Many Americans care about the dangers of mass immigration. Are they right to be concerned? In what follows, I’ll try to show that they are right. Immigration of elements hostile to American values does indeed pose a grave threat. But, if we are libertarians, don’t we have to defend “open borders”? I will argue that we don’t.
One of the most obvious reasons mass immigration is a problem is its immense cost—hundreds of billions of dollars. A post from November 2023 that appeared on Judicial Watch explains:
“Mass illegal immigration resulting from the Biden administration’s open border policies is costing American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars to provide an unprecedented number of migrants with medical treatment, housing, education, and other welfare services, not to mention law enforcement. A new congressional report that includes federal and state figures reveals the shocking price of supporting an estimated 16.8 to 29 million illegal aliens currently living in the United States. The “net cost of illegal immigration is greater than the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of 15 different states,” according to the lengthy report, published this week by the House Committee on Homeland Security. “Illegal immigration costs every American taxpayer a net average of $956—or $1,156 before the taxes paid by illegal aliens are factored in.”
Healthcare is among the biggest expenses with Medicaid costs for “emergency services for undocumented aliens” exceeding $12.4 billion in the last two years, according to figures provided to committee members by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In fiscal year 2022, which ended in September, improper Medicaid payouts across the U.S. totaled more than $80 billion with around $8 billion going to illegal aliens. In New York City hospitals recorded about 30,000 visits by illegal immigrants in the past year along with approximately 300 births. A Yuma County, Arizona lawmaker recently testified before Congress that the maternity ward and emergency room at Yuma Regional Medical Center has incurred over $26 million in uncompensated costs for illegal immigrants.
Housing migrants is another huge expense that is forecasted to reach as much as $451 billion, according to figures cited in the congressional report. New York City alone is on track to spend over $12 billion by 2023 to provide shelter for tens of thousands of illegal aliens that have arrived since spring 2022. Chicago is spending north of $20 million a month to “house and support” illegal aliens and Washington D.C. is doling out more than $52 million to house the large groups of migrants that have settled into the capital area recently. “Because [DHS Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas refuses to follow the law requiring him to detain and remove illegal aliens, towns and cities across the country have been forced to pick up the costs of housing and providing shelter for the hundreds of thousands that have been released into their communities,” the report states. “This reality has been documented everywhere from small towns thousands of miles from the border, all the way to America’s largest cities.”
Education and law enforcement are two other major expenses for the U.S. government, states, and local municipalities nationwide. Nearly four million illegal aliens attend public schools around the country and most receive special services for Limited English Proficiency (LEP) costing American taxpayers nearly $59 billion. New York City alone is spending around $440 million to educate about 11,500 illegal aliens who will likely remain in the system next year. Police expenditures provided by the National Institute of Corrections reveal that illegal immigrants cost states nearly $9 billion in 2022 with judicial expenses around $3.72 billion and prison costs about $6.2 billion. Department of Justice (DOJ) statistics cited in the report disclose that 25,000 criminal aliens are in federal prisons at an annual price tag of approximately $40,000 per incarcerated individual, which means taxpayers are doling out nearly $1 billion to lock up criminal illegal aliens.
Other migrant costs include billions of dollars for transportation and welfare benefits such as food stamps. In fiscal year 2022 the government spent around $5.8 billion to provide millions of illegal immigrants with food stamps, according to figures provided in the new congressional report. Another welfare program known as Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) that gives low-income pregnant women and their children up to the age of five nutritious food disperses over $1.3 billion in benefits each year to illegal immigrants. Transportation costs listed in the document include more than $75 million in Texas to transfer migrants from the state, around $3.5 million for dozens of buses that departed Arizona to Washington D.C. and $12 million to the Florida Department of Transportation for illegal alien relocation. Additionally, the federal government spent at least $340 million transporting illegal immigrants into the interior last year and $660 million to relocate alien family units and minors, which are classified as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).” See this.
If immigration costs so much, why do brain-dead Biden and his gang of neocon controllers support it? One answer is that it is a way of getting votes for their party. In fact, importing enough immigrants into America will ensure that the Democrats will never lose an election. Martin Armstrong gives a good explanation of what the Biden gang has planned for us:
“The Biden Administration is deliberately trying to allow illegal aliens in, grant them residency, and then voting rights before the November 2022 election. Biden sent his proposal to Congress in January 2021 that he calls the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which includes:
- Create an earned roadmap to citizenship for undocumented individuals.The bill allows undocumented individuals to apply for temporary legal status, with the ability to apply for green cards after five years if they pass criminal and national security background checks and pay their taxes.
- Keep families together.
- Embrace diversity. The bill includes the NO BAN Act that prohibits discrimination based on religion and limits presidential authority to issue future bans.
- Promote immigrant and refugee integration and citizenship.
- Grow our economy.
- Protect workers from exploitation and improve the employment verification process.
It has been argued that Biden intends to grant 11 million illegal aliens citizenship to tip the balance of power to the Democrats. Some fear that this may be as much as 20 million, and the Democrats hope this will end the Republican Party. I have told the story of how I was negotiating for Hong Kong to try to buy land in Australia. I met with former Prine Minister Paul Keating, who was Secretary of the Treasury at the time. After much frustration of not being able to get a deal, I asked if this was a racist issue. He replied, no. If he let the people from Hong Kong in, they would vote conservative and change the balance of political power, for he was Labour. I have first-hand knowledge of how they look at immigration solely on the political mix. This is all about wiping out Republicans and creating a welfare-dependent society that gives them the authority to oppress those who actually produce.
Biden is pushing Congress to do this ASAP. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has already ordered authorities to prioritize illegal immigrants for deportation who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security” — claiming that the government does not have the resources to apprehend every person who has entered the US unlawfully. Thus, ONLY those deemed to be a threat to national security will be deported. This is an open invitation for all of South America to come to the USA and get Guaranteed Basic Income. Skills will no longer be required. Reports are that hundreds of thousands are now headed to the border. Europeans are not welcome, but anyone without skills is welcome.” See here.
The pro-immigrationists have a counter-argument that we need to consider. They say that immigrants bring many economic benefits to America, and this has to be weighed against the costs of immigration that we have discussed. In fact, though, the claimed benefits are imaginary. They are propaganda by elite groups who are seeking their own gains, at the expense of the American people. Brandon Smith tells us who is behind the pro-immigration agenda:
“I have said it many times in the past but I think it bears repeating once again: If you want to understand why world events happen the way they do, you must understand the goals and influence of globalist institutions. You must accept the fact that these people create most of the national and international disasters you and I have to deal with on a regular basis and oftentimes they create these disasters deliberately.
Yes, I know, there are plenty of skeptics out there that think all geopolitics and crisis events are random or a product of bureaucratic stupidity; and those people are wrong. They have no idea what they’re talking about because they’re basing this conclusion on assumptions rather than facts and research. Make no mistake, there’s a good reason why it feels like the whole world has gone crazy all at once.
The primary purpose of the globalists is to erase national borders and homogenize all countries and cultures under one economic and governmental system. They have openly admitted to this plan on numerous occasions. One of the most revealing quotes on the agenda comes from Clinton Administration Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot, who stated in Time magazine that:
“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority… National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
He adds in the same article a lesser known quote:
“…The free world formed multilateral financial institutions that depend on member states’ willingness to give up a degree of sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund can virtually dictate fiscal policies, even including how much tax a government should levy on its citizens. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade regulates how much duty a nation can charge on imports. These organizations can be seen as the protoministries of trade, finance and development for a united world.”
The people who push for this agenda are generally members of a number of globalist organizations, from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Tavistock Institute to the World Economic Forum to the IMF or World Bank, not to mention the Bank for International Settlements and the Council For Inclusive Capitalism. However, these think-tank groups are only part of the bigger picture. They are supported by some of the largest banking and investment corporations in the world, including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, HSBC, Vanguard, Blackrock, etc.
If you want to know why mass illegal immigration is a growing crisis at this time and why the current government has been actively trying to enforce an open border police in the US, simply look into the financial aspects of pro-illegal immigration lobbying groups and think tanks pushing open borders messaging into the mainstream. You will find many of these banks and investment funds connected to them in one way or another.
For example, the list of companies backing the Governor of New York’s plan to subsidize illegal aliens entering the state is very revealing. If they’re allowed to continue offering incentives to illegals then those people will continue trying to come to the US; this isn’t complicated. The conspiracy is out in the open.
Admitting To The Agenda, Then Painting It As A Positive
For the first few years of Joe Biden’s presidency, he and his cohorts attempted to deny there was any mass illegal migration problem at all. However, when media coverage (mostly independent) began to expose the enormous caravans of illegals overwhelming border towns like El Paso, Texas, he was forced to acknowledge that the crisis was in fact a crisis.
But, if you thought that forcing Biden to admit to the migrant disaster was going to force him to do something about it, you were sorely mistaken. The reason mass immigration exists right now is exactly because the Biden Administration and globalist institutions are offering free handouts to “asylum seekers.” All they have to do to stop the rising tide of illegals is to stop offering them free stuff. Clearly, the political elites have no intention of doing this.
Instead, government officials, think-tanks and the media have decided that since they’re now pressed to admit that mass immigration and open borders are real, they’re going to spin the crisis as if it’s actually a good thing for America.
In a narrative similar to the one used by EU officials to justify their support of the invasion of Islamic fundamentalists from 2014 onward, American elites claim that western nations are “desperate for a younger population” which can fill the “needs of the labor market.” They claim than mass migrations into the west are “good for the economy.”
This was also the primary message of a World Economic Forum conference on migration and labor held in March. The globalist organization discussed how open borders and mass immigration could be framed as a “positive” in terms of economic advantages. And the talking points derived from WEF events always find their way into the corporate media. The main takeaway? Protectionism (of national borders) is bad and countries that engage in it will be at an economic disadvantage.
Since last month there’s been a hailstorm of establishment media articles and news reports suggesting that mass immigration will boost GDP and make America stronger. These assertions are all built on a single line from a single report from the Congressional Budget Office which states:
“In our projections, the deficit is also smaller than it was last year because economic output is greater, partly as a result of more people working. The labor force in 2033 (EDITOR’S NOTE: Do they mean 2023?) is larger by 5.2 million people, mostly because of higher net immigration. As a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise. We are continuing to assess the implications of immigration for revenues and spending.”
Bloomberg recently published an article boasting that this line from the CBO report shows that the rising fears among Americans over illegal immigration are unfounded. They question why the migrant crisis is a top issue going into the 2024 elections and cite a number of major banking institutions that have adjusted their US fiscal outlook into the positive because of the CBO’s data point and higher immigration. Bloomberg quotes the HSBC:
“Immigration is not just a highly charged social and political issue, it is also a big macroeconomic one,” Janet Henry, global chief economist at HSBC Holdings Plc, wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. No advanced economy is benefiting from immigration quite like the U.S., and “the impact of migration has been an important part of the U.S. growth story over the past two years.”
Firstly, let’s clarify something in terms of the CBO’s theory – The US deficit has fallen in direct correlation to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. It’s more expensive to borrow for everyone, including the government, which makes it more expensive to spend. Because of far higher interest payments the US is now adding over $1 Trillion every 100 days to the national debt. That’s unprecedented.
Any spending cuts can be directly attributed to higher interest rates, NOT immigration. The CBO mentions this fact very quickly in the same report, without elaborating on why they think immigrants add value. But let’s consider the GDP claim for a moment; why would the CBO expect higher immigration to add $7 trillion to the GDP in the next ten years?
They say it’s about more people working, but what about more people taking welfare and other subsidies? Neither the CBO (nor the media) make any distinction between legal migrants and illegal migrants when it comes to economic effects.
Legal migrants usually have careers, business plans, skill sets and their own money coming into the US. Most illegals have nothing – Little education, no substantial skill sets, no money and no plan other than to get free handouts wherever possible. We have seen the proof of this in places like New York and Washington DC, where a tiny percentage of migrants bused into the cities have absolutely crushed their welfare infrastructure.
It’s estimated that the net lifetime cost of each illegal immigrant for the American taxpayer is over $68,000. While some illegals do end up paying taxes, their overall cost is far higher than the amount they pay in.
The jobs market has been inflated by trillions in Federal Reserve stimulus and most of the jobs created are low wage retail and service positions that will disappear in a couple years anyway. The CBO notes in the same report that unemployment is set to increase in 2024, but the media overlooked that little tidbit of information.
Migrants are not needed to keep the labor market going. In fact, as jobs numbers inevitably plummet due to higher interest rates illegals will only add to jobless levels and poverty levels in the US, further dragging the economy down.
Not to mention, the American housing market has suffered an oppressive spike in prices, with home costs and rents in many places doubling. This is caused in part by the millions of migrants entering the country each year looking for housing and getting help from US government programs to secure that housing. Get rid of the illegals and I guarantee rent costs will go down quickly.
Almost all of the projected GDP gain from illegal immigrants comes from their wages which go into their pockets (the same wages they send back to their families in their home countries). There is no direct GDP gain from illegals in terms of benefits to the overall economy. That said, the CBO may also be accounting for another factor which many Americans are unaware of – Government spending being added to GDP.
As I’ve noted in the past, a large portion of GDP calculated by state governments and the federal government comes from spending. The more the government spends the higher GDP climbs. It doesn’t matter if that money was wasted, it is still counted as rising economic activity.
So, if the US is adding 2-3 million illegals per year to the population and the government is spending thousands in tax dollars per year on each illegal through various subsidies, that will amount to billions per year in extra GDP. And the more they allow illegals to enter the country unchecked the more GDP can grow exponentially. Is that good for the economy? No. It’s going to destroy the economy and we are already seeing the effects, but the government and the media can spin it to look like it’s a positive.
The head of the CBO is a Republican but he’s also a former member of the IMF, so it’s not surprising he would paint mass immigration as a positive. The globalists want to end national sovereignty and the fastest way to do that is to create open border conditions, kill domestic economies, erase western culture and then swoop in with a “global solution” after the dust settles. This is the plan; to destabilize the US economic system, not save it. And, illegal immigrants are a useful tool for that end game.” See here.
But even more important than the economic costs of immigration are the cultural costs. We are being flooded by people from alien cultures, exactly the way Jean Raspail described in his famous novel The Camp of the Saints. The great Ralph Raico brilliantly describes this novel:
“For many of us, this crisis will bring to mind the book of the French writer, Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints. It was published in 1973, the first edition in English appeared two years later. All the Great and the Good savaged it as hateful, xenophobic, and foolishly paranoid. As you know, our own Charles Burris has stated, “It is unquestionably the most powerful novel I have ever read.”
Raspail was a prominent figure in French literary circles, a contrarian in that milieu, who proudly proclaimed himself “a man of the right.” What he elegantly describes in his demographic dystopia is the end of the West.
A huge flotilla is approaching the French Mediterranean coast, with a million of the huddled masses from the slums of Calcutta, seeking a better life for themselves in the affluent West. Half-hearted attempts to block their passage are denounced by the Great and the Good as unchristian, sheer hateful racism.
The flotilla lands, and in the novel’s central metaphor, the Ganges comes to Provence.
Provence, a land so pleasant and attractive that the Romans, who covered it with villas and towns, roads and aqueducts, called it simply the Province.
The current inheritors of this ancient terrain are abashed, guilt-ridden over their affluence. The envious invaders, on the other hand, are adamant and single-minded.
Aided by a fifth column, the multitude of Third-Worlders already present as servants and laborers, they take over the homes and estates of the French, who flounder and retreat before them.
Now the floodgates open, and masses of the underprivileged and oppressed stream into France and then across western Europe. The Europeans are psychologically defenseless. Their priests and pastors, their elite academics and media spokesmen, all the Great and the Good have convinced them. They know themselves to be guilty of centuries of ruthless imperialism and racist oppression, of having wreaked death and destruction throughout the world. The white race is indeed, what Susan Sontag called it: “the cancer of humanity.”
The last holdouts are the Swiss. But threatened by The International Community, Switzerland finally surrenders and opens its borders.
Radio Luxembourg plays Mozart until it, too, like every other independent voice, is forced to close down.
A very sad and depressing book. But some say a very prescient book as well.” See here.
Even if immigration is bad for America, though, aren’t we libertarians committed to “open borders”? Murray Rothbard, the greatest of all libertarians, did not think so:
“The question of open borders, or free immigration, has become an accelerating problem for classical liberals. This is first, because the welfare state increasingly subsidizes immigrants to enter and receive permanent assistance, and second, because cultural boundaries have become increasingly swamped. I began to rethink my views on immigration when, as the Soviet Union collapsed, it became clear that ethnic Russians had been encouraged to flood into Estonia and Latvia in order to destroy the cultures and languages of these peoples. Previously, it had been easy to dismiss as unrealistic Jean Raspail’s anti-immigration novel The Camp of the Saints, in which virtually the entire population of India decides to move, in small boats, into France, and the French, infected by liberal ideology, cannot summon the will to prevent economic and cultural national destruction. As cultural and welfare-state problems have intensified, it became impossible to dismiss Raspail’s concerns any longer.
However, on rethinking immigration on the basis of the anarcho-capitalist model, it became clear to me that a totally privatized country would not have “open borders” at all. If every piece of land in a country were owned by some person, group, or corporation, this would mean that no immigrant could enter there unless invited to enter and allowed to rent, or purchase, property. A totally privatized country would be as “closed” as the particular inhabitants and property owners desire. It seems clear, then, that the regime of open borders that exists de facto in the U.S. really amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state, the state in charge of all streets and public land areas, and does not genuinely reflect the wishes of the proprietors.
Under total privatization, many local conflicts and “externality” problems—not merely the immigration problem—would be neatly settled. With every locale and neighborhood owned by private firms, corporations, or contractual communities, true diversity would reign, in accordance with the preferences of each community. Some neighborhoods would be ethnically or economically diverse, while others would be ethnically or economically homogeneous. Some localities would permit pornography or prostitution or drugs or abortions, others would prohibit any or all of them. The prohibitions would not be state imposed, but would simply be requirements for residence or use of some person’s or community’s land area. While statists who have the itch to impose their values on everyone else would be disappointed, every group or interest would at least have the satisfaction of living in neighborhoods of people who share its values and preferences. While neighborhood ownership would not provide Utopia or a panacea for all conflict, it would at least provide a “second-best” solution that most people might be willing to live with.” See here.
Let’s do everything we can to secure our borders and block brain dead-Biden and his gang of neocon controllers from destroying us. Read More