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IMMIGRATION

Are There Any Limits to Illegal Immigration? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/14/are-there-any-limits-to-illegal-immigration/

The U.S.-Mexican border is essentially wide open.

Why? Because there is a general expectation in Mexico and Latin America that American immigration law is unenforced. Or it is so bizarre that simple illegal entry almost always ensures temporary legal residence, pending an asylum hearing.

A scheduled asylum hearing, in turn, is seen by border crossers as a mere formality to be ignored. The popular perception on the border, then, is to stick one foot illegally onto U.S. soil, and, presto, win permanent residence for you and any family members who wish to follow.

In an age of 500 sanctuary city and county jurisdictions, few illegal aliens believe they will ever be deported permanently, even if they have been apprehended committing serious crimes. There is also a general perception among would-be illegal entrants that prominent Democrats and progressives welcome their massive influxes as useful and will do their best to ensure illegal immigration continues unabated.

There is also the assumption that the greater the chaos at the border, the less likely Congress will take bipartisan action to end it. After all, 2020 is an election year and progressives are in no mood to hand Trump the semblance of a legislative victory. This fact is also known to would-be border crossers.

Illegal alien families sense that they are vital to progressive agendas of fundamentally transforming the country by importing first-generation, loyal constituents—a sentiment that is slowly replacing the prior idea of mostly young men coming to work off the books. In an increasingly tribal America, they expect on arrival to be recalibrated instantly from Mexican nationals without any experience of America into “Latinos” and “Hispanics” with historical grievances against the majority population of United States, to be remedied by reparatory hiring and admission, and facilitated by ethnic operatives.

Some polls in the past have suggested that a third of Mexico’s population would immigrate to the United States if possible. The percentages of would-be immigrants from Central America are likely to be even higher. In theory, 50 million could cross the border in the next two decades, which poses the question: what are the theoretical limits on illegal immigration?

Trump Proposes to Bus Illegals to Sanctuary Cities A political masterstroke. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273482/trump-proposes-bus-illegals-sanctuary-cities-matthew-vadum

President Donald Trump’s proposal to ship immigration detainees to so-called sanctuary cities –which are Democrat strongholds— is a political masterstroke, if the Left’s wounded animal-like howling is any indication.

With this politically brilliant tactic, the likes of which would never have come from a President Jeb Bush or a President Mitt Romney, Trump continues to demonstrate that he is one of the few Republican presidents in modern American history who actually knows how to fight the Left. He is giving leftists a well-deserved taste of their own medicine.

And what better place to send illegal aliens than to sanctuary jurisdictions? They claim to welcome illegals and provide services for them. Their sanctuary policies, by which they harbor and shield illegals from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), are magnets for illegals, giving them incentives to sneak across the border or overstay visas.

The president’s plan only gives sanctuary cities more of what they claim to want.

“We’ll bring them to sanctuary city areas and let that particular area take care of it,” Trump said April 12 at the White House. “They say, ‘we have open arms,’ they’re always saying they have open arms, let’s see if they have open arms.”

Obama’s Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan tells it like it is about the illegal alien crisis By Peter Barry Chowka

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/obamas_border_patrol_chief_mark_morgan_tells_it_like_it_is_about_the_illegal_alien_crisis.html

Last January, Mark Morgan, the last head of the U.S. Border Patrol agency under the Obama Administration, started weighing in on the illegal alien invasion crisis at the Southern border.

On January 8, Law & Crime was one of the first news outlets to break the story about the former Border Patrol director. Morgan, it said,

…went public on Tuesday with a message that may surprise the White House: he supports Mr. Trump and his efforts to get funding for a border wall.

“I’m here today breaking my silence to tell the American people that the president is correct in what he’s doing,” Morgan said in an interview with the Law & Crime Network. “The wall works.”
SEE VIDEO

Trump calls sanctuary cities’ bluff: ‘Let’s see if they have open arms’By Stephen Dinan and Gabriella Muñoz –

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/12/trump-looking-illegal-immigrants-sanctuary-cities/

President Trump said Friday that he is considering a plan to release illegal immigrants into sanctuary cities, saying it is fitting punishment for Democrat-led communities that refuse to get tough on border security.

Mr. Trump was confirming a report in The Washington Post that said the idea was being considered.

“Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only,” the president said on Twitter.

Hours later, speaking to reporters at the White House, Mr. Trump said he would only be giving the sanctuaries what they say they want.

“California certainly is always saying ‘Oh we want more people,’ and they want more people in their sanctuary cities, well we’ll give them more people. We’ll give them a lot. We can give them an unlimited supply,” he said.

Obama DHS Secretary: Border Is in ‘Crisis by Any Measure’ By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/obama-dhs-secretary-border-is-in-crisis-by-any-measure/

Former Department of Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson on Thursday echoed the Trump administration’s language to describe the influx of immigrants at the southern border, calling it a “crisis.”

“By any measure, 4,000 arrests in a day, 100,000 in a month ― that’s the population of the city of Albany, N.Y. ― that suddenly shows up on our southern border in one month is a crisis,” Johnson said on Fox News. “It’s a crisis because it overwhelms our Border Patrol and our immigration officials’ ability to deal with it, and it’s a crisis because you have to absorb that population somehow into southern border towns.”

Johnson, who led DHS for the last three years of the Obama administration, said he had guided U.S. border authorities through a similar but smaller migrant crisis in 2014, by promoting the message that the journey to the border is dangerous, seeking the Mexican authorities’ cooperation in stemming the flow of migrants, and expanding U.S. detention capabilities for family units, the last of which was controversial.

“I know what a thousand a day looks like,” Johnson said. “I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like. It must overwhelm the system.”

The former secretary’s remarks came amid President Trump’s purge of DHS leadership this week, which Trump has said is designed to move the department in a “tougher direction.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen was forced out over the weekend, and the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ron Vitiello, resigned Wednesday after Trump pulled his nomination to lead the agency on a permanent basis last week.

The crisis “emanates” from Central America, which is “the most violent region of our world right now,” Johnson said. “We have got make the long-term investment in addressing the poverty and violence in those nations. It can be done. A lot of people don’t want to hear that. They want quick, easy answers. They want some legal lever to pull.”

Pelosi ‘Not Giving Up’ Hope of Partnering with Trump on Immigration By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nancy-pelosi-not-giving-up-hope-of-partnering-with-trump-on-immigration/

House speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she is holding out hope Democrats and President Trump can work together on immigration reform, which she said “has to happen.”

“It’s complicated, but it isn’t hard to do if you have good intentions,” Pelosi said at Democrats’ 2019 Issues Conference in Virginia. “And I’m not giving up on the president on this.”

“I still say to him, ‘We’ve got to have comprehensive immigration reform,’” she added.

Pelosi’s comments came just a day after Trump called her party’s approach to immigration “treasonous.”

Dear Pope Francis: A Border Wall Is The Most Humanitarian Policy Francis’s statement disregards not only the sovereignty of the American nation-state, but also ignorance of how generous America has been to the poor and vulnerable of the world.By Kevin D. Roberts

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/09/dear-pope-francis-border-wall-humanitarian-policy/

Pope Francis has intruded into American politics again, riffing critically on border walls and capitalism. Once again, serious Catholics, including me, are dismayed by the holy father’s ignorance on the issue.

Francis’ remarks— especially his comment that “those who build walls will become prisoners of the walls they put up”—reveals an incomplete understanding of the crisis. Were he to acknowledge the entirety of the current crisis at the border, including the egregious actions of human smugglers and human traffickers, his prodding might find better currency among American policymakers.

As it is, however, his statement displays an unfortunate disregard not only for the sovereignty of the American nation-state, but also a truly unfortunate ignorance of how generous America has been to the poor and vulnerable, especially those who appear on our borders and shores.

Francis has decried the building of a wall, and the free market, which he continues to conflate with the crony capitalism of Latin America. What an irony, considering that Central American migrants are leaving their homelands because those nations have neither the rule of law nor the economic opportunities that the pope rightly wishes everyone to have.

Bernie Sanders on Open Borders: ‘That Is Not My Position’ By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bernie-sanders-on-open-borders-cant-do-it/

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Sunday that he opposes open borders, because such a policy would cause migrants from poverty-stricken parts of the world to flood into the U.S.

The Vermont senator corrected an audience member at a town hall in Oskaloosa, Iowa, who described him as “an advocate for open borders” and asked him how the U.S. would be able to fund health care and other services while also embracing such a policy.

“I’m afraid you may be getting your information wrong. That’s not my view,” Sanders responded. “What we need is comprehensive immigration reform.”

“If you open the borders, my God, there’s a lot of poverty in this world, and you’re going to have people from all over the world,” he continued. “I don’t think that’s something that we can do at this point. Can’t do it. So that is not my position.”

Selective Compassion

From the “End of Day” Report Newsletter: Sent by Janet Levy

As we are experiencing a massive surge in illegal immigration at our southern border, I want to revisit a critical element that is often overlooked in this debate.  The media and many on the left speak of illegal immigration as a humanitarian issue or they couch it in terms of compassion. 

But where is the left’s compassion for taxpayers and for the innocent American victims of criminal illegal aliens? Whenever President Trump talks about illegal immigration, he frequently says that open borders means more crime. 

Predictably, left-wing pundits accuse the president of being “xenophobic,” even though he often praises legal immigration. But the president is absolutely correct. 

Not every illegal immigrant coming across the border is looking for work and a better life. According to government statistics, illegal aliens make up 21% of the federal prison population. 
The 730,000 criminal aliens in state and federal prisons were responsible for 7.5 million offenses. 

They committed: 1 million drug crimes500,000 assaults133,800 sex offenses33,300 homicide-related offenses24,200 kidnappings and1,500 terrorism-related crimes.It cost taxpayers $2.5 billion a year to incarcerate them.  Texas bears the brunt of this burden.  In the past eight years, it has incarcerated nearly 200,000criminal aliens.

California AG: Illegal Immigration Should Be Decriminalized By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/california-ag-illegal-immigration-should-be-decriminalized/

California attorney general Xavier Becerra called Thursday for unauthorized immigration to be decriminalized, saying those crossing the southern border are “not criminals.”

“They haven’t committed a crime against someone, and they are not acting violently or in a way that’s harmful to people,” California’s top cop told HuffPost. “And I would argue they are not harming people indirectly either.”

“If you call them criminals, it’s a lot easier to get people to turn against them than if you call them undocumented immigrants,” he added.

Becerra’s comments came just as President Trump on Thursday issued a “one-year warning” to Mexico to control the flow of migrants and illegal drugs before he closes the border.
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Several prominent border-state Democrats have echoed the California AG’s calls for illegal entry to be decriminalized, including Representatives Raúl Grijalva of Arizona and Veronica Escobar of Texas. Former representative Beto O’Rourke, who hails from the border town of El Paso, Texas and is seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said during his Senate campaign last year that he, too, supports decriminalizing illegal immigration.

“These asylum-seekers — penniless, at wit’s end, after surviving three weeks on the road, very often with their children — then attempt to do what I think any human would do, which is to request asylum in between the ports of entry,” O’Rourke said. “We should not criminalize that.”