Category: Immigration

Domestic Policy, Immigration

Immigration – The New Slavery

Bob Claude |
19th-century New York City tenement dwellers escaping the heat

If I could I would have the kind of restriction which would not allow any immigrant to come here unless I was content that his grandchildren would be fellow-citizens of my grandchildren. They will not be so if he lives in a boarding house at $2.50 per month with ten other boarders and contracts tuberculosis and contributes to the next generation a body of citizens inferior not only morally and spiritually but also physically.”

Speech to the National Americanization Committee, February 1, 1916

This quotation from Theodore Roosevelt came only 50 years after the end of the Civil War – a war fought to end America’s original sin of African–American slavery.  It echoes Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master”.  Lincoln and TR knew the temporary benefits of exploitation of an underclass weakened the nation in the long run, both morally and economically.

Yet our current lax immigration system shows we have still not learned this lesson. By failing to effectively enforce the immigration laws for the last 30 years, the federal government has created a new and perpetually renewing socioeconomic underclass.  We essentially have a de facto policy of importing foreigners to perform work for wages below the likely prevailing wage for Americans and with no practical recourse for violations of basic laws governing wages and working conditions.  It is a system that smacks of slavery and betrays our values as Americans. 

This exploitation is not confined to low-wage blue-collar jobs. The H1B visa program has been abused by high-tech and other industries to keep the wages of IT technical workers down by bringing in cheaper workers from Asia and elsewhere and then discriminating against those workers after they are hired.  This often leaves them with high student debt or other expenses and no way to pay it off without postponing for years such basic goals as a family and home ownership.   

The conventional justification for this policy is that companies cannot find Americans who will work at these supposedly low class, inferior jobs. Many who make these arguments claim to be advocates of free market economics. They conveniently overlook the most basic rule of supply-and- demand economics; i.e, that while changes in personal preference can change the equilibrium point on the supply-demand curve, there is always a price at which supply will meet the demand.  In short, as a Federal Reserve Board President pointed out, they can solve the problem by paying more.  Instead, they believe certain jobs have an inherent value that is lower than what the market will bear and it is the government’s job to reduce their wages to this assumed inherent value.  The result has made it more difficult for all workers at the lower end of the labor spectrum to climb the ladder of success and achieve the American dream. 

The recent influx of Central Americans has provided a new source of laborers and a new rationalization for allowing their entry – their potential status as refugees.  Advocates of refugee status for Central Americans ask us to sympathize with them because of the unrest and high murder and crime rates in those countries.  Here are the 2017 homicide rates in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador compared to the same statistic for the deadliest American cities during the same period:

2017 US Major City Murder Rates vs. Central America (per 100,000)

  • El Salvador 81.2
  • St. Louis 66.1
  • Honduras 59
  • Baltimore 55.8
  • Detroit 39.8
  • New Orleans. 39.5
  • Baton Rouge 38.3
  • Guatemala  27.3

Sources: Pew Research Center; Council on Foreign Relations

Thus, the advocates of granting refugee status are offering to “shelter” these immigrants by settling them in a country with crime rates that are often worse than the countries they are fleeing from.  Their sympathy for crime victims seems to end at the other side of the American border.

Our high national debt and urgent domestic needs means redistributive taxation cannot solve this inequity.  First, the 11 million immigrants who have lived and worked in the shadows with our implicit consent need to be given legal status and an eventual opportunity for citizenship. We then must say “never again” to such exploitation by adopting strict new limits on immigration and effective enforcement mechanisms. Annual immigration limits should be enacted that are inversely related to the unemployment rate.  The higher the unemployment rate, the lower the immigration limit. Employers should be required to use the E-verify system to insure their workers are here legally. Far from creating more paperwork, it simply would require companies continue to report the social security numbers of new hires as they currently do for withholding tax purposes.

The border needs to be secured, but the best way is with an adequately funded Border Patrol that has sufficient resources to interdict both illegal immigrants and drug smugglers (see this article by a retired agent about the current reality).   We also need more immigration judges and facilities that are flexible enough to quickly adjudicate immigration issues. 

In the end, the most effective and humane way to prevent illegal immigration is to help Mexico and our Central American neighbors control the violence and create more economic opportunity in their countries.  Mexico has begged us for years to stop the exportation of American guns arming the drug gangs against the military. We should set an example of border control and do so. President Trump has failed to fund Obama Administration programs to fight violence and rebuild civil society in Central America.  We should fully fund and expand those programs if we are serious about protecting their citizens and encouraging them to stay in and develop their home countries.

Ending this new slavery will not be easy. Our economy has been built on this exploitation for decades. However, end it we must if we are to be true to our values and secure an opportunity for the American Dream for all Americans.

Domestic Policy, Immigration

Black (and all American’s) Lives and Futures Matter

Bob Claude |

I am for the square deal. But when I say am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.

Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism, August 31, 1910

If the protests over George Floyd’s death and racial inequity are to mean anything, they must result in concrete and measurable improvements in the lives of disadvantaged communities. As corporate leaders try to virtue-signal their way past these changes, globalist elites are coming up with convenient excuses to avoid them such as this CNN article.  It disingenuously states that, since the world’s population will peak before the end of the century, America needs to continue its relaxed immigration policies.  It glosses over the fact that the population will continue to increase for the remainder of this century and so will drive more cheap immigrant workers here in the foreseeable future. It essentially accepts high economic inequality as a cost of a strong economy.  At best, this is another example of Wall Street’s short-term thinking and, at worst, simply a way to continue exploiting the current system for personal profit.

 A better way is highlighted in a CNBC interview of African-American investor Jim Reynolds highlighted in Alan Tonelson’s RealityChek weblog. See the July 12 entry on Alan’s blog for more. It points out that, if those companies stopped importing H1B visa technical workers and started developing and investing in students and workers here at home, they would create more opportunities for minority workers.  Indeed, this would apply to all Americans, regardless of race, creed or color.  Of course, this would require real money and effort from those companies, not just a well-worded press release.

Theodore Roosevelt knew that America could not be strong unless its people were strong and our people could not be strong unless they were given a “square deal” by our economy. It is a principle that is colorblind, and also a threat to the privileged few.  Changing our current immigration system is a critical element to achieving it for the average American.   

Domestic Policy, Government, Immigration

The Swamp Wins Again

Bob Claude |

In this site’s mission statement, I said that as much as Theodore Roosevelt was a model, there would be times we would disagree with his likely approach to an issue.  The Supreme Court’s recent opinion on the DACA immigration program highlights one of those differences – the wisdom of unchecked presidential power. 

The Court’s opinion errs not just because it continues a program that flouts the basic rules of immigration law.  The so-called Dreamers would have been granted permanent residency eventually. However, it should have occurred through the legislative process as part of a comprehensive immigration reform that created real and enforceable limits on future immigration.  Instead, the Court used arcane administrative obstacles to allow the Obama Administration to evade the Congress and the people to achieve its political goals. In doing so, the Court has undermined the constitutional separation of powers and the democratic process.

The breadth and depth of the power granted by the Court to administrative agencies (and thus the presidency itself) can only be understood by delving into the details. The court admits that the DACA program (and the corresponding rule protecting the parents of DACA children) were affirmative rules subject to the Administrative Procedure Act. This law ordinarily would require such rules to be issued through a notice and public comment process and adopted only after “reasoned decisionmaking” (the Court’s language). They then could be appealed for judicial review by interested groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for immigration restrictions. Instead, the program was initiated by a three-page “memorandum” not posted for prior comment and justified on conclusory grounds that such immigrants “lacked the intent to violate the law”, are “productive contributors” and “know only this country as home”. No other justification or evidence was cited to support the memorandum. In addition, by acting through such a memorandum, the administration made it more difficult to challenge the program in the courts.

Thankfully, several states did challenge it and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a preliminary ruling holding it to be an illegal rule making.  After President Trump took office, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued an opinion to the Department of Homeland Security holding it to be illegal. Based on these opinions, the acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security decided to rescind the program. That should have been the end of the matter. Instead, a new set of appeals were filed and the Supreme Court struck down the rescission and sent it back to the agency so it can consider at least 8 different objections by supporters of the rule. In short, the court ruled that an agency rule having a multi-billion dollar economic impact and granting new rights to over 20 million people could be adopted without public comment or congressional input on conclusory grounds, but could only be repealed by engaging in a detailed factual and legal analysis.

Justice Thomas’s dissent accurately describes the danger to our constitutional democracy, stating that an agency is  now “not only permitted, but required, to continue administering unlawful programs that it inherited from a previous administration”.  It grants agencies and the beneficiaries of their largesse more rights than the people as a whole. No wonder many refer to Washington as a swamp. Policies adopted through the democratic process go in, but become so mired in governmental and special interest muck that they never come out.

To his credit, President Trump has issued an executive order prohibiting this kind of rogue administrative action.  At the same time, he encourages the same culture of presidential power by constantly acting through executive orders rather than by legislation.  He has never seriously pursued a comprehensive administrative law reform in the Congress.  Without this, a succeeding administration can undo his restraints by its own executive order. As we approach the 2020 election, American nationalists who believe in the unique value of our constitutional democracy should insist that candidates, including Trump, commit to reform that drains the administrative swamp once and for all and opens up policy making to the American people.