Those Stubborn Facts: Yes, Biden Really Has Opened the Border

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Biden administration, Biden border crisis, border security, illegal immigration, immigrants, Immigration, migrants, Open Borders, Those Stubborn Facts

“We preliminarily estimate that illegal immigrants accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the foreign-born population since January 2021 — 1.35 million.”

– Center for Immigration Studies, June 1, 2022

 

Average monthly growth in U.S. foreign-born population during first Obama administration term: 59,000

Average monthly growth in U.S. foreign-born population during second Obama administration term: 76,000

Average monthly growth in U.S. foreign-born population during Trump pre-CCP Virus years: 42,000

Average monthly growth in U.S. foreign-born population sofar during Biden administration: 132,000

 

(“Foreign-Born Population Hit Record 47 Million in April 2022,” by Steven A. Camarota and Karen Ziegler, Center for Immigration Studies, June 1, 2022, https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Population-Hit-Record-47-Million-April-2022%29)

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Biden’s Immigration-Enabling Goals Couldn’t be Worse Timed

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asylum seekers, California, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Department of Labor, Eduardo Porter, illegal aliens, illegal immigration, Immigration, Jobs, Joe Biden, NAFTA, North American Free Frade Agreement, Open Borders, path to citizenship, Pew Research Center, recession, refugees, services, The New York Times, The Race to the Bottom, wages, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Apparent President-elect Joe Biden emphatically and repeatedly told the nation that he’s determined to increase the flow of immigrants to America – whether we’re talking about his promises that will greatly strengthen the immigration magnet (like creating a “roadmap to citizenship” for America’s illegal alien population, tightly curbing immigation law enforcement activities, and offering free government-funded healthcare to anyone who can manage to cross the border lawfully or not), or his promises to boost admissions of refugees, speed systems for processing applications for asylum and (legal) green card applications, and generally “to ensure that the U.S. remains open and welcoming to people from every part of the world….”

During normal recent times such pledges – and the fallout of pre-Trump efforts to keep them – had proven troublesome enough for the U.S. economy and for working class Americans in particular. Inevitably, they pumped up the supply of labor available to U.S.-based businesses, and created surpluses that enabled companies to cut wages with the greatest of ease – exactly as the laws of supply and demand predict.

During the CCP Virus pandemic and its likely economic aftermath, however, this quasi-Open Borders strategy looks positively demented, as emerging trends most recently described by New York Times economics writer Eduardo Porter should make painfully obvious.

According to Porter in a December 1 piece, “The [U.S.] labor market has recovered 12 million of the 22 million jobs lost from February to April. But many positions may not return any time soon, even when a vaccine is deployed.

“This is likely to prove especially problematic for millions of low-paid workers in service industries like retailing, hospitality, building maintenance and transportation, which may be permanently impaired or fundamentally transformed. What will janitors do if fewer people work in offices? What will waiters do if the urban restaurant ecosystem never recovers its density?”

What’s the connection with immigration policy? As it happens, the service industries the author rightly identifies as sectors apparently vulnerable to major employment downsizing are industries that historically have employed outsized shares of immigrant workers (including illegals). And along with other personal service industries, they’re kinds of sectors whose modest skill requirements would continue to offer newcomers overall their best bets for employment.

The charts below, from the Pew Research Center, show just how thoroughly dominated by both kinds of immigrants these sectors, and present similar data broken down by occupation. (The U.S. Department of Labor tracks employment according to both kinds of categories.)

Twenty years ago, in my book The Race to the Bottom, I wrote about news reports making clear that

“immigrants were flooding into California in hopes of landing jobs in labor-intensive industries such a apparel and electronics assembly that NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] had steadily been sending to Mexico — where most of the immigrants come from! In other words, the state was importing people while exporting their likeliest jobs.” 

And not surprisingly, wages throughout the southern California in particular stagnated.  

If a Biden administration proceeds with its stated immigration plans as quickly as it’s promised (with many actions scheduled for the former Vice President’s first hundred days in office), this epic blunder will wind up being repeated — but this time on a national scale.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Im-Politic: How Mexico’s Paying for the Border Wall After All

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AMLO, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, asylum seekers, border security, border wall, caravans, Central America, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, international law, Jorge Ramos, Mexico, Migrant Protection Protocols, migrants, The New York Times, Trump

Here’s quite the spectacular new entry in the “Life is Strange” category: President Trump has turned out to be right in predicting that Mexico would pay for a border wall to curb illegal immigration. Only this victory has taken a form that neither Mr. Trump nor anyone else could have possibly expected. It didn’t even totally entail developments at the border envisioned!

It’s a major win nonetheless, and if you doubt me, then take the word of Jorge Ramos, the well known anchor for Spanish language TV network Univision, a major champion of de facto Open Borders policies, and of course no fan of the President’s. 

For as Ramos has pointed out in a New York Times op-ed piece yesterday, Mexico has created at least the functional equivalent of a wall. He’s referring to the decision (forced by a very effective – though of course widely condemned – tariffs and border-closing threat by Mr. Trump, as Ramos ruefully observed) of Mexico’s new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (nicknamed “AMLO”) to use Mexican forces to prevent Central American migrants and various other supposed asylum seekers from entering the United States en masse. Nor has Ramos been the only mass immigration advocate to point out this specific Trump success.

Some of these Mexican National Guards personnel are helping the United States enforce its new policy that permits requiring many asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases are judged. This Migrant Protection Protocols program replaces the obligation created by international law that until now has been interpreted to rquire Washington to admit  U.S.-bound asylum seekers’ entry even before evaluation. Although motivated by entirely understandable humanitarian concerns, this measure never anticipated the type of mass migration and related asylum fraud situation faced by the United States nowadays.

Other Mexican National Guards have been deployed to the country’s southern border with Guatemala, where they’ve been unmistakably effective in preventing huge caravans of Central American migrants from traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.

The United States has been indirectly financing a small portion of these efforts (through training programs to help for Central American officials better control their own borders). But the vast majority of spending on these efforts is coming from Mexico.

The President is entirely correct in continuing to emphasize the need for more effective physical barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border. But the essence of his famous campaign wall-building promise was to improve America’s own border security greatly, and to make Mexico pay the costs. And that’s exactly what’s now happening to a major extent. Even better – this approach is working. Illegal crossings at the U.S. border are down, and Mexico’s Lopez Obrador says that the migrants groups seeking to enter his country are shrinking.

President Trump has been supplied with abundant material for reelection campaign ads this week (notably, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ripping up of her ceremonial State of the Union transcript). Jorge Ramos’ op-ed has just given him some more.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Illegal Immigrant Poverty Rates Mock Claims that they’re U.S. Economic Saviors

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Census Breau, citizens, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, immigrants, Immigration, non-citizens, Pew Research Center, poverty, social mobility, taxes, Vox.com, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As the U.S. immigration policy debate rages on, claims continue that more lenient admissions policies, including amnesty policies that would clearly strengthen the magnet for more illegal immigration, are urgently needed to fix the nation’s demographically imperiled pension finances.

One of the latest examples comes from the left-leaning news and opinion site Vox.com:

“Economic estimates show that immigration would help save the Social Security system. Not just legal immigration — illegal immigration too.”

“Undocumented immigrants and immigrants with legal status pay billions of dollars each year into the Social Security system through payroll taxes. Based on estimates in the trustees report, the more immigrants that come in, the longer the Social Security system will stay solvent. That’s because immigrants, on average, are a lot younger than the overall US population, so their retirement is far off. And undocumented immigrants pay for Social Security, but they’re not allowed to get benefits.”

I’ve previously debunked such claims about illegal immigrants by showing both that their contribution to the national tax haul currently is much less a drop in the national bucket, and that it’s likely to stay tiny because social mobility in America has slowed to a crawl – meaning in particular that prospects keep getting bleaker for major income ladder climbing by the kinds of low-skill, poorly educated workers who dominate illegal immigrants’ ranks.

So it’s important to report that some recent data from the Census Bureau strongly confirms that mobility point – along with suggesting that one of the best ways to give illegal immigrants a leg up is to cut back their numbers seriously.

The statistics come in the form of figures kept by the Bureau on the “detailed social and economic statistics for age groups as well as racial groups that include the Hispanic, black or African-American, Asian and foreign-born populations.” These include numbers on poverty rates for native-born Americans, naturalized foreign-born citizens, and non-citizens (who of course by definition are foreign born). The latter aren’t necessarily illegals – for a variety of reasons, many legal immigrants never apply for citizenship, or don’t do so right away. But the non-citizen group would include all the illegals.

It seemed to me that the best way to tell if this non-citizen group and its illegal members are making noteworthy economic progress would be to focus on those in the 18-64-year old age group – i.e., those overwhelmingly likeliest to be employed, or seeking employment. The data go back to 1995 and up to 2015, so changes over a respectable period of time can be assessed. Below are the main findings, which also compare how poverty rates for non-citizens of working age have fared versus their native-born and naturalized citizen counterparts.

Year      native born 18-64s    naturalized 18-64s      non-citizen 18-64s

1995          10.8%                           8.4%                           25.7%

2001            8.8%                           8.1%                           17.8%

2007         10.0%                            8.5%                           19.9%

2009         11.9%                          10.1%                           24.2%

2015          9.7%                             8.9%                           17.9%

The most obvious takeaway is that the the poverty rates for the non-citizens of working age have remained much higher than those for the rest of the population of working age. And in absolute terms, for a high-income country like the United States, they’re exceedingly high.

These numbers also show that the poverty rate for the working age non-citizens has declined considerably faster than that for native-born Americans (-30.35 percent vs -10.19 percent). And that 30-plus percent drop contrasts especially strikingly with the change in the naturalized citizen rate – which actually rose by 5.95 percent.

So doesn’t that latter trend strongly suggest that illegal workers do keep increasing earnings significantly? Not so fast. First, remember that the performance of the illegals is undoubtedly worse than that of non-citizens as a whole. After all, illegals don’t have a heck of a lot of bargaining power at the workplace. Second, as RealityChek regulars know, the most accurate read on economic trends comes from comparing similar phases of the economic cycle – e.g., recessions with recessions, expansions with expansions.

And in that vein, what the data underscore to me is that the biggest drop in the working age non-citizens’ poverty rate came during the last half of the strongest and longest American expansion to date – that which lasted from 1991 to 2001. Between 1995 and 2001, it fell by 30.73 percent. During the bubble era expansion of 2001-2007, the non-citizen poverty rate actually increased (by 11.80 percent). Their fortunes improved notably during the first six years of the current expansion – decreasing by 26.03 percent. But that slowdown was more modest than that of the 1991-2001 recovery.

It’s certainly possible that since then, the rate has fallen further – and that this expansion will start speeding up, leading to additional improvement. But given the length of this recovery (more than nine years), that would be surprising – at least for any prolonged period.

Further improvement, however, could indeed be on the horizon because during the current recovery years, when that 26 percent fall in the poverty rate took place, the illegal immigrant population shrunk – from 11.5 million to 11.0 million, according to the pretty authoritative Pew Research Center. I say “pretty authoritative” because measuring activity related to illegality is always difficult. But these Pew data strike me as reasonable because all else equal, whenever the supply of anything (like illegal immigrant workers) decreases, its value (earnings) tends to increase.

So if the Trump administration can keep illegal inflows down, illegal workers’ poverty rates seem likely to fall further because of rising pay. But ironically, this development would also weaken the case that illegals will prove to be the U.S. economy’s financial salvation. For their incomes will remain very low in absolute terms by any reasonable measure, and their numbers will be smaller than their supporters seem to assume.

Moreover, the less illegal immigrant competition they face, again all else equal, the higher the pay of the much greater population of native-born workers will rise. Legal immigrants stand to benefit as well.

Something to keep in mind when you next hear some Open Borders enthusiast shout, “Abolish ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]!”

Im-Politic: New Frontiers in Mainstream Media Coddling of Criminal Aliens

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18th Street, crime, criminal illegal immigrants, deportations, gangs, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mainstream Media, MS-13, Open Borders, The New York Times, Trump

Another Fourth of July has come and gone, and here’s hoping everyone had a great holiday. One recent development that put a damper on mine, though: The latest instance of the Mainstream Media bending over backward to coddle or overlook criminal behavior by illegal immigrants, in an apparent effort to promote further the idea it’s fundamentally illegitimate for a country (like the one that just celebrated a birthday) to control its borders and the inflow of foreigners.

Suggestively, the methodology used in this deceitful exercise – which appeared in The New York Times on June 27 – was almost exactly the same as employed in previous cases of closet Open Borders propaganda: Dismissing the seriousness of numerous categories of offenses that would surely be regarded as extremely serious if mentioned in any context other than illegal immigration.

According to the authors of the article, titled “MS-13 Is Far From the ‘Infestation’ Trump Describes,” “[President] Trump’s statements conflating immigrants with barbaric ‘thugs’ are misleading. Among undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes who were apprehended by Border Patrol, relatively few were convicted of violent crimes such as assault and homicide. ” The clear implication: The Border Patrol patrol is (“tragically?” “inexcusably?” “wastefully?” “cruelly?” – pick your favorite disparaging adverb) focusing its efforts on individuals that in a truly just world would be left alone.

Indeed, as shown by the third graphic in the piece, between October, 2015 (under the Obama administration) and May, 2018, 27,589 illegal immigrants apprehended by U.S. authorities were convicted of crimes. More than half (14,374) were guilty of illegal entry or reentry into the United States – which the authors obviously consider no big deal.

 

But now look at what the other 13,215 illegals (nearly 48 percent of the total) were arrested for. On top of the 13 convicted of homicide or manslaughter, nearly 4,900 (the largest group in this subset) were drunk drivers (a practice outlawed because of its great potential to kill and maim). Nearly 3,700 possessed or were selling illegal narcotics. More than 2,100 committed assault, battery, or domestic violence (the latter of course disproportionately harms women). Another 347 were sex offenders (a crime that also usually victimizes women). Nearly 1,700 others are being punished for burglary, larceny, theft, and fraud. And 488 committed various illegal weapons-related crimes (portrayed as especially heinous, dangerous offenses by a large percentage of the progressive left).

Moreover, keep in mind that these conviction totals cover only a two-and-a-half year period, not the grand total of all illegal immigrants arrested. In addition, surely numerous illegals who have committed these crimes have not been apprehended yet. And don’t assume that those arrested for illegal reentry had been “solid citizens” otherwise, either. It’s all too common for them to have been deported in the first place for much more serious offenses.

Just as outrageous, this Times article used an even more transparently phony ploy to depict the Trump administration as shamefully hyping the illegal immigrant crime threat. As suggested by the title, the authors tried to minimize the threat posed by Central America-tied MS-13 gang with figures purporting to show that it is “not particularly large, nor is it growing. The evidence, they contend, is in the second chart appearing in their article.

But here’s what readers aren’t told: The gang at the top of the chart – 18^th Street – is closely tied to Central America as well.

Finally, the presentation of this piece by The Times was unusual – to put it diplomatically. It was posted as an “Opinion” piece by the paper – which is a good start. But the three authors are identified as regular Times staffers. True, they’re all “members of the Opinion graphics team” at The Times. But they’re not regular columnists or any other kind of opinion writer. And The Times is decidedly not in the habit of permitting news or any other staffers from writing opinion articles. “News analyses,” which as suggested by their name allegedly fall into a third category, are as far as the paper will go, and this privilege is extended only to experienced reporters. Yet there’s nothing in this post to indicate that the authors are recognized authorities on immigration policy, or that they have any credentials of any kind in this field – or any other.

From all appearances, the authors are simply three people who happen to work at production-related jobs at The Times and who don’t like Mr. Trump’s immigration policies. And it seems that on that basis alone, the paper’s Opinion staff decided that their (transparently flimsy) claims merited this prestigious, influential news organization’s bright spotlight. It’s hard to know whether to label this post “fake news” or “fake punditry.” But it’s just as hard to deny legitimately that it represents a new twist on pro-Open Borders media bias.

Following Up: More Illegal Immigrant Coddling from the Mainstream Media

Tags

crime, deportation, ICE, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mica Rosenberg, Open Borders, Reade Levinson, Reuters, Trump, zero tolerance

Last year, I wrote some posts on how some Mainstream Media journalists and other closet Open Borders backers have taken to minimizing the seriousness of crimes like drunk driving when the perpetrators are illegal immigrants facing deportation. Unfortunately, if a recent Reuters “Special Report” is any indication, a new wave of such pieces could be on the way due to the uproar over the Trump administration’s treatment of Central Americans streaming toward the U.S. border with children in hopes of entering America through grants of asylum.

The main ostensible criticism of the President’s initial “zero tolerance” approach to this latest migrants’ surge is that it indiscriminately applied the practice of “family separation” long used by American law enforcement when dealing with domestic criminal suspects apprehended with minors to foreigners whose only transgression appeared to be attempting to cross the border under false pretenses. But supporters of more lenient immigration policies have also been accusing the administration of treating the illegal immigrants already residing in the United States in unduly harsh ways by seeking to deport unauthorized aliens who have broken no other laws – or at least no other serious laws.

It’s that supposed qualification that’s the problem; as I showed, in one instance, the Washington Post‘s coverage of recent deportation data demonstrated that its reporters and editors don’t consider drunk driving a serious crime. In May, the D.C. metro area was treated to another (non-media) example of such illegal immigrant coddling: An area non-profit that provides legal aid for detained immigrants facing deportation proceedings actually rejected taxpayer funding for such activities offered by a local county government because it would have been prevented from using these resources where the accusations entailed fraud, distribution of heroin, second- and third-degree burglary and obstruction of justice….” Apparently these didn’t make this organization’s “serious crimes” list, either – or that, originally, of Maryland’s Montgomery County.

On June 20, Reuters reporters Mica Rosenberg and Reade Levinson – and their editors – clearly attempted to show in a lengthy piece just how common such alleged abuses of illegals has become. In their words, although the President has claimed that “his strengthened immigration-law enforcement” efforts have targeted violent criminal aliens,

“as his administration has expanded its dragnet under a series of executive orders, ICE has locked up thousands of people…with little or no criminal history, with deep roots in their communities, who present little flight risk.

“In earlier years, ICE [the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency] would have released many of these people on bond soon after their arrest, allowing them to live with their families while awaiting legal proceedings that can take years. Now, ICE is denying bond for many of those people and pushing to keep them in detention for the duration of their cases….”

And as is often the case in journalism, Reuters sought to personalize its story by describing the actual experience of one illegal immigrant whose life in the United States has been disrupted by the new policies.

According to the authors, El Salvador native Morena Vasquez had entered the United States illegally as a teenager, and had lived in Georgia for 23 years before a traffic stop “turned into a nightmarish entanglement in the toughened-up immigration policies of U.S. President Donald Trump – an experience that tore apart the life she had spent more than two decades building for herself and her family.”

Near the beginning of their article, Rosenberg and Levinson described Vasquez in terms that were plainly intended to generate sympathy. She had held “two jobs – teaching Spanish at a preschool, as well as the office-cleaning gig.” She has six children – ages four to 17. “[A]ll of them [are] U.S. citizens, [and] had to relocate in the middle of the school year to live near their ailing grandfather in another town, far from the detention center.”

Yet over the next year, “Vasquez languished in the crowded detention center. She repeatedly asked an immigration judge for bond so she could await her day in court back with her family. And repeatedly, bond was denied as ICE argued that she was a flight risk. Even after a judge ruled that she had the right to stay legally and permanently in the United States, she was kept locked up for five more months as ICE fought the decision.”

It was only much deeper into the story, that the reader learns that when she was arrested last year, Vasquez’ “record showed two convictions in 2014 for driving without a license and other traffic violations. It also showed that in 2004, Vasquez was sentenced to probation for contributing to the delinquency of a minor after a child she was babysitting wandered too close to a highway.”

In addition, “Police records show that because Vasquez had failed to appear in court for one of her traffic tickets, ICE in 2015 had issued a ‘detainer’ for her arrest – a notice to local authorities of her illegal presence in the United States. Cooperating police departments automatically turn over to federal authorities any immigrants with outstanding detainers who are picked up in their jurisdictions.” Indeed, it was precisely because she skipped that court appearance, ICE and a local judge denied her bond request in the belief she was a flight risk.

Now let’s be clear: Vasquez is obviously no hardened criminal. But on top of living in the country illegally, she hasn’t been a model “citizen,” either. And if after a clearly lengthy (and surely expensive) probe aimed at showcasing the supposed injustices of the new Trump policies, Reuters decided to use her as their poster-person, readers are entitled both to ask “Is this the best you got?” — and to wonder how many other allegedly needless victims of the Trump policy shift are in fact eminently deserving of deportation?

Im-Politic: From Virtue-Signaling to Real Compassion on Immigration

Tags

asylum seekers, celebrities, DACA, family separation, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mainstream Media, Sanctuary Cities, Trump, virtue-signalling

As should have been clear from the start, President Trump’s decision to halt the practice of family separation for supposed asylum-seekers who try to enter the United States outside of designated ports of entry will by no means end this phase of the immigration policy wars.

After all, this reversal has come via executive order, and the administration’s new policy – which would prevent family separation by detaining both children who have sought illegal entry into the country along with the adults that have accompanied them until their asylum claims are approved – appears to clash with a 2015 Federal court decision appearing to mandate quick release of both the children and the adults, whether asylum claims have been vetted or not.

In addition, avowed immigration rights advocates have made unmistakably clear their dissatisfaction with the new administration stance – strongly indicating in the process that their main concern has never been family separation, but the practice of detaining any of these family members until their asylum claims can be examined.

In other words, these advocates want a “catch and release” policy to be applied to these newcomers as well – even though many and possibly illegal border crossers never comply with orders to return to immigration courts once their cases are up for judgment. So court challenges are inevitable, as is pressure on politicians to loosen such border control practices further, as the outcry over the previous administration policy appears to be widespread (though its depth remains unclear, as suggested by these Gallup results).

And since even ultimately the President has shown that he’ll allow apparent public opinion to override his restrictionist immigration instincts, it’s reasonable to expect the U.S. illegal immigrant population to resume rising, and to surge strongly if Mr. Trump loses a reelection bid in 2020. And don’t forget: Washington could well turn on another powerful magnet for more immigration, especially from the very low-income countries of the Western Hemisphere – broad amnesty for the DACA population, residents of the United States who were brought to the country as children by illegal immigrant parents.

It looks, therefore, all too likely that a new outburst of virtue-signaling fomented by the Open Borders lobby will generate major new costs for the American economy, including both the native-born population, recent legal immigrants, and even recent illegals. Principally, downward wage pressures will increase on workers from these groups with less than exceptional educations or skill levels. And taxpayers at all income levels will need to pay for the government-provided services these newcomers will need.

These services, moreover, aren’t simply confined to various forms of welfare (since a large majority of these arrivals themselves will be poorly schooled and largely unskilled). The population increases they fuel will need new schools, public transit, and fire and law enforcement capabilities, just to name a few. (For a shocking example of the price of failing to provide these new services, check out this recent Washington Post piece on a middle school located right near where I live in a Maryland suburb of D.C. that’s becoming dominated by MS-13 recruiting and recruits in part because of a ballooning student body attributable to the surge of unaccompanied Central American minors in 2014.)

At the same time, those Americans who reap most of the benefits from supercharged immigration flows will represent a much smaller group. As I showed in this 2014 Fortune column, it will be dominated by families high up the income ladder, who disproportionately use the cut-rate landscapers, housekeepers, and nannies who account for so many illegal immigrant workers; and from businesses and entire industries (like construction, hotels, and restaurants) which profit so handsomely from the continuing flood of cheap labor.

As I also wrote in that column, these inequities are far from inevitable, and reducing them is hardly rocket science. How? Through policies that result in the main beneficiaries of illegal immigration paying the lion’s share of the costs. Four years ago, I suggested a new tax on the super-rich, and on industries that heavily employ illegals. That’s still entirely appropriate. But other possibilities abound, too.

For example, how about channeling these newcomers to sanctuary states, and cities and other localities? Or to states that voted for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016? Or to the Congressional districts represented by the loudest critics of the family separation and other elements of the President’s immigration policy? (Yes, there’s lots of overlap here.)

Moreover, let’s not forget the celebrity world. Via social media campaigns, maybe the Samantha Bees and the Robert de Niros and the Kathy Griffins could be pressed to provide some financing for this new – or newly legalized – population. (And here, it’s vitally important to specify that big contributions to advocacy groups focused on indiscriminately helping newcomers work the system, and thereby encouraging greater numbers, a la the Clooneys this week, doesn’t cut it.) Considering its sometimes reckless, often hysterical, and usually one-sided coverage of this complicated issue, the Mainstream Media should be targeted for similar “shaming.”

It’s all about applying to immigration controversies a fundamental principle of fairness – user pays – and adding to it the idea of “cheerleader pays” And even if this proposal falls flat on its face, it will at least achieve a crucial goal: helping Americans distinguish between the virtue signalers and the genuinely compassionate.

Following Up: My Maryland Hometown Approves Non-Citizen (Including Illegal Immigrant) Local Voting

Tags

Aaron Faulx, citizenship, democracy, diversity, Following Up, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, immigrants, Immigration, Maryland, Pledge of Allegiance, Riverdale Park, voting

Monday night, the monthly legislative meeting of my hometown Riverdale Park, Maryland’s Town Council started off, as usual, with the pledge to the flag. A little less than two hours later, the Council voted 4-2 (with one abstention) to extend local voting rights to two categories of non-citizen residents (illegal and legal immigrants), and to 16-year olds to boot.

As RealityChek readers know, I wasn’t surprised by the final result – although the margin of defeat was narrower than I expected. Still, especially in light of the Pledge of Allegiance recited solemnly by Council members supporting this amendment to the Town Charter, and their backers in the audience, the voting decision was a (vigorous) head-scratcher. For it raises the most profound questions about to what exactly those in favor of non-citizen voting are vowing their loyalty.

As I wrote in that previous post, this form of voter expansion is completely inconsistent with arguments made – and with good reason – throughout American history since the era of the Founding. These arguments have held that a successful democracy cannot be created or maintained unless it’s based on a community of deeply shared ideas about democratic governance. In turn, it’s impossible to preserve this community and allow significant immigration flows unless newcomers receive extensive exposure to these values. Hence longstanding requirements that voting on the federal level be restricted to citizens, and that the naturalization process take several years. (As explained also in the post, the Constitution empowers the states to set election rules within their borders, and both historically and currently, some have decided ignore these claims and to permit non-citizen voting.)

Instead, the new Riverdale Park voting eligibility criteria specify that an applicant be a resident for a mere 45 days. Of course, even this threadbare requirement will be difficult at best to verify for illegal immigrants (along with their very identities). And it is utterly far-fetched to suppose that these verification goals can be achieved adequately with same-day registration of these voters.

But just as important, a 45-day local resident who could well have crossed the U.S. border not long beforehand cannot possibly be well-versed enough in the nation’s democratic values to qualify for the franchise – which is after all a right to make decisions with long-term implications for the community’s well-being. As for non-citizen legal U.S. residents, they either have not been present in the United States long enough to pass the national tests for citizenship (which include a five-year residency requirement), or they have chosen not to become citizens – and therefore join the national democratic community.

Is there any reason, however, to believe that the national residency requirement is inappropriate to apply on the municipal level? If so, none of the supporters of Riverdale Park voter expansion has mentioned it, and there’s no evidence that the subject even came up in discussion of the proposal among Council Members.

I sent my RealityChek post on the subject to all the Town Council members before the vote. Only two replied, and neither of them supported the amendment. In fact, I’ve only seen a single reference to the subject of a community of beliefs – in a lengthy and largely emotive ramble on non-citizen voting published by my Council Member, Aaron Faulx, in the April issue of the Riverdale Park government’s official bulletin. According to Faulx, “Our shared beliefs need to evolve toward inclusivity and engagement.”

He didn’t explain what he believes comprises these shared beliefs currently, much less why they’re flawed. But the shared beliefs he prizes are hollow at best and dangerously inadequate at worst. “Inclusivity” per se, after all, says nothing about substance. As a result, it seems to assume that even individuals who actively oppose each others’ most fundamental political and even philosophical principles can for any significant period of time work together to promote any version of common well-being – much less one bearing any resemblance to that which has served the nation so well for so long, though of course not perfectly. How on earth can that work? The only reasonable answer is, “It can’t.”

And if inclusivity per se (and its logical follow-on, “engagement”) cannot be treated as absolutes, then they inescapably need to be supplemented with some form of content. And just as logically, it can’t reasonably be assumed that those  unfamiliar with this content (through usually through no fault of their own to be sure) can instantly or quickly become familiar once they enter any political community – national, state, or local – from the outside. Some period of orientation – i.e., assimilation – is essential. And on a more practical level, some effective way of determining that the assimilation process has been completed is essential.

Reasonable people can disagree on the specifics of all of these procedural standards. But what is thoroughly unreasonable is insisting that they, and the institution of citizenship that necessarily incorporates considered procedural and substantive considerations alike, be dispensed with in the name of a mere shibboleth – whether “inclusivity” or its cousin, “diversity” – that has in and of itself has no organizational capabilities whatever. Even sadder is the seeming refusal of the “inclusivists” to recognize or admit that these related concepts of citizenship and voting rights have for decades (not long enough, to be sure!) been available totally irrespective of race, gender, or ethnicity.

So no wonder I found these “inclusivists’” recitation of the pledge to the flag Monday night so utterly ironic, and indeed bizarre – and why you should, too. For their stated views can only logically mean that they’re pledging allegiance not to a national political community worthy of the name, but to a certain tract of land and whatever agglomeration of individuals happens to be occupying it at any given moment. Why even continue to bother?

Im-Politic: So You’re Outraged by Trump’s Reported –hole Remarks?

Tags

amnesty, Barack Obama, chain migration, Charlottesville, DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Dick Durbin, Gang of Six, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Open Borders, racism, Trump, visa lottery

Although it’s anything but clear that President Trump made the profane comments attributed to him at a recent meeting on immigration reform with several members of Congress, it’s also anything but outrageous that a reporter would ask him afterwards, “Are you a racist?” His performance after the Charlottesville protests last August alone are grounds for legitimate concern.

But are the alleged Trump comments (which only one participant in the meeting – Open Borders supporter Dick Durbin, a Democratic Senator from Illinois – has “confirmed”) the only outrageous set of remarks or positions characterizing the immigration policy debate specifically since it entered its current phase in the mid-2000s? Not on your life. In fact, here are some questions I wish journalists would ask Durbin and the rest of the pro-amnesty crowd.

>”Are you an adult?” That’s a question that’s justified by the abject refusal of those blanketly opposing all efforts to establish some form of effective controls on immigration flows to inform the rest of us just how many newcomers they believe the nation can safely absorb, and over what period of time. Their apparent belief that the answers are “an infinite number” and “as quickly as possible” can’t accurately be described as anything but childish.

>”Do you have a working brain?” The president’s critics have never acknowledged the reality that any sizable version of amnesty – as Open Borders enthusiasts in both major political parties are still pushing in the current negotiations over illegal immigrants originally brought to the United States as children – is going to strengthen greatly the magnet that encourages populations from all over the world to take whatever steps are needed to enter the country illegally?

It happened after passage of the ballyhooed amnesty-centered immigration reform legislation of 1986. And it happened after former President Obama in mid-2012 announced his decision to postpone deportation for many of the aforementioned illegal immigrant children via his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) decision. And why wouldn’t it? If Washington announces that nothing will be done to remove illegal immigrants once they’ve arrived, why wouldn’t they keep trying to come?

>”Are you completely cynical?” President Trump gave Congress more leeway than ever (mistakenly, in my view) to come up compromise immigration legislation. His unmistakable and entirely reasonable assumption was that the group of lawmakers he convened last Tuesday would come up with a proposal that would make permanent the protections currently enjoyed by most of the aforementioned childhood arrivals in exchange for (a) significantly strengthened border security measures; (b) ending the “chain migration” feature of current U.S. immigration policy, which has supercharged the entry of newcomers who have little or no prospect of contributing to the economy; and (c) ending the equally doofy visa lottery, which seeks to increase immigration inflows from certain countries simply because they have been deemed inadequate.

What was the initial response – from a self-appointed task force of Democratic and Republican legislators called “the Gang of Six”? Amnesty not only for DACA recipients but for those denied its benefits by the Obama program, and for the parents of most of this entire cohort; threadbare funding for border security; a shell game stunt that leaves the chain migration system fundamentally intact; and a visa lottery proposal that was just as fake.

So I’ll close by repeating a point I’ve made ever since Mr. Trump made his formal debut in presidential politics in late 2015: If his opponents really wanted to send him and his often objectionable style packing – or now that he’s in the White House, to neuter his effectiveness – they’d spend much more time and energy coming up with realistic solutions to the legitimate complaints voiced by him and his supporters than they spend on fulminating about his latest outrages.

Their failure to process that lesson helped fuel the President’s 2016 victory, and their responses to the alleged – hole remarks shows that their learning curve remains entirely too shallow.

Glad I Didn’t Say That: No Obama Learning Curve on Immigration

Tags

Barack Obama, crime, Ed Gillespie, Fairfax County, gang violence, gangs, Glad I Didn't Say That!, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, immigrants, Immigration, MS-13, Virginia, Virginia governor's race

“[I]n Fairfax County [Virginia] MS-13 related incidents in the first 4 months of this year jumped more than 160 percent compared with 2015.”

—WJLA.com, Washington, D.C., June 30, 2016

“This [MS-13] problem is horrible. This is four murders in this park. Obviously, we’ve had other murders in the region in the past few weeks. This is getting out of control and we need to stop it.”

—Fairfax County police chief Ed Roessler, March 3, 2017

“Along with Los Angeles, ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] considers Northern Virginia a hub for MS-13.”

—Fox5DC.com, Washington, D.C., July 27, 2017

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie’s ads spotlighting MS-13 threat are “really trying to deliver…fear. What he really believes is if you scare enough voters, you might score just enough votes to win an election. It’s just as cynical as politics gets.”

—Former President Barack Obama, October 19, 2017