Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith says a record influx of new immigrants is a 'disaster for families' and young people wanting to own their own home.
The electronics chain founder, who turns 80 next week, wants Australia's net immigration slashed to 75,000 a year to ease Australia's rental and housing affordability crisis.
This would take immigration levels back to where they were in 1997, before the overseas intake doubled within a decade, only to double again after the pandemic.
'Every Australian family has a population plan to have the number of children they can give a good life to, but at the rate we are going, it means the average Australian family will have less,' Mr Smith told the Daily Telegraph.
Australia's population is estimated to double in the next 50 years, with big business interests advocating high immigration to boost the supply of labour.
Mr Smith said 'billionaire political donors' only promoted high population growth to expand their wealth.
New Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Thursday showed Australia welcomed 125,410 permanent and long-term arrivals in January, marking the highest January on record.
Accounting for departures, the net growth in permanent and long-term arrivals for January reached 55,330, surpassing the previous highest intake in January 2009 by 40 percent.
Treasury economists are expecting Australia's overseas intake, covering skilled migrants and international students, to slow to 375,000 in 2023-24.
This would be lower than the record 518,000 intake for 2022-23 and below January's annual increase of 481,620.
But this would still be almost double the pre-pandemic level of 194,400 in 2019-20, before Australia was closed from March 2020 to December 2021.
Official data showed the majority of new arrivals are settling in NSW and then Victoria, leading to more congestion in Australia's two biggest cities.
Most migrants begin as renters, leading to more competition for accommodation in Sydney and Melbourne.
High population growth is also creating problems in other states, with Brisbane the recipient of high interstate migration, as south-east Queensland attracts residents from NSW and Victoria in search of more affordable housing and warmer weather.
Daniel Wild, the deputy executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs think tank, said high immigration was behind Australia's housing crisis.
'It is clear that the federal government's migration program is unplanned, out of control, and out of step with community expectations,' he said.
'On top of this it has failed to address Australia's worker shortage crisis, the very thing the federal government uses to justify such rapid increases in intake.
'It is clear this lazy approach to solving worker shortages is not working and there should be a greater focus of getting Australian pensioners, veterans and students into work.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13199425/Dick-Smiths-urgent-warning-Australia.html
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Monday, March 18, 2024
Australian philanthropist's urgent warning to Australia as a record influx of new immigrants move Down Under
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Illegal Immigrants Leave US Hospitals With Billions in Unpaid Bills
Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are flooding into U.S. hospitals for treatment and leaving billions in uncompensated health care costs in their wake.
The House Committee on Homeland Security recently released a report illustrating that from the estimated $451 billion in annual costs stemming from the U.S. border crisis, a significant portion is going to health care for illegal immigrants.
With the majority of the illegal immigrant population lacking any kind of medical insurance, hospitals and government welfare programs such as Medicaid are feeling the weight of these unanticipated costs.
Apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the U.S. border have jumped 48 percent since the record in fiscal year 2021 and nearly tripled since fiscal year 2019, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
Last year broke a new record high for illegal border crossings, surpassing more than 3.2 million apprehensions.
And with that sea of humanity comes the need for health care and, in most cases, the inability to pay for it.
In January, CEO of Denver Health Donna Lynne told reporters that 8,000 illegal immigrants made roughly 20,000 visits to the city’s health system in 2023.
The total bill for uncompensated care costs last year to the system totaled $140 million, said Dane Roper, public information officer for Denver Health. More than $10 million of it was attributed to “care for new immigrants,” he told The Epoch Times.
Though the amount of debt assigned to illegal immigrants is a fraction of the total, uncompensated care costs in the Denver Health system have risen dramatically over the past few years.
The total uncompensated costs in 2020 came to $60 million, Mr. Roper said. In 2022, the number doubled, hitting $120 million.
He also said their city hospitals are treating issues such as “respiratory illnesses, GI [gastro-intenstinal] illnesses, dental disease, and some common chronic illnesses such as asthma and diabetes.”
“The perspective we’ve been trying to emphasize all along is that providing healthcare services for an influx of new immigrants who are unable to pay for their care is adding additional strain to an already significant uncompensated care burden,” Mr. Roper said.
He added this is why a local, state, and federal response to the needs of the new illegal immigrant population is “so important.”
Colorado is far from the only state struggling with a trail of unpaid hospital bills.
Dr. Robert Trenschel, CEO of the Yuma Regional Medical Center situated on the Arizona–Mexico border, said on average, illegal immigrants cost up to three times more in human resources to resolve their cases and provide a safe discharge.
“Some [illegal] migrants come with minor ailments, but many of them come in with significant disease,” Dr. Trenschel said during a congressional hearing last year.
“We’ve had migrant patients on dialysis, cardiac catheterization, and in need of heart surgery. Many are very sick.”
He said many illegal immigrants who enter the country and need medical assistance end up staying in the ICU ward for 60 days or more.
A large portion of the patients are pregnant women who’ve had little to no prenatal treatment. This has resulted in an increase in babies being born that require neonatal care for 30 days or longer.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986 requires that public hospitals participating in Medicare “must medically screen all persons seeking emergency care … regardless of payment method or insurance status.”
The numbers are difficult to gauge as the policy position of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is that it “will not require hospital staff to ask patients directly about their citizenship or immigration status.”
In southern California, again close to the border with Mexico, some hospitals are struggling with an influx of illegal immigrants.
American patients are enduring longer wait times for doctor appointments due to a nursing shortage in the state, two health care professionals told The Epoch Times in January.
A health care worker at a hospital in Southern California, who asked not to be named for fear of losing her job, told The Epoch Times that “the entire health care system is just being bombarded” by a steady stream of illegal immigrants.
“Our healthcare system is so overwhelmed, and then add on top of that tuberculosis, COVID-19, and other diseases from all over the world,” she said.
A newly-enacted law in California provides free healthcare for all illegal immigrants residing in the state. The law could cost taxpayers between $3 billion and $6 billion per year, according to recent estimates by state and federal lawmakers.
In New York, where the illegal immigration crisis has manifested most notably beyond the southern border, city and state officials have long been accommodating of illegal immigrants’ healthcare costs.
Since June 2014, when then-mayor Bill de Blasio set up The Task Force on Immigrant Health Care Access, New York City has worked to expand avenues for illegal immigrants to get free health care.
“New York City has a moral duty to ensure that all its residents have meaningful access to needed health care, regardless of their immigration status or ability to pay,” Mr. de Blasio stated in a 2015 report.
The report notes that in 2013, nearly 64 percent of illegal immigrants were uninsured. Since then, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have settled in the city.
“The uninsured rate for undocumented immigrants is more than three times that of other noncitizens in New York City (20 percent) and more than six times greater than the uninsured rate for the rest of the city (10 percent),” the report states.
The report states that because healthcare providers don’t ask patients about documentation status, the task force lacks “data specific to undocumented patients.”
Some health care providers say a big part of the issue is that without a clear path to insurance or payment for non-emergency services, illegal immigrants are going to the hospital due to a lack of options.
“It’s insane, and it has been for years at this point,” Dana, a Texas emergency room nurse who asked to have her full name omitted, told The Epoch Times.
Working for a major hospital system in the greater Houston area, Dana has seen “a zillion” migrants pass through under her watch with “no end in sight.” She said many who are illegal immigrants arrive with treatable illnesses that require simple antibiotics. “Not a lot of GPs [general practitioners] will see you if you can’t pay and don’t have insurance.”
She said the “undocumented crowd” tends to arrive with a lot of the same conditions. Many find their way to Houston not long after crossing the southern border. Some of the common health issues Dana encounters include dehydration, unhealed fractures, respiratory illnesses, stomach ailments, and pregnancy-related concerns.
“This isn’t a new problem, it’s just worse now,” Dana said.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/illegal-immigrants-leave-us-hospitals-with-billions-in-unpaid-bills-5604492
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Thursday, March 14, 2024
How Rich People Create Poverty
This is a standard economist's case for immigration but it omits sociological considerations, not least of which is the many crimes committed by immigrants, particularly by their children. It also omits mention of the fact that many of the present crop of illegal immigrants come from the basically Fascist countries of Latin America, where the promise of taxing the rich to help the poor is axiomatic. They tend to bring those values with them, which delivers disaster once those immigrants get access to the voting booth.
Fascism is basically democratic. Even Hitler was fairly elected, so it differs from Communism. Both systems are economically destructive but the failures of Communism are much more evident. For that reason refugees from Communist and Fascist counties differ, with refugees from (say) Cuba tending to skepticism towards socialist promises
So on sociological grounds there is a strong case for SELECTIVE immgration. Considering economic theory only is naive
It’s popular within the academy and fashionable intellectual circles to blame rich Westerners for global poverty, or rich Americans for national poverty. Rich people shoulder a lot of the blame for poverty, but not for the reasons you might think.
It’s worth revisiting why rich Westerners share so much blame for poverty. It’s not because we have high standards of living. Rather, it’s because we enthusiastically embrace immigration restrictions that make it hard for people to move to where their labor is most valuable and tariffs that make their labor less valuable by reducing their customer base—and we make ourselves worse off in the process. In October 2023, President Biden announced plans to resume construction on the border wall he’d pledged to stop while running for President. We’re not blameworthy because we’re richer. We’re blameworthy because we refuse to further enrich ourselves by letting foreigners trade.
People blame the wants of the many on the luxuries of the few. This is incorrect, zero-sum thinking, which holds that there is, always and everywhere, only a fixed amount of stuff to go around. By this reasoning, the fact that I have indicates that someone else has not. Someone goes thirsty because I’m drinking a can of club soda or sparkling water. My opulence causes their want. If that’s true, it’s only true in the very, very short run. People don’t have much because they don’t produce much, and while it’s true that we could redistribute everything and raise the poor’s living standards considerably, we could do so only once (and if we did, we would find the same inequalities emerging immediately). Regular confiscations and redistributions don’t exactly provide people with strong incentives to invest and produce a lot in the first place. One person’s wealth does not cause another’s poverty in a commercial society. It’s a bit more complicated when the rich person is a powdered lord getting ever-richer by taxing the peasants.
A related argument blames global capital, suggesting that we owe our high standards of living to the low standards of living of the farmers and factory workers in poor countries. You might periodically see something float across social media explaining how little of the price of a chocolate bar goes to chocolate farmers or claims that you can buy cheap textiles because people around the world make them for you in (by Western standards) horrific conditions. There are alternative, more accurate explanations. First, the chocolate example shows how little of the value added to a chocolate bar comes from chocolate cultivation, rather than the process’s shipping, processing, marketing, and other parts. Second, the poor conditions in “sweatshops” are due to the workers’ low productivity combined with their lousy alternatives. As Paul Heyne has argued, it seems odd (and morally questionable) to suggest that we are obliged to refrain from offering them slightly better alternatives.
A few sentences ago, I wrote that (some) people don’t have much because they don’t produce much. That isn’t because of any innate deficiency. It’s because of the incentives they face in the societies they inhabit. Making people more productive is a laudable goal, but it has a checkered history. The real gains come from people moving to where their labor is more valuable—and that’s in high-income countries like the United States. The problem is, we rich Westerners won’t let them come. We consign them to lives of low productivity and the attendant poverty by building walls and saying, “No foreigners allowed.” The kicker? We impoverish ourselves in the process. We impoverish ourselves by keeping markets from working and, therefore, keeping others poor.
At the end of 2020, I expressed a wish that we would roll back border socialism. Those policies are among the main reasons why people in low-income countries continue to “enjoy” low incomes. If we allowed them to move to the United States, they might remain poor by American standards, but become rich by global standards.
There is another interesting consideration here, as well. Adam Smith famously wrote that the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market. Immigration and trade restrictions deliberately limit the extent of the market. Smaller markets mean less specialization and a coarser division of labor, meaning we’re worse off, on net. Some people might be made better off by such policies (which is why they support them), but their net gains are smaller than the rest of our net losses.
This is especially true in the long run. Larger markets mean a finer division of labor and a finer division of knowledge. In “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” F.A. Hayek quotes Alfred North Whitehead, who said that “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” Thanks to the division of knowledge, I can write articles like these on a machine I couldn’t design myself, using software I couldn’t write, and I don’t have to think about any of these things. An extensive social division of knowledge means I can concentrate on composition.
In left-wing versions of the popular imagination, rich Westerners are rich because we exploit poor people in the rest of the world. We do share a lot of blame for global poverty, but not because of theft or exploitation. Rather, we are blameworthy because policies like immigration restrictions actively and forcibly prevent people worldwide from improving their lives by moving to where their labor is more productive.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14857&omhide=true&trk=title
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Wednesday, March 13, 2024
How ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Are Costing American Lives
According to a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, ICE asked police in Montgomery County, Maryland, 119 times this year to detain and hand over criminal aliens they had arrested. The criminals’ records included “convictions for assault, robbery, illegal firearms, sex abuse of a minor, rape, and MS-13 gang membership,” former official John Feere said. Montgomery County didn’t honor a single request.
ICE “detainers” are a request from federal law enforcement to their state and local colleagues to let them know when a foreign national (“alien” in immigration law) is going to be released from custody after having been arrested or after having served time for a criminal conviction. This is so ICE can take them into federal custody pending removal, or during any legal process needed to deport them.
Illegal aliens are deportable under immigration law simply for being here illegally, but they can apply for relief such as asylum. Some have legitimate asylum cases, fearing for their lives if they are returned to their home countries, but the majority clog the system with bogus claims so they can stay in the United States for years—oftentimes, indefinitely. But being convicted of a crime makes illegal aliens doubly deportable under other sections of the law.
When detainers are honored, ICE can lock potentially violent alien suspects or convicts safely away from the public. Unfortunately, many local and even state governments in the U.S. have “sanctuary” policies, one of which is to refuse to inform ICE when they arrest or release an alien.
What this means for Americans from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Zebulon, New Mexico, is that convicts who are highly likely to reoffend are being released into their neighborhoods every day. For the leftists currently controlling U.S. immigration policy, the ideology of open borders and defunding law enforcement trumps your safety and security every time.
Here are a few examples of how sanctuary jurisdictions’ refusal to honor detainers puts Americans at risk.
In October 2019, Carlos Orlando Iraheta-Vega, a 20-year-old illegal alien, was charged with beating a 16-year-old high school student to death with a baseball bat after an argument. Iraheta-Vega entered the U.S. illegally when he was under 18, benefiting from immigration policy that coddles “unaccompanied alien minors,” and joined (or rejoined) the Salvadoran gang MS-13.
As reported in the Washington Times, back in November 2018, Iraheta-Vega was arrested for stealing a car. Shortly after, he was arrested for drunk driving. He added another DUI arrest to his record in the summer of 2019. Each time, the “sanctuary” policies of King County, Washington, set Iraheta-Vega free before ICE could pick him up. Local police and prison authorities ignored all of ICE’s detainer requests and cut him loose without informing the agency.
Iraheta-Vega was able to live the gangster life—despite being an illegal alien—with impunity. Until he killed someone.
Now remember—this was back in 2019, when ICE had White House support in asking sanctuary jurisdictions to help them deport dangerous criminals. Imagine how things are now under President Joe Biden and his enforcement-averse secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
Sanctuary cities and counties can be found all over the country, in blue states and red. But their effects are the same everywhere: heightened, preventable risks to the public from criminal convicts who have no right to remain in the country.
In another example, in June 2021, an unnamed Honduran man was caught entering the U.S. illegally near Roma, Texas. Under the Biden “catch-and-release” policy, the Border Patrol gave him a notice to appear in court (many months later) and released him. We don’t know if he showed up for his first, or any, immigration hearings, but in July 2023, police in Herndon, Virginia, arrested and charged him with felony rape, abduction, and assault on a family member.
ICE sent a detainer request to the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, but the center ignored it and released him in August without letting ICE know. Despite Fairfax County’s refusal to assist them, ICE agents from Washington, D.C., arrested the Honduran on Oct. 12 and served him with (another) court notice to attend deportation proceedings. We can only hope that ICE has him detained now, so he can’t assault anyone else.
In October 2023, ICE arrested an unnamed Peruvian illegal alien who was charged with several sex crimes against a minor. Border Patrol first encountered the man in March 2022, but, like millions of others, he was released into the country pending the usual delayed, dragged-out immigration court process to remove him. Then in October 2022, the Peruvian was arrested in Fairfax, Virginia, for petit larceny, but his conviction was deferred by the court, and he was let go.
In July 2023, he was again arrested, on eight sex-crime charges against a victim under 13 years old. The day after his arrest, ICE lodged a detainer, but the Fairfax County detention center ignored it and released this predator into the community. Finally, after almost a month on the loose, the man was taken into custody by ICE in late October.
Unlike Fairfax County, some liberal jurisdictions are finally waking up to public anger at the consequences of their sanctuary policies.
The Washington Times reported in late February that Montgomery County, Maryland, will now “add more crimes to the county’s list where it will cooperate” with ICE and will give ICE 48 hours’ notice ahead of releasing criminals to give the agency time to pick them up and hold them, pending deportation, if a judge orders it.
The list isn’t a complete one, and Montgomery County’s executive (similar to a mayor, in charge of the executive branch of the county government) thinks he shouldn’t have to inform ICE about arrests for charges he doesn’t consider serious. But he may not have the full picture of someone’s criminal record to judge the risk. Regardless, local police should inform ICE every time they cite and arrest, and especially before they release any illegal alien.
As Manhattan Institute fellow and member of the Council on Criminal Justice Rafael Mangual wrote in his book “Criminal [In]justice,” “Criminals don’t specialize. ... Nearly 40 percent of violent felons were on probation, parole, or pretrial release when they committed their offense.”
Jose Ibarra, the man accused of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley in February, was previously arrested in New York for riding with a child on a moped without helmets (or a license) but then released by notoriously lax New York City prosecutors. Later, he and his brother were caught shoplifting in Georgia but only given misdemeanor citations and steered toward a woke “pre-arrest diversion program”—which clearly didn’t divert him from wrongdoing. Ibarra committing another crime, even if not a horrific murder, was entirely predictable.
What it took for Montgomery County to grudgingly pare back its “sanctuary” policy was the shooting and killing of a two-year-old boy by an illegal alien police had arrested—and then released—twice before without honoring ICE detainers. This one county is increasing collegial cooperation with federal authorities in the interests of public safety. How many more innocent victims will have to die before hardcore “sanctuary” cities like New York, Chicago, and Portland come around?
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/how-sanctuary-cities-are-costing-american-lives-5605975
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Refugees and Asylees Don’t Pay Their Own Way
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently issued a report claiming that refugees and asylees as a group are net fiscal contributors, meaning they pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. This claim deserves more than a little skepticism. The U.S. labor market rewards workers for their skills, and the government then redistributes some of the rewards through progressive taxation and spending. Logic dictates — and empirical analysis confirms — that high-skill workers tend to be net contributors, while the less-skilled tend to be net consumers.
Refugees fall toward the lower end of the skill distribution. According to the Annual Survey of Refugees (which does not include asylees), just 11 percent of recent refugees age 25 or older arrived with a bachelor’s degree, and 53 percent arrived without a high school diploma. It’s implausible that a group with such a low average skill level could be making a net contribution — especially considering that, unlike most other immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for the full panoply of welfare benefits. Asylees would need to have quite a positive fiscal impact to make up for the low skill level of refugees alone.
So where does the report go wrong? Its main problem is that it excludes costs associated with “congestible” public goods, such as police, highways, and parks. The report’s authors argue that the marginal cost of congestion is negligible because refugees and asylees are such a small portion of the national population, but that’s valid only if they are spread evenly throughout the country. Refugees and asylees can certainly be large portions of local populations, and congestion costs in those places add up. Based on prior research from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that the authors acknowledge on page 30, assigning refugees and asylees the average per-capita cost of congestible goods likely turns their fiscal impact negative.
Even without the exclusion of congestible goods, the report’s findings would be of limited value due to the lack of policy-relevant subgroup analyses, such as the potential difference between refugees and asylees mentioned above. The two programs could be separately expanded or contracted depending on their independent impacts — but only if policymakers know what those independent impacts are.
Similarly, the report combines recent arrivals with those who became refugees or asylees decades ago, reducing its usefulness for evaluating present-day policies. While the U.S. once took in several groups of higher-skill refugees, such as Soviet dissidents in the 1980s and Eastern Europeans in the 1990s, today refugees come mainly from less-developed parts of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, which has caused the average refugee’s education level to plummet. Should the experience of Soviet dissidents arriving in the 1980s really inform our expectations of Somalis who enter today? Breakdowns of the fiscal impact by education or regional origin would help mitigate this interpretive problem, but, again, the report does not provide them.
In 2020, the Center estimated the fiscal impact of recent refugees (not including asylees) by applying their age and education levels to cost estimates developed by the National Academies. Taking into account all taxes and benefits, the average refugee's lifetime fiscal cost was $60,000 in net present value, with those entering as adults costing $133,000 each. Perhaps this is a price that the U.S. should be willing to pay to further its humanitarian goals, but the price is real nonetheless. Advocates should not deny the trade-off.
https://cis.org/Richwine/Refugees-and-Asylees-Dont-Pay-Their-Own-Way
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Monday, March 11, 2024
Gallup: Immigration Surges to the Top of Americans’ Concerns
With Super Tuesday ended and the 2024 presidential electoral matchup pitting former President Donald Trump against current President Joe Biden set (for now), immigration is now Americans’ leading concern according to a poll released last week by Gallup. That survey is no outlier, and the question now is whether the incumbent and Congress can address voters’ angst over the crisis at the Southwest border in the next eight months. If they can’t, they may be looking for new jobs come January.
Gallup. The results of that poll were released on February 27, with 28 percent of respondents identifying “immigration” as “the most important problem facing this country today”. That puts the issue in first place out of 15 topics polled, solidly beating out “government” (20 percent), the “economy in general” (12 percent), “inflation” (11 percent), and “crime” (3 percent).
Even if you combine the economy and inflation — closely intertwined issues — immigration is still a bigger concern. That is nothing short of tectonic, especially since just one month earlier, immigration was just the second biggest issue for Americans, at 20 percent, trailing the economy by one point.
It’s not entirely clear why Americans are suddenly focused on immigration, given that the Southwest border is in no better or worse shape than two years ago, but migrant crises in northern cities, the Senate’s failure to pass a border bill, and recent high-profile crimes committed by migrants have likely played a major role.
Separately, that poll revealed that 55 percent of Americans view “large numbers of immigrants entering the United States illegally” as a “critical threat” to the United States over the next 10 years. Gallup has been polling on this question since 2004, and never in that two-decade period have Americans’ concerns about the unauthorized population been so heightened.
By contrast, at the outset of the Trump administration in 2018, just 38 percent of Gallup respondents said that illegal immigration would be a critical threat in the succeeding decade. When the question was first asked, in 2004 with September 11 fresh in Americans’ minds, just half of those polled saw illegal immigration as a critical threat.
There was, not surprisingly, a partisan split on this question, with 90 percent of Republicans viewing illegal immigration as a critical threat (up from 84 percent a year ago), compared to just 29 percent of Democrats. That said, 29 percent is a nine-point rise on the issue among the president’s fellow partisans over that period.
The biggest reasons for the increase on this issue, however, are rising concerns about illegal immigration among Independents, 54 percent of whom now view it as a critical threat, compared to 40 percent who took that position in 2023.
Wall Street Journal. On March 3, the Wall Street Journal released the results of its latest poll of 1,754 registered voters, conducted between February 21 and 28.
It revealed that “immigration” will be the most important issue on voters’ minds when they head to the ballot box in November, the choice of 20 percent of respondents, up from 13 percent in the same poll conducted two months before.
Immigration switched positions with the “economy” — the biggest issue for 14 percent of respondents in the latest poll compared to 21 percent in December — as voters’ number-one electoral concern. As the Journal noted, this is “a rare instance of any issue topping the economy as most prominent on voters’ minds”.
Separately, according to that poll, just 29 percent of voters approve of the job President Biden is doing when it comes to handling immigration (just 7 percent “strongly” approving) and just 30 percent are pleased with his performance in “securing the border” (with only 9 percent “strongly” in approval).
By contrast, 66 percent of the electorate disapproves of Biden’s immigration performance (54 percent strongly so), and 65 percent disapprove of the president’s efforts to secure the border (53 percent of whom strongly disapproved on that question).
And respondents to that poll think things are only getting worse, with 71 percent of voters saying that immigration and border security are headed in the “wrong direction”, compared to just 16 percent who think those issues are headed in the “right direction”.
Neither Trump nor congressional Republicans should be patting themselves on the back or taking victory laps, however.
That’s because while 45 percent of respondents agree with the statement “President Biden reversed Trump's executive orders on the border which opened our borders, and he failed to use the power he has had all along to seal the border and clamp down on illegal immigration,” 38 percent agreed that “Republicans killed a bipartisan deal they and Democrats negotiated that would reduce the number of migrants coming into the country only because Trump told them he didn't want to help Democrats.”
It’s safe to say the electorate is tired of excuses as to why the border is insecure and illegal immigration is out of control — they just want it fixed.
Fox News. Finally, on March 3, Fox News released the results of its latest poll, conducted between February 25 and 28, of 1,262 registered voters.
In that poll, 66 percent of respondents disapproved of the president’s handling of immigration, compared to less than a third, 31 percent of voters, who approved. That ties Biden’s lowest approval rate on immigration, reached in a similar poll Fox News conducted in November 2021.
That said, just 59 percent of the voters in that earlier poll disapproved of the job the president is doing on immigration, the difference between now and then being 10 percent of respondents who hadn’t yet made up their minds.
Apparently, 7 percent of them have now decided, and they don’t like the job Joe Biden is doing on immigration: that 66 percent disapproval rate for the president’s handling of immigration in the most recent Fox News poll is the highest it’s ever been in the 34 months the outlet has polled on this question.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Gallup-Immigration-Surges-Top-Americans-Concerns
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Sunday, March 10, 2024
Bloodthirsty Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua sets up shop in US as border authorities sound alarm
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is warning agents to be on the lookout for members of a notorious Venezuelan prison gang coming across the southern border -- just as the socialist country is refusing to take its citizens back.
A CBP source provided Fox News with an internal CBP intelligence bulletin revealing tattoos and identifiers for Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang. Members of that gang have been entering the U.S. illegally through the southern border.
Fox News reported this week that the brother of the suspect in the killing of Georgia student Laken Riley has ties to the gang. Both the suspect and his brother are Venezuelans who entered the U.S. illegally.
Federal authorities have been warning that the gang, also known as TdA and known for its violent turf wars as it expanded into other countries in South and Central America, is trying to establish itself in the U.S., where police are already linking it to organized crime. The FBI has also warned that the gang could team up with the bloodthirsty MS-13.
Last month two suspects in the assault of two NYPD officers were revealed to be members of TdA.
But CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sources have expressed frustration to Fox News that Venezuelan gang members are extremely difficult to deport because Venezuela is currently not taking them back.
Only 834 Venezuelans were deported in FY 2023, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data, despite there being over 335,000 encounters at the border. The administration had started returning illegal immigrants from Venezuela directly to the socialist dictatorship in October as part of a way to discourage the flow to the border.
While the administration took heat for the flights from immigration activists, who argued Venezuela was not an appropriate country to return migrants due to its human rights abuses, administration officials told reporters in January that it was looking to increase the number of flights.
One official said that "we do have the intention of ramping up repatriation flights to Venezuela" and that the administration sees it as a "critical part" of the broader immigration strategy.
"It’s an important deterrent," they said, with officials also saying they were pleased that Mexico was also now flying migrants straight to Venezuela.
In December, the administration had made limited exceptions to sanctions on a Venezuelan airline to help facilitate deportation flights from Canada and Latin America.
But last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Maduro regime has stopped flights of deported migrants from both the U.S. and Mexico after the U.S. reimposed some economic sanctions. The flights ended at the end of January, officials told the outlet, after around 1,800 returns.
Before beginning the flights last year, the administration had extended deportation protections to nearly 500,000 Venezuelans already in the U.S. in September. Venezuela is also part of a controversial parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans (CHNV) which allows 30,000 migrants with sponsors to fly into the U.S. each month.
Fox is told that Venezuelans can still be removed to Mexico, but that many then typically re-enter the U.S. illegally as a "gotaway."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bloodthirsty-venezuelan-gang-tren-de-aragua-sets-up-shop-in-us-as-border-authorities-sound-alarm
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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