Left and Right

Nothing has contributed more to the lowering of wages and eradication of benefits for so many blue collar workers, than our maddening immigration policy. Illegal immigrants, in particular, have impacted the lower paid jobs to such an extent now that the mantra “they’e just doing jobs Americans won’t” is accepted by everyone.

Just recently, the newly minted richest man in the world, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced that he was giving $33 million of his substantial billions to the “dreamers,” whose parents entered this country illegally, so that they could attend college. He didn’t offer $33 for any American-born “dreamer.”

This is the height of insanity; giving money to people who are here illegally. Yes, the word is unkind, but what is the point of having an immigration policy, or anyone bothering to abide by it, if one can not only avoid deportation, but actually be rewarded? California Governor Jerry Brown’s act enabling driver licenses to be used as voter IDs in elections all but granted illegals the right to vote, since they have long been permitted to get driver licenses.

One of the most prestigious universities in the world, the University of Chicago, awarded an illegal immigrant $300,000 in scholarships. It is unclear what this lucky non-citizen will do with the extra $14,000 or so, as a full ride to the expensive school is some $286,000. Maybe it’s some kind of new illegal “bonus.”

Both Republicans and Democrats fight fiercely for illegal immigrants. Some Republican Tennessee lawmaker drafted a bill that would have allowed about 8,000 qualifying illegal immigrants to pay in-state college tuition, though it failed to pass. “I did it because it’s the fair and just thing to do, and I believe these kids will have a huge beneficial impact on Tennessee’s economy,” stated Rep. Todd Gardenhire. “They’re great students, perfect citizens, and pay the same sales taxes the rest of us do.” Note here the over-the-top generalization. So all illegals are “great students?” And how can they be “perfect citizens,” when they…..aren’t citizens?

Proving that this is just as bipartisan an issue as our all war/no peace foreign policy is, Democrats in several states have tried to get the same sort of legislation passed, with the general goal of making financial aid easier for illegal immigrants. In some cases, this includes set-aside funds for illegals who “qualify” under DACA.

Former Arizona Governor and Obama Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano slid easily into the position of President of the University of California system. As such, she has decreed that $25.2 million be allotted for a loan program catering exclusively to illegal immigrants. “This funding will further strengthen the university’s undocumented student initiative, and help ensure that these students receive the support and resources they need to succeed.” Napolitano declared.

“Undocumented student initiative?” This is where the madness really kicks in. Our leaders know people who are in an illegal status, or if we must be politically correct, undocumented. So why aren’t they being documented? What exactly are the immigration authorities doing here? But then again, what has our border patrol been doing for more than thirty years, as wave after wave of immigrants have poured illegally across our southern border?

In New Jersey, in-state tuition is already offered to illegal immigrants. Considering how in-your-face all this catering to illegal immigrants is, it’s ironic and laughable that millions of state taxpayer dollars allotted to illegals under the California Dream Act remain unclaimed, due to fears that disclosing parental tax information will somehow lead to deportation. As Don King used to say, “Only in America!” Critics of the measure concentrated on the fact that many students didn’t meet the grade  point requirements (a messy detail that evidently only applies to citizens), rather than the fact taxpayer money was openly being doled out to illegal immigrants.

The Ford Foundation is just one of many huge organizations that award Pre-Doctoral Fellowships to undocumented status students. A naive sort like myself would suppose that a rational country would address the immigration status of students when they first enter an American school system. However, all this was ingrained into law during “conservative” hero Ronald Reagan’s tenure in office. A 1982 Supreme Court decision mandated that states provide K-12 public education for students without legal immigrant status.

As far back as 1982, the U.S. Department of Labor sent a memo out to all state employment security agencies regarding the payment of unemployment benefits to “illegal aliens,”as they were even more indelicately referred to then. Citing a study by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the memo stated,  “The preliminary findings indicate potentially widespread abuse of the unemployment insurance program by illegal aliens.”  It is impossible to imagine the extent of the “abuse” that must exist in this area by now.

Ronald Reagan, of course, permitted the disastrous 1986 Immigration “Reform” Act to be passed under his watch. As I’ve noted many times before, that odious piece of legislation opened the barn door forever, permitting blanket amnesty and creating what became known as “chain migration,” which has recently been identified by the mainstream media as roughly the trillionth example of the systemic “racism” which plagues this country.

The pleas of Snopes and other defenders of the Official Faith notwithstanding, illegal immigrants qualify for a good deal of government assistance. Pregnant women, for example, have long been granted free healthcare, leading to the birth of untold number of “anchor babies,” which is again yet another of the endless “racist” terms our hopeless society is saddled with.

A 2014 study by the Social Security Administration, which was hardly hostile toward immigrants, came up with a few illuminating conclusions nonetheless. The study found, “the redistributive nature of Social Security may mean that many immigrants realize a higher rate of return on payroll tax contributions than US natives… immigrants who receive benefits are likely to receive higher replacement rates….immigrants who arrive in the United States at older ages may have higher employment rates than same-age, native-born workers…”

Illegal immigrants are often hired on the spot, from one of those convenient cattle-style lines that Americans can now see in virtually all areas of the country, outside of hardware stores and the like. Needless to say, these kinds of workers pay no taxes, including the payroll deductions that fund Social Security. It is impossible to calculate how much potential tax revenue is lost every year from this kind of informal labor contract, which may only be for a week or even a day.

A 2013 study by the Heritage Foundation determined that illegal immigrants impose a fiscal burden of approximately $54.5 billion annually. The mainstream media never reports it, but illegal immigrants commit a vastly disproportionate amount of violent crimes. Over 42% of federal kidnappings involve non-citizens. The U.S. Sentencing Commission found that 75% of all convicted federal drug offenders were illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants comprised 17% of all drug trafficking sentences and one third of all federal prison sentences. Again, to a novice, it would seem absurd to waste the legal system’s resources on those who are not in the country legally. And to spend money to house them in our prison system is absolutely unfathomable.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that as of 2014, illegal immigrants were responsible for over 13% of all crimes committed in the U.S. The General Accounting Office found that illegal immigrants committed 25,064 murders from 2003-2009. Very conservative estimates indicate that at least 3.5% of the American population entered the country illegally. But they commit a wildly disproportionate 22 to 37% percent of all murders.

Between June 2011 and March 2017, over 217,000 illegal immigrants were arrested and booked into Texas jails alone; they had jointly committed over nearly 600,000 criminal offenses. California faces the biggest problems with illegal immigrants, but Governor Jerry Brown is hardly anxious to address them logically. In 2014, Brown signed a bill that amended a state statute amending the maximum sentencing for misdemeanor crimes by one day from 365 to 364 days in jail, which conveniently circumvented current federal laws that provide for the deportation of illegal and legal immigrants in this country who have received sentences of 365 days or more.

According to the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, U.S. taxpayers are footing an annual bill of nearly $19 million per day to house and care for an estimated 300,000 to 450,000 convicted criminal immigrants who are eligible for deportation and are currently residing in local jails and state and federal prisons across the country. Remember, all the “racist” cries against Donald Trump originated when he simply protested the fact that illegal immigrants who have committed crimes are not being deported and instead resuming their criminal activities in this country.

The February 7, 2017 edition of The Miami Herald reported that “At least 121 killings within a four-year span were carried out by convicted immigrants who were not deported, according to a 2015 U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee document….Every year, federal immigration authorities release foreign nationals convicted of crimes — including murder — both because the U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited indefinite detention or because their countries refuse to take them back even after immigration judges have ordered deportation.”

The immigration boom of the early twentieth century, combined with large average American families, guaranteed a plentiful population. It made sense, therefore, for our leaders to issue a veritable moratorium of all immigration from the 1920s through the 1960s. The new immigration boom, which really went into overdrive in the 1980s with the vast importation of millions who illegally crossed the southern border, coincided with a cultural campaign urging young couples to start smaller families or forego children altogether.

Anyone living in America today obviously knows that we have enough people. In fact, we have far too many people residing here, which drains the available resources for all. Merely enforcing our immigration laws would free up these resources dramatically, not to mention open up untold numbers of job openings, free up college placement for citizen students, and cut the average size of classrooms all over America.

Trump’s ludicrous idea of a “wall” means nothing if it serves simply to wall everyone already here in. Deportations which should have happened years ago, actual border security, and denial of all government services to undocumented residents would make such an ugly symbol unnecessary. But given the prevalence of “sanctuary cities” and the like, it’s clear that a substantial portion of Americans care more about the rights of these “dreamers” than they do about all of our civil liberties being trampled upon.

I don’t hate immigrants. It isn’t their fault. It’s understandable that they’d want to flee their often desperate circumstances and try to improve their lives. And it’s an irrefutable fact that most of them do, in fact, see their lives improved in America. But just as we can’t compete with Third World wages and benefits, we can’t compete with Third World standards of living or expectations.

The establishment Left is aghast at any efforts to control illegal immigration because most of these immigrants are nonwhite. I don’t think there is any doubt that, if most of the illegals happened to be desperately poor whites trickling across our northern border from Canada, that they’d be a bit more concerned about their negative impact on blue-collar workers, even if they had no propensity to commit crime and spoke English fluently.

The establishment Right objects to any curtailment of illegal immigration because they want cheap labor. And no labor comes any cheaper than the kind they can get from these exploited people.

A sovereign country should put its own interests, and its own people, first. Otherwise, it really isn’t a sovereign country. America First isn’t about Nazis. It’s about taking care of your own first. Charity begins at home.

The post Left and Right appeared first on LewRockwell.