Displaying posts categorized under

IMMIGRATION

It’s not racist to screen out migrants who’ll be a burden Jonathan Tobin

https://nypost.com/2019/08/12/sorry-but-its-not-racist-to-screen-out-migrants-wholl-be-a-burden/

Last week’s mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, has sent public discourse about immigration off the rails.

It has allowed radicals to frame as racist normal law enforcement activities and immigration rules. We saw this in New York recently, with anti-ICE protesters stopping traffic on the West Side Highway and holding sit-ins at an Amazon store to protest the company’s compliance with immigration rules.

In the left’s telling — and it’s increasingly hard to distinguish the hard left from the soft — the administration and those who support it are no better than the insane white nationalist who committed the El Paso atrocity.

Similar hysteria has greeted a new Trump administration regulation governing legal immigrants’ access to public welfare. The New York Times depicted the new rule as part of an effort by the president and his hard-line immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, to “shift” the demographic makeup of newcomers to the country.

Under the new rule, those who are in the country legally will have a more difficult time obtaining green cards or gaining citizenship if they received food stamps, housing assistance, Medicare or other public benefits.

If You’re Not Grateful To The United States, Why Are You Here?By Casey Chalk

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/14/youre-not-grateful-united-states/

Rather than ridicule America’s past, as if the travesties of U.S. history nullify its soaring glories, immigrants and longtime Americans should be grateful for America and its political and cultural traditions.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post featured an op-ed entitled “I am an uppity immigrant. Don’t expect me to be ‘grateful,’” by New York University professor Suketu Mehta, an author who recently published a book arguing that “immigration is a form of reparations” for past American crimes.

In the article, Mehta accuses America of stealing “the futures of the people who are now arriving at its borders,” of causing many immigrants “to move in the first place,” and of “despoil[ing] their homelands and mak[ing] them unsafe and unlivable.” He censures the West for “despoil[ing] country after country through colonialism, illegal wars, rapacious corporations and unchecked carbon emissions.”

Mehta asserts, for such reasons, that he’s “entitled” to live in the United States. Yet a few brief historical reflections will demonstrate that immigration as reparations is a bit more complicated than Mehta lets on. Moreover, no one, whether first-generation immigrants or direct descendants of voyagers on the Mayflower, deserves to be here. Being American is a gift for which every citizen should be inordinately grateful.

Note to 2020 Dems: It’s Not Racist to Ask Immigrants to be Self-Sufficient By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/trending/note-to-2020-dems-its-not-racist-to-ask-immigrants-to-be-self-sufficient/

On Tuesday, the Trump administration issued a final rule empowering federal officials to deny green cards to legal immigrants who have received certain public benefits or who are deemed likely to do so in the future. Democrats have attacked this “public charge” regulation as racist, but it is not racist to ask immigrants to be self-sufficient.

Ken Cuccinelli, acting director at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), put it this way: “President Trump’s administration is reinforcing the ideals of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, ensuring that immigrants are able to support themselves and become successful here in America.”

Cuccinelli is right, and the public charge policy seems narrowly tailored to address the kinds of long-term services that suggest a lack of self-sufficiency. The benefits considered under the policy include food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, and housing assistance, Politico reported.

The public charge policy does not consider enrollment in the Children’s Health Insurance Program or enrollment in Medicare Part D, nor does it consider the use of Medicaid by children, pregnant women, or new mothers during a 60-day period. Enrollment in the supplemental food program WIC, for low- to moderate-income pregnant women, infants, and children, would also not contribute to a public charge determination.

Polling suggests this rule is popular. A full 73 percent of voters said they would support a new requirement that incoming immigrants must be able to support themselves financially, according to an America First Policies poll. Americans want to welcome new immigrants — but they don’t want to see them go immediately on the public dole.

Yet, as if on cue, Democrats denounced the policy as racist and cruel.

“This administration’s cruel new policy called [Public Charge] is another racist policy that targets the less fortunate & is intended to prevent certain immigrants from becoming citizens & voters. It’s wrong & goes against our values. I will reverse it as president,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, tweeted as the final rule became public.

Another ungrateful migrant creates a new ‘narrative’ for ingratitude By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/another_ungrateful_migrant_creates_a_new_narrative_for_ingratitude.html

Rep. Ilhan Omar was just an opening act. Now, another ungrateful migrant has come out of the woodwork to tell us how awful we are and how ingratitude for being allowed to come here is the rightful state for migrants.

Calcutta-born Suketu Mehta, a bitter revanchist who would have been ripped to shreds as a fourth-rate, fourth world ‘intellectual’ by V.S. Naipaul (too bad he’s not alive) puts forth the argument in the Washington Post that immigration is a reparation. His piece is titled ‘I am an uppity immigrant. Don’t expect me to be grateful.” Based on what he says, it’s clear he views migration to the U.S. as an entitlement solely because America is so very, very bad — and as a lagniappe, because he’s so very, very good. He writes:

I’ve been told to “go back” ever since 1977, when I enrolled in an extravagantly racist all-boys Catholic school in Queens, N.Y. — birthplace of President Trump, who recently became the biggest, loudest mouthpiece for this line of rhetoric when he tweeted that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” The idea is: White Americans get to decide who is allowed to come in and what rules we are to follow. If you come here, don’t complain. Be grateful we took you in. “Go back” is a line that’s intended to put immigrants in our place — or rather, to remind us that our place in this country is contingent, that we are beholden to those who came here earlier.

To this I say: No, we are not. I take my place in America — an imperfect place — and I make it my own; there’s a Constitution that protects my right to do so. I will not genuflect at the white American altar. I will not bow and scrape before my supposed benefactors. I understand the soul of this nation just as well, if not better, than they do: a country that stole the futures of the people who are now arriving at its borders, a cacophonous country, an exceptional country, but one that seems determined to continually sabotage its journey towards a more perfect union. Nobody powerful ever gave the powerless anything just because they asked politely, and immigrants don’t come hat-in-hand. I am an uppity immigrant. I am entitled to be here. Deal with it.

Middle Eastern Terrorism Coming to the US through Its Mexican Border by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14632/terrorism-mexico-border

In May, Abu Henricki, a Canadian citizen of Trinidadian origin, told researchers with the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism that ISIS sought to recruit him and others to penetrate the US-Mexican border through routes originating in various Central American locations…. Other Trinidadians, he said, were also being approached to “do the same thing.”

The idea that Islamic terror groups are operating in Mexico and eyeing—and exploiting—the porous US-Mexico border is not a hypothetical; unfortunately, it appears to be a fact. At least 15—though likely many more—suspected terrorists have already been apprehended crossing the border since 2001. One suspected terrorist who crossed the border, an ISIS supporter, already launched a terrorist attack in Canada that nearly killed five people.

The only question left is how much more evidence, and how many more attacks—and with what greater severity—are needed before this problem is addressed?

A captured Islamic State fighter recently related how, in an effort to terrorize America on its own soil, the Islamic terror group is committed to exploiting the porous US-Mexico border, including through the aid of ISIS-sympathizers living in the United States.

“Whatever one thinks of President Donald Trump’s heightened rhetoric about the US-Mexico border and his many claims that it is vulnerable to terrorists, ISIS apparently also thought so,” according to the Government Technology and Services Coalition.

Citizenship and American Identity If we extend the designation to everyone in the world, how can we still be a country? Geoffrey M. Vaughan

https://www.city-journal.org/american-citizenship

Civis Romanus sum: “I am a Roman citizen!” Two thousand years ago, those words protected one throughout the Roman Empire, imposing strict limits on the punishments that public authorities might inflict. Today, we’re seeing a powerful conflict between the national and the foreign in the Western hemisphere. At the United States southern border, a father and daughter lost their lives attempting to cross the Rio Grande. Along the shores of Italy and Spain, meantime, boatloads of migrants risk their lives sailing across the Mediterranean. 

More than 1 billion people would improve their lives by moving to a relatively small number of countries—namely, those of Western Europe and North America. Polls confirm the desire of citizens of poor countries to move to the West. These people do not merely seek material advantage, though that’s certainly a factor. They also want protection from violent elements of their society, from criminals, and even from their own governments. In many parts of the world, declaring one’s citizenship offers no such protection. Chinese citizenship doesn’t save the Uighurs, for example, from the abuses they have suffered. Even Rome’s decaying republic and corrupt empire had better protections for citizens than do some contemporary countries.

Citizenship, like monetary currency, operates on a principle of trust. Currencies are valued highly if one can be assured that others will exchange goods and services for them at face value. Similarly, advanced countries acknowledge one another’s passports virtually as tickets to entry. Citizenship is treasured when one’s rights can be assumed—but worthless when one cannot leave a country or reenter it, when a government doesn’t protect property or individuals, or when one must take desperate measures to escape.

Just as government policies can undermine currencies, so, too, can they degrade citizenship. Cancelling debt is one way to devalue a currency; printing too much money is another. The Democratic presidential hopefuls seem set on similar policies for American citizenship. Most have, in one form or another, suggested decriminalizing illegal entry to the United States. “That is tantamount to declaring publicly that we have open borders,” said Jeh Johnson, former head of Homeland Security under Barack Obama. Most of the Democratic presidential candidates have also endorsed providing illegal immigrants medical insurance, even as millions of American citizens lack coverage. With these measures in place, what would remain of American citizenship?

Border Patrol Chief: 5,800 ‘Fake Families’ Discovered at the Border By Nicholas Ballasy

https://pjmedia.com/trending/border-patrol-chief-5800-fake-families-discovered-at-the-border/

Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Mark Morgan told a Senate committee on Tuesday that 5,800 “fake families” have been discovered trying to enter the U.S. illegally this year.

“Our laws prevent us from holding people more than 20 days and because we can’t get the information we’re probably releasing them even sooner than that in many cases, correct?” Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) asked Morgan during a Senate Homeland Security hearing on the border crisis.

“With respect to family units, since March of this year, United States Border Patrol has been releasing family units directly so in some cases they’re being released in under 48 hours into the interior of the United States,” Morgan said.

Johnson replied, “Because it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to try and find facilities to hold them for 20 days with this overwhelming flow so instead of border patrol turning them over to ICE for a more thorough vetting process and then ICE releasing them, border patrol is doing it directly?”

“That’s correct,” Morgan, who also served in the Obama administration, responded.

Supreme Court: Defense Funds Can Be Used To Build Border Wall A win for Trump — and for Americans. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274443/supreme-court-defense-funds-can-be-used-build-michael-cutler

President Trump and, more importantly, Americans just got some really great news.  On July 26, 2019 The Hill reported, Supreme Court rules Trump can use military funds for border wall construction.

The news report began with this statement:

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Trump administration can start using military funds to construct a wall on the southern border, handing the president a major legal victory.

The ruling allows the administration to use $2.5 billion in military funds to begin construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border while litigation plays out. A lower court had issued an injunction blocking officials from using those funds.

The article went on to quote Chuck Schumer, the Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate in this excerpt:

Democrats blasted the move Friday night, with Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (D-Calif.) calling it “a deeply regrettable and nonsensical decision.”

Schumer argued the ruling “flies in the face of the will of Congress and the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, which our founders established in the Constitution.”

“It’s a sad day when the president is cheering a decision that may allow him to steal funds from our military to pay for an ineffective and expensive wall for which he promised Mexico would foot the bill,” Schumer added in a statement.

U.S. Supreme Court lets Trump use disputed funds for border wall

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday handed President Donald Trump a victory by letting his administration redirect $2.5 billion in money approved by Congress for the Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding.

The conservative-majority court on a 5-4 vote with the court’s liberals in dissent blocked in full a ruling by a federal judge in California barring the Republican president from spending the money on the basis that Congress did not specifically authorize the funds to be spent on the wall project fiercely opposed by Democrats and Mexico’s government.

“Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!” Trump tweeted just minutes after the court acted.

A brief order explaining the court’s decision said the government “made a sufficient showing” that the groups challenging the decision did not have grounds to bring a lawsuit.

In a highly unusual move, Trump on Feb. 15 declared a national emergency in a bid to fund the wall without congressional approval, an action Democrats said exceeded his powers under the U.S. Constitution and usurped the authority of Congress.

The Left’s Immigration Con Job Exploiting hate and fear to undermine America. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274348/lefts-immigration-con-job-michael-cutler

Frequently Americans who understand the true significance of our immigration laws and need for secure borders lament that the Left appeals to the emotions of Americans.  The emotion that is most often cited is that of compassion.

Americans are among the most kind-hearted and generous people on earth.  Therefore appeals to compassion can be very effective.

Frequently we make decisions either based on emotions or reason.  Generally emotional decisions ignore cold, hard facts.

Consequently the Radical Left, the media and globalist immigration anarchists have weaponized compassion using our best intentions against us, always portraying illegal aliens in the most sympathetic ways possible.  While many illegal aliens are simply desperate people who want to flee the grinding poverty of their home countries to come to the United States for a better life.  However the United States does not have infinite resources.

We need to compare the United States to an overcrowded lifeboat that is tossed in a storm with many other people thrashing about in the cold water.  The problem is that if we permit those in the water onto the lifeboat, it will capsize.

Simply stated, uncontrolled immigration is an invasion that will quickly overwhelm our nation’s economy and infrastructure.  Overcrowding our schools has a deleterious impact on the education our children receive.  Flooding America with millions of additional aliens impacts the price and available of housing, driving up prices while the massive influx of competing foreign workers frequently displaces Americans and drives down wages.  This causes massive increases in homelessness across the United States.