Many of us do not possess the intellectual firepower needed to understand the logic behind the Biden administration’s decision to turn the southern border of the United States into a 1,954-mile long welcome center.
Poll after poll of Democrats, Republicans and Independents show that significant majorities oppose the open border policy that has been embraced by President Joe Biden since the day he took office and began systematically dismantling various Trump-era policies that had stemmed the flow of migrants into the United States such as the Remain in Mexico policy and an end to catch and release directives.
This opposition had already manifested during the global pandemic in which 83% of all respondents in one poll supported a complete end to all immigration across the southern border whereas a Rasmussen report declared that two-thirds of all respondents opposed admitting migrants if they would be taking jobs away from American citizens.
Although Gallup has reported differing levels of support for increasing, decreasing or maintaining existing levels of immigration to the United States over recent years, those individuals preferring reduced levels of immigration have usually been the most numerous; yet very few respondents, in any case, have been in favor of an open border.
So in view of such sustained opposition to a substantial increase in immigration — let alone a complete dismantling of the border security system itself — why would the Biden administration continue to insist on allowing almost anyone from almost anywhere to come to the United States with little to no vetting? Who might benefit from this nihilistic approach to border security?
Well, there is that paragon of God and country and apple pie — the Democratic Party — which has long pushed for increased immigration as a way to make up for those former party members who had previously left its ranks after coming to their senses. Open border advocates would claim “demographics are destiny” with the expectation that the Democratic Party would maintain a stranglehold on most minority voter groups while continuing to encourage the mass migration of future voters.
These new arrivals would presumably pay fealty to their party overlords and eventually overwhelm the supposedly shrinking ranks of more conservative Republican voters at the ballot box.
Unfortunately, this approach has not worked out so well as most immigrants do not necessarily vote in a monolithic bloc because they are often socially conservative and do not always identify with the hard-left big government welfare-state orientation of the modern Democratic Party.
Many immigrants fled socialist or communist countries and do not romanticize the claptrap of Marxist theology that is so popular with college students who have overcome the daunting barriers imposed by their upper-middle class backgrounds. Indeed, the Hispanic vote is now almost evenly divided amongst the two major political parties; a development that has shocked many allegedly clever political analysts.
The financial benefits of mass immigration is also presented to the American public as a net benefit. However, the reality is far less rosy than the open border zealots would admit as shown by studies which have compared the actual tax revenues contributed by illegal migrants to the costs that are expended each year by federal, state and local governments to provide various services to these very same individuals.
According to a study completed by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the net cost of illegal immigration for the United States as a whole as of 2023 was more than $150 billion. This number was calculated by subtracting the tax revenues paid by illegal migrants ($32 billion) from what FAIR estimated to be the gross negative economic impact of illegal immigration which amounted to about $182 billion.
More to the point, FAIR estimated that illegal immigration costs each American taxpayer nearly $1,156 per year and, more surprisingly, that each illegal migrant or each child of each illegal migrant costs the United States $8,776 per year. Because many illegal migrants work in the so-called underground economy for cash, they may pay little to no income taxes at all.
Open border advocates wax poetic about the United States being a nation of immigrants while conveniently ignoring the fact that this nation was founded on the rule of law and not the erratic dictates of its chief executive.
Illegal migration has been encouraged both by lax border enforcement as well as the outright provision of numerous economic incentives to foreign nationals such as emergency medical care, in-state tuition, welfare benefits and outright cash payments that are not always available to most Americans.
Because people act in their own self-interests, it is not surprising that this cornucopia of goodies is now (in May 2023) drawing more than 10,000 migrants a day to the southern border.
On the federal level, FAIR calculates that the federal government in 2022 spent nearly $66.5 billion on illegal migrants which consisted of $6.6 billion for education, $23.1 billion in medical expenditures, $25.1 billion in justice enforcement expenditures, and $11.7 billion in welfare payments.
On the state and local level, FAIR concluded that the numbers are equally staggering with a total of $115.7 billion spent on illegal immigrants including $73.3 billion on state educational expenditures, $18.6 billion on state medical expenditures, $21.8 billion on state administration of justice expenditures, and $2 billion on state welfare expenditures.
Even though illegal migration advocates are quick to claim that these migrants provide tax revenues to the government, they never bother to point out that the costs of permitting these individuals to remain in the country and receive the various benefits available to them is roughly six times the amount of the tax revenues paid by these same individuals.
Such inconvenient facts would obviously cloud the narrative that the United States must continue to allow millions of migrants to enter its borders each year because Americans are simply no longer capable of doing any jobs requiring manual labor.
Jefferson Hane Weaver is a transactional lawyer residing in Florida. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of North Carolina and his J.D. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Columbia University. Dr. Weaver is the author of numerous books on varied compelling subjects. Read more of his reports — Here.
© 2023 Newsmax. All rights reserved.