Im-Politic: An Open Borders Mainstay Shoots His Cause in the Foot

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Biden administration, Border Crisis, Central America, Donald Trump, drug cartels, Emma Lazarus, human trafficking, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Jorge Ramos, Latin America, Mexico, migrants, Open Borders, sovereignty, Statue of Liberty, The New York Times, Univision

The current crisis on the U.S.’ southern border is President Biden’s fault. His predecessors’ immigration policies were working. The new administration’s reliance on stemming the migrants’ tide by Building Back Better in Central America won’t work for the foreseeable future, if at all. When folks like Mr. Biden talk about “fixing a broken system,” they really mean reorienting that system to maximize immigration. And – most damning of all – bolstering America’s well-being and security shouldn’t be the main aims of U.S. immigration policy.

Don’t take my word for it. Take that of Jorge Ramos. Because these dangerously radical and indeed – in one instance, un-American – points were exactly what the Univision anchor and long-time supporter of Open Borders by Any Other Name just admitted openly in a column in last Friday’s New York Times.

On responsibility for the current border crisis? According to Ramos:

“‘The border is not open,’ the U.S. secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, told me in an interview. ‘What we have discontinued,’ Mr. Mayorkas promised, ‘is the cruelty of the previous administration.’”

“Well, apparently, in Central America, people only heard the bit about ‘cruelty’ being over, which is why so many migrants are heading north toward the border. Tens of thousands of asylum seekers, mostly from Central America, have waited for over a year in Mexican border towns and they will not waste this opportunity.”

Don’t think for a minute, incidentally, that the small Central American countries will be the only sending countries – even in the Western Hemisphere. The polling organization Gallup has recently determined that no fewer than 42 million Latin Americans want to move to the United States permanently. And as Ramos makes clear, no one should be startled in the least:

“It should come as no surprise that this [migration flow] is happening along a border that divides one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world from one of its most economically unequal regions. Latin America’s poor and vulnerable — struggling amid a pandemic, the devastation of climate change and the violence of their homelands — are moving north to a safer, more prosperous place. It’s that simple. And this will keep happening for a long time.”

On the effectiveness of President Trump’s policies, Ramos writes that they “reduced annual net immigration to its lowest levels since the 1980s.” It’s true that he denounces them as “racist,” “anti-immigrant,” “inhuman,” and “repressive.”

But as long as he’s being so candid, he and others of his ilk need to ask “compared to what?” As Ramos himself reports,

“According to the head of the U.S. Northern Command, 30 percent to 35 percent of [Mexico] is under the control of ‘transnational criminal organizations.’ This means that any migrants traveling north through Mexico are in immediate danger.”

Indeed, the present U.S. immigration system is now “a dangerous system that encourages human trafficking controlled by drug cartels and other organized crime networks.”

What should U.S. immigration policy aim for? What could be clearer than Ramos’ answer that it “must involve accepting many more authorized immigrants”?

Or than Washington must “create a system that can legally, efficiently and safely absorb more of these immigrants and refugees. They will keep coming; there is no other solution”?

Or than “[T]he United States should start accepting between one and a half and two million authorized immigrants every year. Entry into the United States must be legalized and optimized….”? (At the same time, given the powerful forces Ramos describes as fueling continuing hemispheric migration to the United States, what makes him think that such a U.S. quota would prevent much greater migrant flows from continuing to come to America’s doorstep?)

Nor does Ramos evidently think much of the near-term potential of turning Central America into the kind of place people wouldn’t seek to flee in the first place:

“The $4 billion investment in Central America that President Biden has promised is a good starting point for tackling the origins of migration in the region: poverty and a lack of opportunity. That project, however, will take years to yield results.”

But the key to understanding Ramos’ position, and possibly those of many other supporters of more lenient U.S. immigration policies, is recognizing that U.S. interests – safeguarding the nation’s security and prosperity – isn’t his top priority.

Thus the author’s argument that “It’s clear that America’s immigration system is broken and outdated” because “it doesn’t reflect the new needs of the United States or its southern neighbors.” And why else would he emphasize that “all along the U.S.-Mexico border, the aspirations of new immigrants are colliding with a country reluctant to revamp its way of welcoming and absorbing newcomers.”

Ramos doesn’t neglect the case that ramping up immigration is in America’s interests, too, focusing in particular on familiar arguments that many more newcomers are needed “to support the nation’s beleaguered economy, replace its growing population of retired workers and make up for the country’s low birthrate.”

Although I and others have repeatedly debunked these claims (see, e.g., here and here), they’re entirely legitimate to debate. So is the insistence that America has a moral duty to accept more of the world’s tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free – to paraphrase the (justly) famous Emma Lazarus poem at the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

But the judgment about the economic impact of greater immigration flows, and about the country’s moral obligations, must be made by Americans alone. Otherwise, kiss goodbye the country’s sovereignty and independence. Ramos’ suggestion to the contrary should go far toward intellectually (though not legally!) disqualifying him from the American immigration policy debate.

Except he’s did such a great job in this Times column of unwittingly confirming some of the strongest indictments of lax immigration policies and the worst fears of border realists about the agendas of their backers. In fact, to paraphrase a classical Greek general’s reported lament after a costly victory, another such column (or a couple), and the Open Borders cause may be undone.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Senate Fast Track Vote Reveals Widespread Trade Policy Cluelessness

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Congress, currency manipulation, fast track, House of Representatives, human trafficking, labor standards, Malaysia, Obama, Rob Portman, Robert Menendez, Senate, TPA, TPP, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership, {What's Left of) Our Economy

With the Senate approving fast track negotiating authority for the president in the wee hours today, it’s an ideal time to take stock of where Mr. Obama’s trade agenda stands.

First, the fast track debate now heads to the House of Representatives, which has always been more resistant to the trade strategies pursued by America for at least two decades. Campaign finance dynamics largely explains why: Since Senate seats are state-wide offices, they’re much more expensive to win that House seats, and therefore big money is especially important. And America’s big money loves job- and growth-killing trade deals.

Second, largely as a result, just in terms of political score-keeping, the Senate’s endorsement is no big deal. In fact, the only real suspense came on a vote on a measure that would have required any trade deals submitted to Congress to contain enforceable disciplines on currency manipulation. It was defeated, but only by a 51-48 vote. At the same time, the details of this issue speak volumes about how un-seriously even well-intentioned American leaders handle trade issues.

As I’ve explained before, even the measure offered by Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and his Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michigan would have done nothing to solve this problem. Why not? There’s no global anti-currency manipulation consensus (and indeed, many countries are determined to either use it or retain the option). Moreover, future U.S. trade deals, such as the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are likely to include majoritarian dispute-resolution systems just like their predecessors. Therefore, any American complaints filed under the new regimes can be expected to go exactly nowhere.

But let’s give supporters of the amendment the benefit of the doubt and just assume that they hadn’t had time to think this far ahead. This shortcoming could be entirely forgivable given how vehemently and for how long the opposition, led by President Obama and Congress’ Republican leaders, has rejected effective responses to currency manipulation. It would still be anything but clear why so many Portman-Stabenow backers wound up favoring the fast track bill once the currency provision went down – including Portman himself, who had warned colleagues that without his measure, “In one week, through currency exchanges, you can undo years of benefits in terms of reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers in a trade agreement.”

Another example of how fundamentally inane the fast track debate has become concerns the economically tangential, but of course morally abhorrent, issue of human trafficking. The subject was injected into trade policy and politics by Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who offered an amendment that would bar Congress from using fast track procedures for any trade deals with countries officially accused by Washington of egregious human trafficking records. TPP first-round member Malaysia falls into this category.

Even though the Obama administration regarded it as a TPP-killer, the Menendez measure passed the fast track- and offshoring-friendly Senate Finance Committee by a strong bipartisan 16-10 vote. Fast track supporters evidently were counting on weakening it enough to make it acceptable to the White House and to the Malays, but somehow the full-strength Menendez amendment survived and was included in the final trade legislation. It’s easy to see how fixing what fast track backers insist is a major problem could push the bill’s journey through Congress further into the intensifying 2016 presidential campaign cycle, and thus threaten its chances.

But the Malaysia trafficking fight is noteworthy in at least three other respects, too. First, it’s as vulnerable to nullification by TPP members as the Portman-Stabenow currency measure. Second, it’s also vulnerable to nullification by President Obama, who could in principle appease the Malaysians and others simply by certifying that their trafficking record has improved. But even if these two propositions were not true, the Malaysia ruckus reveals a third fast track and TPP-related complication that looks especially damaging to their supporters. For it belies sweeping claims by the president and his trade policy supporters that the TPP is creating high, enforceable standards in areas like labor rights and environmental protection.

If the president is right (and I’ve explained why, for separate reasons, he isn’t), then TPP will serve as “the most progressive trade deal in history” because its social and human rights and ecological and other requirements will be strong enough to require violators to change their ways – presumably by threatening them with the loss of trade preferences created by the agreement. But according to fast track backers, including the president, Malaysia is not only not preparing to clean up its human trafficking act. It’s threatening to torpedo the whole TPP if the measure survives. And judging by these expressed fears, it’s succeeding. If according to Mr. Obama, Malaysia feels free to resist a TPP rule on a practice that is in effect the toleration of slavery, why won’t other developing countries feel equally free to resist TPP rules in much more (legitimately) controversial areas, like appropriate levels of worker rights and environmental protection in developing countries?

The continuing irony surrounding the fate of fast track and TPP is that the Obama trade agenda is so misbegotten that it could well fail in the House without critics raising any of the above contradictions. But beyond the immediate future, they’re important because they make clear that even if many fast track opponents succeed in reshaping American trade policy to reflect their stated priorities, the resulting new agreements would damage the U.S. and world economies as much as their predecessors. Much more radical surgery on this policy front is needed. If fast track’s defeat doesn’t spotlight that need, American leaders will have missed an all-too-rare opportunity to help foster genuine, because sustainable, growth nationally and globally.