RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.compactmag.com/article/why-immigration-cant-revive-the-economy/

Boosting immigration would seem a no-brainer to address the West’s ongoing demographic implosion and revive its stagnating economies. Even Japan now recruits foreign temporary workers for its rapidly aging economy. Yet mass migration has aroused fierce opposition, not only in the United States but in Great Britain, Netherlands, and France. Moves to reduce migration are already in place in Italy, and seem imminent in Germany, whose welfare state is creaking under the burden. 

This runs against conventional economic theory. Both libertarian conservatives and progressives see unregulated migration—upwards of 10 million during Joe Biden’s presidency—as a net plus. Many businesses see it as a source of cheap labor and demographic vitality. But if migrants have boosted population number, they have done little to revive stagnating economies in Europe and Canada.

Opposition to migration is often blamed on racism and xenophobia, and depicted as a drag on economic progress. Yet if you actually look at what is occurring on the ground level, mass immigration doesn’t seem to go along naturally with economic growth.

This is particularly evident in Britain and France, both of which have experienced massive increases in migration but have largely stagnant economies. Canada once based its migration policy on luring newcomers who could boost the country’s economy. But under Justin Trudeau the mantra was simply the more the merrier. In 2023 the country of 40 million received a million immigrants, accounting for 97.7 percent of Canada’s population growth. But despite the influx,  over the past decade Canada has suffered the slowest economic growth rates among advanced countries while its once high standard of living continues to decline.

This failure is less obvious in the more dynamic United States. But here too many newcomers, particularly the undocumented, are low-skilled and now must compete in poorly paid manual labor or service jobs with other recent immigrants or the indigenous poor. Jobs requiring extensive manual labor have dropped to 22 percent of all jobs in 2025, from 35 percent 50 years ago. As we add more workers to the low-wage pool, their presence does tend to retard wage growth, as noted by a recent Congressional study, and could discourage natives from work. 

https://apnews.com/article/trump-visas-deportations-068ad6cd5724e7248577f17592327ca4

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Thursday it is reviewing more than 55 million people who have valid U.S. visas for any violations that could lead to deportation, part of a growing crackdown on foreigners who are permitted to be in the United States.

In a written answer to a question from The Associated Press, the State Department said all U.S. visa holders, which can include tourists from many countries, are subject to “continuous vetting,” with an eye toward any indication they could be ineligible for permission to enter or stay in the United States.

Should such information be found, the visa will be revoked, and if the visa holder is in the United States, he or she would be subject to deportation.

Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has focused on deporting migrants illegally in the United States as well as holders of student and visitor exchange visas. The State Department’s new language suggests that the continual vetting process, which officials acknowledge is time-consuming, is far more widespread and could mean even those approved to be in the U.S. could abruptly see those permissions revoked.

There were 12.8 million green-card holders and 3.6 million people in the U.S. on temporary visas last year, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

As Trump cracks down on student visas, other countries see opportunity

The 55 million figure suggests that some people subject to review would currently be outside the United States with multiple-entry tourist visas, said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute. She questioned the value of spending resources on people who may never return to the United States.

The State Department said it was looking for indicators of ineligibility, including people staying past the authorized timeframe outlined in a visa, criminal activity, threats to public safety, engaging in any form of terrorist activity or providing support to a terrorist organization.

“We review all available information as part of our vetting, including law enforcement or immigration records or any other information that comes to light after visa issuance indicating a potential ineligibility,” the department said.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/15/lets-pause-to-marvel-at-trumps-incredible-border-victory/

Earlier this month, Customs and Border Protection recorded fewer than 7,832 illegal border crossings in July. That’s a staggering number when you consider that the 25-year average for that month is 76,000.

Even more staggering is that this should never have happened. At least, not if you believed President Joe “Autopen” Biden.

For four years straight, Biden and his minions told the American public either that the border was secure, or that the problem was impossible to fix due to Republican intransigence, or some combination of the two.

Here, for the record, is a sampling:

March 2021: “It happens every single, solitary year: There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. That happens every year.” – Joe Biden.
March 2021: “The border is secure, and the border is not open.” – Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
June 2021: “The administration has made significant progress at establishing a well-managed and secure border while also treating people fairly and humanely. The American people support this approach.” – White House statement.
Sept. 2021: “The border is secure. We’re executing our plan.” – Mayorkas.
July 2022: “Look, the border is secure. We are working to make the border more secure. That has been a historic challenge.” – Mayorkas.
Jan. 2023: “Our problems at the border didn’t arise overnight and they’re not going to be solved overnight. It’s a difficult problem.” – Biden.
Jan. 2023: “Biden-Harris Administration today is announcing new enforcement measures to increase security at the border and reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully.” – White House statement.
Feb 2023: “We now have a record number of personnel working to secure the border.” – Biden.
July 2023: “Our approach to managing the borders securely and humanely, even within our fundamentally broken immigration system, is working.” – Mayorkas.
Feb. 2024: “The only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump.” – Biden.
May 2024: “The president has such limited ability to issue executive orders that would have an impact on the border. He can’t conjure resources out of thin air.” – Sen. Chris Murphy.
June 2024: “Today, I’m moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as president to do what I can on my own to address the border.” – Biden.
June 2024: “Over the past three years, while Congress has failed to act, the president has acted to secure our border.” – White House statement.
Sept. 2024: “The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular, over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed.” – Kamala Harris.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/ice-race-ruling-judge-maame-ewusi-mensah-frimpong?skip=1

The Justice Department just filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to vindicate its authority to enforce immigration law. A federal judge in Los Angeles had declared ICE’s questioning of suspected illegal aliens unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ruled on July 11 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had been impermissibly using race to decide whom to detain for questioning about immigration status. Yet Frimpong’s rules for litigating in her courtroom are themselves a violation of the principle of color-blindness.

According to the plaintiffs in Pedro Vasquez Perdomo v. Kristi Noem, ICE’s immigration operations in Southern California single out suspects based on race and three additional factors: a Spanish accent or inability to speak English; presence at a location, such as a day laborer pick-up site, known to harbor illegal aliens; and working at a job, such as at a car wash, known to be dominated by illegal aliens. Frimpong ruled that those four factors, alone or in combination with the other three, did not provide ground, known as “reasonable suspicion” in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, for stopping and questioning a suspect for illegal presence.

ICE had disputed the advocates’ characterization of its stops. Its officers have more particularized suspicion based on their experience and on additional observed facts about the setting and the suspect, ICE argued. Frimpong’s rushed briefing and hearing schedule had not provided the government sufficient time to make its defense, the Justice Department attorneys alleged, to no effect.

https://pjmedia.com/victor-joecks/2025/07/16/why-mexicans-are-protesting-mass-immigration-n4941818

Many Mexicans have similar complaints about American immigrants as Americans do about Mexican immigrants.

Earlier this month, a major city saw a xenophobic protest against immigrants. Those gathered hurled ethnic slurs at the foreigners. Someone spray-painted “not your home” on a wall. One sign read, “Respect my culture.” Complaints included the influx driving up housing prices and foreigners not speaking the native language. At some point, the demonstration turned violent, with some participants vandalizing local businesses.

If that protest had happened in Dallas or Jacksonville, the left would be outraged. They’d blame President Donald Trump. They’d attack Republicans for being racist. They’d smear conservatives as violent, Christian nationalists.

That’s harder to do in this case. This protest was in Mexico City, and the protesters were Mexicans. They’re upset about the many Americans and other foreigners who’ve settled in their city, especially with the advent of remote work. Mexican officials actively encouraged this immigration.

In 2022, Claudia Sheinbaum, then-mayor of Mexico City, worked with Airbnb to tout Mexico City as the “capital of creative tourism.” Sheinbaum, currently the president of Mexico, claimed the arrangement wouldn’t increase costs for Mexico City residents. Locals are now complaining about gentrification and the increasing number of apartments that are being converted into Airbnb rentals.

Foreign money has shifted both the local economy and culture. Some corner grocery stores have become high-end restaurants. Many foreigners expect the Mexican waiters to speak to them in English. One study found housing prices in Mexico City quadrupled between 2000 to 2022, even while per capita income fell after adjusting for inflation. Little wonder many residents feel priced out of their own city.

Catering to expats and promoting tourism is a great way to boost GDP. The average salary in Mexico City is under $375 a month. But those economic benefits aren’t evenly distributed. For those who own property or have capital to invest, this influx of wealth is a boon. Their property values are up, and they can charge higher rents. Low-income residents, however, face high prices that may force them to move out of their neighborhoods.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/05/what-an-america-first-guestworker-policy-could-look-like/

Liberals view mass immigration as a terror weapon to be used against the recalcitrant native population. Before Trump, this was the unstated but obvious purpose of American border policy. Even now, it is the de facto immigration policy of every other Western country on earth.

This liberal view can be summarized succinctly: White people are fundamentally racist. They are settlers, colonialists, and imperialists. The wealth they have is stolen. The reason third-world countries are poor is because of the evils of Whiteness. Mass migration is a means of settling these differences: granting the benighted brown people of the earth access to capital unjustly taken by the evil White man.

Our politicians will not always say this out loud, but they virtually all believe it in their hearts. Mass migration is not meant to improve the lives of the people but to punish them for their sins. Immigration policy is meant to benefit immigrants; it is not intended to benefit the founding or native stock of the nation.

The supposed economic benefits of immigration in our current system are vastly overstated. Immigrants who come here, both legally and illegally, get access to schools, health care (ERs functionally cannot turn anyone away), police protection, and American courts of law. Many of these foreigners do not pay taxes because they work in all-cash businesses. A huge percentage of illegal immigrants receive welfare payments using fake documents.

Lawyers and tax professionals in immigrant communities specialize in acquiring government benefits for their clients. In California’s Central Valley, there are signs all along Highway 99 from Bakersfield to Fresno promising potential customers, in Spanish, to get them the Earned Income Tax Credit and associated goodies.

This is to say nothing of immigrant crime, which is vastly underreported. Without Mexicans in America, there would be no Mexican gangs. The cost of drug trafficking, DUIs, and gang violence from migrants and their children is incalculable.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/final-court-showdown-begins-over-whether-trump-can-get-these-gang-members-out-of-here/

It’s a grim sign of the times that Old Joe Biden’s regime can open the door to millions upon millions of illegal migrants without a peep from the courts, but as soon as President Donald Trump tries to remove them, our self-anointed moral superiors in the judiciary burn the midnight oil to come up with pretexts to stop him. Trump has been trying to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act as the legal foundation to remove Venezuelan gang members, but several courts, including the Supreme Court, have stymied him. Now, the final showdown has begun in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 states that “whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government, and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies.”

This law has the admirable directness and simplicity that was characteristic of statute-making in an earlier, less complicated age. The extract above continues for a lengthy paragraph, and then the Act goes on for a couple more, but that’s it. If a similar law were drafted in 2025, it would be 700 pages long.

The Alien Enemies Act has been the law of the land for 227 years, even if it has been ignored from time to time. The Trump administration contends that the Act allows today for the deportation of members of the lethal Tren de Aragua gang, which constitutes a “hybrid criminal state.” Trump issued an executive order on March 15 stating that Tren de Aragua was “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” That certainly seems to be the case. Tren de Aragua members didn’t come into the country hoping to get jobs and become “Maryland dads.” They came here to traffic in drugs and engage in other crimes. If that isn’t a “predatory incursion,” what is?

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/07/big-government-and-illegal-immigration/

The general consensus among opponents of mass illegal immigration is that the immigrants in question are largely irrelevant in their purported supporters’ calculations. For all their rhetoric about compassion, the “promise of America,” and the “land of opportunity,” immigration supporters cynically think of immigrants not as people, but as tools, as the means to an end. Mass illegal immigration is the quickest and easiest way to change the nation’s electoral calculus—altering Congressional (and, by extension, Electoral College) apportionment to favor Democrats. Or it’s the best way to undermine “white privilege” in elections (and elsewhere) by upending the white majority status. Or—as in Great Britain—it is a way to upend the historical underpinnings of the nation, create a multicultural society, and make “the right” pay for its cultural intransigence:

The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity,” according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw, and David Blunkett.

He said Labour’s relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to “open up the UK to mass migration,” but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate their “core working-class vote.”

As with any such consensus, this one is undoubtedly rooted in at least some truth. Democrats in the United States did indeed hitch their wagons to the theory that demographic change would deliver them a semi-permanent electoral majority, and they’ve behaved accordingly for years. As for Great Britain, who am I to disagree with “an adviser” who helped craft the nation’s immigration policy and who believes that it worked precisely as expected and delivered the multicultural utopia he and his compatriots had long envisioned? Some significant part of the present immigration crisis—here, there, and everywhere—is inarguably the result of consciously cynical manipulation on the part of aggressive ideological operatives.

All of that said, however, it is perhaps unwise and unhelpful to overcomplicate matters. Hanlon’s Razor (attributed to Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, Pennsylvania) admonishes that one should “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Douglas Hubbard, a management consultant and author, coined what he called a “clumsier” version of Hanlon’s adage, which almost certainly applies here: “Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.”