Category: Immigration

…whether they are federal or local. Same pocket gets picked in the end: yours.

So my question is this: If the open border crisis is “…crushing city budgets…”, leading to demands for federal aid, why should we believe that shifting the costs to the federal government won’t just crush their budget instead? Is it really any different if the money comes from federal taxes rather than local taxes?

Denver mayor pleads for nationally coordinated effort on migrant crisis as city nears ‘breaking point’

The real solution is to enforce federal immigration law and stop illegal immigration. How about we try that instead of breaking our federal budget, eh?

(* For those who are acronym-challenged, “Not In My Back Yard”)

New York City is clearly a “sanctuary” city – notice how they welcome illegal immigrants:

NYC Mayor Adams sues bus companies dropping off migrants for $700M

But, wait – isn’t the only real question here whether or not these “immigrants” wanted to go to New York? Haven’t the courts already decided that free travel is a right guaranteed by the Constitution? If so, then who is New York to limit their means of travel by punishing those who transport them?

Hypocrisy aside, it seems that New York really wants to treat these “immigrants” as second-class citizens.  I hope the courts recognize this New York law restricting travel for what it is – an infringement of constitutional rights. In any event, the real problem is the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border – not Texas attempting to spread the joy!

PS: So what happens when immigrants living in New York pay to bus in their illegal relatives, and then register them for state services so that they don’t have to pick up the tab for their support? I wonder how many of them will be charged under this statute? Since there’s no political benefit, my guess is none…

…how much money the border states will get, assuming New York gets their requested $654 million from FEMA. My guess? None.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams says ‘migrant crisis’ under Biden administration has ‘destroyed’ city

 New York has received ~4500 migrants/month, with ~55,000 arriving in the past year. For those of you who don’t understand the economic cost, it is reported that more than 34,000 migrants are currently wards of the city – at great taxpayer expense. Think not? From the same article cited above:

In a memo from the New York City Office of Management, reported by the New York Post, the city will spend an estimated $4.2 billion on costs related to migrants and asylum seekers that would be spent through June 30, 2023, and the end of fiscal year 2024.

And that’s just for New York. In contrast, last year migrant border crossings at border states exceeded 2.76 million.

Interestingly, back in August DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas criticized Texas for busing migrants to D.C. and New York, stating:

“These cities have certain capacities,” he said. “They have infrastructure to address the needs of migrants, and we need to calibrate the movement of people, according to their capacity and their efficiencies. And that is not being done.”

So the capacities of Texas are of no concern, only those of D.C.,  New York, and other liberal strongholds matter? DHS has allowed hundreds of thousands of “migrants” across the border each month, but Texas and other border states are expected to keep and support them all rather than “spread the joy” to the liberal sanctuaries who have demanding open borders in the first place?

RUFKM?!?

NYC Mayor Eric Adams is whining about receiving approximately 21,000 migrants since last year. Border towns like El Paso Texas receive nearly 30,000 in a single month. So let me see….. 21,000 per year vs. more than 300,000? RUFKM??

NYC Mayor Eric Adams pleads with White House for more help on migrant crisis

Adam’s solution? Put the federal government in charge of migrant travel, coordinating their movements so as to prevent their being shipped to NYC.

“I have a Republican governor dumping on my city,” Adams said.

Welcome to El Paso, where a Democrat President is dumping 1,000 illegal immigrants per day. By the way, based on the NYC population  at 8.8M and the U.S. at 330M, NYC should have received some 55,000 immigrants last year – not a paltry 21,000.

Suck it up, Mr. Mayor, and put on your big boy pants. If you want to limit illegal immigration to the Big Apple, then limit it for everywhere else, too. Tell your fellow Democrat President Biden to get control of the border!

Trump had a policy that worked? A policy that the Democrats resoundingly opposed?

US, Mexico to announce deal reinstating Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy: report

Who’d have thought?

While I can appreciate the sentiment, I don’t think this will get past the courts:

Trump orders Census not to count undocumented immigrants for awarding congressional seats

President Trump’s alleged method to negate this incentive is fraught with problems. Trump’s claim (according to the news article above) is that the term “person” is not defined in the Constitution, in particular with respect to Article 1 Section 2 and the 14th amendment, and therefor he can define it to exclude illegal aliens. However, the 14th amendment includes the following text:

“…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”

I don’t think anyone would assert that the clause above would not also apply to illegal aliens (think about it…). Thus, the 14th amendment effectively includes illegal aliens in its definition of “person”. QED.

That’s not to say I disagree completely with Trump’s sentiments. Counting illegal aliens towards the apportionment of congressional representatives provides a perverse incentive for states to ignore – nay, thwart – immigration laws. Immigration is the sole domain of the federal government, and states should be taken to the woodshed for actively seeking to bypass the federal immigration system for their own gain.  I just don’t believe that Trump’s position is tenable.

Better luck next time, Skippy.

Fox News and NPR are both reporting that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued regulations requiring foreign students to leave the country if their colleges go to 100% on-line classes due to Covid-19. Immigration supporters are against this new ruling. One immigration attorney is alleged to have said “This makes no sense.” However, it makes perfect sense.

The student visa program is not about people coming here to permanently live; it’s about people getting an education from an American university, then going home to do good with that education in their own country. If they can get that same education remotely, then why should they remain in the U.S.? To put it in a more clear light: If American universities had always been on-line only would we have allowed foreign students to come here at all, or simply given them remote access to our education system?

Many seem to consider the student visa program a path to more permanent residency. NPR quotes the same immigration attorney as saying:

“This is not the America that I think foreign students come to live in.”

Exactly.

Editors note: I would agree with foreign students remaining in the U.S. if the school’s transition to online classes were openly declared temporary. Classroom and group learning, in my opinion, offers a significant advantage over on-line learning, with classroom and study group participation being integral and necessary components for learning complex subjects. Forcing a foreign student to incur the expense of returning home only to come back to the U.S. the following semester would be an unfair burden to the student.

The State Department is trying to discourage “birth tourism”. This is when someone comes to the U.S. on a visitor’s visa to have their baby, thus imparting U.S. citizenship to the child. Some argue that this will permit the parents to leverage the child as an “anchor baby” (allowing them to stay or emigrate to the U.S.), or permit the child once grown to move to the U.S. and then petition for residency of the parents.

I understand the State Department’s concern. I’m not prepared to debate the full intent of the 14th amendment here, but I doubt that its intent was to grant citizenship to the children of visitors (legal or not). However, I think that we may have another means of discouraging this practice.

The United States requires that all its citizens, even those residing outside of the U.S., to pay income tax. How about we start leveraging this new source of revenue and demand current and back tax payments from all of the now (and future) grown “anchor babies” living outside of the U.S.? And if someone wants to exert their dormant U.S. citizenship after growing up abroad, how about we require they provide proof of past earnings and the payment of all back taxes – complete with civil and criminal penalties?

I’m sure that many of these children (with dual citizenship) will simply ignore their American heritage when it is inconvenient, but if it can be proven that they have failed to pay taxes or hid wealth by banking as non-Americans then they should be charged, jailed and fined for their actions.

Let’s see how long it is before some of these children start renouncing their citizenship, once they are forced to meet their income reporting and tax obligations.