Absolutely the best analysis of this issue that I’ve ever read. Thank you for your thoughtful articles that don’t just rehash tired partisan talking points.
Have you heard of a movement called BLEXIT? While their goals go across the entire culture, it seems yours focus on education. The Democrats are wanting to continue the plantation system which you os appropriately identified in this article.
Great article, though it doesn't touch on actual slavery, now labeled human trafficking. Some are making a lot of money taking advantage of desperate people or despicable people taking advantage of tax payer/NGO largess. The clean up from the last admin open border policy is monumental. Time to stop kicking the can down the road, as both parties have done
Thank you so much for stating these inconvenient truths with such clarity. Best piece I've seen written about the *real* issues posed by illegal immigration. I come from a working class background but wound up entering a profession (journalism) that brought me into contact with quite a few people who grew up quite differently. Wealthy neighborhoods where they went to the best schools. Parents who paid for their college educations. All the advantages money can bring. They tend to be for open borders and see this strictly in terms of compassion for desperate people crossing the border in search of better lives. They can't see the bigger economic picture here because they don't want to. Who will pick the cotton, indeed? That's what I always hear when this topic comes up.
I’m afraid I’m going to get out over my skis on this, but here goes:
I’d say illegal immigration is more like Plantation or Peculiar Institution 3.0. Slavery, Jim Crow, and illegal immigration all combine cheap labor and increased political power without an increased voter base. The latter two even got around the 3/5 compromise that was necessary to get the Constitution approved.
Businesses are supposed to constantly look for cost savings. A business that doesn’t do that isn’t a good business. If one business finds a way to deliver a good or service with lower costs, it pushes competing businesses to lower their costs too, and all consumers benefit. That process drives technological progress and has been the prime mover in increasing our standard of living.
That process has also put a lot of people out of work – secretaries, typists, factory workers, farmers, and buggy whip makers. Automation and technological progress have been bigger factors in job losses for Americans than offshoring or immigration. So people have to lose their jobs to improve our standard of living. So far, that’s been a net plus on average, though some individuals and communities are worse off. Previous predictions of widespread immiseration have not come to pass. That doesn’t mean they might not in the future.
Inflation is a general rise in prices across the board. Wages can lag behind inflation, and inflation is bad, but it’s not inflation that is the primary driver of cost-cutting for businesses.
We want working people to have a higher standard of living. One way we do that is by trying to raise wages by reducing competition for US labor by restricting imports (including tariffs) and immigration. Of course, when you restrict supply of anything, you inadvertently incentivize a black market in it, and illegal immigration is a natural result of this kind of restriction. If you’re serious about protecting labor, you have to fight it. You can fight it by attacking supply at the border or attacking demand in the person of the employer. And you should at least be aware that you’re deliberately doing it partially at foreign workers’ expense, whatever you decide.
Restricting the supply of labor to raise wages also raises prices for the goods and services produced by higher-wage labor, so the standard of living of workers won’t go up as much as their wages. Raising wages also incentivizes automation, so more jobs will be lost. In some sectors, like food, where black market labor has been an integral part of the system, you might have to raise wages and prices a lot, and you might see more competition from foreign products or services, but you might also see more automation and technological solutions.
I oppose illegal immigration, mostly because it encourages illegal behavior. I’d like to see what happens when we reduce illegal immigration, but it’s going to be difficult, no matter what.
Thanks for writing this piece, Monica. Here in the Southern Border region, the legacies of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta are integral to our culture. Why would the elite and professional classes want to rock the same boat that enables them to pay substandard wages for their service workers? It's easier and more profitable to whip up crowds of protestors with flag waving campaigns, protest and identity politics. We just saw a special election for Raul Grijalva's replacement, since he recently passed away. His daughter Adelita will continue his political legacy. Take a look at who's running against her. https://butierezforcongress.org/
Mayor Bass also misses a key aspect of the situation. She's arguing that the ICE raids are bad for the economy and cruel. However, the reverse is also cruel. Letting people in the country illegally--it is still a crime to come to the US and overstay a visa or cross a border illegally--and then letting them live here in some sort of gray status and working in the black-market economy is also cruel. The Biden Administration's calculus was that, once these folks are here, someone will give them amnesty, and they can stay. However, that is not what is happening. Instead, they are learning that (1) being in the US illegally is illegal or (2) being here on a temporary status is only good until the status ends, at which point you are also here illegally (or must leave the country). The Biden Administration wanted to appeal to white uber-educated liberals who could feel better about themselves with the US having a liberal immigration policy ("I am part of the resistance! I support brown people getting into the US!! Hey Barista, is this oat milk? I wanted oat milk!!!!!") Now the consequence is that the people who were let in are now being deported and feeling the whiplash of that comes from having been lied to.
I'm not sure who is receiving the benefits of all these illegal immigrants. I'm middle class and don't have as nanny, maid, or gardener. I suppose that when I eat out, there may be illegals working the kitchens, though more often I suspect they're students or twenty somethings stuck on a path to poverty.
On the occasion I stay in hotels, for work, cleaners and other staff might be illegal. But hotels are big corporations, that, as far as I know, have reasonably stringent requirements to vet worker's status. Do they circumvent these somehow?
I suppose the unseen ways I benefit from cheap illegal labor is through construction and agriculture?
When Karen Bass claims that LA would stop functioning, is she suggesting the same is true of the country as a whole, or is she indicting her city in particular? I'm tempted to believe she means there's a lot of elites enjoying nannies, maids, gardeners, pool boys, golf, regular dining out, car washes, and more.
In other words, can someone quantify how much the poor, middle class, and elite are beneficiaries of illegal labor?
US workforce participation is down from 68% in 1997 to 63% now. Before that, participation by males aged 25-55 dropped by 5-6 percentage points from 1950 to 1998.
I suspect there's 5-10% of people who have been turned into a permanent government dependent underclass right there. Did illegal immigration contribute to that?
The flood of Illegal Aliens over the past five years was part of the "Color Revolution" to destabilize Western Society. It wasn't just here in the US it was in Europe as well, all to justify Totalitarian measures.
The Paid Trolls, speaking their Talking Points, are literally working for someone other than the American People.
In effect, they are unregistered Foreign Agents working for outside forces.
- Just watch any Hearing, either House or Senate, and you will see what I'm talking about.
Today we use the term, "Deep State". In the past they would be the "Managerial Elite". That is an oxymoron, since they are neither good "managers" nor "elite". This "flood and destabilize" tactic has been used for centuries by the "Deep State".
- The Irish Potato Famine was a manufactured famine to force Irish Catholics to flood into Protestant American. They were the illegal aliens of the day.
- After the Civil War the freed slaves flooded into Northern cities looking for jobs. They were the illegal aliens of the day.
- The same thing has happened time and again.
The narrative is that people were fleeing economic hardship, moving to richer parts of the world. The problem with that narrative are the causes of the economic hardship, and the ease of transport. In the latest flood, NGOs were funneling people from all over the world to the US.
- This was not an "organic" flow of people. None of them are.
Good evidence of that is the latest flood stopped immediately. The NGOs stopped their support.
Yikes! I just realized that I'm starting a rant.
I always try to say twenty things real fast, not realizing that I've lost people on the first point. HA!
There was an article in The Economist over the last month about Denmark. The Danish government treats legal immigrants quite roughly and their argument is simple; it is middle class Danes who pay the price for immigration.
Good thoughts. I heard an interview with a contractor in Houston a few years back who said that his competition hired illegals so in order to compete he had to as well. And Mayor Bass knows that trafficked children are working in the pot growing industry in her state. In Maine it is indentured Chinese illegals being used in that sector by Chinese gangs. Peter Thiel believes that AI will affect the engineers and other hard science fields. The future is unclear at best.
Thank you for the article, Monica. This is what happens when we continue to accept the existence of an economic system that runs on money, and where we depend on money to "purchase" everything we need or want, in an era of technological development where automation and A.I. can eliminate most of the arduous tasks and produce an abundance for everyone. A barter system only makes sense in a pre-Industrial era where real scarcity is a fact of life. But the retention of scarcity in a post-Industrial era is entirely *artificial*, and the result of retaining class rule, money, production for profit, and a wage system during an era of technological advancement that renders these things unnecessary, archaic, and utterly regressive.
This is why we have not come anywhere near eliminating poverty and establishing universal freedom from want during a period of time when we possess the technological capacity to do so. All rationalizations not to do this are right-wing, neoliberal, Social Darwinian nonsense that needs to be excised from our mindset, unless we want matters to get worse and worse when such things are no longer necessary from a material standpoint, and thus no longer morally or logistically defensible.
I am upper middle-class but from a screwy family and Autistic (I believe) and it happens that I relate better to working class persons. I remember that for a time after graduating high school I considered jobs that were working class. But then certain social changes occurred and I began to feel that in this new situation getting a working class job was no longer an option. They would wonder what I was doing there. It was not going to work. The social roles were more strictly divided. As Monica says, that was "decades ago." Maybe by the eighties. The two sets of persons were more tightly divided than before and it became inconceivable that I could hold a working-class sort of job.
The economy seems to work on a set of basic factors, such as employment, manufacturing, and finance. All these factors need to work together, and they usually do. I do not think finance will ever fail -- it is just magical money production. But with enough financial corruption the quality of our lives could be impacted by all the free money the rich get. And then the manufactured goods could be less well-made or new products could stop getting made. So good products could become less available, and the work force could become restive because of wages and so forth. At some point, the U. S. needs a comprehensive economic policy. It is a shame that we do not believe in this. We believe getting better control over the economic system is somehow an interference with "freedom." But we may "free market" ourselves to death.
As Monica says, leaders need to "create" an economy. We have in the past been subjected to a constant barrage of rightist propaganda that said "don't regulate." The economy may have worked all by itself in the past. I don't think so, but if it did it will not continue to do so indefintely into the future. There are certain basics that allowed this capitalist prosperity to exist for many Americans. When all of the basic components of the economic system fail in tandem with other components of our way of life, things are going to be a lot different. By that time, I fear it will be too late.
This piece from MH is good. It is a well-written essay, reminding us of many of the important things we need to be aware of. But we usually ignore it. Don't worry, say the conservatives: the market will just continue to work: "all by itself."
Other than seeking new Democratic voters (and increasingly Hispanics are voting Republican) it’s not clear to me exactly why the Biden administration decided that it was a good idea to open our borders to millions of unskilled, uneducated people. It ended up costing the Democrats the 2024 election. Allowing a relative small number of the well educated in each year is probability a good idea.
This was one of the most disastrous policies the country has seen in my long lifetime. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here undermines the wages of our working class and exacerbates our national housing crisis when we can’t house our own citizens. It consumed billions of our tax dollars which could have been put to better use.
The age of mass migration is over. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay there and work to improve their living conditions.
I also don’t understand those who say that we should not deport the majority of these interlopers. They violated our laws and continue to violate them. No one believes that they have a right to visit Paris as a tourist, rent an apartment and live their life there without the permission of the French people and no one would argue that the French have no right to kick their sorry asses out of that country. Why do the same rules not apply to the United States? They clearly do.
It seems likely to me that the Biden administration started out with the message of "Trump is mean/racist to immigrants and we'll be the opposite", failed to anticipate that would-be illegal immigrants would interpret that to mean the borders would basically be open, and then because of Biden's incapacity the administration failed to properly recognize what was happening at the border until it had escalated into a full-scale fiasco with Texas setting up its own border barriers and busing migrants en masse to northern cities. Had Biden been mentally 100%, I suspect he wouldn't have let things get to that point.
I can’t disagree with a single thing you’ve written. It’s spot-on in every way.
I recently watched Congressional testimony from a former Border Patrol official who estimates that around 50 million immigrants have entered the U.S. since 2020. I believe this is hands-down the most short-sighted, self-destructive and misguided policy decision I’ve seen in my lifetime. It’s not just economically disastrous; it will wreak havoc on our country demographically. It’s utterly irresponsible to allow so many people to enter a sovereign nation in such a short period of time without thoroughly vetting them to ensure their perspective, behavior and values are compatible with our own. This act, alone, could forever change our country in ways we cannot even begin to imagine, and I dare say most of them won’t be good.
Thank you for your earlier response. I will be reading both posts. Responding to both you and Dave above: this is all about power. Long term power. While the border is closed today come 28 it can easily be reopened. The pro immigration campaign is well under way. The targets of that campaign are not you and me but rather the under 30 and especially the under 20 folks for they are tomorrow's voters ( into midterms and later presidential elections). The border battle is far from over .
This is why I so often post about K-12 education and the need for people locally to be involved. Really involved. Here's a good way to assess the problem. Ask a 15 or 20 or 30 year old if they view themselves as a global citizen ( citizen of the world). If they answer yes then ask if they identify more as a global organizations and American citizen. Notice these questions are never polled but is there any doubt in your mind that the concept of global citizenry is being inculcated long before a kid is 15. Then think how about global citizen might feel about the question of immigration or even open borders not to mention NGOs that they are indoctrinated to believe are indispensable to saving or helping people on a global basis.
Alternative version of the story: the US economy has grown so much that it has created jobs beyond the born-here population's ability and willingness to do them all. So we depend on immigrants to do the rest.
The folks already here have had first pick of the new positions created and many immigrants came to do the old ones. The immigration system sucked and keeps sucking because enough Americans react on an identity-centered basis or on a class-centered basis to make a simple, easy system unviable.
It could be the administration of immigration that creates the dependency on undocumented workers, rather than a search for savings.
The question is, how much are illegal workers, which shockingly, Karen Bass says prop up the entire economy of LA, get paid? What workers rights are they denied? If they receive less pay and benefits than unemployed legal workers would otherwise receive, there is a direct impact on the ability of legal American residents to earn a fair* wage.
*If you could call it fair. Illegal workers might explain why minimum wage has not increased in 16 years, under three Democrat administrations.
Absolutely the best analysis of this issue that I’ve ever read. Thank you for your thoughtful articles that don’t just rehash tired partisan talking points.
Have you heard of a movement called BLEXIT? While their goals go across the entire culture, it seems yours focus on education. The Democrats are wanting to continue the plantation system which you os appropriately identified in this article.
Great article, though it doesn't touch on actual slavery, now labeled human trafficking. Some are making a lot of money taking advantage of desperate people or despicable people taking advantage of tax payer/NGO largess. The clean up from the last admin open border policy is monumental. Time to stop kicking the can down the road, as both parties have done
Monica,
Thank you so much for stating these inconvenient truths with such clarity. Best piece I've seen written about the *real* issues posed by illegal immigration. I come from a working class background but wound up entering a profession (journalism) that brought me into contact with quite a few people who grew up quite differently. Wealthy neighborhoods where they went to the best schools. Parents who paid for their college educations. All the advantages money can bring. They tend to be for open borders and see this strictly in terms of compassion for desperate people crossing the border in search of better lives. They can't see the bigger economic picture here because they don't want to. Who will pick the cotton, indeed? That's what I always hear when this topic comes up.
I’m afraid I’m going to get out over my skis on this, but here goes:
I’d say illegal immigration is more like Plantation or Peculiar Institution 3.0. Slavery, Jim Crow, and illegal immigration all combine cheap labor and increased political power without an increased voter base. The latter two even got around the 3/5 compromise that was necessary to get the Constitution approved.
Businesses are supposed to constantly look for cost savings. A business that doesn’t do that isn’t a good business. If one business finds a way to deliver a good or service with lower costs, it pushes competing businesses to lower their costs too, and all consumers benefit. That process drives technological progress and has been the prime mover in increasing our standard of living.
That process has also put a lot of people out of work – secretaries, typists, factory workers, farmers, and buggy whip makers. Automation and technological progress have been bigger factors in job losses for Americans than offshoring or immigration. So people have to lose their jobs to improve our standard of living. So far, that’s been a net plus on average, though some individuals and communities are worse off. Previous predictions of widespread immiseration have not come to pass. That doesn’t mean they might not in the future.
Inflation is a general rise in prices across the board. Wages can lag behind inflation, and inflation is bad, but it’s not inflation that is the primary driver of cost-cutting for businesses.
We want working people to have a higher standard of living. One way we do that is by trying to raise wages by reducing competition for US labor by restricting imports (including tariffs) and immigration. Of course, when you restrict supply of anything, you inadvertently incentivize a black market in it, and illegal immigration is a natural result of this kind of restriction. If you’re serious about protecting labor, you have to fight it. You can fight it by attacking supply at the border or attacking demand in the person of the employer. And you should at least be aware that you’re deliberately doing it partially at foreign workers’ expense, whatever you decide.
Restricting the supply of labor to raise wages also raises prices for the goods and services produced by higher-wage labor, so the standard of living of workers won’t go up as much as their wages. Raising wages also incentivizes automation, so more jobs will be lost. In some sectors, like food, where black market labor has been an integral part of the system, you might have to raise wages and prices a lot, and you might see more competition from foreign products or services, but you might also see more automation and technological solutions.
I oppose illegal immigration, mostly because it encourages illegal behavior. I’d like to see what happens when we reduce illegal immigration, but it’s going to be difficult, no matter what.
Here's an example of how the demands of market forces are being met.
http://www.teachquestusa.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-perkins-7228537a/
Thanks for writing this piece, Monica. Here in the Southern Border region, the legacies of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta are integral to our culture. Why would the elite and professional classes want to rock the same boat that enables them to pay substandard wages for their service workers? It's easier and more profitable to whip up crowds of protestors with flag waving campaigns, protest and identity politics. We just saw a special election for Raul Grijalva's replacement, since he recently passed away. His daughter Adelita will continue his political legacy. Take a look at who's running against her. https://butierezforcongress.org/
Mayor Bass also misses a key aspect of the situation. She's arguing that the ICE raids are bad for the economy and cruel. However, the reverse is also cruel. Letting people in the country illegally--it is still a crime to come to the US and overstay a visa or cross a border illegally--and then letting them live here in some sort of gray status and working in the black-market economy is also cruel. The Biden Administration's calculus was that, once these folks are here, someone will give them amnesty, and they can stay. However, that is not what is happening. Instead, they are learning that (1) being in the US illegally is illegal or (2) being here on a temporary status is only good until the status ends, at which point you are also here illegally (or must leave the country). The Biden Administration wanted to appeal to white uber-educated liberals who could feel better about themselves with the US having a liberal immigration policy ("I am part of the resistance! I support brown people getting into the US!! Hey Barista, is this oat milk? I wanted oat milk!!!!!") Now the consequence is that the people who were let in are now being deported and feeling the whiplash of that comes from having been lied to.
I'm not sure who is receiving the benefits of all these illegal immigrants. I'm middle class and don't have as nanny, maid, or gardener. I suppose that when I eat out, there may be illegals working the kitchens, though more often I suspect they're students or twenty somethings stuck on a path to poverty.
On the occasion I stay in hotels, for work, cleaners and other staff might be illegal. But hotels are big corporations, that, as far as I know, have reasonably stringent requirements to vet worker's status. Do they circumvent these somehow?
I suppose the unseen ways I benefit from cheap illegal labor is through construction and agriculture?
When Karen Bass claims that LA would stop functioning, is she suggesting the same is true of the country as a whole, or is she indicting her city in particular? I'm tempted to believe she means there's a lot of elites enjoying nannies, maids, gardeners, pool boys, golf, regular dining out, car washes, and more.
In other words, can someone quantify how much the poor, middle class, and elite are beneficiaries of illegal labor?
US workforce participation is down from 68% in 1997 to 63% now. Before that, participation by males aged 25-55 dropped by 5-6 percentage points from 1950 to 1998.
I suspect there's 5-10% of people who have been turned into a permanent government dependent underclass right there. Did illegal immigration contribute to that?
The flood of Illegal Aliens over the past five years was part of the "Color Revolution" to destabilize Western Society. It wasn't just here in the US it was in Europe as well, all to justify Totalitarian measures.
The Paid Trolls, speaking their Talking Points, are literally working for someone other than the American People.
In effect, they are unregistered Foreign Agents working for outside forces.
- Just watch any Hearing, either House or Senate, and you will see what I'm talking about.
Today we use the term, "Deep State". In the past they would be the "Managerial Elite". That is an oxymoron, since they are neither good "managers" nor "elite". This "flood and destabilize" tactic has been used for centuries by the "Deep State".
- The Irish Potato Famine was a manufactured famine to force Irish Catholics to flood into Protestant American. They were the illegal aliens of the day.
- After the Civil War the freed slaves flooded into Northern cities looking for jobs. They were the illegal aliens of the day.
- The same thing has happened time and again.
The narrative is that people were fleeing economic hardship, moving to richer parts of the world. The problem with that narrative are the causes of the economic hardship, and the ease of transport. In the latest flood, NGOs were funneling people from all over the world to the US.
- This was not an "organic" flow of people. None of them are.
Good evidence of that is the latest flood stopped immediately. The NGOs stopped their support.
Yikes! I just realized that I'm starting a rant.
I always try to say twenty things real fast, not realizing that I've lost people on the first point. HA!
Thanks for the article.
There was an article in The Economist over the last month about Denmark. The Danish government treats legal immigrants quite roughly and their argument is simple; it is middle class Danes who pay the price for immigration.
Good thoughts. I heard an interview with a contractor in Houston a few years back who said that his competition hired illegals so in order to compete he had to as well. And Mayor Bass knows that trafficked children are working in the pot growing industry in her state. In Maine it is indentured Chinese illegals being used in that sector by Chinese gangs. Peter Thiel believes that AI will affect the engineers and other hard science fields. The future is unclear at best.
Thank you for the article, Monica. This is what happens when we continue to accept the existence of an economic system that runs on money, and where we depend on money to "purchase" everything we need or want, in an era of technological development where automation and A.I. can eliminate most of the arduous tasks and produce an abundance for everyone. A barter system only makes sense in a pre-Industrial era where real scarcity is a fact of life. But the retention of scarcity in a post-Industrial era is entirely *artificial*, and the result of retaining class rule, money, production for profit, and a wage system during an era of technological advancement that renders these things unnecessary, archaic, and utterly regressive.
This is why we have not come anywhere near eliminating poverty and establishing universal freedom from want during a period of time when we possess the technological capacity to do so. All rationalizations not to do this are right-wing, neoliberal, Social Darwinian nonsense that needs to be excised from our mindset, unless we want matters to get worse and worse when such things are no longer necessary from a material standpoint, and thus no longer morally or logistically defensible.
I am upper middle-class but from a screwy family and Autistic (I believe) and it happens that I relate better to working class persons. I remember that for a time after graduating high school I considered jobs that were working class. But then certain social changes occurred and I began to feel that in this new situation getting a working class job was no longer an option. They would wonder what I was doing there. It was not going to work. The social roles were more strictly divided. As Monica says, that was "decades ago." Maybe by the eighties. The two sets of persons were more tightly divided than before and it became inconceivable that I could hold a working-class sort of job.
The economy seems to work on a set of basic factors, such as employment, manufacturing, and finance. All these factors need to work together, and they usually do. I do not think finance will ever fail -- it is just magical money production. But with enough financial corruption the quality of our lives could be impacted by all the free money the rich get. And then the manufactured goods could be less well-made or new products could stop getting made. So good products could become less available, and the work force could become restive because of wages and so forth. At some point, the U. S. needs a comprehensive economic policy. It is a shame that we do not believe in this. We believe getting better control over the economic system is somehow an interference with "freedom." But we may "free market" ourselves to death.
As Monica says, leaders need to "create" an economy. We have in the past been subjected to a constant barrage of rightist propaganda that said "don't regulate." The economy may have worked all by itself in the past. I don't think so, but if it did it will not continue to do so indefintely into the future. There are certain basics that allowed this capitalist prosperity to exist for many Americans. When all of the basic components of the economic system fail in tandem with other components of our way of life, things are going to be a lot different. By that time, I fear it will be too late.
This piece from MH is good. It is a well-written essay, reminding us of many of the important things we need to be aware of. But we usually ignore it. Don't worry, say the conservatives: the market will just continue to work: "all by itself."
Other than seeking new Democratic voters (and increasingly Hispanics are voting Republican) it’s not clear to me exactly why the Biden administration decided that it was a good idea to open our borders to millions of unskilled, uneducated people. It ended up costing the Democrats the 2024 election. Allowing a relative small number of the well educated in each year is probability a good idea.
This was one of the most disastrous policies the country has seen in my long lifetime. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here undermines the wages of our working class and exacerbates our national housing crisis when we can’t house our own citizens. It consumed billions of our tax dollars which could have been put to better use.
The age of mass migration is over. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay there and work to improve their living conditions.
I also don’t understand those who say that we should not deport the majority of these interlopers. They violated our laws and continue to violate them. No one believes that they have a right to visit Paris as a tourist, rent an apartment and live their life there without the permission of the French people and no one would argue that the French have no right to kick their sorry asses out of that country. Why do the same rules not apply to the United States? They clearly do.
Apparently you haven’t been to Paris lately
I have not. Last trip was 16 years ago. Doubt I will be returnign anytime soon.
Dave please see my comment just below Monica's response to you.
It seems likely to me that the Biden administration started out with the message of "Trump is mean/racist to immigrants and we'll be the opposite", failed to anticipate that would-be illegal immigrants would interpret that to mean the borders would basically be open, and then because of Biden's incapacity the administration failed to properly recognize what was happening at the border until it had escalated into a full-scale fiasco with Texas setting up its own border barriers and busing migrants en masse to northern cities. Had Biden been mentally 100%, I suspect he wouldn't have let things get to that point.
I can’t disagree with a single thing you’ve written. It’s spot-on in every way.
I recently watched Congressional testimony from a former Border Patrol official who estimates that around 50 million immigrants have entered the U.S. since 2020. I believe this is hands-down the most short-sighted, self-destructive and misguided policy decision I’ve seen in my lifetime. It’s not just economically disastrous; it will wreak havoc on our country demographically. It’s utterly irresponsible to allow so many people to enter a sovereign nation in such a short period of time without thoroughly vetting them to ensure their perspective, behavior and values are compatible with our own. This act, alone, could forever change our country in ways we cannot even begin to imagine, and I dare say most of them won’t be good.
Thank you for your earlier response. I will be reading both posts. Responding to both you and Dave above: this is all about power. Long term power. While the border is closed today come 28 it can easily be reopened. The pro immigration campaign is well under way. The targets of that campaign are not you and me but rather the under 30 and especially the under 20 folks for they are tomorrow's voters ( into midterms and later presidential elections). The border battle is far from over .
This is why I so often post about K-12 education and the need for people locally to be involved. Really involved. Here's a good way to assess the problem. Ask a 15 or 20 or 30 year old if they view themselves as a global citizen ( citizen of the world). If they answer yes then ask if they identify more as a global organizations and American citizen. Notice these questions are never polled but is there any doubt in your mind that the concept of global citizenry is being inculcated long before a kid is 15. Then think how about global citizen might feel about the question of immigration or even open borders not to mention NGOs that they are indoctrinated to believe are indispensable to saving or helping people on a global basis.
Alternative version of the story: the US economy has grown so much that it has created jobs beyond the born-here population's ability and willingness to do them all. So we depend on immigrants to do the rest.
The folks already here have had first pick of the new positions created and many immigrants came to do the old ones. The immigration system sucked and keeps sucking because enough Americans react on an identity-centered basis or on a class-centered basis to make a simple, easy system unviable.
It could be the administration of immigration that creates the dependency on undocumented workers, rather than a search for savings.
The question is, how much are illegal workers, which shockingly, Karen Bass says prop up the entire economy of LA, get paid? What workers rights are they denied? If they receive less pay and benefits than unemployed legal workers would otherwise receive, there is a direct impact on the ability of legal American residents to earn a fair* wage.
*If you could call it fair. Illegal workers might explain why minimum wage has not increased in 16 years, under three Democrat administrations.
Thank you for a frank and honest analysis of this issue, Monica. Progressives never repudiated slavery, they just renamed it.