RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/09/the-epochal-challenge-of-mass-immigration/

Wolfgang Kasper is an emeritus Professor of Economics. This is an edited version of an address to a meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society in Fort Worth, Texas, in May. Professor Kasper thanks Regine Kasper, Jeff Bennett (Canberra), Václav Klaus (Prague), Stefan Markowski (Warsaw and Canberra), Tom Sowell (Stanford) and many attendants at the Fort Worth gathering for their comments, but of course retains all responsibility for judgments and errors. 

Allow me to begin on a personal note. When I was a child, my family was “ethnically cleansed” and, soon after that, we became refugees because my father had to flee for his liberty from the Soviet effort to “harvest” German engineers for the post-war reconstruction of the Russian Fatherland. Later, we became migrants. As an adult, I have been a guest worker in half a dozen countries. And over the past forty-six years I have lived in Australia, the country with the biggest share of foreign-born residents, bar Israel.

I therefore claim to know a thing or two about migration.

Migration and integration

The most important thing I know is that one cannot and must not discuss the act of migration without considering the subsequent process of integration. To me, integration means that the newcomers must make every effort to learn the host community’s rules of conduct in the public domain, and obey them. What meals they cook at home, to what gods they pray—that is left to their own private choice. Integration, though personally gratifying and potentially rewarding, is a huge challenge. It touches on deeply held feelings of personal identity and demands the adaptation of normally persistent cultural norms[1].

Insisting on the newcomers adopting the habits and modes of public behaviour of the host community is not racist. Racism is abhorrent, because it amounts to discrimination according to what we have been given by nature, characteristics which we cannot change. By contrast, habits and modes of behaviour come from nurture; they are cultural features, which are learnt and can be relearnt.

In this article I shall use the shorthand “the West” to describe the countries of Western Europe, North America and Australasia, which are the three pillars of Western civilisation. By and large, they are democratic and have capitalist market economies. I shall speak summarily of “the South” when I refer to Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America, namely the regions that are the main sources of the new mass migration.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/the-death-of-american-citizenship/

Open borders and sanctuary cities are blurring the distinction between illegal immigrants and Americans, and activist judges are eroding the Bill of Rights.

The American Founders institutionalized the best of a long Western tradition of representative government, with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. These contracts outlined the rare privileges and responsibilities of new American citizens.

Yet the concept of citizenship is being assaulted on the premodern side by the legal blending of mere residency with citizenship.

Estimates on the number of undocumented American residents range from 11 million to more than 20 million. The undocumented are becoming legally indistinguishable from citizens and enjoy exemption from federal immigration law in some 500 sanctuary jurisdictions. An illegal resident of California will pay substantially less tuition at a California public university than will a U.S. citizen of another state.

Multiculturalism has reduced the idea of e pluribus unum to a regressive tribalism. Americans often seem to owe their first allegiance to those who look like they do. Citizens cannot even agree over once-hallowed and shared national holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July.

It is eerie how such current American retribalization resembles the collapse of Rome, as Goths, Huns, and Vandals all squabbled among themselves over what was left of 1,200 years of Roman citizenship — eager to destroy what they could neither create nor emulate.

Citizenship has always been protected by the middle classes — on the idea that they are more independent and self-reliant than the poor but can stand up to the influence and power of the elite.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/09/taking-the-sugar-off-the-table/

“To my mind, the Trump administration’s bid to limit immigrants’ access to welfare is one of the most important and reformative initiatives in seventy years. Many trends and movements begin life in the US and ripple out across the world. For my money, and that of all taxpayers, I’m hoping this one finds its way to our side of the Pacific.”

Some years ago, I wrote a piece for Quadrant, “How to choose better migrants”, in which I argued that Australia’s immigration policies should be based on the costs of absorbing migrants and the benefits from their activity. I am pleased to note that this approach is being taken in the US, where the Trump administration is attempting to implement something of a revolution. Should it succeed, the positive consequences for Americans will be incalculable.

Here is how Reason, mouthpiece of the libertarian Cato Institute, fumed that the open borders it favours might soon not be quite so open:

The rule, which is supposed to go into effect in mid-October (though courts are likely to intervene, for now), would brand any immigrant who is likely to qualify for even minimal social services a “public charge” and make it harder for them to enter the country if they are abroad—or, if they are already here, the rule will make it harder for them to upgrade their immigration status and obtain green cards or citizenship.

The measure’s goal is a limit on welfare spending, saving somewhere between US$57.4 to US$112 billion, in part by restricting payments to non-citizens. The proposal will be retroactive, should it survive the courts and furious opposition on Capitol Hill, meaning anyone applying for US citizenship would be checked on all computer bases, with the overall welfare costs associated with that particular individual assessed and totalled. All such benefits received would need to be repaid; if not, access to citizenship will be blocked. Welfare recipients not living in America but residing in their countries of origin would have their benefits slashed.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ninth-circuit-lifts-nationwide-injunction-allows-trumps-asylum-crackdown-to-proceed/

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has temporarily lifted a nationwide injunction against President Trump’s restrictive asylum policy, allowing the administration to once again turn away asylum-seekers who travel through a so-called safe third country on their way to the U.S.

The Ninth Circuit granted the administration’s request for a stay late Tuesday night, just one day after San Francisco-based U.S. District Court judge Jon Tigar issued for the second time a nationwide injunction blocking the administration from implementing its new asylum policy. The court’s ruling narrows the scope of the injunction so that the administration is only blocked from implementing its safe-third-country policy within the court’s jurisdiction, which includes California and Arizona.

Under the new asylum policy, which was announced in July, migrants who travel through a safe third country such as Mexico on their way to the U.S. will be denied asylum if they haven’t previously applied for refugee status in the country that country. The policy is now in effect in New Mexico and Texas, since those states fall outside of the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction.

Soon after the policy was announced, Tigar, an Obama appointee, issued a nationwide injunction blocking its implementation, but was rebuffed by the Ninth Circuit, which narrowed the scope of the injunction. Citing new evidence about the policy’s alleged harm to migrants, Tigar reissued the nationwide injunction Monday, only to be overruled once again.

“The court recognized there is grave danger facing asylum-seekers along the entire stretch of the southern border,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement issued in response to Tigar’s Monday ruling.

The White House, meanwhile, criticized Tigar on Tuesday for seeking to unilaterally control federal immigration policy from the bench.

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“Immigration and border security policy cannot be run by any single district court judge who decides to issue a nationwide injunction,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. “This ruling is a gift to human smugglers and traffickers and undermines the rule of law. We previously asked the Supreme Court to set aside the district court’s injunction in its entirety, our request remains pending with the Court, and we look forward to it acting on our request.”

The administration has appealed to the Supreme Court to allow the policy to remain in effect nationwide until a the protracted court battle concludes.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/274887/are-illegal-aliens-bringing-leprosy-california-daniel-greenfield

California has it all. Beaches, sunshine, typhus. Yes, there are sunny beaches and sunny typhus adjacent to some of those beaches. Also hepatitis outbreaks.

And now, leprosy.

According to the CDC, there are between 100 and 200 new cases of leprosy reported in the U.S. every year. A study just released from the Keck Medical Center at the University of Southern California looked at 187 leprosy patients treated at its clinic from 1973 to 2018 and found that most were Latino, originating from Mexico, where the disease is somewhat more common, and that there was on average a three-year delay in diagnosis, during which time the side effects of the disease — usually irreversible, even with treatment — began to occur.

Leprosy is still more prevalent in Central America and South America, with more than 20,000 new cases per year. Given that, there is certainly the possibility of sporadic cases of leprosy continuing to be brought across our southern border undetected.

And it seems only a matter of time before leprosy could take hold among the homeless population in an area such as Los Angeles County, with close to 60,000 homeless people and 75 percent of those lacking even temporary shelter or adequate hygiene and medical treatment

Illegal aliens spreading leprosy to homeless addicts in California? You can’t spell social justice without anti-social diseases. At this rate, California won’t be a sanctuary state. It’ll be a state walled in by other states and its sunny beaches will be populated by zombies.

But it’ll be fine because typhus-ridden zombies suffering from leprosy can’t use straws. That’s good for the environment. Right?

The CDC’s own numbers made it clear that leprosy is a disease brought into the country by immigrants from South America, Asia and Oceania. That last part mostly means Micronesia.

amgreatness.com/2019/08/24/ending-catch-and-release/

As Congress persists in serially ignoring anything having to do with the border crisis, the Trump Administration continues to release regulations aimed at fixing the problem of illegal immigration.

The administration on Friday released its latest rule to address a longstanding “pull” factor: that illegal migrants who arrive with children immediately are released into the interior of the country.

This process, often called “catch and release,” has bedeviled multiple administrations for years. It has its roots in a 1997 legal agreement known as the Flores settlement. Though originally having to do with detention conditions, judges have expanded and interpreted the settlement to mean that children cannot be detained for more than 20 days.

The practical effect leaves the government with two choices: separate families when they get here, detaining the parents and placing their children with foster families, or release families to await processing together.

The latter has been the approach of most presidents. The Trump Administration, however, enacted a strict application of the law in 2018 when it began separating families to detain the adults and then reversed itself after public outcry.

The consequences of a “catch and release” policy are self-evident. U.S. Border Patrol wastes time and resources arresting crossers who are then immediately released. Illegal crossers are incentivized to cross, knowing they’ll be released instead of being detained. Many of them do not show up for their designated court dates, remaining in the country illegally and without documentation, creating a permanent underclass.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274691/inconvenient-truth-about-

There are two broad categories of lies that could be referred to as crimes of commission and crimes of omission.

The crime of commission is when facts are blatantly misrepresented, while the crime of omission involves leaving out relevant information, for example, when statements are taken out of context or relevant information is left out of the report.

These tactics have become commonplace and routine particularly when the mainstream media reports on the Trump administration and also when it reports on issues pertaining to immigration.

When the Trump administration promulgates policies that impact immigration, synergy kicks in and the truth is likely nowhere to be found.

Over a century ago a popular expression, the streets are paved with gold, drew immigrants to the United States who were determined to strike it rich in America.  When they got here they found that the streets were paved, not with gold, but with cobblestones that came from the cargo holds of ships that used those cobblestones as ballast. 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/court-trump-administration-asylum-rule

A federal appeals court sided with the Trump administration on Friday in the legal battle over its efforts to limit asylum claims from Central America – blocking, for now, a nationwide injunction that blocked the implementation of the rule.

Last month a California federal judge blocked the rule that would require migrants to first apply in one of the countries they cross on their way to the U.S. – with certain exceptions. The rule is tailored to target Central Americans from the Northern Triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who would travel across multiple countries, including Mexico, before claiming asylum in the U.S.

But the San Francisco federal appeals court for the 9th Circuit on Friday ruled that the injunction imposed by the California federal judge can only apply in states within the court’s jurisdiction in the western U.S. The ruling says that the court failed to discuss why a nationwide injunction was necessary to remedy the harm alleged by those immigration advocacy groups named in the lawsuit.

“The district court clearly erred by failing to consider whether nationwide relief is necessary to remedy Plaintiffs’ alleged harms,” the ruling says. “And, based on the limited record before us, we do not believe a nationwide injunction is justified.”

.https://www.city-journal.org/html/truth-behind-trump-storm-15676.html

…..”The truth is that an “hourglass,” low-mobility, big-government economy presents a new set of questions about immigration policy. Today’s immigrants face a different economic reality from their predecessors. 

During the mass migration that took place in the period between 1850 and 1930, more than 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States. Many were uneducated and unskilled people from countries that were largely shitholes. Immigrants from nineteenth-century Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Austro-Hungarian, Greece, even the now-flush Scandinavian countries, were escaping poor, stagnant places where the future promised more of the same.

Poverty and lack of skills didn’t stop newcomers from finding work because there was plenty of it—on the piers of New York and Philadelphia, the meatpacking plants of the Midwest, and in the factories that were spreading to cities all over the country. In 1914, over 70 percent of the factory workers at Ford Motor Company were foreign-born. Immigrants and their children were over half of all of American manufacturing workers in 1920. New technologies and a swelling population also meant more jobs for construction and transportation workers. The pre–World War II industrial economy, sociologists Roger Waldinger and Joel Perlman have written, offered a “range of blue collar opportunities” for immigrants and their children.

Today’s unskilled immigrants are not so lucky. Automation and offshoring to Third World countries have seriously eroded the number of blue-collar jobs. Manufacturing positions plummeted from 19.4 million in 1979 to 11.5 million in 2010, even as immigrants were adding millions to the population of job seekers. In 1970, blue-collar jobs were 31.2 percent of total nonfarm employment. By 2016, their share had fallen to 13.6 percent of total employment. Today’s immigrants are more likely to be hotel workers, agricultural hands, bussers, janitors, and hospital orderlies. They may be earning more than they could have in their home countries, but their wages—assuming they work full-time—are enough only to keep them a notch or two above the poverty line in the United States. Adding to their troubles is frequently a lack of benefits, unreliable hours, and little chance for moving up the income ladder.