How FEMA Got into the Illegal Immigrant Business

In the midst of the last major budget crisis in Washington, Democrats diverted money and the legal authority to put the nation’s disaster relief agency into the business of caring for the millions of illegal immigrants who crossed the border on the Biden-Harris administration’s watch. And now both parties seem to be trying to obfuscate the truth.

White House spokeswoman Karine-Jean Pierre took the lead in trying to suggest it was a "conspiracy theory" to suggest the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was using its resources to aid illegal aliens. Republicans countered with surprise and shock that FEMA had routed $640.9 million in grants to nonprofits aiding immigrants, many of whom have crossed into the U.S. illegally.

But the truth is both parties signed off on a budget deal earlier this year that increased funding for the new mission authorized in 2023 for FEMA, which is now reeling from a double-barreled hurricane crisis that has led to frustration over alleged missteps by the agency as millions of stranded and needy Americans in the Southeast await help.

“FEMA, as well as this whole Biden administration has is here to protect Americans, our citizens, and hurricane Helene has put a tremendous burden on us, but, get this, follow these funds that have been directed at anything but Americans: $110 million in FEMA funds went to the emergency food and shelter program to assist migrants,” Congressman Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show Monday.

Norman partly blamed the broken budget process in Congress for giving funds to FEMA  for immigrants rather than American citizens suffering from a disaster.

“If we don't get back to regular order, John, then there's no hope for ever having a fiscal sanity plan in place,” he said. "They, the Democrats, play us like a drum waiting to the end of the year."

FEMA has disputed the Republican characterizations in recent days that disaster relief money was diverted to fund illegal immigrants, instead pointing out that Congress appropriated funding for the immigrant programs separately during the budget process.

"This is false. No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts,” FEMA said in its Hurricane Helene Frequently Asked Questions page.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also denied that FEMA resources were going to illegal migrants at a press conference last week despite her own statements at the podium two years earlier touting the opposite.

“Funding is also available through FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter program to eligible local governments and not-for-profit organizations upon request to support humanitarian relief for migrants,” Jean-Pierre said of FEMA efforts to alleviate the immigration crisis.  

A Democrat-run Congress that year later created the Shelter and Services Program (SSP) was to replace a similar program formerly run by DHS, which was directed to transfer $800 million of its appropriations in 2023 to the emergency management department. Though FEMA is a subagency of DHS, it represented a transfer of the core responsibility for illegal and legal immigrant support to the agency dedicated to disaster relief.

The funding was to stand up the new program which would “support sheltering and related activities provided by non-Federal entities, including facility improvements and construction, in support of relieving overcrowding in short-term holding facilities of U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

By 2024, the program was well established at the agency when Republicans and Democrats alike voted to fund it to the tune of $650 million with the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024—a minibus bill passed by the House and Senate in March, both with significant Republican support, and sent to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Now, Republicans have placed the program under a spotlight after widespread flooding and damage from Hurricane Helene left several southeastern regions devastated and tens of thousands of citizens without basic resources. But, so far, few who originally supported the bill have owned up to their role in passing the budget stopgaps last year funding the very programs being placed under the spotlight.

A group of Senators who did not vote for the funding measure led by James Lankford of Oklahoma, wrote a letter to President Biden last week raising concerns about how FEMA’s immigration responsibilities could be impacting its disaster readiness.

“FEMA’s continued entanglement in DHS’s efforts to respond to the border crisis could impact its readiness and emergency response mission,” a group of Republican lawmakers wrote to Biden last week. “Rather than ensuring FEMA is ready to respond to hurricanes and other emergencies, FEMA has been pulled into a border crisis mission.”

“FEMA’s mission is ‘helping people before, during, and after disasters,’ not helping DHS clean up the impact of your Administration’s reckless border policies,” they added.

The letter was also signed by GOP Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Frustration started growing among conservatives after FEMA announced that it did not have enough funds to get through the remainder of hurricane season and amid allegations that the agency was slowing down or outright obstructing private relief efforts in flood-stricken Appalachia.

“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said after Mayorkas’ announcement that whistleblowers approached his office after the hurricane and claimed that FEMA misappropriated funds related to disaster relief. The agency vehemently denied those allegations. In a letter last week, Gaetz claimed the whistleblowers told him that FEMA has serious mismanagement issues and used taxpayer funds marked for disaster relief on non-disaster-relief programs that housed and supported illegal immigrants on the country's southern border.

Additionally, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who is sponsoring private efforts to deliver aid to hurricane victims, criticized the federal response to Hurricane Helene, claiming that the government was blocking flights trying to bring Starlink internet connection devices and other aid to hurricane victims, after a source told Musk the airspace was shut down.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg disputed these reports and said “no one is shutting down the airspace and FAA doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights,” Just the News reported.

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/how-fema-got-migrant-business-and-who-covering-it?

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Uncontrolled immigration is the hottest topic of our age. And hurling accusations of racism won't change that

Will it ever be possible to have an honest conversation in this country about mass immigration? There are some who would prefer us not to.

On Tuesday the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that in the year to June 2023 the population of the United Kingdom grew by 1 per cent, or 662,400, to 68.2 million people.

This astounding annual increase, the largest since records began, was driven entirely by net migration. In fact, the resident population of the UK fell by 16,300 over this period because there were more deaths than births.

How did our State broadcaster, the BBC, deal with these extraordinary facts? Well, it reported on Tuesday’s BBC1 News at Six that the record rise in population was driven ‘mainly’ by net immigration, although in truth it was exclusively so.

BBC Home Editor Mark Easton gave us the benefit of his thoughts. Whilst acknowledging that the population would have fallen without immigration, he looked forward with foreboding to what will happen if Tory visa rules curb the influx of immigrants.

In other words, what worries Mark isn’t the reality of mass migration but the prospect of the UK population declining if it abates. The implication was that this country needs large numbers of immigrants.

It’s all academic in any case since, despite those tighter visa rules belatedly introduced by the last Tory government, legal immigration seems likely to remain at very high levels – higher than this country experienced before Brexit.
Migrants wave to a smuggler's boat in an attempt to cross the English Channel near Dunkirk, northern France

According to the statistically impeccable Migration Watch – an organisation ignored by the BBC because it opposes mass immigration – annual net migration of 600,000 is projected to lead to an increase in our population of 20 million by the mid to late 2040s. That’s 40 cities the size of Bristol!

Even if growth turned out to be half this amount, the pressure on schools, public services such as hospitals, and housing would be immense. I don’t believe this is what most British people, including immigrants settled here, want.

Then there is social cohesion, already fraying as some immigrant communities fail to assimilate. Just look at the origins of the people coming here (85 per cent from outside the EU) in the 12 months to June 2023.

How can so many people from different societies easily assimilate in a country that is already culturally fragmented?

All these are legal immigrants, encouraged to come here by universities, the NHS, or businesses. The number of illegal immigrants includes, but far surpasses, those who have come across the English Channel in recent years.

A new study at Oxford University reckons that there could be as many as 745,000 illegal immigrants living here, more than one in every 100 people in Britain. By contrast, France and Germany (a more populous country than the UK) are estimated to have 300,000 and 700,000 illegal immigrants respectively.

This Government hasn’t grasped the severity of the situation or the concerns of the majority of people. Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper metronomically repeat their intention to ‘smash the gangs’ – i.e. stop illegal immigration – without producing any measures likely to achieve such an outcome.

Meanwhile, although Starmer says somewhat breezily that legal net migration should come down, he hasn’t come up with a single policy that might give us a shred of confidence that he will manage to achieve that.

This brings me to another dishonesty. No one in this Government ever connects the dire shortage of new housing in this country with immigration levels that are out of control.

Sir Keir Starmer never makes a link. Nor does Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London. Nor does Deputy PM Angela Rayner, who is spearheading Labour’s plan to build 150,000 new homes a year. Labour is stamping on local opposition and denigrates so-called ‘Nimbys’ as it plans to despoil swathes of England with new homes.

This is my question. If the population is gently declining, as those ONS figures suggest, why do we need so many new houses and all the ancillary infrastructure of schools, roads, GP surgeries, pylons and so forth? There is one obvious answer. Mass immigration.

I accept that this isn’t the only cause. If there weren’t a single immigrant entering the country, we would still need more homes. Households are declining in size for a number of reasons. More people are living alone, or as couples, than was the case half a century ago.

Nonetheless, immigration is a major factor in housing demand – responsible for at least 40 per cent of new homes, according to Migration Watch and the Right-leaning Centre for Policy Studies.

Imagine a young person, who may be of a Left-wing persuasion, unable to rent or buy a flat. Because there is a fashionable fatwa against connecting high levels of immigration with the shortage of housing, such a person may blame the capitalist system.

And so the cry goes out from Whitehall: ‘Build more houses!’ But the sensible and honest cry should be: ‘Bring immigration under control’.

Will it ever happen? There are many vested interests dependent on mass immigration – universities; the NHS; businesses craving cheap labour – and it will take a strong and determined government to stand up to them. We don’t have one of those.

Moreover, Labour is largely in thrall to modish metropolitan opinion that still claims it is racist to oppose immigration. Such people have succeeded in keeping a lid on an honest and informed debate for years.

But no longer, I think. Uncontrolled immigration will be the hottest political topic for the next 20 years, as more and more people seek to escape the poverty and lawlessness of their unhappy homelands.

The party that fails to control mass migration is doomed. That almost certainly means Labour. As for the Conservatives, having failed in government will they now fail in opposition?

Of the two remaining candidates to get through, surprisingly, to the final round of the Tory leadership contest – Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch – only the former appears resolutely committed to restricting immigration.

Reform UK could have an opening. For all his many faults, Nigel Farage understands that people have had enough. His challenge, which he has so far just about met, is to oppose mass immigration without sounding racist. His appointment of Zia Yusuf, a Muslim multi-millionaire, as party chairman was shrewd.

Will we ever have an honest debate about immigration? Those who would rather we didn’t will continue to hurl accusations of racism to stifle discussion. But they’ll no longer be able to suppress the biggest issue of our age.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13942059/Uncontrolled-immigration-hottest-topic-age-hurling-accusations-racism-wont-change-that.html

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Kamala Harris skirts questions on ‘historic flood’ of migrants three times, whiffs on economic policy answer in tense ‘60 Minutes’ interview

Kamala Harris whiffed on an attempt to explain how she’d help boost small businesses and repeatedly deflected when asked about the “historic flood” of migrants crossing illegally into the US since she’s been vice president in a  “60 Minutes” interview that aired Monday.

Harris, 59, was unable to describe how her fiscal policies would work in “the real world,” including passing both chambers of what is likely to be a divided Congress, after CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker accused her of being unrealistic.

“My plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses, you invest in the middle class and you strengthen America’s economy,” Harris told Whitaker during the sit-down.
60 Minutes clip of their Kamala Harris interview 5
A CBS correspondent pressed Vice President Kamala Harris in a “60 Minutes” interview on specifics about her plan to invest in small businesses. CBS

“Small businesses are part of the backbone of America’s economy,” she restated.

“Pardon me, Madam Vice President, the question was, ‘How are you going to pay for it?'” Whitaker interrupted.

“Well, one of the things I’m gonna make sure,” Harris began, blinking repeatedly in apparent surprise at the questioner’s pushback, “that the richest among us — who can afford it — pay their fair share in taxes.”

“It is not right that teachers and nurses and firefighters are paying a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations. And I plan on making that fair,” she went on.

“But we’re dealing with the real world here,” Whitaker interjected. “How are you going to get this through Congress?”

“You know, when you talk quietly with a lot of folks in Congress, they know exactly what I’m talking about ’cause their constituents know exactly what I’m talking about,” the vice president said before repeating herself yet again. “Their constituents are those firefighters and teachers and nurses.”

Harris’ economic agenda — which includes increasing the amount in tax deductions offered for startups to $50,000 — is estimated to add $3.5 trillion to the national debt, according to a nonpartisan analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget released Monday, even while raising taxes on corporations, the ultra-wealthy and others to the tune of $4.25 trillion.

Billionaires and other high-income earners also do not pay lower tax rates than teachers, nurses or firefighters, according to analyses by both the US Treasury Department and the Congressional Budget Office.

The top 1% income bracket shoulders 46% of the nation’s tax burden at a current taxation rate of 37%, according to economists.

The average tax rate for teachers, nurses and firefighters based on those occupations’ median income is 22% — but could be as low as 12% for married couples and heads of households.
Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris waves before boarding Air Force Two after assessing the Hurricane Helene recovery response in North Carolina on October 5, 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina. 5

In an early clip released of the sit-down with CBS’ Bill Whitaker that will air at 8 p.m. Monday, Harris, 59, was unable to explain how her fiscal policies would work in “the real world.” Getty Images

Critics have harped on Harris’ word salads during her time in office, which have earned her comparisons to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ vacuous character Selina Meyer in HBO’s “Veep.”

Often, the vice president resorts to repetition when asked to clarify her positions — most recently in an interview last week with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, when Harris used the word “holistic” three times in 23 seconds.

Harris, who has embraced President Biden’s recent “crackdown” on illegal immigration, sidestepped when asked by Whitaker why the administration didn’t aim to stem illegal border crossings years earlier.

The vice president blamed Congress for not taking up legislation to “actually fix” the border crisis.

https://nypost.com/2024/10/07/us-news/cbs-correspondent-presses-kamala-harris-on-specifics-of-50k-small-business-plan-were-dealing-with-the-real-world/

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Dire immigration warning as overseas arrivals soar in Australia

The Albanese government's immigration targets for the last financial year could be exceeded by as much as 100,000 people.

Corinna Economic Advisory's Saul Eslake forecast the 2023-23 financial year intake would be 495,000 people, 'if not more', reported The Australian.

The government had settled on a net overseas migration (NOM) intake target of 395,000 for the same period, down from 518,000 the previous year.

Abdul Rizvi, former immigration department deputy secretary, estimated the number would be around 450,000 to 475,000 people and added that Australia's robust jobs market was keeping people here and attracting those from overseas.

'Especially people in Europe and China and in Southeast Asia, where the labour market has weakened more quickly than in Australia,' Mr Rizvi said.

'What we had was a higher-than-expected return of Australian citizens, and we also had a higher-than-expected net arrival of Kiwis.'

The government has already revised their numbers twice.

In last year's May budget it forecast the number of foreigners moving to the country would drop to 315,000 in the 12 months to June under new measures it introduced - though this was revised to 375,000 in December and 395,000 earlier this year.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton previously said the influx of new residents vying for places to live was why property prices remain at record highs.

'This is why Australians can't afford to buy a home, it's why the rents have gone through the roof and it's why we find ourselves in a position that we do today with people living without secure accommodation,' he said.

Minister for Employment Affairs Murray Watt said migration had slowed under the government's measures it had introduced progressively over the last two years.

'We recognise that we need to make sure that the numbers of migrants that we have coming to Australia is sustainable, and that's exactly why we've taken a range of actions to bring that number down,' he said.

Mr Eslake said the makeup of migrants coming to Australia was as important as the overall numbers and that the Coalition was correct to call for more construction workers to be allowed in.

Dozens of building companies have collapsed in recent months courtesy of a surge in material and labour costs.

It is one of the reasons the Master Builders Association estimates Australia will not meet a target of 1.2million new homes built over the next five years to ease the housing crisis.

Mr Rizvi said along with the nation's low unemployment rate - 4.1 per cent, compared to 6 per cent in the EU and 5.2 per cent in China - attracting new immigrants, there was also a slower-than-anticipated decline in foreign student numbers.

He also said the conditions for working holiday visa holders had 'not really tightened at all'.

'Arrivals have not declined as they [the government] expected, departures have not increased as they expected.'

Official immigration figures for the 12 months to July will not be released until later this year.

Looking ahead to the target for this financial year of a net overseas migration intake of 260,000 people, Mr Rizvi said it too would likely be well exceeded unless the government quickly introduced more measures.

NOM is the difference between arrivals to Australia and departures from Australia and includes both migrants and Australians.

Migrant arrivals to Australia are counted in NOM if they are in Australia for a total of 12 months or more during a 16-month period.

Temporary visa holders are the largest contributing group to migrant numbers and most temporary visa categories are demand-driven  and not capped.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13934653/Australia-immigration-politics-Albanese.html

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Trump sounds alarm on illegal immigrant murderers: 'A lot of bad genes in our country'

Former President Trump on Monday described illegal immigrant murderers as having "bad genes" and warned that there are "a lot of bad genes in our country" as illegal immigrant crime remains a top issue for voters ahead of the November election.

"How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States," the 2024 Republican presidential nominee told radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Trump appeared to be referring to the more than 13,000 illegal immigrants in the U.S. who are on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s non-detained docket with a conviction for homicide. The data was revealed in a letter to lawmakers last month. Some of those, although it is unclear how many, will be in federal or state prisons, and many came into the U.S. in prior administrations. The data says that, among those not in detention, there are 425,431 convicted criminals on the docket, up from about 405,000 in June 2021 and 368,000 in April 2016.

The data revelation has again fired up the issue of illegal immigrant crime, which has been a top concern for many voters amid a massive border security crisis in which record numbers were seen at the border and a number of high-profile crimes committed allegedly by illegal immigrants.

"You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now," he said.

Trump appeared to be referring only to murderers, but some media outlets quickly pounced on Trump's words and accused him of referring to immigrants more broadly. An NBC News headline described it as the "latest disparagement of migrants" from the former president.

The Washington Post, Politico and other mainstream media outlets also echoed this same narrative. Mediaite described Trump's comment as "chilling" and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, "That type of language is hateful, it's disgusting, it's inappropriate. It has no place in our country."

Trump has promised to take a tougher line on illegal immigration as well as some forms of legal immigration. He has promised to launch a massive deportation campaign if elected. He has also promised to finish the border wall that he started in his first administration and end Biden-era parole programs that have brought hundreds of thousands of migrants into the U.S.

Polls generally show that Trump is leading his Democrat opponent, Vice President Harris, on the issues of immigration and border security. Republicans have said that the Biden administration encouraged and fueled the border crisis by rolling back Trump-era policies and expanding catch-and-release.

Harris has sought to position herself as the candidate better suited to handle border security, pointing to her past as a prosecutor who went after transnational criminal organizations. She has also backed a bipartisan border security bill unveiled this year that would surge funding for the border and also limit some asylum entries.

Harris and the Biden administration have accused Trump of opposing that bill for political purposes, but conservatives have said the bill would only codify high levels of illegal immigration.

Meanwhile, border encounters are down sharply at the border, with a drop of more than 50% since the summer. The administration puts that down in part to an executive order signed by President Biden that limits asylum entries into the U.S. Harris recently supported a move to toughen up that order further.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-sounds-alarm-illegal-immigrant-murderers-bad-genes-in-country

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J.D. Vance is right, unbridled immigration of 8 million since 2021 is causing housing prices to skyrocket. It’s math.

By Robert Romano

“We don't want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices. But we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country… which does drive up costs, Tim. Twenty-five million illegal aliens competing with Americans for scarce homes is one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country. It's why we have massive increases in home prices that have happened right alongside massive increases in illegal alien, alien populations under Kamala Harris's leadership.”

That was Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance at his Oct. 1 debate against Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, outlining that allowing 8.3 million border crossings since 2021 reported by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, most of whom tend to stay, thus requiring housing, increases demand and thus prices for existing homes.

For example, in Fiscal Year 2024, of the 2.75 million southwest border encounters, 1.4 million were Title 8 apprehensions, of which only about 309,000 were subjected to expedited removal, about 109,000 were detained pending proceedings and another 139,000 voluntarily returned, with almost all of the rest given a voluntary “notice to appear” for later immigration proceedings. The rest were just caught and released. In other words, about 2.2 million stayed. Where?

In the nation’s increasingly scarce housing. Now, do that every year, and you wind up with millions more demanding housing, and if production does not keep up—it hasn’t—and prices have only one place to go, up. At the debate, Vance noted “there's a Federal Reserve study that we're happy to share after the debate. We'll put it up on social media. Actually, that really drills down on the connection between increased levels of migration, especially illegal immigration, and higher housing prices.”

True to his word, on Oct. 2, Vance posted on X a speech by Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman from May 3 at the Massachusetts Bankers Association Annual Convention in Key Biscayne, Fla., when she stated, “there is a risk that strong consumer demand for services, increased immigration, and continued labor market tightness could lead to persistently high core services inflation. Given the current low inventory of affordable housing, the inflow of new immigrants to some geographic areas could result in upward pressure on rents, as additional housing supply may take time to materialize.”

Since 2020, the U.S. population has increased by almost 5.7 million to 337 million on a net basis once births, deaths and immigration are factored in, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That means illegal immigration of 8.3 million reported by the Border Patrol — again, most of them stay — more than accounts for the entire overall increase of the population.

Even still, from 2021 to 2024, there have been about 5.8 million housing starts for private homes, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That’s enough homes for every person, let alone every household — the average size of American households is 2 when households are divided by population level.

So, construction has more than kept up with the growth of the population, although there are regional incongruities. One-third of illegal immigrants live in California and Texas alone, with Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois included accounts for more than half of the inflow, according to Pew Research.

And according to Zillow, about half of the worst housing shortages are in Californian cities alone, while the biggest increases in housing supply were occurring in Austin, Seattle, Orlando, Jacksonville, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Raleigh, Nashville, and Phoenix. Texas builds more homes, and so prices there are less than California.

Overall, since the end of 2020, the U.S. Freddie Mac Home Price Index has increased 37.2 percent. The all transactions house price index by Federal Housing Finance Agency says they’re up 44 percent. And housing in the consumer price index is up 22.7 percent, and overall shelter prices are up 22.8 percent.

It is in that context that Kamala Harris is proposing to build an additional 3 million homes over the next four years, in addition to the current 1.3 million a year already being constructed. Or we could just deport the illegal immigrants, as proposed by former President Donald Trump, and then there is no shortage.

Also, and this is sad to think about, but as Baby Boomers age and pass away — there are 60 million Americans 65 years old and older — the number of available housing units will grow dramatically over the next 15 years. The same thing is happening in Japan, where once there were housing shortages, but because of the aging population, there are surpluses as prices collapse.

Meaning, just as soon as we get done building a bunch of new homes to accommodate all of the immigration, we could see home prices contract as happened in 2007 through 2011. At best, there are temporary shortages that could be almost entirely mitigated by restricting migration. Senator Vance was right.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/10/j-d-vance-is-right-unbridled-immigration-of-8-million-since-2021-is-causing-housing-prices-to-skyrocket-its-math/

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The economic case for mass immigration is COLLAPSING

Listen to the expert class and they’ll tell you mass immigration is good for Western economies. It’s driving growth, making us more productive, making our societies more prosperous and improving living standards. But this is a myth.

Mass immigration —as a growing pile of evidence across Europe now shows— is not good for Western economies. On the contrary, if you look past the pro-immigration zealots masquerading as serious economists on Twitter and engage with the actual evidence then you’ll soon realise that much of the immigration flooding into the West is hollowing out our economies, taking more out of them than it’s putting in.

Look at the UK. A couple of weeks ago, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) released a new report on the country’s fiscal risks, concluding that the country’s finances are on an unsustainable path. Over the next half-century, because of the UK’s ageing society and climate risks, public spending is forecast to rise from 45% to over 60% of GDP, with debt as a percentage of GDP soaring to an eye-watering 274% in the coming decades. In short, we’re heading for disaster unless something changes.

But what was also interesting about this report is that, unlike what usually happens, it did not point to mass immigration as the answer to these problems. Why? Because even the technocrats at the OBR have finally realised that the current model of mass immigration that we are pursuing in the UK is weakening, not strengthening, the economy. In short, the very kind of immigration that our hapless political elites on both the Left and the Right have been encouraging since Brexit—low skill, low wage, non-selective immigration from outside Europe— is the most economically damaging.

For a start, the OBR quietly notes that mass immigration is contributing to what is known as ‘capital dilution’, or what I call ‘the population trap’. This is what happens when populations expand so quickly that the sheer scale and speed of this population change exceeds the capacity of the state to provide its own citizens with functioning public services —such as a functioning NHS and education system— as well as things like affordable and available housing and safe neighbourhoods. Mass immigration, in short, is managed decline because it’s putting enormous pressure on a state that is already struggling to provide public services for its existing population.

This is what the Canadians, the Swedes, and many others are now finally realising —that the sheer scale of demographic change over the last twenty years or so has been so great that the state is now simply unable to perform its most basic functions. And this is what is now happening in the UK —even if much of the elite class ignore it.

Since 1997, net migration added nearly 6 million people to the country, with close to 4 million arriving since 2010 under Conservative-led governments, the most pro-immigration governments in history. In 2022 and 2023 alone, more than 2.4 million people migrated into the UK. But at the same time growth has remained low, productivity and wage growth have stagnated, and the country has recorded the worst GDP-per-capita figures since the 1970s. Where is the booming, dynamic, innovative, prosperous economy that the pro-immigration lobby promised us would arrive?

Look around at the NHS, our education system, and infrastructure and it’s already crystal clear to many that these changes are imposing other costs. As the OBR notes in typically technocratic lingo, the sheer scale of this migration is diluting what it calls ‘the public capital stock per person’. In other words, the British people and their children are now being pushed by incompetent elites into a big debt, big state, big spending, big tax society that will increasingly be defined by masses of immigration from outside Europe and even worse public services than we have now.

Some of these costs have already been tracked. One think-tank, Oxford Economics, estimates that the very kind of mass immigration from outside Europe that the old parties are now imposing on the rest of us has cost the UK economy somewhere around £9 billion. In housing, too, we already know that mass immigration is driving up house prices and rents, requiring the UK, which built only 180,000 homes last year, to build some 550,000 homes each year if it is to keep up with the demand from immigration, in turn making it harder for British families, workers, and young people to get onto the housing ladder. As I’ve said before, you can have available and affordable housing for British families or mass immigration. You can’t have both.

Then come the less visible but still significant costs to the public purse —like the fact nearly 2 million state school pupils do not speak English as their first language, that immigrants made 7 million new GP registrations between 2010 and 2022, that our broken asylum system cost us at least £7 billion a year, and that immigrants are disproportionately more likely to be arrested —all costs that you are not supposed to discuss or mention in polite society but which you, the taxpayer, are still forced to pay each year while being told this model of mass immigration is actually good for you.

But surely the economic contribution that immigration is making outstrips these costs, right? Nope. As I’ve been arguing for years, the OBR has finally looked at the fiscal impact of different types of immigration into Britain and concluded that the very kind of low-skill, low-wage migration that our hapless politicians in Westminster are now encouraging is a net fiscal cost, not benefit, to the economy and taxpayers.

As the OBR analysis finds, an average low-wage migrant costs the taxpayer about £150,000 by the time they reach 60, about £465,000 by the time they reach their 80s and about £1 million if they live to 100. The OBR also find that tweaking different kinds of migration makes little difference to our country’s growing debt problem. In short, mass immigration is simply not the panacea the expert class want you to think it is.

And the OBR find this while suffering from big problems. They make some truly bizarre calculations, like assuming immigrants have no children and dependents and while completely disregarding things like the fiscal cost of immigration on housing, education, and crime —which have been shown to be significant.

And here’s something else that many people in Westminster don’t want you to know —it’s the same story in other economies across the West. Just as evidence in the UK is starting to show, many studies in Europe, which are based on MUCH more granular data than we have in the UK, are finding that mass immigration is undermining, not strengthening, economic prosperity in the West.

One massive problem in the UK —which I’ve been talking about in recent months— is that while we know in broad terms that mass immigration is now making us poorer we also do not have the very granular data on things like welfare claims, taxation, and criminality by nationality and immigration status that are available in other countries and would allow us to paint an even more detailed picture of what’s going on.

Why? Because the state and civil servants very clearly want to keep this data hidden from you, the taxpayer, or they are so incompetent they are not collecting it in the first place. You’re being forced, in other words, to pay for the costs of this political project while the state simultaneously refuses to show you data on the impact immigration is having on your economy, welfare state, NHS, prison sentence, and more, and then being called a racist or misinformed lemming if you ask questions. It’s unbelievable.

But other countries HAVE been collecting and crunching this data and they find a very consistent and alarming story. In recent years, research in Denmark, Sweden, Germany and other countries that we’ll come to has converged on the same point: mass immigration, though especially low-wage, low-skill, and non-European migration from the Middle East and Northern Africa —precisely the kind that’s now flooding into Europe and the UK—is a net fiscal cost to economies in Europe. It’s hollowing them out from the inside and eroding their welfare states.

One of the most detailed studies, the Borderless Welfare State, at the University of Amsterdam, paints a striking and bleak picture. It’s based on incredibly detailed and reliable data on individuals in the population. What did it find? It found clear and overwhelming evidence that much of the immigration that’s flooding into the country is undermining the welfare state and imposing big costs on the economy.

Why? Because much of the immigration into the Netherlands, like much of the immigration into the UK, is being driven by less well educated immigrants who cling to the welfare state and take more out of it than they put in.

As Jan van der Beek’s research shows, the share of poorly educated people in the 25-65 age group among non-European immigrants (34%) is twice as high as among the native Dutch (17%). And because the poorly-educated are more likely to rely on welfare this is increasing the proportion of net recipients in the population, upsetting the balance. This is exactly why Milton Friedman said: ‘You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state’. It’s also why other scholars warn mass immigration erodes social trust and support for welfare —not least as the native population begin to realise they are merely subsidising outsiders from very different cultures who often hate who they are and are a net fiscal drain on the economy.

As Jan van der Beek also finds, while poorly-educated immigrants are a net fiscal cost on Western economies, so too are migrants who are moving into the West to join family members, study, or seek asylum (as many in the UK are doing). In the UK, for example, while people often assume that international students are affluent PhD students from Chile the reality is quite different. More than 40% of graduate visa holders in the UK earn less than £15,000 a year, with many ending up servicing the low-wage, low-skill Deliveroo economy. Only migrants who are moving for work make a net contribution although even then the pattern is mixed. As van der Beek finds, whereas labour migrants from North America, Oceania and Japan bring a net fiscal gain to the economy of some £670,000, asylum migrants from Africa, like many of those arriving in the UK, cost the Dutch a net cost of £685,000 per migrant.

Family and asylum migration is especially costly (which has also been found in Belgium). In fact, in the Netherlands it’s estimated that granting one asylum request to one migrant costs Dutch taxpayers about £1.1 million —to cover the asylum-seeking migrant, their family members, and the impact of the second generation.

There are also enormous differences according to where migrant workers come from. On average, migrant workers from Africa, the Middle east, and Central and Eastern Europe are a net fiscal drain. Their education and income is low, making them, on average, net recipients of the welfare state. This is aggravated by higher rates of family-related migration that come with labour migration, which doubles the cost.

One example are low-skilled, guest-worker migrants from Morocco and Turkey who have grown from 55,000 in the 1970s to 935,000 since. In 2016, in the Netherlands, these guest-workers and their descendants were net fiscal recipients of an astonishing £8 billion –equivalent to 2.5% of all government spending—which is even more striking given they tend to be younger and in theory should be net contributors.

The most costly forms of migration are asylum-seekers from the Middle East and Northern Africa. This is in line with findings from the Danish Ministry of Finance, who also single out the so-called ‘MENAPT’ region (Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey) as the region that is associated with the biggest fiscal costs to Western economies and brings the biggest problems with integration.

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/the-economic-case-for-mass-immigration?

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‘Unprecedented’: Retired Border Patrol Chief Blows Whistle on How Biden-Harris Admin Hid Border Crisis

Retired Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott blew the whistle to the Daily Caller News Foundation on what he calls the Biden-Harris administration’s going to great lengths to hide the illegal immigration crisis from the public, just days after a current sector chief made similar claims.

Aaron Heitke, a former chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, testified before a House committee Sept. 18 that the White House ordered agents to hide information on arrests of so-called special interest aliens or SIAs, move masses of illegal migrants out of sight of the press, and give other instructions to disguise the true level of the border crisis.

Scott, who led Border Patrol from roughly the last year of the Trump-Pence administration to the first seven months of the Biden-Harris administration, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he was given similar orders.

“There was a gag order put on us literally within minutes of the Biden administration taking office,” Scott said.

“The chief of staff for Customs and Border Protection, when she arrived, one of her first orders was to forbid us from talking to the public, or doing press releases, or doing media without the White House clearing our statements,” Scott said. “Not only were they not cleared, when they finally did give us talking points, they weren’t even accurate. They weren’t truthful.”

Scott’s tenure as Border Patrol leader overlapped with Biden’s assignment of Vice President Kamala Harris to address the root causes of illegal immigration from Central America. The retired chief confirmed that Harris never once spoke to him, even after her designation as “border czar.”

Having worked for the Border Patrol since the early 1990s, Scott experienced multiple changes in presidential administration. The longtime officer said higher-ups’ clamping down on communication to the public was nothing new, but the sheer level of control handed down by the Biden-Harris administration was nothing he had experienced before.

“No press conferences were approved, all border tours were shut down,” Scott said. “It was unprecedented. I’ve never seen a gag order that tight.”

Scott’s comments follow the testimony given by Heitke, in which the former San Diego sector chief agent said he was prohibited from talking about the rising number of special interest aliens—those who potentially pose a national security risk to the U.S.—unlawfully crossing the border.

“Prior to this administration, the San Diego sector averaged 10–15 SIAs per year,” Heitke told the House Homeland Security Committee. “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, way over 100 SIAs in 2023, and more than that this year.”

“These are only the ones we caught. At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIAs or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke testified. “The administration was trying to convince the public that there was no threat at the border.”

Heitke also went into detail about steps he said the Biden-Harris administration took to hide masses of migrants from reporters, accusing the White House of portraying “fiction” to the public.

“Each time we asked for help in dealing with a new issue, it fell on deaf ears,” Heitke said. “At times in San Diego, we had 2,000 or more aliens sitting in between the fences asking to turn themselves in. I was told to move them out of sight of the media.”

This is not the first time agents have accused the Biden-Harris administration of intentionally trying to cover up the extent of the border crisis from the media.

Ahead of Harris’ first trip to the border in El Paso, Texas, in 2021, administration officials gave explicit instructions to clear the area of migrants to put on a “show” for the vice president, according to Border Patrol sources who spoke to the New York Post.

Although an executive order issued by President Joe Biden in June led to a steady decline in illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, the Biden-Harris administration had overseen a major wave of illegal immigration into the country after issuing a slate of executive orders that largely dismantled the Trump-Pence administration’s border agenda.

Border Patrol agents reported encountering more than 7 million migrants illegally crossing into the U.S. since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, according to the latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The massive wave of illegal migration has strained the resources of major sanctuary cities such as New York City and Chicago, but also smaller towns in the heartland such as Springfield, Ohio.

Scott commended his former colleague for speaking out, noting that doing so puts his ability to make an income at risk. Many retired agents don’t speak out because companies and other private contractors that work with the federal government want to avoid the publicity that can come with working with or hiring whistleblowers, according to the retired Border Patrol chief.

“I think it’s very problematic that the administration is trying to hide so much relevant information from the public,” Scott said. “I’m very, very grateful that Chief Heitke stepped up and decided to share that information with the public because that really hurts his ability to get contract jobs in the future.”

Heitke is “not only taking a risk, he’s knowingly cutting his family’s income by standing up for what’s right,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/30/unprecedented-retired-border-patrol-chief-blows-whistle-on-how-biden-harris-admin-hid-border-crisis/

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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

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https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH  -- new site)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com  (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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