Former President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to deport millions of wealth-shifting illegal immigrants “is not good policy,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a political event in Texas on Friday.
Mayorkas doubled down on his business-first extraction migration economic policy at the Texas Tribune event but lamented public opposition to elite demands for more cheap immigrant labor, saying, “[I] speak to state leaders, senators, House members on both sides of the aisle, and they will speak of visa [worker] programs and the need to expand the number of visas … [and yet] nothing, nothing is accomplished.”
This massive inflow shifts billions of dollars in wages and salaries from young families to older investors. For example, on Wednesday, Breitbart News reported that salaries for tech graduates have been flat since 2008, partly because Mayorkas and his agency predecessors have imported millions of foreign graduates via the H-1B, J-1, TN, L-1, and F-1 visa programs.
At the event, Mayorkas was asked about rising public opposition to his wealth-shifting migration policies. “I can’t speak of what is driving the public reaction to it,” he said before suggesting that the mainstream public opposition to his policy is a national security threat:
The divisiveness in our country’s political life is preventing progress that our country desperately needs, and that’s not only with respect to immigration. What I will say about the divisiveness is: A divide speaks of a chasm; it speaks of space, a vacuum, if you will, and that vacuum tends to be filled, and it is filled by our adversaries. Our adversaries, adverse nation-states, exploit that divide. And I consider the divisiveness in our country to actually be a homeland security issue.
Mayorkas again complimented Canada’s supercharged migration system, even though Canadians’ expanding poverty, declining productivity, and poll-tested anger are likely to push Prime Minister Justin Trudeau out of office by the fall of 2025. Mayorkas said:
We look to the north, with Canada. Canada takes a look at its market needs, and it says, “You know what? We need 700,000 foreign workers to address our labor needs domestically.” And, so, they build a visa system for that year to address the current market condition. And they say, “We’re going to bring in a million people.” And it’s market sensitive.
We [in the United States] are dealing with numerical caps on labor-driven visas that were set in 1996. It’s 2024. The world has changed. It is remarkable how there can be [elite] agreement that [the visas system] is broken and not have an agreement on a solution. The country is suffering as a result of it.
Mayorkas is a clever and ruthless advocate for the radical levels of migration that have enabled the government-expanding “Bidenonomics” economic policy. He has great sway in the White House and over the economy, partly because President Joe Biden ceded that power to him in 2021 when he asked Vice President Kamala Harris to take a large role in border policies. She refused.
Since January 2021, he has helped extract at least ten million wealth-shifting blue-collar and white-collar migrants from poor countries for use in Americans’ workplaces, communities, schools, and hospitals.
Mayorkas has repeatedly explained that he supports more migration because of his migrant parents, his sympathy for migrants, and his support for “equity” between Americans and foreigners. He also justifies his welcome for migrants by saying his priorities are above the law and claiming that the “needs” of U.S. business are paramount regardless of the cost to ordinary Americans, the impact on U.S. children, or Americans’ rational opposition.
In May 2023, Mayorkas explained his motivation in a graduation speech to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy:
My drive has been defined by a very clear purpose. My mother’s and father’s life journeys were defined by displacement. My mother was twice a refugee, first from war-torn Europe and, 19 years later, with my father, my sister, and me from the communist takeover of Cuba … They are the primary engine of my drive, and the primary reason why I work so hard, my purpose.
Mayorkas is very sympathetic toward migrants and told the Texas event, “I resist the conflation of people seeking a better life with criminality and the smuggling of drugs.”
He also said he wants to push the cartels out of the labor-trafficking business and ensure government control over migration from poor countries. “We have a [moral] obligation to drive migration differently than in their hands,” he said.
He uses Congress’s vast spending for migrants and his knowledge of the nation’s byzantine immigration laws to help migrants get into the United States, get rooted in the U.S. economy, and then win legal status.
Mayorkas told the Texas Tribune event that he regretted the bipartisan defeat of the Senate’s February border bill.
He helped draft the bill to ensure a massive inflow of migrants. “It is very unfortunate, from the perspective of the interests of this country, that [the bill’s approval] did not occur,” Mayorkas said, adding:
It is not the first time in history that some elements of a society have pointed to migrants as a source of social ills for which they are not responsible. That is a phenomenon that is not unique to the United States, historically and right now.
Harris has promised to sign the Mayorkas bill if she is elected president.
When asked about Trump’s plan to deport millions of migrants, Mayorkas scoffed as he listed the legal and practical hurdles needed to deport the migrants that he imported:
How exactly does that work under law? How will [Venezuelan migrants] be returned to Venezuela? What flight will actually take them to Venezuela? Will Mexico accept the return of a Venezuelan? Will they have been given [due] process under law to make a claim for asylum? What if they manifest fear under our Executive Order, assuming our Executive Order withstands legal challenge … If Mexico says, “No, we’re not taking Venezuelans back,” what exactly does it mean to immediately “remove” an individual? What [legal appeals] process will be provided to them? What resources will mass deportations require? Where will those individuals be held? What will be the funding for that?
What if some of those individuals claim fear under our current [asylum] laws. What process will they be given? What if a judge grants their claim? What if an asylum officer finds that they established a claim of credible fear? … Where exactly are they held [in confinement], with what funding and what under conditions? Because there are legal decisions that govern the conditions in which individuals must be detained. There are standards of detention.
You know, politics is different than governing. Governing involves not just policy, but operational realities. There are funds, there are people, there are facilities, there are transportation assets that need to be considered when one is talking about executing a policy.
“So, I would like to see an organization [and] an operations plan to bring this [mass deportation] to life — and I don’t see it,” he said.
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