The existing border wall must be torn down so that migrants can freely enter the United States, says an open borders op-ed published by the New York Times.
“Democrats should follow their voters, who increasingly want more open borders, and reframe the immigration debate by rejecting the very notion that the border needs more ‘security’ and making it clear that the real problem is the denial of migrants’ rights,” says the op-ed by Daniel Denvir, an open borders advocate, who argues that “[t]he time has come for the Democratic Party to push for concrete policies to make the border more open.”
Denvir continues:
The border must be demilitarized, which would include demolishing the already-existing wall and dramatically downsizing the Border Patrol. Criminal sanctions on illegal entry and re-entry must be repealed. Opportunities for legal immigration, particularly from Mexico and Central America, must be expanded. The right to asylum must be honored. And citizenship for those who reside here must be a stand-alone cause.
Even the Democrats’ support for “border security technology” is a bad thing, wrote Denvir:
Democrats have for far too long let their political opponents define the terms of debate. Now they’re doing it again: House Democrats’ proposal heading into the negotiations with Republicans didn’t include funding for new physical barriers or additional Border Patrol agents, but it did offer significantly increased funding for “border security technology.”
That’s not only bad for immigrants who, as a result of militarized borders are more likely to be kidnapped, violently assaulted and driven to cross via the lethal desert. It’s also bad for Democrats, who are handing ammunition to the nativist right at a time when Republicans are on the back foot and polls show that Democratic voters are moving decidedly leftward on immigration and the border.
Denvir presents himself as a leftist, but the New York Times‘ audience is decidedly upper class. The Times‘ pitch to advertisers, for example, says its online audience consists of 91 million people, with a median age of 48 and a household income of $96,000. This is far higher than the nation’s median income of $60,000 in 2017.
Moreover, wealthy people tend to gain much of their income through the stock market, which makes investors rich when salaries are reduced. Devin’s open borders policy would dramatically lower salaries while funneling hundreds of billions in wages to the stock portfolios of his New York Times‘ editors and readers.
The wealth transfer is already huge under current policies, which provide businesses with a combined legal immigrant and illegal migrant population of at least 45 million — including at least 12 million illegals — plus at least 1.5 million college-graduate guest workers.
Immigrants — legal or not — are good for business because they help lower wages, raise rents, and spur purchases of many products and services.
In 2016, Breitbart News reported a study by the National Academy of Sciences which shows how mass migration shifts wealth from American employees to investors, including many GOP and Democratic donors:
Immigration shifts roughly $500 billion in wages away from Americans and from established immigrants, directing that money toward new immigrants and to major employers, according to a dramatic report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
On page 128, the report plays up the benefits of immigration by saying the inflow of skilled and unskilled immigrants has ”generated an immigration surplus of $54.2 billion, representing a 0.31 percent overall increase in income that accrues to the native population.”
But that flood of low-wage immigrants also cuts marketplace wages for Americans by 5.2 cents on the dollar, admits the report, titled “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration.”
The pro-immigration report doesn’t provide a total dollar figure for the immigration tax of 5.2 percent, even though it supplies the dollar figure for the “immigration surplus.”
But the report notes that native-born Americans provide 83.5 percent of labor in the $17.5 trillion dollar economy. Two-thirds of the economy — 65 percent — is labor, so the value of the 5.2 percent wage cut on Americans adds up to roughly $494 billion per year.
Denvir’s proposal to open the border would dramatically raise the transfer of income from workers to investors — but he includes no estimate for the economic cost of his plan. Instead, he promises political benefits to the Democratic leaders:
Democrats should follow their voters, who increasingly want more open borders, and reframe the immigration debate by rejecting the very notion that the border needs more “security” and making it clear that the real problem is the denial of migrants’ rights. The time has come for the Democratic Party to push for concrete policies to make the border more open.
…
Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, all Democrats who are new to the House, have drafted a letter urging opposition to any deal that increases Department of Homeland Security funding in any form. That’s a good start.
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Simple realism dictates that no legislation to grant citizenship to the millions of undocumented Americans who deserve it will be passed until the Republicans are defeated. There’s no use trying to appease them. The bipartisan consensus supporting harsh immigration and border enforcement has fractured. Democratic elected officials need to catch up.
Via Twitter, Denvir declined to answer questions from Breitbart News.
The establishment’s economic policy of using legal and illegal migration to boost economic growth shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor.
That annual flood of roughly one million legal immigrants — as well as visa workers and illegal immigrants — spikes profits and Wall Street values by shrinking salaries for 150 million blue-collar and white-collar employees and especially wages for the four million young Americans who join the labor force each year.
The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in Heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that coastal investment flow drives up coastal real estate prices and pushes poor U.S. Americans, including young millennials, Latinos, and blacks, out of the economic opportunities in prosperous cities such as Berkeley and Oakland, California.