Feds Were Reportedly Instructed to Clear Scene of Illegal Immigrants During Harris’ Border Trip

Federal immigration authorities were instructed to clear the streets of migrants ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ one and only border trip, according to sources that spoke with the New York Post.

Before Harris made her first and only trip to see the U.S.-Mexico border in June 2021 in El Paso, Texas, federal agents were reportedly ordered to clean the area up to disguise the actual level of the border crisis, according to Border Patrol sources that spoke with the New York Post. Agents were reportedly told to move illegal migrants out of holding facilities in order to put on a “show” for the vice president—and even went as far as to style unaccompanied minors’ hair.

“They rented out a ton of hotels and we spent hours moving out bodies. The kids that remained, we had to braid their hair,” one agent stated to the New York Post, and added that they “made jokes about how the building was more secure than the whole border was.”

“She had zero interest in really seeing anything. It was rushed,” added a former official who was present during Harris’ visit.

President Joe Biden tapped Harris to lead the administration’s efforts to mitigate the then-fledgling border crisis in early 2021, with specific instruction for her to address the root causes of irregular migration from Central America. However, almost immediately after the announcement, her office began to distance Harris from the job description, according to CNN.

Following growing pressure to visit the border, Harris finally did so in June 2021. In the time since Harris was appointed to address the root causes of illegal immigration to the U.S., more than 7 million migrants have tried crossing the U.S. southern border, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection.

The El Paso sector was being bombarded with migrants at the time. There were more than 21,500 Border Patrol encounters in that month alone, according to CBP data.

“We sanitized all the aliens out of there to make it look good,” another agent told the New York Post of the Harris visit.

After Biden announced he would no longer seek reelection over the weekend, Harris established herself as the presumptive presidential nominee for her party without a primary vote. In that time, numerous media outlets have attempted to downplay her appointed responsibilities on the border crisis.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/feds-were-reportedly-instructed-to-clear-scene-of-illegal-immigrants-during-harris-border-trip/

**************************************************

All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

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

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

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

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

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

***********************************************

Britain has reached its immigration breaking point

Between 2022 and 2023 the population of England and Wales increased by over 600,000 – the biggest increase since 1949, when records began. This population explosion has been fuelled almost entirely by immigration.

That’s because in 2019, with Brexit done, a new and more liberal immigration system was put in place. Instead of taking back control, as had been promised to the British people, it threw the gates wide open.

Most of the increase was driven by two new visas. One was for care workers. Rather than increase wages in a sector dominated by British workers, it undercut them. Meanwhile the graduate visa was supposed to attract world-class talent by offering them two years work in Britain after graduation. Instead it created a bonanza in dubious one-year postgrad courses, offering a foot in the door of the British market, with many of these students working illegally for Deliveroo rather than starting tech unicorns.

Adding to the madness, both visas allowed for dependents to be brought along, leading whole families in the Global South to decamp here.

The result is that our economy has seen a huge influx of low-skilled workers, on top of the millions who have entered our country since the Blair government turned us from a country of emigration in the 1990s into a country of mass migration. Instead of the promised economic boom, we’ve seen GDP per capita fall, meaning that even if the economy is technically growing, individually we are actually getting poorer.

This excess of labour, which is entirely the result of government decisions to keep levels of legal immigration high, has warped the economy. Rather than invest in automation, which would deliver more productivity and therefore more growth, we’ve seen Britain fall behind our international competitors in adopting industrial robots. Famously, automatic car washes have decreased in number since the 2000s, being replaced by hand washes manned by migrants.

In addition, all of these people have placed greater stress on our infrastructure. We haven’t built a new reservoir since the 1990s, while we’ve added millions of new people. As a result, we get hosepipe bans every year and the sewage system has to flush waste into rivers when the Victorian piping can’t handle the scale of usage. The same is true across roads, railways, hospitals, dental clinics and much more. No amount of investment can match the increase in population driven by immigration.

Some of this is also due to demographic changes in our population. Lots of people are living longer and longer thanks to medical improvements, which has a big cost as the elderly use health care much more than the rest of us. At the same time, too few children are being born to replace the workers who retire. Inevitably higher costs and fewer taxpayers strains public services.

Immigration is sometimes touted as a solution. If British people won’t have babies then we need foreigners to keep the economy going. The issue is that not all workers are alike. There is now academic literature showing that workers from Western countries, like Japan or America, are a net fiscal benefit but that non-Western workers are a net fiscal negative. Unfortunately the latter make up the vast majority of those coming here to work.

There’s also no way that immigrants can solve the demographic crisis, as they too will get old and need care. In fact, they probably make it worse: too many immigrants are a major reason for our sky-high property prices, which make it hard for young people to buy a house and have children. If more than half your income goes on rent, there isn’t much left for raising a family.

So to manage the strain we need both a sharp reduction in immigration and record-breaking expansion of our infrastructure, including housing. That doesn’t mean all immigration needs to cease. We know that some migrants really do add to our society – but they make up only a few tens of thousands of the millions coming here. By setting a high income requirement to come here, ending exemptions, and shutting down other routes in, we could achieve this.

The new government has made much of their pragmatism. The record of the Conservative years is clear: mass immigration makes no fiscal sense. The pragmatic option is to sharply reduce migration, reducing the environmental impact and incentivising business to invest in productivity-raising automation. Britain could be both welcoming and thriving.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/16/migration-britains-population-explosion-demographics/

**************************************************

All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

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

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

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

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

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

***********************************************

DOJ Sues Migrant Child Center for ‘Sexual Abuse and Harassment’

On July 18, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it’s suing Southwest Key Programs Inc., “a Texas-based nonprofit that provides housing to unaccompanied children [UACs] who are encountered at” the Southwest border, for engaging in “a pattern or practice of sexual abuse and harassment of” children trusted to its care. Such a shocking claim — while inevitable — is emblematic of the issues inherent in the federal government’s UAC system, which has never worked and is now breaking down under its own weight as migrant children continue to surge across the U.S.-Mexico line.

How We Got Here. The term “unaccompanied alien child” is defined in statute as:

a child who — (A) has no lawful immigration status in the United States; (B) has not attained 18 years of age; and (C) with respect to whom — (i) there is no parent or legal guardian in the United States; or (ii) no parent or legal guardian in the United States is available to provide care and physical custody.

Under that definition, only alien minors without parents or legal guardians here are considered UACs, but nonetheless the federal government — and DHS in particular, lumps plenty of kids with parents and guardians here illegally in as UACs, too.

That definition was added to federal law by section 462 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HSA), as good a starting point as any in explaining why Border Patrol has apprehended nearly 82,000 UACs in just the first nine months of FY 2024.

As its name suggests, the HSA was the law that created DHS. Prior to the establishment of that department, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was responsible for detaining, caring for, and releasing alien children.

I refer to it as the “former INS” because it was abolished in section 471 of the HSA, with its immigration responsibilities dispersed among various other agencies at DHS, including CBP, ICE, and USCIS.

Responsibility over the detention, care, and release of UACs wasn’t retained by any of those agencies, though. A hasty Democratic amendment to the HSA transferred authority over those children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

As I’ve explained repeatedly in the past, even though I was present when that amendment was adopted, I have no idea why jurisdiction over UACs was transferred to ORR, an office that to that point had no experience in detaining, caring for, or releasing anyone, let alone children.

There was no discussion about the amendment itself, nor any as to why ORR was a better fit than ICE, which retained jurisdiction over the detention of aliens generally for immigration purposes.

Notably, legacy INS units that ICE inherited did, in fact, have experience in the care and placement of such children.

Immigrants’ advocates, however, had long been critical of how INS dealt with alien kids, so the sponsors of that amendment likely assumed placing those children anyplace else was a better choice. History has not vindicated that assumption.

At least initially, there weren’t that many UACs showing up at the border. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the number of UACs apprehended by DHS and referred to ORR in the early 2000s “averaged 6,700 annually and ranged from a low of about 4,800 in FY 2003 to a peak of about 8,200 in FY 2007”.

That quickly changed after a now-Democratically controlled Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA).

Section 235 of the TVPRA divided UACs into two separate groups based on nationality: (1) children from “contiguous” countries (Canada and Mexico); and (2) minors from “non-contiguous” countries (everywhere else).

Under that provision, UACs from a contiguous country can be returned home if they haven’t been trafficked and don’t have a credible fear of return.

UACs from non-contiguous countries, however, must be transferred to ORR within 72 hours and placed into formal removal proceedings (UACs are not subject to expedited removal), even if they haven’t been trafficked and have no fear of return. By statute, ORR then places most of those children with “sponsors” in the United States — usually the children’s own parents or guardians.

Not surprisingly, the number of UACs from non-contiguous countries soared after that provision took effect as parents (and, more importantly, smugglers) realized the TVPRA all-but guaranteed any child who could make it illegally into the United States would be released into this country to rejoin his or her family.

https://cis.org/Arthur/DOJ-Sues-Migrant-Child-Center-Sexual-Abuse-and-Harassment

**************************************************

All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

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

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

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

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

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

***********************************************

Immigration has become a potent issue that lies beyond the traditional political divisions

Buried away in the British election results is a huge warning for Australia, made all the more relevant by the Senator Fatima Payman saga. On the face of it, the election was a triumph for British Labour, of course. It won over 65 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. But in electoral terms, it won only 34 per cent of the vote.

The Conservatives saw their vote plummet from 44 per cent to 24 per cent in just five years. But behind the facade of that result lurked the toxic issue of immigration and multiculturalism. It’s what the Americans like to call a “third rail” issue.

Across the English Channel, the French election was also a huge warning for Australia. In that election, the anti-immigration party of Marine Le Pen won more votes than any other political party although the parties of the centre and the left by collaborating each won more seats. Le Pen’s party won 37.3 per cent of the vote while the coalition of the left won 26.9 per cent. This was a huge vote against immigration and multiculturalism.

This same trend has been seen over the past year in the Netherlands and Italy and more importantly helps explain the Trump phenomenon in the United States. For a long time, commentators argued this rise in support for these hitherto fringe political movements was caused by globalisation: the loss of manufacturing jobs to China, the decline in living standards in traditional industrial towns, and so on.

There may be some truth in this. After all, centre-left and centre-right governments believe heavy manufacturing should be closed down because of the CO2 emissions it generates. Better to transfer those emissions to China and India. A lot of punters may think that policy is not just damaging to them but intellectually absurd. But still, that isn’t the main reason many people are shifting away from traditional parties.

The fundamental cause of this drift away from traditional political parties of the centre left and centre right is the way immigration and multiculturalism have been handled. It would be a mistake to think that in Britain, France, the Netherlands, the US and Italy the public are opposed to immigration. It’s not that simple. And it’s not that they object to people because of their colour. Immigration is not so much the issue as two aspects of it. The first is unregulated immigration. Tens of thousands of migrants have been pouring into Europe and America without approval, normally courtesy of people-smugglers.

Unregulated immigration is deeply unpopular. And the second issue is those migrants who fail to integrate into society. Multiracialism is one thing but the term multiculturalism, which we all praise, denies the existence of cultural norms that bind a society together. That is resented and creates tensions and divisions.

In France and the UK, some migrants have congregated very heavily in particular suburbs of major cities, turning those suburbs into what appears to more traditional people little more than foreign enclaves.

The people within those enclaves are often alienated from the rest of society by virtue of their physical isolation. The enclaves have their own schools, religious institutions, shops and so on. In recent elections, these concentrations of migrants have had an alarming effect on electoral outcomes.

In the recent UK election, in constituencies where at least 40 per cent of people are Muslims, the Labour vote actually declined from the 2019 election by nearly 34 per cent! In constituencies where Muslims made up between 10 and 20 per cent of the vote, Labour’s vote fell by 6.8 per cent, whereas in constituencies where Muslims accounted for less than 10 per cent of the electorate, Labour increased its vote by an average of 3 per cent. In a general election that was a triumph for the Labour Party it nevertheless lost five seats to Muslim activist independents.

This recent practice of migrants or the descendants of migrants of a particular religious persuasion voting en bloc – in this case on the issue of the Hamas-induced war in Gaza – has alarmed not just the Labour Party but the broader British population. But for immigration and multiculturalism to be embraced, and for a country successfully to hold together as an entity, there have to be some binding principles and attitudes that define the nation. Without that, the nation will atomise.

As British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton wrote: “We, like everyone else, depend upon a shared culture for our security, our prosperity and our freedom … we can welcome immigrants only if we welcome them into our culture, and not beside or against it.” Three days after the election, former Labour prime minister Tony Blair gave some stark advice to the new government. He said new Prime Minister Keir Starmer “needs a plan to control immigration” and made the very simple point: “If we don’t have rules, we get prejudices.” That’s exactly right.

In the US this issue is also very potent and one of the driving forces of former president Donald Trump’s popularity. It is claimed that some 10 million illegal migrants have entered the US since President Joe Biden was elected. That figure may be a bit of an exaggeration, but still, the problem of illegals pouring over the Mexican border is huge.

Within the US multiculturalism is embraced and accepted. In the main. But like anything, it can be taken too far. To use it as a tool by specific ethnic groups to denigrate the nation that has welcomed them, to pour scorn on its history and to appear supportive of its adversaries is politically inflammatory. It is also disrespectful of the country that has welcomed these people to its shores.

So what about our own country? We have to be careful. Senator Payman was elected on a Labor Party ticket and has resigned from that party over the issue of a foreign war in which Australia is not involved. If our politics is going to descend into this kind of ethnic conflict, then it’s going to be hard to keep our country together.

But don’t worry, the punters won’t tolerate that and will start voting with greater enthusiasm for fringe political movements if our two mainstream parties don’t just control immigration – the Howard government explained all that many years ago – but make sure there are core principles that hold our country together. We cannot afford to allow a hugely successful country to atomise.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/immigration-not-globalism-is-true-cause-of-centrist-pain/news-story/09e49e28d63d07ef16b4faab5c35be56

**************************************************

All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

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

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

***********************************************

UK returns small boat migrants to France for first time

Ministers are prepared to look at sending asylum seekers to be processed offshore, Sir Keir Starmer said, as he promised to “reset” Britain’s approach on illegal migration.

The prime minister said on Thursday that abandoning the “gimmick” of the Rwanda scheme opened the door to a closer relationship with other European countries to tackle the small boats crisis.

He was speaking as he hosted more than 40 leaders from across Europe at the European Political Community summit at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

Starmer said he had won support from other leaders for his drive to co-ordinate action to tackle the gangs behind the Channel crossings but admitted there was not a “silver bullet” that would solve the crisis.

He also opened the door to the UK moving the processing of asylum claims offshore following a similar scheme being pursued by Italy.

“I’m a practical person. I’m a pragmatist,” he said. “I’ve always said we’ll look at what works and where cases can be processed closer to origin, then that is something which should be looked at.”

Italy and Albania ratified a deal this year that will allow the Italian authorities to send migrants to two Italian-run processing centres in the Balkan country.

The deal, the first “offshoring” deal struck by an EU member state, will see up to 3000 migrants at any one time sent to Albania while their asylum claim is processed, but it differs from Britain’s terminated Rwanda deal because it will allow successful applicants to be transferred to Italy.

It is expected up to 36,000 migrants will be processed under the arrangement each year in what Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, hopes will create a deterrent against migrants entering the country illegally.

Starmer said “there’s interest in how that might work” when asked about whether Britain could replicate the deal but stressed that his focus was on targeting the people smuggling gangs that facilitated illegal migration routes.

A senior Home Office source said it was “unlikely” that the new Labour government would pursue an offshoring scheme but would be open to exploring the concept if it was workable, cost effective and compliant with international law.

The source said: “We’ll look at models, we’ll look at anything that is workable, affordable and within international law. We wouldn’t take it off the table but there is not an active piece of work, conversation or negotiation going on.

“The position is unchanged, the priority for us on tackling irregular migration is going after the gangs and building security co-operation. But we haven’t shut ourselves down to that relatively unlikely scenario [of offshoring asylum seekers].”

Starmer also appeared to open the door to a returns agreement with France in the future – but said the UK would not join up to any EU burden-sharing arrangement.

“The returns agreement only comes into being at the end of the process,” he said. “And my focus is at the beginning of the process to make sure we actually secure our borders because the problem we’ve got is we’ve got tens of thousands of people who are here who shouldn’t be here. That is not a sensible policy on any approach.”

He added: “I’ve always said we’re not going to be part of the EU scheme. That is for EU members. We’re not a member. We’ve never wanted to or asked to be part of that scheme.”

Starmer warned that efforts to bring numbers down would take time. He added: “We’ve got record numbers this year. We can’t switch that in 24 hours, one week. We have been left in a really difficult position yet again by this government ... it’s been a dereliction of duty because border control is about our national security.

“And rather than address it with a serious answer, they addressed it with a gimmick. The gimmick didn’t work, and we’re left with a very serious situation to try and turn around.”

Starmer received strong backing from his European counterparts.

Earlier Thursday, a Border Force vessel rescued 13 migrants from the water and returned them to Calais. The Home Office said it was the first time that a UK vessel had returned migrants to France but denied reports that there had been a change in policy, saying that the operation was following a request from the French.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/uk-returns-small-boat-migrants-to-france-for-first-time/news-story/d575307066cb0c33cf4dfabcebae20fa

**************************************************

All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

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

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

***********************************************

Residents Near Border Say Trump Will Protect Their Families From Drug Cartels

Jim and Sue Chilton own a ranch in Arizona on the U.S.-Mexico border. Every time Jim leaves the house, Sue fears he won’t come back alive, she said Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

“Our house has been broken into twice,” Sue told convention delegates. “A Border Patrol agent was shot five times by drugs smugglers on our ranch. The cartel drug smugglers are crossing our nation’s border every day. They are bringing lethal drugs into our country.”

The Chiltons’ security cameras have spotted more than 3,500 drug traffickers and others in camouflage marching through their ranch, according to Jim Chilton, a fifth-generation rancher in Arivaca.

“These are not asylum-seekers,” he said. “It looks like and it feels like an invasion, because it is.”

Things were different when Donald Trump was president, the Chiltons believe.

“Under President Donald Trump, it wasn’t like this, and if we bring him back,” Jim Chilton said, “I know he’ll stop it again.”

“We know firsthand that Biden’s open border is our nation’s greatest national security threat,” he continued. “We need to make America safe again.”

Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was almost finished on the Chilton family’s ranch when Biden became president and halted construction of the wall.

“Since then, crossings on our ranch have increased fivefold,” Jim Chilton said.

“We must elect Donald Trump to finish the wall, to stop the cartels, to keep America safe and strong,” he said.

The crowd erupted with several resounding cheers of “Build that wall!”

David Lara, owner of a small business who lives in a border town, said small towns like his bear the brunt of the border chaos.

“Imagine strangers terrorizing your homes, your neighbors, your yards, the local schools,” Lara said. “Imagine being treated as second-class citizens as chaos and crime terrorize streets.”

“I don’t have to imagine this,” he continued. “I’ve watched it with my own eyes. I’ve seen my town suffer.”

Lara blames the Biden administration’s border policies.

“Biden and [Vice President] Kamala Harris want the illegal immigration crisis to continue, and no amount of suffering has changed their mind or convinced them to finally put Americans first,” he said.

“We must reelect President Trump to close the border the crime and stop the drug from pouring in,” Lara said. “We must reelect President Trump to imprison and deport violent gang members, instead of coddling them as they terrorize our nation.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/17/americans-southern-border-trump-protect-families-cartels-violence/

**************************************************

All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

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

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

***********************************************

Green Cards for International College Grads Are a Great Deal for Americans

On a recent podcast, former president Donald Trump said that if elected, he would give permanent green cards to all international students who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities. If so, it would boost our economy and potentially decrease the government’s budget deficit. However, it wouldn’t solve our border problems.

Trump declared, “What I want to do and what I will do is, you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a Green Card to be able to stay in this country.”

He elaborated, “And that includes junior colleges, too. Anybody graduates from a college, you go in there for two years or four years. If you graduate or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country.”

There were 858,395 international students in U.S. colleges in 2022-23. If a quarter of them graduate annually, legal immigration will increase by 200,000 yearly and surely grow in future years as the promise of a Green Card attracts more international college applicants.

The regular inflow of highly skilled immigrants would benefit Americans by increasing economic growth. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reported that perhaps the most crucial benefit of immigration is the “infusion by high-skilled immigration of human capital that has boosted the nation’s capacity for innovation and technological change.” The NAS added that this innovation “has the potential to increase the productivity of natives” and economic growth.

The policy change would secure economic benefits without causing most of the standard worries about immigration. College graduates commit fewer crimes than non-graduates. Virtually all immigrants who graduate college already speak English and are at least partially assimilated. And while they represent a significant flow, they do not amount to a flood in the context of overall legal immigration to the United States, which has averaged 2.5 million people annually over the last decade, excluding the pandemic years.

Following Trump’s remarks, campaign representative Karoline Leavitt stated that an aggressive vetting process would “exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters, and public charges” from this program. Presumably, most immigrants already here on student visas would pass this test. Rather than “public charges,” these immigrants would create a net tax gain.

The NAS estimates that each immigrant with a college degree creates a combined fiscal surplus for national, state and local governments of around $500,000 over 75 years (in present value terms). Those with graduate degrees create a surplus of closer to $1 million. A decade of giving Green Cards to college graduates could easily generate $1 trillion in net fiscal surplus.

In short, this policy should be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, good economics is often not good politics. During his presidency, Trump severely cracked down on immigration, including high-skilled immigration, and his base is often motivated by his anti-immigrant rhetoric. The only chance this idea has politically is if it is combined with increased border security to crack down on illegal immigration.

Unfortunately, illegal immigration can’t be cured by enforcement alone. The vast majority of people crossing the border illegally have essentially no legal path to immigration, and few, if any, of them would be able to take advantage of a Green-Card-for-college-grads program. As long as massive differences exist between economic opportunities in the United States and their origin countries, illegal immigration will remain a problem despite enforcement—if there is no plausible legal path for these lower-skilled immigrants.

No single immigration reform can solve all our immigration problems, but giving Green Cards to college graduates is a step in the right direction. These immigrants would get the opportunity to realize the American dream, and we natives would enjoy more economic growth.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14989&omhide=true&trk=rm

**************************************************

All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

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

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

***********************************************