RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/03/reclaiming_control_of_america_s_immigration_system.html

In biology, the membrane defines the boundary of a cell, regulating what enters and exits to ensure the cell’s survival.  Without this boundary, the cell disintegrates.

Similarly, a nation’s border defines its sovereignty, regulating the flow of people, goods, and ideas to protect its identity and security.  President Donald Trump captured this truth when he asserted, “We do not have a state without a border.”

Just as a cell membrane is essential for life, a nation’s border is essential for its existence.  The state’s role, at its core, is to provide law and order — establishing and enforcing laws that govern what crosses its borders.  This includes regulating commodities, labor, and investment, not by dictating individual choices, but by ensuring that all actions comply with the rule of law.  The debate over how much regulation is necessary often divides libertarians and conservatives, but ordinary Americans intuitively understand that uncontrolled illegal immigration is akin to finding an uninvited stranger in your home.  It disrupts the order and security that borders are meant to protect.

The immigration issue was one of the key factors that brought Trump to the presidency.  It even saved his life when a bullet grazed his ear as he turned his head toward a banner displaying a graph on illegal immigration.  In principle, President Trump is right on immigration, and his stance resonates with the public.  However, campaign promises and realities on the ground do not necessarily align.

Below, I summarize data from several studies on immigration, which present a slightly different picture from what rally rhetoric suggests.

According to the most recent Pew Research Center estimates, the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States grew to 11.0 million in 2022.  This situation is indeed unacceptable, and changes are necessary — not only for Trump’s term, but also for the foreseeable future.  To achieve this, amendments must be made to the nation’s laws.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/17/the-moral-hazard-of-illegal-immigration/

The U.S. border was illicitly crossed fewer times last month than in any February in the country’s history. There were 28,654 encounters and apprehensions of illegals reported nationwide. For those who might see border security, and deportations, as cruel acts against the poor and hopeless who want only to escape to a land of plenty, we offer another way of looking at illegal immigration.

Because the February number is actually good news.

The phrase “moral hazard” comes to us from the insurance industry. It refers, says Law & Liberty, “to the possibility that insuring against costly outcomes actually increases the reckless behavior creating the need for insurance in the first place.”

We often hear about the moral hazard of foreign aid. As long as we send money to struggling nations, their “leaders” will never liberalize their economies and root out the corruption that wrecks their societies. They don’t have to deal with the consequences of their policies.

It takes no leap of logic to apply the tag to an open-border policy, much like the one the Biden administration oversaw for four years. When unfettered entry into the U.S. is a pressure release valve for countries where millions are mired in perpetual poverty, those nations’ leaders, who are more often than not grifters and authoritarians, have no incentive to free their economies and purge their governments of the mobsters and entrenched insiders whose misfeasance limits prosperity to only a select few.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/12/immigration-and-fertility-by-nation/

“But one thing is certain: the human population is rapidly declining in every developed nation on earth. How we adapt to that, and who we invite into our nations, should involve a discussion that includes all variables.”

When a nation’s population grows, it’s easier for that nation to experience economic growth. This is the conventional economic wisdom that has been unchallenged for centuries. And there was little reason to challenge this axiom, because throughout human history, the global population trend has been one of perpetual increase. But as birthrates are crashing in wealthier nations, without exception, it may be time to reexamine what constitutes healthy economic growth and how it may be achieved without increasing population.

The way Western nations have chosen to respond to crashing birthrates is to rely on mass immigration. Tens of millions of people are being encouraged to migrate from poor nations where fertility remains high into rich nations with low fertility. This gives rise to challenges that remain unresolved and indeed may worsen as people arrive by the millions from cultures with dramatically different values and beliefs than the host culture.

Let’s assume for a moment that these cultural clashes can be resolved. That’s making a huge leap of faith, but let’s envision a world where, as the developed nations saw their indigenous population diminish, they were steadily replaced by immigrants from high-fertility nations. This is not mere speculation. Based on current trends, within a generation, indigenous populations in developed nations will become minorities, outnumbered by immigrants.

So notwithstanding how these nations would maintain social stability in the face of replacement levels of immigration, and notwithstanding how the indigenous cultures would merge with the immigrant cultures into something unrecognizable by any historical comparisons, what else can we surmise might characterize these new and blended populations?

One of the most salient determinants of individual success is an individual’s general intelligence, and what’s true for individuals is also true for nations. The data on average IQ by nation is available online, and when checking multiple sources here, here, and here, the overall figures were remarkably consistent. What is also true, although the scatter plot does reveal some outliers, is that in the world today, the higher the national average IQ, the lower the fertility. The converse is also true.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/03/10/cbs_reporter_we_did_not_see_a_single_migrant_during_trip_to_border.html

CBS’s Camilo Montoya-Galvez reported that during a trip to the US-Mexico border this week, he “did not see a single migrant or asylum-seeker” over the course of four hours.

“Typically, when you go to the border, you will see groups of people who are trying to cross into the US, but we did not see a single migrant,” he reported.

https://nypost.com/2025/03/03/us-news/nyc-eases-requirements-for-illegal-migrants-to-get-id-residency-card-a-terrible-idea/

The city is making it easier for potentially hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants to obtain a municipal residency ID card to help try to pave the way for everything from housing to free health care.

The Adams administration-backed change, passed by the City Council, adds 23 types of lesser IDs that migrants and others can show to prove New York City residency to get the useful card.

For example, illegal migrants and others are now able to produce expired driver’s licenses and previous documents from ICE, the federal Bureau of Prisons and open cases with city departments such as for housing, in addition to 100 other types of IDs, to help obtain an IDNYC card.

The official city IDs were first offered by the de Blasio administration in 2015 to try to help migrants more easily access free health care in city public hospitals, open bank accounts, sign leases and enroll in school, among other things.

All New Yorkers 10 and older, “regardless of immigration status,” can apply for an IDNYC card, the city’s website says.

About 1.7 million people have received the special card to date, including 132,054 last year and 127,859 in 2023, the city says.

https://tomklingenstein.com/trump-is-right-about-birthright-citizenship/

Shortly after President Trump issued his executive order addressing birthright citizenship, the U.S. Senator from Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, posted this on her X/twitter account: “The Fourteenth Amendment is clear as day—’All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’” Fascinating that she elided over the key phrase, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” 

Unfortunately, my long-time friend, Professor John Yoo, recently published an article at The Civitas Institute that begins with a summary that repeats the same error. “The Fourteenth Amendment directly overruled Dred Scott by declaring that all persons born in the US were citizens.” (Emphasis added). Now I know that Professor Yoo himself does not believe that, as during our many debates on the subject of birthright citizenship, he has always acknowledged that the “subject to the jurisdiction” clause excludes the children of diplomats and occupying armies. But there it is, boldly stated in this article, without even the ellipses that Senator Hirono used in her X post.

My dispute with Professor Yoo centers on whether the “subject to the jurisdiction” clause omitted from his and Senator Hirono’s formulations exempts from the grant of automatic citizenship only the children of diplomats and occupying armies, as the old English common law of jus soli did, or whether it also exempts the children of temporary visitors (“sojourners” was the word in use at the time), such as those present in the U.S. as tourists or on temporary work or student visas, and the children of those who have entered this country illegally.     

Truth be told, because immigration (and particularly illegal immigration) was not an issue in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, there is no direct debate about whether children of temporary sojourners or illegal immigrants would be citizens. But there is extensive debate over the analogous question of whether the children of Native Americans would be citizens. Those debates make clear that they would not be, because they owed, through their parents, allegiance to their semi-sovereign tribes and not to the United States. 

Children born to parents who, as merely temporary visitors (legal or illegal) to this country continue to owe allegiance to a foreign power — their home country — are by analogy even less entitled to automatic citizenship. Quite simply, they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States in the complete sense intended by the Fourteenth Amendment.

https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2025/02/23/oops-i-think-the-nyt-just-said-the-quiet-part-about-deportation-out-loud-n4937259

Tell me you’re out of touch without telling me you’re out of touch. 

I wasn’t planning on writing anything today as I’m knee-deep in a house cleaning project, but I took a little break to peruse the news and saw an article in the New York Times that had me wondering if I’d accidentally stumbled upon a satire site like the Babylon Bee. It was about how deporting illegal migrants would have a negative impact on the wealthy people who have homes in the Hamptons. You know, the real victims in all of this.  

The article is entitled “They Help Make the Hamptons the Hamptons, and Now They’re Living in Fear.” The subtitle reads “Latino immigrants care for some of America’s most lavish beachside mansions. Their disappearance would affect the wealthy, too.” But wait, it gets better. The article begins: 

The party dresses must be double-pressed, the hedges shaved into sharp rectangles. The hand soap and lotion dispensers must be formed into neat lines along bathroom sinks. Caterers need to slip out of view as soon as the oysters and cocktails are served.

Wealthy residents of the Hamptons demand perfection. Now, many of the people who make it so — Latino immigrants, some of them undocumented — are panicking about President Trump’s deportation orders.

It goes on with great quotes like this one: “Some of the wealthy are quietly beginning to make calculations about what it would mean if their undocumented workers were deported. Who would mow the lawn?”

(Note: their undocumented workers)

Or this one from Marit Molan, director of Hamptons Community Outreach: “Everyone relies on housekeepers and carpenters and tree cutters and grass cutters. People come to the Hamptons to enjoy their houses, and who is going to take care of their houses?”

Who would mow the lawn? Or shave the hedges into sharp rectangles or fill the hand soap dispensers? Are you kidding me? I couldn’t believe what I was reading. We’re talking about human beings, and the New York Times is worried about how elitist Hamptons homeowners will take care of their plantations properties.

https://www.thefp.com/p/trumps-opening-move-against-migrant?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Mellissa Harper, who was installed a few weeks ago as the temporary head of the federal government’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is wasting no time making important and necessary changes to the agency’s infamous Unaccompanied Alien Children program. On Friday, the agency released new guidance that will make it more difficult for members of transnational criminal organizations and pimps to “sponsor” teenage migrants and then traffic them for sex or labor. The problem grew significantly under the Biden administration, with three times more victims applying for government benefits under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act during the Biden administration.

The most significant change is that all potential sponsors must be fingerprinted, and the fingerprints must be sent to the FBI to check for criminal records. No child will be released to a sponsor until their fingerprints are recorded in the unaccompanied child’s file. In addition, all identification documents must be legible and unexpired.

Critics of the Trump administration’s immigration policy complain that cumbersome fingerprinting and identification rules could delay the vetting of sponsors, leading to a backlog and overcrowding in shelters that house unaccompanied children. They also fear that under Harper, who has been an official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since 2007, ORR will share information about the sponsors, most of whom are illegal immigrants themselves, with ICE, making it easier to arrest and deport them. But Harper was unapologetic in an email to the ORR staff. “The pervasive fraud in the sponsor process is undeniable,’ she wrote.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/02/17/trump-gets-broad-backing-on-illegal-immigration-crackdown-ii-tipp-poll/

President Donald Trump’s actions since reclaiming the Oval Office to secure America’s borders, remove criminals and keep other illegal immigrants out are proving to be highly popular among American voters, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows. Even a significant share of Democrats support Trump’s policies.

If you’re looking for a reason why Trump won so handily against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, illegal immigration looms large. The online national I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Jan. 29-31, asked 1,478 adults around the country four questions about Trump’s immigration policies and the actions he has taken so far. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

The first question: “Do you support or oppose Trump’s promise of large-scale deportations of illegal migrants?” By a roughly 3-to-2 majority, voters back this idea. The actual numbers: 57% say they support it either “strongly” (35%) or “somewhat” (22%), while just 35% oppose it “strongly” (22%) or “somewhat” (13%). Another 8% aren’t sure.

How does that split with regard to political affiliation? Republicans (85% support, 11% oppose) and independents (54% support, 37% oppose) both gave strong backing.

What about the Democrats? A solid majority oppose it, at 59%, but 31% (nearly one in three) support it. And that support likely comes from two pillars of the Democratic Party: black voters (43% support, 45% oppose) and Hispanic voters (46% support, 44% oppose).