Securing the Border—Absolutely Essential—but Far from Enough
A Warning to Republican Primary Voters
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the Biden Administration released nearly 1.4 million illegal immigrants into the United States in fiscal year 2023 alone. Nearly a million of these were processed and aided by the U.S. Border Patrol. Other agencies processed about 400,000. This amounts to a separate Biden immigration system with outrageously inadequate or no documentation and little regard for national security, public safety, and economic impact. Moreover, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has admitted that another 600,000 entered the United States without apprehension—the “gotaways.” Illegal immigrants entering across our border totaled nearly 2.0 million. Another 850,000 overstayed their visas and blended into the economy. A frequent example of this is when an agricultural guest-worker violates their visa and disappears in order to take a higher paid job for an employer that does not require E-Verify immigration status. These forms of illegal immigration are totaling 2.85 million per year, almost three times the 1.0 million legal immigrants issued visas in 2023.
According to the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR), more than 7,550 illegal immigrants crossed the U.S. border during the 24 hours of February 16, 2024. This included a record number of Chinese, nearly10 percent. FAIR estimates illegal border crossings during just over three years of the Biden Administration have totaled 10.3 million. According to FAIR and CIS, illegal immigrant households use welfare and Medicaid benefits at a rate more than double that of native households. Updating for inflation a 2016 CIS report on wage suppression of U.S. workers caused by illegal and excessive legal immigration, the cost to U.S. workers is now $632 billion per year. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 165.5 million employed U.S. workers in 2023. This means that U.S. worker wages are being suppressed by an overage of over $3,800 annually per worker by legal and illegal cheap foreign labor. Though hard to measure, BLS statistics indicate many U.S. workers are being displaced. (See Rubenstein, Worker Displacement Index on Vdare.com.)
The Visa Overstays represented about 30 percent of last year’s illegal immigrants. Before our Border became an easy open door, Visa Overstays were estimated at 40 to 50 percent of illegal immigration. So, just building a wall or “securing the border” is not going to be an adequate solution to controlling immigration. American workers, taxpayers, families, and small businesses will continue to suffer the consequences of illegal immigration. Public safety and national security will still suffer. Our healthcare and educational institutions will still be over-burdened.
Border Security, including fences and walls are absolutely necessary. Our present immigration crisis is literally an invasion. But border security alone is not enough. American immigration policy cannot be effective unless it is enforced at the workplace. The E-Verify systems works extremely well at this. But many employers prefer cheap labor to legal labor. Immigration law must also be enforced in our healthcare systems. Only serious medical emergencies should be accepted, and the bill should be paid by those who employ illegal immigrants.
Another huge problem is so-called birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants and visitors. This extreme distortion of the 14th Amendment has never been tested in the courts. Children born to illegal immigrants now amount to 7.5 percent of all live births in the U.S., or about 300,000 per year, which costs U.S. taxpayers $2.3 billion. The total of birthright citizenship children in the U.S. has accumulated to over 4.0 million. Birthright tourism is a major industry (racket), especially in California, paying the medical costs for mothers who come to the United States to have their childbirth at taxpayer expense, with the baby becoming an automatic citizen, giving the mother additional welfare and healthcare benefits.
Illegal immigration and sanctuary cities and counties bring higher crime rates. The degree of additional crime is considerable and self-evident to most people, but it is vigorously denied and often suppressed by cheap foreign labor advocates, the liberal legacy media, and cowardly politicians. Here are a few statistics from a CIS study of illegal immigrant crime in Texas updated in 2017. Illegal immigrant crime is 17 percent higher than the total population, which already has a considerable percentage of legal immigrants. Sexual assault crimes by illegals, however, are 104 percent, more than double, the general population. In North Carolina, NCFIRE.info reported for 2022 that 227 illegal immigrants were arrested for the rape or sexual assault of 954 children.
There are 14 Republican Primary candidates running in the March 5 North Carolina U.S. Congressional District (NC13) where I live. Most of them promise to “Secure the Border.” But securing the Border is not going to be enough. The campaign ads and literature of many of these indicate they may have limited understanding of the immigration crisis beyond the border. Are they aware and concerned about the larger scope and issues that constitute our monstruous immigration crisis? Are they concerned about the impact of illegal immigrant labor on American jobs and wages, the burden on taxpayers, the burden on schools and healthcare, and the safety and security of their families? Are they aware that the Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are maneuvering for a large amnesty as a compromise solution? This is a huge issue, which is extremely dangerous for candidates and voters to ignore. Amnesties do not fix illegal immigration; they explode it into multi-fold immigration disasters. The 1.0 million amnesties given in the 1986 amnesty exploded into over 6.0 million more illegal immigrants in the next decade. It also helped explode the national burden of welfare costs.
Excessive legal immigration is also a considerable burden on American workers and taxpayers. The final report of the Jordan Congressional Immigration Reform Commission in 1996 recommend a maximum of 550,000 legal immigrants per year, but it has been almost double that for decades, and this also results in chain-migration of relatives or claimed relatives.
The 1996 Commission also recommended against guest-worker programs. These amount to an indirect, taxpayer subsidy for those who reduce their labor costs with cheap foreign labor. Congress largely ignored the Jordan Commission reports, however. Sluffing off the Jordan report was a huge victory for cheap-labor Big Donors, crushing needed immigration reform and the interests of the American people. Big Donor money is especially powerful today, even though the country is in desperate need for real immigration reform and enforcement. It is an existential threat to the American Republic.
Bringing in more immigrants has also become an acknowledged Democratic strategy for winning elections with low-information voters. It has been working. Formerly dependable conservative states like Virginia, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina now lean Democratic or barely Republican, showing close and shrinking margins on state-wide votes. According to World Population Review, North Carolina has the eighth highest number of illegal immigrants in the United States, with 488,000 adults and 169,000 birthright or illegal children, totaling 657,000 or about 6.0 percent of the population. The taxpayer burden is $3,141 per illegal immigrant or family member per year.
In a February 17 text, Tucker Carlson indicated there were 22 million illegal immigrants in the United States, and the Democrats plan to give them amnesty, welfare, and voting rights. FAIR estimates that an amnesty would bring in 52 million more immigrants. Carlson believes what I think has been obvious for 20 years—amnesty and its consequential increase in illegal and family related legal immigration will result in tens of millions of new Democrat voters, making the U.S. a one-party. left-liberal, socially Neo-Marxist state.
Heather MacDonald, with the Manhattan Institute, is the author of several best-selling books on immigration and social issues. She advises that only two steps are necessary to drastically reduce illegal immigration and benefit the economy. The first step is simply to enforce existing immigration laws. Enforcement at the workplace and health and welfare services are particularly important. Second, we must insist on raising the average education and skill levels for legal immigrants. A 2010 Heritage Foundation study indicated that the average legal immigrant household cost taxpayers over $4,000 per year. We must have a predominantly merit-based system that assures that legal immigrants are a positive contributor to the American economy and not a burden. Moreover, our immigration levels must not displace American workers or result in lower income for legal American workers.
Highly Recommended reading: The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan than Today’s; Heather MacDonald, Victor Davis Hanson, & Steven Malanga; 2007.
The Soft Power Alternative to Illegal Immigration and Amnesty
Proponents of amnesty often disingenuously argue that we must have an amnesty, because it is impossible to reduce the number of illegal immigrants here except by extreme police-state methods. This is a false dilemma. The Jordan Commission, the Center for Immigration Studies, and others have concluded that a Soft Power Plan would within just a few years minimize the number of illegal immigrants in the country. The Soft Power Plan elements are simply enforcing immigration policy at the workplace as well as the border, not allowing undocumented immigrants to have driver licenses or register vehicles, and not allowing undocumented immigrants to receive government welfare or healthcare benefits except in emergency medical situations. The residual unlawful aliens left in the country and those associated with Drug Cartels and national security threats could be sifted out and deported by ICE fairly quickly, hopefully with local government and law enforcement cooperation. For example, President Eisenhower successfully deported about 1.1 illegal Mexican immigrants from June 1954 to the end of 1955 using just 750 border and immigration officials.
Humane treatment of illegal immigrants is essential, but immigration policies require tough-minded, fair, and consistent administration. The standard of fairness must be measured by its benefit to the American people in their respective states, including their safety, prosperity, liberties, and security. For over 40 years we have had de facto immigration policies that are unfair to the American people. Soft or negligent immigration law enforcement increases illegal immigration and multiplies its woes. Employers who violate U.S. immigration laws must be subject to significant fines, and if necessary criminal penalties.
Warning to Republican Primary Voters
While securing the border is gravely important, ignoring the need for immigration enforcement and other reforms would severely limit its effectiveness. There are some that would link securing the border to an amnesty or amnesties. Any amnesty, even a small amnesty, at this point would have a high probability of throwing the country into chaos and economic, fiscal, and social disaster and decline. Amnesties result in multi-fold additional illegal immigration. Some who are promising to “secure the border” are also connected to big cheap-labor donors. Voters should look for candidates who know and understand more about the immigration crisis than just securing the border. Voters should look for candidates with the courage to insist on immigration reform at the workplace and in healthcare and welfare facilities. Hiding behind “securing the border,” while failing to address absolutely necessary immigration enforcement and reforms is predictive for electing liberal-leaning donor captives. The nation sorely needs honest and courageous conservatives. Strong immigration enforcement positions are often the clearest indicator of strong conservative positions on a wide range of issues.
In Concord, “embattled farmers stood;” now we again at Liberty’s every post must stand against outrageous tyranny.
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East. 
