—and How to End It
An agenda to address
joblessness, the great American domestic crisis of the twenty-first century
Economy, finance, and
budgets
In 1967, 95
percent of “prime-age” men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. During the
Great Recession, though, the share of jobless prime-age males rose above 20
percent. Even today, long after the recession officially ended, more than 15
percent of such men aren’t working. And in some locations, like Kentucky, the
numbers are even higher: fewer than 70 percent of men lacking any college
education go to work every day in that state.
The rise of
joblessness—especially among men—is the great American domestic crisis of the
twenty-first century. It is a crisis of spirit more than of resources. The
jobless are far more prone to self-destructive behavior than are the working
poor. Proposed solutions that focus solely on providing material benefits are a
false path. Well-meaning social policies—from longer unemployment insurance to
more generous disability diagnoses to higher minimum wages—have only worsened
the problem; the futility of joblessness won’t be solved with a welfare check.
The loss of work for so many also reflects the emergence of a modern labor
market with little interest in less skilled job seekers. American wages were
high in the 1960s and 1970s because of steady demand for unionized labor in
Detroit and Allentown. Automation and globalization have destroyed many of
those jobs, and the process is likely to continue. Technology gurus like Elon
Musk believe that future innovations will make the human contribution to other
economic sectors, including services, increasingly obsolete as well.
Yet every
underemployed American represents a failure of entrepreneurial imagination. We
can do better. Our educational system must improve the way it provides skills
that bring higher earnings, and we need to experiment with new forms of
vocational training. We should encourage entrepreneurial energies, including by
making it easier for small businesses to get up and running in low-income
areas. And social programs that deter employment should be reformed—and ideally
replaced by a simple pro-work subsidy. It’s time to end the war on work.
Illustrations by The Heads of State
America began
as an oasis of plenty in a world of poverty. Farms from New Hampshire to
Georgia offered any free man crossing the Atlantic the chance to exchange hard
work for a full belly. In 1820, 78 percent of the American labor force farmed.
While droughts and pestilence often threatened disaster, joblessness was no
part of then-rural America. If you didn’t work, you starved, and there was
always another patch of land to hoe and seed.
Unemployment
arrived only when workers moved to cities. A vital strength of urban life is
that it can connect people who want to work with people who have capital and
ideas. But sometimes, those matches aren’t available. Almost half of America’s
workers had left their farms by 1870, setting the stage for the recessions of
the 1870s and 1890s. University of Florida economist J. R. Vernon estimates
that the unemployment rate hit 8 percent in 1878 and may have exceeded 15
percent in the 1890s. In both downturns, financial crises had led to bank
failures and massive firm bankruptcies. In 1894, the Pullman Strike disrupted
the nation’s transportation network.
Yet as soon
as the banking system recovered, American entrepreneurs resumed hiring cheap,
usually unskilled, labor. Nominal wages actually fell over both the 1870s and
the 1890s because workers had to accept low pay. With no government safety net,
long-term unemployment meant deprivation—or even death.
By 1920, the
U.S. had become a majority-urban nation. As urban industry replaced
agriculture, the country got wealthier but also more vulnerable to economic
dislocation. The Great Depression brought it with terrible force: the
unemployment rate exceeded 15 percent in 1931, peaked at 24.9 percent in 1933,
and remained above 14 percent as late as 1940. (These figures count those
working on federal relief programs as unemployed; exclude these individuals,
and the unemployment rate was down to 9.5 percent by the end of the decade.)
Depression-era Americans endured long-term joblessness, then, but it was
fundamentally different from the kind that afflicts us today. The U.S. economy
was in disastrous shape throughout the 1930s, with real GDP and industrial
output staying below 1929 levels for most of the decade. Whatever the
reason—and debates remain lively—American industry recovered from the
Depression with painful lethargy. Persistent unemployment mirrored an enduring
economic crisis.
The New Deal
saw the rise of public programs that worked against employment. Wage controls
under the National Recovery Act made it difficult for wages to fall enough to
equilibrate the labor market. The Wagner Act strengthened the hand of unions,
which kept pay up and employment down. Relief efforts for the unemployed,
including federal make-work jobs, eased the pressure on the jobless to find
private-sector work.
The carnage
of World War II ended both the Nazi regime and the American Depression. The
peace augured in 30 years of remarkable growth and prosperity. America enjoyed technological
preeminence and an enormous growth in human capital, thanks to policies like
the GI Bill. Women surged into the labor force by the millions, yet demand for
male work stayed robust. The empowered postwar unions shifted industrial
employment to right-to-work states, as the classic work of Thomas Holmes
illustrates, but they didn’t compromise the labor market as a whole.
From 1945 to
1968, only 5 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54—prime-age males—were
out of work. But during the 1970s, something changed. The mild recession of
1969–70 produced a drop in the employment rate of this group, from 95 percent
to 92.5 percent, and there was no rebound. The 1973–74 downturn dragged the
employment rate below 90 percent, and after the 1979–82 slump, it would stay
there throughout most of the 1980s. The recessions at the beginning and end of
the 1990s caused further deterioration in the rate. Economic recovery failed to
restore the earlier employment ratio in both instances.
The greatest
fall, though, occurred in the Great Recession. In 2011, more than one in five
prime-age men were out of work, a figure comparable with the Great Depression.
But while employment came back after the Depression, it hasn’t today. The
unemployment rate may be low, but many people have quit the labor force
entirely and don’t show up in that number. As of December 2016, 15.2 percent of
prime-age men were jobless—a figure worse than at any point between World War
II and the Great Recession, except during the depths of the early 1980s
recession.
The trend in
the female employment ratio is more complicated because of the postwar rise in
the number of women in the formal labor market. In 1955, 37 percent of
prime-age women worked. By 2000, that number had increased to 75 percent—a
historical high. Since then, the number has come down: it stood at 71.7 percent
at the end of 2016. Interpreting these figures is tricky, since more women than
men voluntarily leave the labor force, often finding meaningful work in the
home. The American Time Survey found that nonemployed women spend more than six
hours a day doing housework and caring for others. Nonemployed men spend less
than three hours doing such tasks.
Joblessness
is disproportionately a condition of the poorly educated. While 72 percent of
college graduates over age 25 have jobs, only 41 percent of high school
dropouts are working. The employment-rate gap between the most and least
educated groups has widened from about 6 percent in 1977 to almost 15 percent
today. The regional variation is also enormous. Kentucky’s 23 percent male
jobless rate leads the nation; in Iowa, the rate is under 10 percent.
Graphs by Alberto Mena
Why, since
1970, has each new downturn added to the ranks of the permanently unemployed?
Social science has not fully answered this question, but the best guess
involves a combination of a generous social safety net, deindustrialization,
and social change.
Both Franklin
Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson aggressively advanced a stronger safety net for
American workers, and other administrations largely supported these efforts.
The New Deal gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, which were
expanded in the 1950s. National disability insurance debuted in 1956 and was
made far more accessible to people with hard-to-diagnose conditions, like back
pain, in 1984. The War on Poverty delivered Medicaid and food stamps. Richard
Nixon gave us housing vouchers. During the Great Recession, the federal
government temporarily doubled the maximum eligibility time for receiving
unemployment insurance.
These various
programs make joblessness more bearable, at least materially; they also reduce
the incentives to find work. Consider disability insurance. Industrial work is
hard, and plenty of workers experience back pain. Before 1984, however, that
pain didn’t mean a disability check for American workers. After 1984, though,
millions went on the disability rolls. And since disability payments vanish if
the disabled person starts earning more than $1,170 per month, the disabled
tend to stay disabled. The economists David Autor and Mark Duggan found
that the share of adults aged 25–64 receiving disability insurance increased
from 2.2 percent in 1985 to 4.1 percent 20 years later. Disability insurance
alone doesn’t entirely explain the rise of long-term joblessness—only one-third
or so of jobless males get such benefits. But it has surely played a role.
Other
social-welfare programs operate in a similar way. Unemployment insurance stops
completely when someone gets a job, which may explain why economist Bruce Meyer
found that the unemployed tend to find jobs just as their insurance payments
run out. Food-stamp and housing-voucher payments drop 30 percent when a
recipient’s income rises past a set threshold by just $1. Elementary economics
tells us that paying people to be or stay jobless will increase joblessness.
Scholars
Olivier Blanchard and Justin Wolfers have explained Europe’s persistent
unemployment, which they called “hysteresis,” by the interaction of adverse
economic shocks and extremely generous welfare states. Twenty years ago, the
more economically successful European nations, such as Sweden, Germany, and the
Netherlands, reorganized their welfare states to emphasize work and witnessed
positive results. Others, including France, Italy, and Spain, did not, and they
have struggled. In a sense, the eurozone financial crisis of the past
half-decade is the legacy of southern European countries that wouldn’t fix
their failing welfare systems. The U.S. needs to decide if it wants to follow
the path of Germany or of Spain.
Yet these
programs didn’t immediately generate a crisis of joblessness in America.
Manufacturing workers weren’t going to leave their well-paying union jobs in 1967
because of the existence of food stamps. But over the next half-century, things
changed dramatically. As hundreds of studies have documented, wages for the
best-educated and most-successful Americans have risen, while those for the
least-educated and least-successful Americans have stagnated.
These
developments result from tectonic movements in the economy. Globalization and
technological change have steadily eroded—and continue to erode—the demand for
American brawn. In 1966, American factories employed millions of industrial
workers, making products that were shipped to far poorer places. As technology
spread, the world’s lower-wage countries started manufacturing. Asia’s economic
tigers initially thrived because of low labor costs, but these increasingly
educated countries eventually achieved technological parity with—and sometimes
became superior to—many American industries.
Manufacturing’s
share of total American output has fallen from 25 percent in 1968 to 12 percent
today. The number of manufacturing workers has shrunk from 19.5 million in 1979
to 12.2 million, which represents 8.8 percent of nonfarm employment. The fact
that manufacturing today is a larger share of GDP than of employment
underscores a shift toward technology-intensive production—another response to
high U.S. labor costs. For millennia, men were valued for their muscles. Human
strength was crucial to feudal farming and to Henry Ford’s assembly line. We
still have some jobs that depend on strong backs, as in the building trades. But
they are getting rarer because machines can do the work for us.
We’re not
moving toward an entirely mechanized economy. Between 1980 and 2000, U.S.
service-sector employment rose by 73 percent—a whopping 37 million new jobs.
There remains commercial value in a friendly face and the charm of human
interaction. But for millions of men, working in the service sector wasn’t a
good option.
American
joblessness reflects the social unraveling that Charles Murray describes in Coming
Apart. A significant portion of the American heartland has moved from a
norm of stable marriage and traditional religion to single-parent families and
social dysfunction. A study by Raj Chetty and Nathan Hendren calculated
mobility across America using income-tax records. Their data show that the
share of single-parent families in an area is a particularly strong predictor
of low upward mobility. Any parent knows that raising children is tough, even
with two adults involved. When only one parent is around, that task gets even
harder. Unsurprisingly, many kids from broken families lack the skills needed
to get ahead in today’s competitive economy.
During World
War II, the army taught millions of Americans how to behave effectively in a
tough organization. Such skills may have helped returning veterans thrive in
the industrial America of the 1950s. Yet that very success may also have
enabled younger Americans to tolerate joblessness, as they wind up relying for
extended periods on their parents’ (or grandparents’) help. Thirty percent of
prime-age jobless men currently live with their parents.
The rise of
joblessness among the young has been a particularly pernicious effect of the
Great Recession. Job loss was extensive among 25–34-year-old men and
35–44-year-old men between 2007 and 2009. The 25–34-year-olds have
substantially gone back to work, but the number of employed 35–44-year-olds,
which dropped by 2 million at the start of the Great Recession, hasn’t
recovered. The dislocated workers in this group seem to have left the labor
force permanently.
Unfortunately,
policymakers seem intent on making the joblessness crisis worse. The past decade
or so has seen a resurgent progressive focus on inequality—and little concern
among progressives about the downsides of discouraging work. Advocates of a $15
minimum hourly wage, for example, don’t seem to mind, or believe, that such
policies deter firms from hiring less skilled workers. The University of
California–San Diego’s Jeffrey Clemens examined states where higher federal
minimum wages raised the effective state-level minimum wage during the last
decade. He found that the higher minimum “reduced employment among individuals
ages 16 to 30 with less than a high school education by 5.6 percentage points,”
which accounted for “43 percent of the sustained, 13 percentage point decline
in this skill group’s employment rate.”
The decision
to prioritize equality over employment is particularly puzzling, given that
social scientists have repeatedly found that unemployment is the greater evil.
Economists Andrew Clark and Andrew Oswald have documented the huge drop in
happiness associated with unemployment—about ten times larger than that
associated with a reduction in earnings from the $50,000–$75,000 range to the
$35,000–$50,000 bracket. One recent study estimated that unemployment leads to
45,000 suicides worldwide annually. Jobless husbands have a 50 percent higher
divorce rate than employed husbands. The impact of lower income on suicide and
divorce is much smaller. The negative effects of unemployment are magnified
because it so often becomes a semipermanent state.
Time-use
studies help us understand why the unemployed are so miserable. Jobless men
don’t do a lot more socializing; they don’t spend much more time with their
kids. They do spend an extra 100 minutes daily watching television, and
they sleep more. The jobless also are more likely to use illegal drugs. While
fewer than 10 percent of full-time workers have used an illegal substance in
any given week, 18 percent of the unemployed have done drugs in the last seven
days, according to a 2013 study by Alejandro Badel and Brian Greaney.
Joblessness and
disability are also particularly associated with America’s deadly opioid
epidemic. David Cutler and I examined the rise in opioid deaths between 1992
and 2012. The strongest correlate of those deaths is the share of the
population on disability. That connection suggests a combination of the direct
influence of being disabled, which generates a demand for painkillers; the
availability of the drugs through the health-care system; and the psychological
misery of having no economic future.
Increasing
the benefits received by nonemployed persons may make their lives easier in a
material sense but won’t help reattach them to the labor force. It won’t give
them the sense of pride that comes from economic independence. It won’t give
them the reassuring social interactions that come from workplace relationships.
When societies sacrifice employment for a notion of income equality, they make
the wrong choice.
Politicians,
when they do focus on long-term unemployment, too often advance poorly targeted
solutions, such as faster growth, more infrastructure investment, and less
trade. More robust GDP growth is always a worthy aim, but it seems unlikely to
get the chronically jobless back to work. The booms of the 1990s and early
2000s never came close to restoring the high employment rates last seen in the
1970s. Between 1976 and 2015, Nevada’s GDP grew the most and Michigan’s GDP
grew the least among American states. Yet the two states had almost identical
rises in the share of jobless prime-age men.
Infrastructure
spending similarly seems poorly targeted to ease the problem. Contemporary
infrastructure projects rely on skilled workers, typically with wages exceeding
$25 per hour; most of today’s jobless lack such skills. Further, the current
employment in highway, street, and bridge construction in the U.S. is only
316,000. Even if this number rose by 50 percent, it would still mean only a
small reduction in the millions of jobless Americans. And the nation needs
infrastructure most in areas with the highest population density; joblessness
is most common outside metropolitan America. (See “If You Build It . . .,”
Summer 2016.)
Finally,
while it’s possible that the rise of American joblessness would have been
slower if the U.S. had weaker trade ties to lower-wage countries like Mexico
and China, American manufacturers have already adapted to a globalized world by
mechanizing and outsourcing. We have little reason to be confident that
restrictions on trade would bring the old jobs back. Trade wars would have an
economic price, too. American exporters would cut back hiring. The cost of
imported manufactured goods would rise, and U.S. consumers would pay more, in
exchange for—at best—uncertain employment gains.
The
techno-futurist narrative holds that machines will displace most workers,
eventually. Social peace will be maintained only if the armies of the jobless
are kept quiet with generous universal-income payments. This vision recalls
John Maynard Keynes’s 1930 essay “Economic Possibilities for Our
Grandchildren,” which predicts a future world of leisure, in which his
grandchildren would be able to satisfy their basic needs with a few hours of
labor and then spend the rest of their waking hours edifying themselves with
culture and fun.
But for many
of us, technological progress has led to longer work hours, not playtime.
Entrepreneurs conjured more products that generated more earnings. Almost no
Americans today would be happy with the lifestyle of their ancestors in 1930.
For many, work also became not only more remunerative but more interesting. No
Pennsylvania miner was likely to show up for extra hours (without extra pay)
voluntarily. Google employees do it all the time.
Joblessness
is not foreordained, because entrepreneurs can always dream up new ways of
making labor productive. Ten years ago, millions of Americans wanted
inexpensive car service. Uber showed how underemployed workers could earn
something providing that service. Prosperous, time-short Americans are
desperate for a host of other services—they want not only drivers but also
cooks for their dinners and nurses for their elderly parents and much more.
There is no shortage of demand for the right kinds of labor, and
entrepreneurial insight could multiply the number of new tasks that could be
performed by the currently out-of-work. Yet over the last 30 years,
entrepreneurial talent has focused far more on delivering new tools for the
skilled than on employment for the unlucky. Whereas Henry Ford employed
hundreds of thousands of Americans without college degrees, Mark Zuckerberg
primarily hires highly educated programmers.
What could
change this dynamic? The first step is to improve Americans’ skills. The
jobless rate is about 8 percent for prime-age men with a college degree or more
but more than 22 percent for men with only a high school diploma or less. We
have levers that can improve educational outcomes, like the very best early-childhood
programs and charter schools. Such innovations should be expanded and made
better through competition and evaluation.
We should
also improve the way that we do vocational education. (See “Vocational Ed,
Reborn,” page 36.) Many vocational schools, like Boston’s Madison Park High
School, have long been troubled. The most ambitious students avoid getting
tracked onto a vocational path, and they—and their parents—want schools that
focus on college readiness. Consequently, less fortunate or struggling students
often get segregated into these vocational centers. The conventional teachers
in many vocational programs often lack the know-how for teaching either
high-paying blue-collar trades, like plumbing, or cutting-edge fields, like
computer programming.
A more
effective approach might be to keep students in college-readiness-oriented
schools and experiment with out-of-school vocational training. Kids could be
taught after school, on weekends, and during the summer by programs
specializing in particular occupations. These initiatives can be evaluated
swiftly—you can readily determine if a program has produced, say, good
carpenters. The superior training programs can then be scaled up and bad ones
shut down. Adopting this structure would mean that anyone could potentially
compete to run the programs—trade unions, private providers,
nonprofits—increasing the chances that some programs will excel. We should also
be open to initiatives like Cambridge, Massachusetts’s “The Possible Project,”
which has been training youths, many from poorer backgrounds, to launch
themselves in the start-up economy. (I am currently working on a randomized
control trial for the project.)
Older workers
present the toughest training problem. The extensive literature on retraining
adults for new jobs has few success stories. We must keep trying; here, too,
the more experimentation, the better.
Along with
up-skilling workers, we should lower the regulatory barriers to
entrepreneurship. It’s a sad fact that America tends to regulate the entrepreneurship
of the poor much more stringently than it does that of the rich. You can begin
an Internet company in Silicon Valley with little regulatory oversight; you
need more than ten permits to open a grocery store in the Bronx.
One-stop
permitting would be a good step, especially in poorer areas. If new businesses
had only a single regulatory office to satisfy, the obstacles to
entrepreneurship would be less daunting. One-stop permitting would also make it
easier to evaluate the regulator on its speed and the number of permits issued.
Permitting shops could specialize in the languages and businesses most common
in their areas.
Occupational
licensing is another area crying out for reform. The University of Minnesota’s
Morris Kleiner has found that the share of American workers who need an
occupational license has increased from 5 percent in the 1950s to 29 percent in
2008. States now credential interior designers, tree trimmers, and even
florists. In many cases, these requirements are merely means for protecting
incumbents from competition. When we license basic service jobs, we make it
tougher for the jobless to find something new to do.
American
entrepreneurs can solve our joblessness crisis only if the U.S. stops
incentivizing joblessness. Consolidating social policies would be a crucial
step. Struggling families now receive food stamps, housing vouchers, Temporary
Aid to Needy Families, and other assistance—all of which punish work. If the
various programs were combined into a single cash benefit, that benefit could
be designed so that the tax on earnings never went above 30 percent. We could
follow the lead of Norway on unemployment and disability insurance, allowing
the disabled to keep, say, 50 percent of their benefit above the $1,170
threshold, while tightening the requirements for being designated as disabled.
Unemployment insurance could be structured so that payments were no longer contingent
upon staying completely out of work.
Here, the
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) offers a design model, by providing funds that
initially scale up with earnings, especially for lower-income families with
children. Economists Nada Eissa and Jeffrey Liebman found that the credit’s
introduction in 1986 increased labor-force participation significantly. The
EITC was instituted during one of those rare moments in modern U.S. history
when policymakers wanted to avoid rewarding joblessness.
We also need
to make hiring workers less costly for employers. Temporarily cutting the
payroll tax was one of the most constructive policies adopted during the Great
Recession. We could enact a permanent payroll-tax reduction. The tax could be
gradually phased in for workers once their hourly earnings went beyond a
certain threshold. The payroll tax could be eliminated for workers who had been
unemployed, at least for an initial period. The costs of reducing the payroll
tax could be offset by raising the minimum retirement age for employees who
hadn’t paid these taxes for enough years. Reducing mandated benefits, like
health care, that employers must provide lower-income earners would help
encourage work, too. Ideally, the reform of our health-care system will ensure
that workers have health-care options that don’t unduly burden employers.
Making work
pay needs one final, major policy initiative: wage support, which would replace
the EITC. The EITC had the right overall idea, but it is cumbersome and
indirect. Instead, the federal government could simply provide pay to increase
the earnings of minimum-wage workers by a fixed amount—say, $3 per hour.
Consequently, a worker paid $7.25 would take home $10.25 hourly, with the
difference paid for by taxpayers. The subsidy could fall gradually as wages
rise, and it could be targeted for specific groups—larger for returning
veterans or the long-run jobless—and rise or fall with the level of aggregate
unemployment. The phaseout might slightly slow private-sector wage growth, but
the cost would be more than offset by the benefits of such a visible push
toward employment. Such a program would be expensive, so it should be matched
with spending reductions for other social services.
The rise in
joblessness is not inexorable. But to solve this crisis, we must educate,
reform social services, empower entrepreneurs, and even subsidize employment.
That is an ambitious—but necessary—agenda for ending the war on work before it
consumes another generation of Americans.
Edward L.
Glaeser is a professor of economics at Harvard University, a City Journal contributing editor,
and the author of Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest
Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier.
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