Reviewing the Immigration Disaster

Congressional Immigration Grades for NC and SC

According to the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR), illegal immigrants were costing American taxpayers $182.1 billion per year at the beginning of 2023. These illegal immigrants contribute only $31.4 billion in federal, state, and local taxes paid, leaving American taxpayers with a net cost of $150.7 billion per year. Also according to FAIR, there were 15.5 million illegal immigrants in the U.S at the beginning of 2022, and President Biden’s unlawful Open Border policy has added another 6.0 million in just two years, bringing it to 21.5 million. Many knowledgeable immigration scholars believe illegal immigrants may now number well over 30 million, and thus the net 2023 fiscal cost for illegal immigration was far in excess of $200 billion. The truth is that we have completely lost control of immigration and the ability to estimate and contain its mounting fiscal costs.

Moreover, this cost is only a fraction of what cheap foreign labor has cost American workers in suppressed wages. The Center for Immigration Studies estimated this was $494 billion in 2016, which adjusted for 28 percent inflation since then is $632 billion. This is the cost of both illegal and legal immigration. A 2010 Heritage Foundation study revealed that illegal immigrant households were costing American taxpayers $14,000 per year per household, and an amnesty would double that cost to $28,000 per year. Moreover, even legal immigrant households were costing taxpayers $4,000 per year per household, because of lower education and skill levels. These 2010 figures do not reflect the 40 percent inflation that excess government spending has inflicted on the American people from 2010 to 2023,  Projected current figures would be about $19,600 annually for illegal households and perhaps $5,600 for legal immigrant households. The current cost of amnesty would be about $39,200 annually per amnestied household.  

None of this includes the even more tragic cost of illegal immigrant crime, the spread of infectious diseases, and the death and human misery created through illegal drug cartels and accompanying human abuse. We are rapidly losing control of public safety, national security, and even political control over our country. The Epoch Times issue of January 10-16, 2024, reveals a dark shadow over the integrity of the American elections. Over 43 percent of 2020 votes were by mail, and a survey of over a thousand mail-voters indicated approximately 20 percent of these voters admitted to practices that compromised the integrity of those votes. These were admissions. How many others  made no admissions but violated voting laws intentionally to tilt the vote count? How many mail-in ballots were created or manipulated in the vote count? Mail-in voting has fatally compromised public confidence in honest elections. Mail-in voting is the easiest way for illegal aliens to vote, and this is undoubtedly a powerful incentive for dishonest power-seekers to push mail-in voting and frustrate fraud prevention measures. Failure to control illegal immigration multiplies vote fraud and is rapidly destroying the integrity of American elections.

I have been writing on immigration on an off for close to a quarter of a century. Until the advent of Donald Trump, only a brave minority of Republicans clearly understood the enormous accumulating danger that illegal immigration and excess legal immigration were becoming, and which threatened tsunamic disaster of nation-destroying proportions. Instead, immigration became a sacred cow, and “We are a nation of immigrants” became our naïve, unworkable, and misguided immigration policy.  “Moderate” (liberal) Republicans turned blind eyes to the pain of American workers, crime victims, huge fiscal costs, and accumulating demographic changes that would eventually mean one-party far-left Democrat Party rule. Many Republicans instead courted the cheap-labor and U.S. and state chambers of commerce donor class. Many of these saw amnesty rather than immigration enforcement as fashionable political wisdom. President George W. Bush proposed or backed four amnesty attempts as the solution. Amnesties, however, do not fix illegal immigration; they explode it.

Judging from the 1986 Reagan amnesty, amnesties explode illegal immigration by a factor of  about 2.5 within 10 to 15 years, probably sooner. They also trigger more amnesties. Based on liberal Republican promises, Reagan thought he was giving amnesty to less than a million undocumented immigrants. He reluctantly agreed to the amnesty in exchange for increasing enforcement levels. The reality was that there were actually 2.75 million amnesties, and another 3.0 million for six supplemental amnesties bringing the total to 5.75 million. Fraud is prevalent in amnesty administration! The Democrats then balked at enforcement measures, and illegal immigration continued at an even greater level. Amnesties also increase chain-migration of  family relatives of amnestied illegals, an average of about 3.45 new “family” legal immigrants per amnesty. Because of chain-migration and fraud, even a modest amnesty could reach enormous proportions, creating demographic and cultural chaos and serious threats to social and economic stability and public safety and national security.

Near the end of his eight years as President, Ronald Reagan confided to his Attorney General Ed Meese that his biggest mistake as President was signing the 1986 amnesty. (See Vdare.com blog post, January 20, 2024.)

Biden’s Open Border policy is destroying the country and that destruction will probably be irreversible if the Democrats win the presidency and Congress in 2024. There is an even faster road to destruction, however, if Republicans compromise to get border security by agreeing to an amnesty. FAIR estimated in 2022 that an amnesty would result in 52 million more immigrants. Republicans need to take a firm stand, and that means strict enforcement and honest administration of all immigration laws. These laws must protect U.S. workers, small businesses, and taxpayers from both legal and illegal cheap labor immigration. “Birth-right citizenship” for children of illegal immigrants is disastrous immigration and social policy and must be abolished. Even small amnesties easily become uncontrollable, so absolutely no amnesties!  

Still complacent about immigration? Watch this 5-minute video on the current invasion by Tucker Carlson:

https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1747755685704843700?s=20

Let’s look at the latest NumbersUSA Congressional immigration report cards to see how North Carolina and South Carolina members of Congress are doing:

The Republicans in both states have fortunately improved their immigration record in the current term. I think they are getting the message that voters are really upset with U.S. immigration policy, and it is no longer fashionable to virtue-signal about amnesty and other unlawful “compassion.” The Career record is, however, the best indication as to whether they will stand fast on strong immigration enforcement policy or do a virtue-signaling or donor pressured compromise on amnesty. Just a few sell-outs could destroy the country and any future Republican credibility with informed voters. Such amnesty compromise legislation is now being discussed to pass a budget and close the border, but any significant amnesty would essentially nullify genuine border security. Such a compromise might be praised by the media and political fools for a few months, but a whirlwind of national destruction would have been sown and would come quickly.

President Eisenhower successfully deported 1.3 million illegal immigrants in 1954 with stern military tactics, low cost, and minimal public objection. But we have allowed the problem to grow since 1961, and except for Donald Trump, have tended to fuel illegal immigration with lax immigration enforcement and a series of amnesties beginning in 1986.  Now the Biden Administration is pumping fuel on the fire, and we have an enormous nation-destroying problem.  However, there is still a way to correct our foolish path to self-destruction.

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, alluding to railroad boxcars used by the Nazis during the Holocaust. This is a false dilemma. The Jordan Commission report of 1995, the Center for Immigration Studies, and others found that a Soft Power Plan would quickly 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, 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 over a few years, hopefully with local government and law enforcement cooperation. 

Do we still have the patriotic backbone to save our country?

“Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave."--Barbara Jordan, February 24, 1995, Texas educator, former Texas Senate legislator, former Democrat member of Congress, and Chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.