Exclusive--Michelle Malkin to Trump: No More 'Empty Threats' on Immigration, Border

In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Malkin said Trump’s threats to close the U.S.-Mexico border to stop illegal immigration must be backed up with action, not just rhetoric.  I don’t want to hear empty threats anymore about how he’s going to do what he should have done many, many, many months ago. The fact that you have a massive number now of … strangers bringing in children, tells you that the very magnet that he says he understands is causing this. The failure to just go ahead executively and fix the asylum system, proves him right on that and yet he’s not doing what he can do as president with his executive authority. [Emphasis added]  Malkin said Trump should have the military at the southern border, asking rhetorically “Does he believe his own rhetoric or not?”  More blame for the levels of illegal immigration the country is currently experiencing should be placed with elected Republicans, Malkin said, who failed to take any action on immigration while controlling the House and Senate for the first two years of Trump’s term.  “Faux pro-borders Republicans … deserve a heck of a lot more scrutiny and condemnation for putting us in the situation that we’re in,” Malkin said.  Trump, Malkin said, must be vigilant in changing immigration policy and statute:  Here’s my fear, is that you know the conventional establishment talking point this week on immigration — even as these hordes of people are coming in unprecedented numbers — is ‘Oh, we got a few billion from the Pentagon for the fencing.’ And it just lulls the base into this false sense of hope that something is being done when we could have Congresspeople in Washington, themselves, putting pressure on Trump to exercise his inherent executive authority to actually do more than just put a few more dozen miles of physical barriers. And I’m not saying that we don’t need [a wall] but what needs to happen is that the policies need to change. [Emphasis added]  As Breitbart News has chronicled, the U.S. is set to admit anywhere between one to 1.5 million illegal aliens this year. The Trump administration’s most recent expansion of the Catch and Release policy has resulted in the release of about 24,000 border crossers and illegal aliens in just two weeks. Simultaneously, experts project that at the current rate of illegal immigration, up to 500,000 illegal aliens could successfully cross into the country this year, undetected by Border Patrol.  Republican voters rank deporting illegal aliens and ending illegal immigration as their top priority to ensure a better quality of life for themselves and their middle class families, the latest Pew Research Center survey revealed.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-03-30--WatchKris Kobach Wage Hikes via Less Immigration a Massive Win for Trump Working-Class American

Watch—Kris Kobach: Wage Hikes via Less Immigration a ‘Massive’ Win for Trump, Working-Class Americans

During a debate for IntelligenceSquared, Kobach touted Trump’s “Hire American” economy, which has delivered increased blue-collar and working-class wages by between 3.4 percent and four percent in the last 12 months.  “By reducing illegal immigration, you drive up wages, especially in unskilled labor categories,” Kobach said. “Therefore, [blue-collar workers] have seen those wage gains, and [Trump] has delivered.”  In terms of wages, in the last 12 months, we’ve seen a 3.4 percent increase in nominal wages. That’s extraordinary, the largest wage gains in the last 12 years. It is a massive achievement for the working, blue-collar voter, and that’s why blue-collar voters in exit polls voted 66 percent for Donald Trump in the last election. He’s the only one that can pull it off again. [Emphasis added] [The wage gains are] a direct result of his positions and his policies on his signature campaign issue, which of course is immigration. President Trump has done what no other presidential candidate has done in recent years, made that a centerpiece issue and has governed with that as a centerpiece issue. He has recognized that illegal immigration really does affect all of us. Every state is a border state now. [Emphasis added]  Those wage hikes for America’s working and lower middle class and a populist-nationalist agenda are what must continue for Trump to capture states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — as he did in 2016 — in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.  “I don’t know if any Republican can do what Trump did in those blue-collar states [of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin] and break through the Rust Belt,” Kobach said. “The party, after Trump, we may be toast if we don’t find somebody who has his special sauce who can connect with voters in those three states.”  Wage hikes for blue-collar and working-class Americans, though, are increasingly threatened by the record levels of illegal immigration coming across the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) mass release of border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the country in recent months.  Unfettered illegal immigration — along with the country’s mass legal immigration policy, where more than 1.2 million mostly unskilled foreign nationals are added to the population every year to compete against Americans for jobs — has kept Americans’ wages stagnant and low for decades.  Every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of American workers’ occupations reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent, researcher Steven Camarotta has found. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels — not factoring in the wage depression caused by illegal immigration.  In a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by perhaps more than 12.5 percent. In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.  Likewise, every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.  In 2017, foreign-born residents made up more than 17 percent of the total U.S. workforce, comprising about 27.4 million foreign workers who compete against American workers for jobs. In occupations that have been relieved by stricter immigration enforcement, like dairy farming, U.S. wages have risen and so have working conditions as employers seek to attract talent in a tight labor market.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-03-31--Robert Francis Beto ORourke El Paso Safe Because of Immigrants Asylum Seekers

Robert Francis 'Beto' O’Rourke: El Paso Safe Because of Immigrants, Asylum Seekers

In a speech to over 1000 supporters, O’Rourke drew a sharp contrast between his immigration policies and those of President Donald Trump, extolling the virtues of increased immigration and diversity as a unifying force.  “With Ciudad Juarez we form the largest binational community in this hemisphere. And for 20 years running, we’ve been one of the safest cities in the United States of America,” the El Paso native declared. “We are safe not despite the fact that we are a city of immigrants and asylum seekers. We are safe because we are a city of immigrants and asylum seekers.”  “We have learned not to fear our differences, but to respect and embrace them. We see the languages spoken in this community, the traditions, the cultures, as a strength for El Paso,” he added.  O’Rourke’s remarks follow a threat by President Trump to shut down the Southern border, citing repeated failures by the Mexican government to assist the administration in preventing further South American caravans reaching the United States. The president also blasted Democrats for advocating “weak” immigration laws.  “The DEMOCRATS have given us the weakest immigration laws anywhere in the World. Mexico has the strongest, & they make more than $100 Billion a year on the U.S. Therefore, CONGRESS MUST CHANGE OUR WEAK IMMIGRATION LAWS NOW, & Mexico must stop illegals from entering the U.S,” the president wrote on Twitter Friday morning.  He continued: “Mexico has for many years made a fortune off of the U.S., far greater than Border Costs. If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States [through] our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week.”  O’Rourke also criticized President Trump over family separations at the border and vowed to kill the policy if elected president.  “Let us reunite every single one of those families that are still separated today,” O’Rourke said. “And let’s remember that every single one of us, including those who are just three or four blocks from here detained under the international bridge that connects us with Mexico behind chain-linked fence and barbed wire, that they are fellow human beings and deserved to be treated like our fellow human beings.”  “We will find security not through walls, not through militarization, we will find security by focusing on our ports of entry,” he went on. “If we are really serious about security, we have a golden opportunity, Republicans, Independents, Democrats alike to work on comprehensive immigration reform, to rewrite this country’s immigration laws in our own image with our own values and in the best traditions of the United States of America.”  O’Rourke delivered the speech at South El Paso Street, which is connected to Mexico by an international bridge.


breitbart--2019-05-15--Survey Only 2-in-15 Americans Aware of Soaring Illegal Immigration to US

Survey: Only 2-in-15 Americans Aware of Soaring Illegal Immigration to U.S.

The latest Harvard/Harris Poll reveals that when Americans are asked how many illegal aliens are arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, only about 13 percent answer correctly. Meanwhile, about 76 percent of Americans believe illegal immigration levels are vastly lower than they actually are.  For example, there were nearly 100,000 border apprehensions in April, alone. This puts illegal immigration at the southern border on track to outpace every year of illegal immigration under former President Obama and take the U.S. back to Bush era levels. At current rates, experts project there to be 863,000 border apprehensions this Fiscal Year, though this only counts illegal aliens who are caught at the border and does not include those who successfully cross.  Since Fiscal Year 2010, the number of border crossers and illegal aliens apprehended trying to enter the U.S. has been anywhere between 300,000 to 500,000.  In the Harvard/Harris Poll, though, less than two-in-15 American voters correctly said there are between 250,000 to 500,000 border apprehensions each year. Meanwhile, more than three-in-four Americans incorrectly said there are between zero to 250,000 border apprehensions a year.  Even among Republican voters, conservatives, and Trump supporters, a plurality of 35 percent incorrectly estimated that there are only 10,000 to 100,000 border apprehensions each year.  When voters were told that there were more than 100,000 border apprehensions in the last month, the majority, about 52 percent, said they supported President Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency at the southern border to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Another 48 percent said they oppose the national emergency.  Nearly six-in-ten working class and lower middle class Americans support the national emergency, as well as almost 65 percent of American voters who live in rural communities.  As Breitbart News reported, Republican voters, conservatives, and Trump supporters all rank building a border wall to stop illegal immigration and reducing legal immigration levels as their top priorities heading into the 2020 presidential election. For swing voters, building a border wall and reducing all immigration are the third and fourth top priorities, following stimulating jobs and passing an infrastructure bill.  Every year, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million mostly low-skilled legal immigrants to compete against working and middle class Americans for jobs. The vast majority, about 70 percent, of legal immigration to the country is driven by the process known as “chain migration,” whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S.  High levels of immigration, illegal and legal, put downward pressure on U.S. wages while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth away from America’s working and middle class and towards employers and new arrivals, research by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has found.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-05-30--Donald Trump Declares He Will Increase Tariffs on Mexico Until Illegal Immigration Remedied

“On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP,” President Trump wrote in a Thursday night tweet.  On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied,..  “The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied,” the president said and continued in a subsequent post, “….at which time the Tariffs will be removed. Details from the White House to follow.”  Minutes later the White House released the following statement from President Trump:  As everyone knows, the United States of America has been invaded by hundreds of thousands of people coming through Mexico and entering our country illegally.  This sustained influx of illegal aliens has profound consequences on every aspect of our national life—overwhelming our schools, overcrowding our hospitals, draining our welfare system, and causing untold amounts of crime.  Gang members, smugglers, human traffickers, and illegal drugs and narcotics of all kinds are pouring across the Southern Border and directly into our communities.  Thousands of innocent lives are taken every year as a result of this lawless chaos.  It must end NOW!  Mexico’s passive cooperation in allowing this mass incursion constitutes an emergency and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.  Mexico has very strong immigration laws and could easily halt the illegal flow of migrants, including by returning them to their home countries.  Additionally, Mexico could quickly and easily stop illegal aliens from coming through its southern border with Guatemala.  For decades, the United States has suffered the severe and dangerous consequences of illegal immigration.  Sadly, Mexico has allowed this situation to go on for many years, growing only worse with the passage of time.  From a safety, national security, military, economic, and humanitarian standpoint, we cannot allow this grave disaster to continue.  The current state of affairs is profoundly unfair to the American taxpayer, who bears the extraordinary financial cost imposed by large-scale illegal migration.  Even worse is the terrible and preventable loss of human life.  Some of the most deadly and vicious gangs on the planet operate just across our border and terrorize innocent communities.  Mexico must step up and help solve this problem.  We welcome people who come to the United States legally, but we cannot allow our laws to be broken and our borders to be violated.  For years, Mexico has not treated us fairly—but we are now asserting our rights as a sovereign Nation.  To address the emergency at the Southern Border, I am invoking the authorities granted to me by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.  Accordingly, starting on June 10, 2019, the United States will impose a 5 percent Tariff on all goods imported from Mexico.  If the illegal migration crisis is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico, to be determined in our sole discretion and judgment, the Tariffs will be removed.  If the crisis persists, however, the Tariffs will be raised to 10 percent on July 1, 2019.  Similarly, if Mexico still has not taken action to dramatically reduce or eliminate the number of illegal aliens crossing its territory into the United States, Tariffs will be increased to 15 percent on August 1, 2019, to 20 percent on September 1, 2019, and to 25 percent on October 1, 2019.  Tariffs will permanently remain at the 25 percent level unless and until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory.  Workers who come to our country through the legal admissions process, including those working on farms, ranches, and in other businesses, will be allowed easy passage.  If Mexico fails to act, Tariffs will remain at the high level, and companies located in Mexico may start moving back to the United States to make their products and goods.  Companies that relocate to the United States will not pay the Tariffs or be affected in any way.  Over the years, Mexico has made massive amounts of money in its dealings with the United States, and this includes the tremendous number of jobs leaving our country.  Should Mexico choose not to cooperate on reducing unlawful migration, the sustained imposition of Tariffs will produce a massive return of jobs back to American cities and towns.  Remember, our great country has been the “piggy bank” from which everybody wants only to TAKE.  The difference is that now we are firmly and forcefully standing up for America’s interests.  We have confidence that Mexico can and will act swiftly to help the United States stop this long-term, dangerous, and deeply unfair problem.  The United States has been very good to Mexico for many years.  We are now asking that Mexico immediately do its fair share to stop the use of its territory as a conduit for illegal immigration into our country.  The cartels and coyotes are having a greater and greater impact on the Mexican side of our Southern Border.  This is a dire threat that must be decisively eliminated.  Billions of dollars are made, and countless lives are ruined, by these ruthless and merciless criminal organizations.  Mexico must bring law and order to its side of the border.  Democrats in Congress are fully aware of this horrible situation and yet refuse to help in any way, shape, or form.  This is a total dereliction of duty.  The migrant crisis is a calamity that must now be solved—and can easily be solved—in Congress.  Our broken asylum laws, court system, catch-and-release, visa lottery, chain migration, and many other loopholes can all be promptly corrected.  When that happens, the measures being announced today can be more readily reduced or removed.  The United States is a great country that can no longer be exploited due to its foolish and irresponsible immigration laws.  For the sake of our people, and for the sake of our future, these horrendous laws must be changed now.  At the same time, Mexico cannot allow hundreds of thousands of people to pour over its land and into our country—violating the sovereign territory of the United States.  If Mexico does not take decisive measures, it will come at a significant price.  We therefore look forward to, and appreciate, the swift and effective actions that we hope Mexico will immediately install.  As President of the United States, my highest duty is the defense of the country and its citizens.  A nation without borders is not a nation at all.  I will not stand by and allow our sovereignty to be eroded, our laws to be trampled, or our borders to be disrespected anymore.


breitbart--2019-08-08--Poll Majority of Blacks Hispanics Support Anti-Illegal Immigration 2020 Candidates

Poll: Majority of Blacks, Hispanics Support Anti-Illegal Immigration 2020 Candidates

The latest Harvard/Harris Poll reveals that about 70 percent, or seven-in-ten, U.S. voters said they would be more likely to support a 2020 presidential candidate who stands for “strengthing our border to reduce illegal immigration” to the country.  Only 30 percent of U.S. voters said they would be less likely to support a 2020 presidential candidate who supported reducing illegal immigration.  Support for reducing illegal immigration is vastly popularly among swing voters, about 69 percent of whom said they would be more likely to back a candidate like President Trump in the 2020 election because of his stance against illegal immigration.  Similarly, voters across racial lines said they would be more likely to support a 2020 presidential candidate that wants to reduce illegal immigration. Roughly 63 percent of black Americans and 61 percent of Hispanic Americans said they would be more likely to support an anti-illegal immigration presidential candidate.  More than seven-in-ten working and lower-middle-class Americans, as well as 71 percent of suburban voters, said the same.  As Breitbart News reported, the Harvard/Harris Poll found that nearly seven-in-ten swing voters, along with 64 percent of all U.S. voters, said they are less likely to support a 2020 presidential candidate who supports more immigration to the country.  The Washington, DC-imposed mass immigration policy — whereby more than 1.5 million mostly low-skilled foreign workers are admitted to the U.S. to compete against Americans every year — has been a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational conglomerates, as every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of an occupation’s labor force reduces Americans’ hourly wages by 0.4 percent. Every one percent increase in the immigrant workforce reduces Americans’ overall wages by 0.8 percent.  Currently, there are anywhere between 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living across the country, the majority of which live in California, New York, Florida, and Texas.  The poll surveyed 2,214 registered American voters online between July 31 and August 1.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-08-09--Donald Trump ICE Deportation Raids a Good Deterrent to Illegal Immigration

Donald Trump: ICE Deportation Raids a 'Good Deterrent' to Illegal Immigration

“This serves as a very good deterrent, if people come into our country illegally, they’re going out, they’re not coming illegally and staying,” Trump said.  The president commented on the ICE raids as he left the White House on Friday for a series of fundraisers in New York.  Altogether 680 illegal immigrants working at a Mississippi food plant were detained by ICE authorities on Wednesday as part of massive enforcement sweep.  Critics immediately raged against the president, after the media featured children in the United States who were separated from their parents during the raid.  But Trump defended it as part of the process.  “You have to go in, you can’t let anybody know,” he said.  He said the raids would send a strong message to people coming into the country illegally.  “We have bad laws, they may get in, although we’re being very tough, but they may get in, but it doesn’t matter, because they’re going out,” he said.


breitbart--2019-08-09--Watch Joe Biden Vows Flood of Immigration If Elected

Watch: Joe Biden Vows Flood of Immigration If Elected

In a speech to the Asian and Latino Coalition PAC, Biden promised to increase the level of legal immigration to the country beyond the roughly 1.2 million legal immigrants that are admitted every year, booming the foreign-born population to an unprecedented 45 million — a 108-year record high.  Specifically, Biden said the U.S. can “in a heartbeat” import another two million immigrants today.  We could afford to take in a heartbeat another two million people. The idea that a country of 330 million people is cannot absorb people who are in desperate need … is absolutely bizarre … I would also move to increase the total number of immigrants able to come to the United States. [Emphasis added]  In addition to an increase in legal immigration levels, Biden said his national immigration plan would ensure that all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living across the U.S. receive amnesty and a pathway to American citizenship.  Likewise, Biden said it is “immigration” that has “built this country,” reiterating the claim that the U.S. is a “nation of immigrants,” calling it “a fact.”  Biden’s comments come after the latest Harvard/Harris Poll finds that swing voters by a majority, as well as nearly every other demographic group, say they are less likely to support a 2020 presidential candidate who wants more illegal and legal immigration to the U.S.  Currently, the nation’s Washington, DC-imposed mass legal and illegal immigration policy — whereby at least 1.5 million unskilled foreign nationals are admitted to the U.S. every year — is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational corporations, as America’s working and middle class have their wealth redistributed to the country’s top earners through wage stagnation.  Research by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has discovered that immigration to the country shifts about $500 billion in wages away from working and middle-class Americans toward new arrivals and economic elites. Similarly, research by Steven Camarotta has found that every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of an occupation’s labor force reduces Americans’ hourly wages by 0.4 percent. Every one percent increase in the immigrant workforce reduces Americans’ overall wages by 0.8 percent.  In the last decade alone, the U.S. has admitted ten million legal immigrants, forcing American workers to compete against a growing population of low-wage foreign workers. Meanwhile, if legal immigration continues, there will be 69 million foreign-born residents living in the U.S. by 2060 and a total population of more than 404 million residents.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-08-11--Mississippi Restaurant Offers Free Pizza to Immigrants Refugees

Mississippi Restaurant Offers Free Pizza to Immigrants, Refugees

The owner of Dodo Pizza, Alena Tikhova, said that after moving to America from Russia four years ago, she wanted to do something to combat the “hate and cruelty” against people from other countries.  “We do what we can,” she said. “We have pizza, and this is maybe small, but this is just our small way of showing support and I think this particular time, that group needs of people needs support and appreciation.”  “We do what we can, so we address one topic at a time. Right now, I feel like this hate and cruelty is the biggest topic,” she concluded.  On Wednesday, Breitbart News reported that the raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents was the largest single-state raid in U.S. history. The agents arrested 680 illegal aliens during the event.  “According to federal officials, some of the hundreds of illegal aliens arrested on Wednesday have already been ordered deported by an immigration judge and have refused to self-deport. Those illegal aliens will be quickly deported,” the report said.  However, Tikhova said the arrests by ICE agents “doesn’t feel right to me as a human being.”  In a press release issued Wednesday, ICE said the agency worked with the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to uphold laws established by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) that “requires employers to verify the identity and work eligibility of individuals they hire.”  “These laws help protect jobs for U.S. citizens and lawful U.S. residents, eliminate unfair competitive advantages for companies that unlawfully hire an illegal workforce, and strengthen public safety and national security,” the press release said, adding that “Unauthorized workers often use stolen identities of legal U.S. workers, which can profoundly damage for years the identity-theft victim’s credit, medical records and other aspects of their everyday life.”  By enforcing the law, HSI investigators are able to combat many forms of illegal activity which include worker exploitation, child labor, and human trafficking, the press release concluded.


breitbart--2019-08-12--Public Charge Self-Sufficient Immigrants Proficient in English Favored for Green Cards

Public Charge: Self-Sufficient Immigrants Proficient in English Favored for Green Cards

During a press conference on Monday, Acting United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli said the Trump administration will establish what is known as the “Public Charge” rule — a regulation whereby legal immigrants would be less likely to secure a permanent residency in the U.S. if they have used any forms of welfare in the past, including using subsidized healthcare services, food stamps, and public housing.  These immigrants subject to the rule are technically mostly nonimmigrants in the U.S. and foreign nationals, including illegal aliens seeking to adjust their immigration status, temporary foreign guest workers wanting a green card, and foreign nationals looking to be sponsored for a green card by their employer or U.S.-based relative.  The rule will take into account a number of negative and positive factors when assessing an immigrant’s qualification for a green card. Among the positive factors that will help secure a green card for an immigrant is their ability to speak English.  “DHS will consider whether the alien is proficient in English or proficient in other languages in addition to English as part of the public charge inadmissibility determination,” the regulation states. “People who spoke a language other than English at home were less likely to be employed, and less likely to find full-time work when employed.”  Today, there are roughly 65 million U.S. residents speaking a foreign language at home. In the nation’s largest cities, New York City, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Phoenix, nearly half of the residents speak a foreign language at home. In Los Angeles, alone, almost one-in-six residents speak a foreign language at home.  Self-sufficiency is similarly a positive factor that will make an immigrant more likely to secure a green card over those who are reliant on welfare and deemed a “public charge.”  For example, foreign nationals in the U.S. who currently pay for their own non-subsidized health insurance would be more likely than nationals on Obamacare or Medicare to be approved for permanent residency in the country.  USCIS will take into account an immigrant’s work history and total ability to earn a sufficient living in the U.S. without relying on taxpayers.  “The ability of the alien to earn sufficient income to pay for basic living needs (i.e., food and nutrition, housing, and healthcare), as evidenced or impacted by, for example, the alien’s age, health, work history, current employment status, future employment prospects, education, and skills” will be considered in weighing whether an immigrant is approved for a green card, according to the regulation.  The enactment of the Public Charge rule comes after Trump signed an order set to begin in September that enforces existing 1996 laws signed into statute by then-President Bill Clinton. The order mandates that a family member or business sponsor of a legal immigrant looking to permanently resettle in the U.S. is responsible for paying back the welfare costs previously used by that immigrant.  For example, if a visa holder has used $10,000 in food stamp benefits while living in the U.S., when a family member sponsors them for a green card, that family member will be notified of the legal immigrant’s welfare costs to taxpayers and will be obligated to pay back the amount. If the sponsor of a legal immigrant does not pay the welfare cost, the Treasury Offset Program will take the money out of the sponsor’s taxes for that year.  The order also ensures that the personal income of a legal immigrant’s sponsor is taken into consideration when a legal immigrant is applying for federal welfare. Currently, only the income of legal immigrants is considered by federal agencies when applying for public benefits. Under the rules set out by Clinton’s 1996 law, the Trump administration will make certain that the income of both the legal immigrant and their sponsor is considered when applying for benefits.  As Breitbart News reported, the majority of the more than 1.5 million foreign nationals entering the country every year use about 57 percent more food stamps than the average native-born American household. Overall, illegal and legal immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households and 44 percent more in Medicaid dollars. This straining of public services by a booming 44.5 million foreign-born population translates to the average immigrant household costing American taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-08-12--Statue of Liberty Question Our Immigration System Is for the Benefit of This Country

'Statue of Liberty' Question: 'Our Immigration System Is for the Benefit of This Country'

“I’ll drive it home with a sledgehammer here: America’s immigration system is first and foremost, for the benefit of America. Period,” USCIS acting director Ken Cuccinelli told Breitbart News.  The purpose of immigration policy was raised during a White House press conference on Monday when Cuccinelli unveiled the new “Public Charge” regulation which will help deny green cards to foreign people who are likely to need welfare and aid from taxpaying Americans.  Cuccinelli’s pro-American statement came shortly after a sharply ideological question by a CBS reporter:  Almost as long the public charge rules has been in the effect since the late 1800s, there also has been — almost as long — the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty that read “Give us your tired, your poor.” You are implementing a public charge rule for the first time. Is that sentiment, “Give us your tired, your poor,” still operative in the United States? Or should those words come down, should the plaque come down off the Statue or Liberty?’  The 1886 statue was inspired by the Union victory in the civil war and was subsequently built in France. The statue is named “Liberty Enlightening the World” to emphasize the statue’s message — that Americans’ freedoms show the way forward for other people and countries.  But that pro-freedom message has been buried under a pro-migration drumbeat by pro-migration advocacy groups and friendly media outlets.  In 1903, 17 years after the statue was opened, pro-migration advocates added a plaque with a pro-migration poem, saying “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The plaque was part of a broader immigration debate, which ended in 1924 when Congress sharply reduced the inflow of new migrants, so allowing Americans to win a rapid rise in their standard of living from roughly 1945 to 1970. The period of rapid income growth ended several years after Congress expanded immigration in 1965.  In 1986, the plaque was moved from the statue to a museum inside the statue. But the plaque is still being used by pro-migration groups to help change the public’s understanding of the statue from its pro-U.S. “Enlightening the World” message to their anti-U.S. “nation of immigrants” message.  In the White House press conference, Cuccinelli first dodged the CBS question about the plaque, saying “Well, I’m certainly not prepared to take anything down off the Statue of Liberty.”  “We have a long history of being one of the most welcoming nations in the world on a lot of bases, whether you be an asylee, whether you be coming in here to join your family or immigrating yourself,” he added.  But a few minutes later, Cuccinelli provided the answer to the statue question when he told another reporter that “the entire legal immigration system is designed by Congress for the benefit of America.”  In a subsequent phone call with Breitbart News, Cuccinelli expanded his answer:  That plaque was added after the Statue of Liberty. It wasn’t part of the Statue of Liberty, and you can talk to National Park Service about that. But there’s no question our immigration system, as this President has frankly and without apology proclaimed, is for the benefit of this country. It does have collateral benefits to the rest of the world. But first and foremost, Americans’, American immigration policy is about America, and making us stronger in the future. And this rule is consistent with that policy, and frankly that tradition. By ensuring that people who come here won’t eventually be people who would go on welfare, or likely to go on welfare, we strengthen both America and America’s immigration policy, and that is the goal of this rule … I’ll drive it home with a sledgehammer here, America’s immigration system is first and foremost, for the benefit of America. Period.  Cuccinelli’s statement has always been at the center of Americans’ immigration policy, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “The idea of letting [only] people in who can pay their owns bills not only predates the Statue of Liberty, it predates the United States itself,” he told Breitbart News, adding:  The renewed focus on the public charge rule was caused by President Bill Clinton’s decision to loosen the rule, Krikorian said. The immediate “purpose of this new rule is to overturn Orwellian rules by the Clinton administration which narrowed the definition of welfare as much as possible, limiting it only to cash [aid] so that if you were on food stamps, on Medicaid, living in public housing, you would still be considered self-sufficient under those dishonest rules,” he said.  When asked about Cuccinelli’s use of “America” instead of “Americans,” Krikorian replied:  In a sense [the use of ‘America’] is sort of true … But that overriding purpose still leaves the question of which Americans should be helped by immigration law? Every immigration policy can help some Americans and hurt others, so the point of politics is to work that out. Current immigration policy helps monied interests at the expense of poor Americans, and I suppose you can decide that either way but I root for poor Americans … The question is who loses and who gains? Which Americans are being helped and which Americans are being hurt? And who do we think is more important? I think it is more important not to hurt poor Americans [with massive waves of cheap labor] than to provide a very small [financial] benefit to other Americans who own shares in Koch Foods which is using immigration for its [cost-saving] benefit.  However, many pro-migration advocates are ignoring the impact on Americans, he said. “Immigration policy is supposed to benefit Americans, but the advocacy groups seem to focus almost exclusively on whether immigration policies are good for foreigners who are not even here yet. Who are you rooting for? The anti-border people seem to be rooting for foreigners instead of Americans.”  Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university. This total includes about 800,000 Americans who graduate with skilled degrees in business, health care, engineering, science, software, or statistics.  But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of approximately 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including about 1 million H-1B workers and spouses — and around 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.  The government also prints out more than one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.  This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth and returns for investors because it transfers wages to investors and ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.  This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.  The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.  The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the Heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.


breitbart--2019-08-13--Dem Rep Heck Trump Hates All Immigrants Except His In-Laws and Wife

Dem Rep. Heck: Trump 'Hates All Immigrants,' Except His In-Laws and Wife

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Representative Denny Heck (D-WA) reacted to the Trump administration’s new immigration rule by stating that “the president hates all immigrants, except his mother- and father-in-law and his wife, evidently.”  Heck said, “Look, the president hates all immigrants, except his mother- and father-in-law and his wife, evidently. He hates them whether they’re here without documents, they’re here with a green card, they’re here seeking asylum. He hates them all. And the incredible irony of this particular circumstance, Wolf, is, a lot of people here who are on green cards are working in very low-paying jobs that nobody else wants to do, and that’s why they qualify for some of these benefits. He’s not only going to be hurting these families, he’s going to be hurting the local economies, which need these people to fill these jobs.”


breitbart--2019-08-20--New York Times Hides to Smear Donald Trumps Policies as Anti-Immigrant

New York Times Hides $$$ to Smear Donald Trump's Policies as 'Anti-Immigrant'

The paper’s dismissal of economics is buried deep in a long and critical article about Trump’s immigration policy and his top aide, Steven Miller. The dismissal allows the article to comply with the August 12 instructions from the NYT‘s senior editor who urged reporters to treat public debates over immigration policy as racial conflicts, not as disputes over money, wages, salaries, profits, and stock prices.  The article’s subheadline claims the nation’s immigration policy is now driven by hostility towards individual immigrants, not by the widespread public opposition to the painful economic distortions caused by the government’s support for mass migration:  “Behind Mr. Miller’s singular grip on the Trump anti-immigrant agenda are forces far bigger than [Miller’s] own hostility toward the foreign-born.”  The NYT reporter, Jason DeParle, dismissed the public’s concerns about jobs, wages, and housing prices with a few vague sentences crediting unnamed “economists”:  Yet DeParle’s admission of “greater downward pressure” indirectly admits that immigration does exert some downward pressure on wages. His mention of “other forces” also hides the indirect economic effect of mass immigration, such as companies’ ability to break unions by hiring refugees and illegal migrants for jobs in meatpacking, construction, and restaurants.  DeParle also cited the misleading summary issued by the National Academies of Science to cover up the dynamite results of its 643-page, landmark study of immigration economics in 2016. DeParle wrote:  But the summary by the National Academies downplays the data and statements in the report which admit that imported workers cut Americans’ wages.  For example, on page 171 of its September 2016 report, the academies’ experts agreed to a formula which shows that immigration imposes a 5.2 percent income tax on Americans:  The NAS panel declined to state the dollar value of the 5.2 percent immigration tax. But panel member George Borjas, a Harvard economist, calculated the value of the tax at $500 billion a year.  This $500 billion immigration tax is not paid to the government — it is paid by employees to employers and investors who gain whenever wages are lowered by the increased supply of workers jostling and competing for wages. That’s a political boon for Democrats because economic pressure tends to push Americans to vote for the big-spending party.  The immigration tax of $500 billion is a huge loss for the many American families who are already hurt by automation and globalization, by the rising cost of education, housing, childcare and healthcare, and by Wall Street’s constant pressure for spending cuts and payroll curbs. Small wonder that many Americans feel under intense economic pressure to vote for the big-spending  giveaway Democrat Party.  On page 242, the NAS report also showed 18 studies which describe the wage losses caused by the government’s policy of importing labor:  “The evidence suggests that groups comparable to the immigrants in terms of their skill may experience a wage reduction as a result of immigration-induced increases in labor supply, although there are still a number of studies that suggest small to zero effects,” the report said on page 248.  The NAS report also hides the impact of immigration on wages by arguing that wages will rise once the economy expands to provide jobs for all the immigrants, so forcing employers to start paying fair market wages. The summary said, “When measured over a period of ten years or more, the impact of immigration on the wages of natives overall is very small.”  But the problem with NAS ten-year claim is that the long-run never arrives because the government keeps providing roughly 1 million more new legal immigrants each year, plus a population of roughly 1.5 million visa-workers, at least 2 million people with work permits, plus at least 8 million working illegals.  When asked, many economists and even business groups quickly — but reluctantly — admit that wages are cut by the government’s policy of boosting the labor supply with migrants. Breitbart News has extensively covered those admissions.  The Senate’s 2013 “Gang of Eight” immigration bill would have shifted more of the nation’s new wealth from employees over to investors, according to the 2013 study of the bill by the Congressional Budget Office. “The rate of return on capital would be higher [than on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades,” says the report, titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”  The CBO report also repeated the NAS claim that wages would rise once the economy eventually provides jobs for all the new immigrants. “Average wages would be slightly lower than under current law through 2024, primarily because the amount of capital available to workers would not increase as rapidly as the number of workers and because the new workers would be less skilled and have lower wages, on average, than the labor force under current law,” the CBO said. But the promise of a future rise in wages would be dashed if the government again expanded immigration.  In 2016, many establishment media out and staffers for Hillary Clinton’s campaign touted a study by the Wall Street advisory firm Moody’s Analytics. The study said that candidate Donald Trump’s promise to deport migrant labor would raise Americans’ salaries: “As the immigrants leave, the already-tight labor market will get tighter, pushing up labor costs as employers struggle to fill the open job positions. … Mr. Trump’s immigration policies will thus result in… potentially severe labor shortages, and higher labor costs.”  In 2016, Moody’s reported that the deportation of illegals in Arizona spiked Americans’ wages:  The business school at the University of Pennsylvania has issued several reports say that less immigration will slow the expansion of the economy. When pressed by Breitbart News, the group’s leader, economic professor Kent Smetters, admitted that Trump’s 2017 immigration reduction plan would raise Americans’ wages for the next 33 years: “By 2027, wages increase a small amount (0.231%) relative to baseline; by 2040, wages increase by an even smaller amount (0.158%).” The school is backed by several investors who stand to gain from an increased inflow of consumers and cheap workers.  In February 2018, former treasury secretary Robert Rubin told a D.C. meeting at his Hamilton Project that wages rose in the 1990s because there was a shortage of workers. “First in the mid-90s, earlyish, and then rest of the 1990s, as we all know, wages increased at a robust level at all quintiles, and that was in some fair measure, due to tight labor markets, which in turn, at least in my, view, were a function in some fair measure, of good policy.” Rubin’s resume includes 26 years at Goldman Sachs, four years as President Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary and ten years running the Citigroup banking firm, during a decades-long period when Americans’ wages were mostly flat.  Foreign economists admit the obvious. The Central Bank of Ireland recently reported that “an increase in inward migration can help to mitigate overheating dynamics in the labour market … Typically, employment growth at or above the “full employment” level is accompanied by strong growth in wages and prices. As the supply of labour is scarce relative to demand, workers’ bargaining power increases and the price of labour increases.”  Business advocates commonly say immigration has little impact on wages — but also that higher immigration can prevent wage raises. For example, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal wrote in August 2017:  President Barack Obama admitted the obvious several times. For instance, in his January 2016 State of the Union Address, he said: “immigrants aren’t the principal reason wages haven’t gone up enough; those decisions are made in the boardrooms that too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns.” In his 2006 autobiography, Obama wrote “this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole… [but] it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans.”  White-collar graduates also lose salaries and careers to immigration, according to a 2013 report by left-of-center academics:  Mass immigration also reduces employees’ income by forcing them to pay more for housing. The impacts include a claimed $3.7 trillion jump in real estate values, and the increased pressure by elites on other Americans to reduce the “single-family zoning” rules which created suburbia. The same supply and demand factor operates in Ireland, where the Central Bank reported that “Higher migration, however, also increases the demand for housing putting upward pressure on house prices  But the impact is especially clear outside the New York Times‘ front door, where local residents blocked the arrival of Amazon because it would spike rental costs: “An analysis conducted in April by Zillow found that renters’ costs could increase by more than $200 annually in the two cities relative to the real-estate site’s base cases if Amazon were to set up in them,” Business Insider reported November 2018.  In August 2019, the Daily Mail showed how one New York landlord split one apartment lengthwise into nine spaces of five-foot-high rooms, each renting for $600 per month.  The immigration-fueled real-estate growth along the costs is also helping to slow economic growth in America’s heartland. Coastal investors have little need to hire young workers in distant Kansas, Oklahoma or Kentucky because the government keeps flying new foreign workers into Los Angeles, New York, North Carolina, New Jersey, Florida, and Seattle.  This huge shift in population, and the resulting drop in wages has pushed the coastal states further and further into the Democrat columns on election day. In contrast, the GOP does well with young people who can afford homes and families in states with fewer migrants and small wealth gaps.  But DeParle’s effort to dismiss the impact of the economic impact of mass migration complies with his newspaper’s new race-before-money editorial policy.  The policy was described August 12 by executive editor Dean Baquet in a closed-door meeting with reporters and editors, when he said the newspaper is going to focus on the impact of slavery and racism throughout American politics during the runup to the 2020 elections. The public’s worries about migration’s impact wages are to be treated in the same fashion as articles about Fox News, on “anti-immigrant conspiracies,” or religious opposition to abortion, he said:  Even if immigration has no impact on wages and rents, the New York Times article collides with the reality that Trump has repeatedly said he wants to welcome immigrants to the new jobs in his go-go economy. “We want to allow millions of people to come in . . . We have to have legal immigration, not illegal immigration,” Trump said August 7:  The NYT article is not entirely off-base. For example, it does admit that Breitbart’s follow-the-money coverage of the immigration issue has had an impact on Americans’ politics, saying “right-wing populism had long flourished on talk radio, but Breitbart, with few restrictions on space, could cover the issue in greater depth, bringing intense scrutiny to hot-button issues.”  Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university. This total includes about 800,000 Americans who graduate with skilled degrees in business or health care, engineering or science, software, or statistics.  But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately 1 million H-1B workers and spouses — and about 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.  The government also prints out more than one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.  This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth for investors because it transfers wages to investors and ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.  This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.  The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.  The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the Heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, undermines suburbia, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.


breitbart--2019-08-26--Bezos WaPo Business Needs Welfare-Dependent Immigrants to Take US Jobs

Bezos' WaPo: Business Needs Welfare-Dependent Immigrants to Take U.S. Jobs

Despite rising wages for America’s blue-collar and working-class thanks to a tightened labor market, the Post editors write that importing low-income foreign workers is “the obvious antidote to chronic and predictable labor deficits.” To date, there remains about 12 million Americans out of the labor market who are unemployed, under-employed, or discouraged by their job prospects but all of whom want full-time jobs.  A rational immigration system, one that meets the labor market’s demands for workers in an array of skill categories and income levels, is the obvious antidote to chronic and predictable labor deficits. Unfortunately, the Trump administration, heedless of the pleas of employers, has implemented and proposed measures whose effect will deepen existing and future shortages. And it has done so even as the unemployment rate, now 3.7 percent, continues to bump along at near-historic lows. [Emphasis added] A policy announced by the administration this month would impede large numbers of low-income legal immigrants from remaining in the United States, or coming in the first place, if they are judged likely to use public benefits to which they are entitled, including noncash ones such as housing subsidies and health care. The impact would be a dramatic reduction in newcomers, and in existing immigrants eligible to become legal permanent residents, or green-card holders, the final step before full citizenship. By targeting low-income and low-skilled migrants, the rule would perpetuate severe worker shortages in a variety of sectors. [Emphasis added] President Trump has leveraged nativist policies to his political advantage. He has been indifferent to their corrosive long-term economic impact. Far from making America great again, the president’s policies are likely to transform the United States into a second Japan, where an aging population and barriers to immigration have sapped the dynamism and prospects of what was once one of the world’s most dynamic economies. [Emphasis added]  The editorial comes after the Trump administration announced that it would enforce a Clinton-era regulation which effectively prevents welfare-dependent legal immigrants from permanently resettling in the U.S. by obtaining a green card.  The regulation will be a boon for American taxpayers in the form of an annual $57.4 billion tax cut — the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5 million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.  Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” economic model has proven the strongest for blue-collar workers and their wages, which had previously stagnated for decades due to an annual inflow of more than a million low-skilled legal immigrants.  In USA Today, contributor Gad Levanon recently noted how America’s working class is making large gains and helping to close the wage gap between the working-middle class and the wealthy.  “At this point, the reversal in wage inequality is modest,” Levanon writes. “But it is real, and the trends underlying it look likely to last for at least another decade. A continuation would provide extended and welcome relief to America’s working class, after years of wage stagnation in sectors that were shedding jobs.”  The Post publishes pro-mass immigration editorials almost annually. Last year, the Post editors wrote that Trump’s tight labor market for American workers was “reaching crisis proportions” after previously acknowledging that a labor shortage means higher wages and more job opportunities for Americans.  A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal reported how the tightened labor market has given American workers power over corporations and businesses where they negotiate their terms of employment rather than the other way around.  Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s current mass legal immigration system burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants. Similarly, research has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the country’s high immigration levels.  For every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations, their weekly wages are cut by about 0.5 percent, Camarota finds. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.75 percent.  Today, about 17.5 percent of the American workforce is made up of foreign-born workers. About 7.8 million of these foreign-born workers are illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to the latest analysis by Pew Research Center.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-09-05--Poll Increasing Immigration Giving Illegals Right to Vote Most Unpopular 2020 Political Positions

Poll: Increasing Immigration, Giving Illegals Right to Vote Most Unpopular 2020 Political Positions

The latest Harvard/Harris Poll finds that 2020 presidential candidates who want to increase overall immigration to the U.S. — while the country already admits 1.5 million foreign nationals every year — are the least likely to win over American voters.  When all U.S. voters were asked which position would make them the most unlikely to vote for a 2020 presidential candidate, “opening our borders to many more immigrants” topped the list with 64 percent.  Increasing immigration was the top most unpopular position among swing voters, with 66 percent saying they would be unlikely to vote for a 2020 presidential candidate who favors such a policy. Wanting more immigration to the U.S. was also the most unpopular position among Republican voters, conservatives, Trump supporters, voters who identify as “moderates,” white voters, American men, voters without a college degree, rural voters, and suburban voters.  Even among Hispanic voters and black Americans, increasing immigration was the second most unpopular position a 2020 presidential candidate could take — just after increasing taxes to pay for social programs.  Likewise, American voters are nearly unanimously opposed to giving illegal aliens the right to vote, as some left-wing communities have implemented. San Fransisco’s Department of Education, for example, started allowing non-citizens to vote in citywide school board elections last year.  The vast majority of Americans, 85 percent, said they oppose such a policy, including 80 percent of Democrat voters, 86 percent of swing voters, 75 percent of self-described “liberals,” 77 percent of black Americans, and 73 percent of Hispanic voters. Only 15 percent of Americans said they support giving illegal aliens the right to vote in U.S. elections.  At current legal immigration levels, the U.S. is on track to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters in the next two decades. About eight million of those 15 million new foreign-born voters will have arrived in the country through the process known as chain migration, in which newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-09-30--46 Illegal Immigrants from 10 Countries Arrested in Ohio Michigan ICE Operation

46 Illegal Immigrants from 10 Countries Arrested in Ohio, Michigan ICE Operation

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers in Michigan and Ohio carried out a five-day targeted enforcement action which ended on September 25. During the operation, ERO officers arrested 46 individuals, mostly criminals, from 10 different countries, according to information obtained from ICE officials.  Officers arrested mostly criminals with either charges or convictions for serious crimes after illegally entering the United States. Some also had charges for immigration violations and final orders of removal.  Samples of the offenses committed or alleged to have been committed include gross sexual imposition, attempted felonious sexual penetration, importuning, attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, criminal sexual conduct – second degree, driving under the influence of liquor, operating while intoxicated, operating a vehicle while impaired, child endangerment, burglary, controlled substance – delivery / manufacture of marijuana, controlled substance – delivery / manufacture of marijuana (conspiracy), marijuana possession, possession of drugs, negligent assault, illegal entry, aggravated burglary, receiving burglary tools, attempted receiving and concealing stolen property, criminal mischief, retail fraud, disorderly conduct, solicit prostitution, obstruct official business, reckless operation of a vehicle, operating a vehicle without a license, and driving while license suspended.  As examples, ICE officials disclosed the following:  Officials reported the arrested individuals, all men, came to the U.S. from Mexico, Senegal, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cameroon, Iraq, United Kingdom, South Korea, Tanzania, and Honduras.  “ICE focuses its enforcement resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security. However, ICE does not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement,” officials stated. “All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and if found removable by final order, removal from the United States. ICE does not conduct sweeps.”  “Upholding public safety by focusing on removing criminal aliens is at the heart of what ERO officers do every day,” Detroit ERO Field Office Director Rebecca Adducci said in a written statement. “These targeted enforcement actions highlight ICE’s vital role in keeping our communities safe.” The Detroit Area of Responsibility includes Michigan and Ohio.  At the same time as this operation, ERO officers in Texas and Oklahoma arrested an additional 94, Breitbart Texas reported. ERO officers carried out other operations in multiple jurisdictions during this same time period.  Some of the migrants arrested may face federal prosecution for illegal entry after removal. If charged and convicted, the migrant could face up to 2o years in federal prison prior to being removed from the U.S.


breitbart--2019-10-06--E.U. Infighting over Illegal Immigration Grows as Hungary, Poland Cry 'Enough'

As tens of thousands of illegal immigrants continue to enter Europe after crossing by boat from Turkey, Greece said it will call on the European Union to impose sanctions on member states that refuse to accept their share of new arrivals.  A group of central and eastern E.U. nations including Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic have all opposed mandatory E.U. relocation quotas for refugees — an action Greece’s new conservative government says puts an unfair burden on border member states like Greece, Spain, and Italy.  “I will say this clearly: I will raise the issue of specific sanctions for European countries that refuse to take part in a fair distribution of refugees on a European level,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday.  “It is an act of hypocrisy,” he added. “You cannot enjoy the benefits of (border-free travel and trade) and not accept 1,000 or 2,000 refugees as part of EU management of the issue.”  A summer spike in arrivals of migrants and refugees from Turkey has overwhelmed the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios, who already find their migrant reception centres becoming increasingly overcrowded. In just one month, Lesbos received 2,700 migrants, according to one local newspaper.  Other islands, such as Samos, are in even worse situations with one migrant reception centre meant to house just 650 people currently home to over 4,000, as Breitbart News reported.  E.U. migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer were in Turkey and then traveled on to Greece Friday, as European officials look to restart of deportations from Greece to Turkey of migrants whose asylum applications have been rejected or are not in need of international protection.  “Irregular arrivals to Greece increased over the past weeks and months,” Avramopoulos said. “There is an urgent need to further strengthen the prevention and detection of irregular departures from Turkey.”  Around 22,700 migrants are estimated to be living on the various Greek islands in the Aegean, with 42 percent coming from Afghanistan and just 11 percent from Syria.


breitbart--2019-10-14--Trump-Mexico Immigration Deal Breaks Up Caravan of 2000 Migrants

New immigration procedures implemented by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) effectively disbanded a group of 2,000 mostly Central American caravan migrants.  Immigration policies put in place following an agreement between Mexico and the Trump Administration broke up a caravan consisting of approximately 2,000 people from Central America, Africa, and the Caribbean Islands, the Associated Press reported Saturday. The group began to move northward from Tapachula, Chiapas, early one morning last week after being held up for official travel documents. The group quickly encountered Mexican Federal Police and members of the newly formed National Guard.  When the group came upon the police and soldiers, some scattered while others surrendered.  The migrants are provided opportunities to request asylum in Mexico. Instead, the group chose to illegally attempt to move through Mexico to the U.S. border.  “I want to pass through Mexico, I don’t want to live here,” Amado Ramirez expressed. Reportedly traveling with his wife and young children, he said he hoped to obtain documents allowing him to pass through Mexico.  Hundreds of African migrants also attempted to make their way through Mexico but the government stalled their request for visas. “Almost all of them want to seek asylum in the United States, rather than stay in Mexico,” the AP reported.  Stressful conditions turned violent as some of the migrants “engaged in scuffles” with police at the regional immigration office.  Under the agreement between Mexico and the United States, Mexican immigration officials give the migrants two choices — stay in Mexico or leave via Mexico’s southern border. Many are flown back to their countries of origin. African migrants have a more difficult path as their home countries often lack the infrastructure to handle mass repatriations, the AP stated.  Migrant support groups reported that the presence of the National Guard and other law enforcement officials in southern Mexico made the process for moving north very difficult.  Large group migration through Mexico to the U.S. southern border hit a 12-year high during Fiscal Year 2019. However, changes in Mexican policies negotiated by the Trump Administration effectively dropped the numbers from a high mark of nearly 133,000 in May to about 40,000 in September, Breitbart Texas reported. By the end of the fiscal year, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended an estimated 850,000.  Migrant families and unaccompanied minors made up for nearly two-thirds of the apprehensions in the U.S.


breitbart--2019-11-05--NY Times Poll: Conservative Biden Voters Want Less Legal Immigration

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s most conservative supporters say by a majority that they want fewer legal immigrants admitted to the United States every year to reduce foreign competition in the workforce.  A comprehensive survey by the New York Times and Siena College reveals how Biden’s most conservative supporters want less legal immigration to the U.S. — a potential inroad for President Trump and his “America First” agenda.  The survey finds that 41 percent of Biden voters who do not support Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) say women running for president “just aren’t that likable.” These Biden voters, the survey finds, are mostly men and working class who align with Trump on a series of cultural and political issues.  For example, of these Biden voters, a majority of 54 percent said they want to reduce legal immigration levels wherein currently the U.S. admits about 1.2 million mostly low-skilled legal immigrants every year who compete for jobs against working and middle class Americans.  About 55 percent of these conservative Biden voters said discrimination against white Americans is now as big of a problem as discrimination against minorities, and 79 percent said political correctness has “gone too far.”  For years, Trump has pushed to decrease legal immigration levels to boost wages for American workers, open job markets for American graduates, and raise the quality of life for the working class.  In his 2015 promise, Trump demanded a halt to all immigration in order to allow businesses to hire from the existing labor pool. Since then, Trump has endorsed the RAISE Act to cut legal immigration down to 500,000 admissions a year to raise wages and employment.  While the big business lobby, corporate interests, and 2020 Democrats advocate for more legal immigration to the U.S. to increase foreign competition against Americans, about 11.5 million Americans remain either unemployed, underemployed, or out of the labor market – all of whom want full-time jobs.  At the expense of working and middle class Americans, the nation’s legal immigration system has driven the foreign-born workforce to the highest level in decades. Today, 17.5 percent of workers — or 3-in-17 — in the U.S. are immigrants.  In 2018, foreign-born workers were cheaper to hire for employers, earning a median weekly salary of less than $760. At the same time, native- born American workers’ median weekly salary was $910. The data, though, found that while native-born Americans’ wages have been largely stagnant, foreign-born workers have seen their wages rise.  Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s current mass legal immigration system burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants. Similarly, research has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the country’s high immigration levels.  For every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations, their weekly wages are cut by about 0.5 percent, Camarota finds. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.75 percent.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-11-07--Minnesota Town Hikes Taxes to Deal with Mass Immigration Overwhelming Local Schools

Taxpayers in the small town of Worthington, Minnesota hiked taxes to fund an expansion of their school district, since mass immigration has overwhelmed teachers, resources, and classrooms.  This week, Worthington taxpayers voted to approve an additional nearly $34 million in funds to expand the local school district, which has ballooned in class enrollment due to a massive influx of unchecked migration.  For years, Worthington taxpayers had repeatedly rejected providing more tax dollars to the school district — voting down the initiative five times. This time around, there was a major push from immigrant rights organizations to turn out the vote to get more funding.  The story of this small 13,000-resident community in middle America is the latest example of mass immigration’s direct impact on school districts, quality of life issues, and the rights of residents to have a say over the issue.  As Breitbart News reported, mass immigration to Worthington has driven the school district to the brink with a constant flow of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) arriving in the region and newly arrived immigrants sending their children to the region’s schools as they take jobs at the nearby JBS Pork slaughterhouse.  Over the last six years, Worthington has had to absorb more than 400 UACs, who arrived at the nation’s borders primarily from Central America and were resettled in the area.  Projections from an April report by analyst Steven Kopits revealed that by the November 2020 presidential election, nearly one million migrant children may arrive in the U.S. — roughly 800,000 of whom would need to be accommodated by local school districts.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


breitbart--2019-12-07--House Passes Bill Opening Backdoor Immigration Route for Wealthy Chinese

The House quietly passed a bill on December 3 to crack open a backdoor route for wealthy Chinese to buy their way into U.S. citizenship by lending money to the U.S. real estate industry.  Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) portrayed the bill as a boost to trade between the United States and Portugal. But the bill allows wealthy Chinese to get into the United States after first buying Portuguese citizenship.  “Congress is getting duped. … [The bill is] creating a new path for Chinese people,” said one Capitol Hill source.  Wealthy Chinese can buy “golden visa” citizenship from Portugal’s government in as little as 35 days. If House bill H.R. 565 is approved by the Senate and becomes law, then the new Chinese citizens of Portugal will be able to move into the U.S. by getting E-1 Treaty Trader or E-2 Treaty Investor renewable visas.  The bill may have a lot of hidden support in the Senate because it could provide a band-aid fix for the backlogged EB-5 program.  The EB-5 program allows wealthy foreigners to buy green cards by lending money to U.S. businesses, mostly to real estate investors. But the money inflow has shrunk because immigration law seeks to promote diversity among immigrants by capping the annual share of EB-5 green cards that can be bought by people from each country, such as China or India. This “country cap” rule means that new Chinese EB-5 buyers must wait more than ten years to get delivery of their backlogged green cards.  This delay is making it difficult for real estate groups to sell the EB-5 visa to Chinese lenders. The same backlog problem is also hindering the sale of green cards to wealthy Indians. Lobbyists for the EB-5 “Regional Centers” and the real estate industry are trying to kill off the country caps by lobbying for passage of Sen. Mike Lee’s S.386 bill, as well as for passage of EB-5 rewrite which is sponsored by three GOP Senators.  But the Portugal bill could allow Chinese EB-5 buyers to quickly migrate into the United States, where they can live and work while waiting a decade for the delivery of the EB-5 green cards.  David North, an expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, reported:  It was one of those furtive moves by which the open-borders types expand migration to the United States a little bit at a time, while drawing a minimal amount of attention, and certainly no public policy debates. I saw it reported only in a Law360 article that is behind a partial paywall. Now the Treaty Traders (E-1) and Treaty Investor (E-2) program is not the largest of our nonimmigrant worker/investor programs — there were 60,438 admissions in 2018 according to the Department of State — but it operates, with a single exception, without much regulation. The visas are handed out by diplomats overseas, and there is no States-side operation to monitor the program. One of the legal services writing about the program says that one can get the visa with an investment as small as $25,000. In years past I have heard that the sum could be as low as $10,000. It is said to be a system often used by people from Korea to open a dry cleaning business here. The one restraint to the program is that it is limited to nations with whom we have a certain kind of treaty, and those nations do not include the big sending nations such as China, India, and Mexico.  The Portugal bill was slipped through the House, without a recorded vote, by Cicilline, with brief aid from Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA). “Foreign direct investment plays a significant role in the U.S. economy,” Cicilline said, adding:  One of the most important factors and encouraging investments United States is the availability of business related visas, like non immigrant one and E two visas. Allowing Portuguese citizens access to conduct substantial trade between the United States and Portugal, or invest a substantial amount of capital in the United States to qualify for non-immigrant E-1 and E-2 visas will help strengthen U.S.-Portugal ties and promote an increase in Portugal’s investments in the United States. Extending visas to Portugal not only gives Portuguese businesses an opportunity to invest in United States, but it’s a mutually beneficial relationship that promotes jobs in both countries and growth in the United States’ businesses and in our economy.  The bill was also backed by Democrat leaders, including Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. In a statement, he said:  Cline briefly endorsed the bill, saying:  In the Senate, three GOP senators are pushing a new EB-5 bill that would a reform regulation set in place by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency. The bill would also steer the foreign EB-5 money away from rural areas and back towards real-estate projects in wealthy cities.  The bill is supported by Sens. Mike Rounds (R-SD), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). The bill does not yet have enough support to pass the Senate, but Graham may try to include it in the 2021 funding bills.  The EB-5 bill is just one small part of Washington’s immigration policies which widen the wealth gap between coastal and heartland states.  For roughly 30 years, immigration has supercharged the economic growth in the coastal states. The vast supply of visa workers and legal immigrants arriving at Los Angeles International Airport, for example, means that California investors can ignore the pool of American labor in heartland states. The coastal investors can fund new job creation centers close to their neighborhoods, and fill those jobs with the legal immigrants who arrive daily from India, Africa, South America, and Asia.  The flow of government-supplied labor denies jobs, investments, opportunities, and wealth to many Americans in slower-growing, lower-priced, interior towns.  States, communities, and families expend a massive effort to birth, rear, and educate millions of young Americans — but coastal investors can ignore them and simply hire workers imported from around the world.  The shift in power from families to investors — and the resulting regional wealth gap — is spotlighted by a 2018 report from the Economic Innovation Group, “From Great Recession to Great Reshuffling”:


breitbart--2019-12-23--Study: Immigration to Redistribute 26 Congressional Seats to Blue States for 2022 Election

The nation’s illegal and legal immigration system will help shift 26 congressional seats, primarily from red states, and redistribute them to mostly blue states next year, according to new analysis.  Every year, the United States imports about 1.2 million legal immigrants who largely arrive to reunite with foreign relatives already in the country. This level of annual legal immigration is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of foreign workers who arrive on work visas every year and nearly a million illegal aliens who successfully enter the U.S.  Research by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler finds that annual illegal and legal immigration to the U.S. will redistribute political power in the form of 26 House seats away from a number of red states and towards massively populated blue states like California and New York.  “To put this number in perspective, changing the party of 21 members of the current Congress would flip the majority in the U.S. House,” Camarota and Zeigler note.  Ohio, a swing state that voted for President Trump in 2016, will get three fewer congressional seats in 2020 due to mass immigration in other states. Michigan and Pennsylvania, also states that voted for Trump in 2016, will each have two fewer congressional seats. Wisconsin, a Trump-supporting swing state, will have its congressional seats cut by at least one.  Red states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia, Camarota and Zeigler predict, will all get one less congressional seat in 2020. Smaller blue states such as Minnesota and Rhode Island will each receive one less congressional seat.  Those seats cut from mostly red states will be redistributed to California, the most immigration-inundated state in the country. California, by 2020, is set to gain 11 congressional seats solely due to the fact that noncitizens, rather than just American citizens, are counted in congressional apportionment.  Likewise, New York — where nearly 40 percent of residents are foreign-born — is set to gain four more congressional seats and New Jersey, with a more than 22 percent foreign-born population, will also take an additional two congressional seats.  Texas, which has become increasingly blue due to immigration and out-of-state young people, will gain another four congressional seats, as will the swing state of Florida with its foreign-born population of 4.1 million.  The deeply blue states of Illinois and Massachusetts, both of which went 55 to 60 percent for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, will each gain one congressional seat.  As Breitbart News has chronicled for years, the counting of only American citizens to divide up congressional districts and electoral college votes would shift power away from the affluent, metropolitan coastal cities of the U.S. and towards middle America.  If congressional districts were set by the number of citizens, the overall average population needed per congressional seat could decrease to about 670,000 citizens per district. This would give a stronger advantage for states with small illegal alien populations to gain and keep their current number of congressional seats.  Camarota and Zeigler’s research is one component of how overall immigration is aiding in shifting power to Democrats and metropolitan cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. In the upcoming 2020 election, about 1-in-10 U.S. voters will have been born outside the country.  Ronald Brownstein, senior editor for The Atlantic, noted this year that nearly 90 percent of House congressional districts with a foreign-born population above the national average were won by Democrats. This means that every congressional district with a foreign-born population exceeding roughly 14 percent had a 90 percent chance of being controlled by Democrats and only a ten percent chance of electing a Republican.  The New York Times and Axios admit that legal immigration at its current rate will continue shifting the American electorate more towards Democrat control, as discovered in the 2016 presidential election between then-candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  Among native-born Americans, Trump won 49 percent to Clinton’s 45 percent, according to exit polling data. Among foreign-born residents, Clinton dominated Trump, garnering 64 percent of the immigrant population’s vote compared to Trump’s mere 31 percent.  John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


cbsnews--2019-01-14--Shutdown could cancel thousands more immigration hearings

Nearly 43,000 immigration hearings have already been canceled due to the government shutdown, bumping immigrants out of court dates that took years to secure, according to a new report. And tens of thousands more hearings will soon be in jeopardy if the shutdown continues. Attorneys say migrants may have to wait up to four years in some areas to have their hearings rescheduled after the government reopens.  The partial government shutdown has closed most immigration courts, effectively cancelling 42,729 hearings from December 24 through January 11, according to the report from Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Each additional week the government is shut down will cancel another 20,000 hearings. If the shutdown continues through all of January, that means more than 100,000 individuals will have had their hearings postponed, according to TRAC.  "The longer this continues the impact will be disastrous to an already overworked and understaffed Immigration Court system," said Alan Pollock, a New Jersey-based immigration attorney, in an interview with CBS News. After tomorrow, Pollock will have had 12 hearings canceled.  Once the government reopens, those court appearances will get added to the immigration court's record-high 800,000-case backlog, which has grown by 49 percent since President Trump took office in January 2017, according to TRAC. Several Trump administration immigration policies have dumped previously inactive cases onto the court's docket, making it difficult to process regular immigration hearings. Between the shutdown and those policies, immigration professionals estimate the backlog could climb to 1.1 million cases.  "The irony is that if they don't have their day in court they can't get deported, so if you want to deport people quickly, this is the exact opposite way to do it," said Jeremy McKinney, a North Carolina-based immigration attorney, who referred to the immigration courts as a "deporting machine."  Most people in the immigration court system have been waiting years for their hearings to take place, said Sui Chung, a Miami-based immigration attorney, in an interview with CBS News. While most have waited between one and three years, some with canceled hearings due to the shutdown have waited up to 13 years, according to Chung, who conducted a survey last week among thousands of immigration attorneys to determine the impact of the shutdown.  Because of the backlog, it could be years before their cases are rescheduled, immigration attorneys said. In North Carolina, new dates for immigration hearings aren't available until late 2020 and early 2021, according to McKinney. In previous shutdowns, he was able to reschedule canceled hearings within three months. In Houston, hearings aren't being scheduled until as late as 2022, Ruby Powers, an immigration attorney, told CBS News.  The Executive Office for Immigration Review, an arm of the Department of Justice that oversees all immigration courts, did not respond to calls requesting comment. Calls to the office were sent to voicemail, where a recording said it would not be handling press inquiries due to the government shutdown.


cbsnews--2019-01-22--Immigration by the numbers

Immigration by the numbers

On this week's episode of the "Where Did You Get This Number?" podcast, host Anthony Salvanto explores U.S. immigration statistics, how they're derived, and what they mean for the country.  Public opinion on whether immigrants are a burden or strength to the country have changed significantly during the past 20 years, according to Mark Hugo Lopez, director of global migration and demography research at the Pew Research Center.  "So for example, back in the '90s, two-thirds of Americans would have seen immigrants, or said immigrants were a burden to the country because they take jobs, health care, etc." said Lopez. "Today on the other hand though, about two-thirds of Americans will say, or more than half I should say, that immigrants are actually a strength for the United States because of the talents that they bring."  Pew surveys have also found that there seems to be some sort of connection between knowing or living close to immigrants and having a more positive view of immigrants.  "So these results that we found about Republicans living near the border having a somewhat different point of view does reflect as a general finding that the closer you are to immigrants or immigrant communities, the more likely you are to have a different view of immigrants than somebody who lives farther away," Lopez said.  About one-quarter of the over 40 million immigrants in the United States are unauthorized, and one of the main ways that figure has been calculated is with birth and census records from other countries, according to Randy Capps, director of research at the Migration Policy Institute. Capps referred to the years when most of the unauthorized immigrants coming into the country were from Mexico.  "We have good birth records [from Mexico] and we can add up that and compare it to the Mexican census, and that could tell us how many Mexicans could potentially have left the country and come to the U.S.," Capps said. "And the other benchmark is how many people might have entered the country illegally across the border with Mexico or might have come in legally, but then decided to overstay their visa."  Capps also said that there is a misconception that Mexico is sending the most unauthorized immigrants now.  "The big Asian countries of China and India are sending more people to the U.S. each year now than Mexico," Capps said. "Also, it's not just a matter of the border. Probably 60, 70 percent now of the unauthorized immigrants in the country are coming in by overstaying their visa, not by crossing the border."  To hear more of our discussions on immigration in the United States, download the "Where Did You Get This Number?" podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or Spotify. New episodes are available every other Monday.