President Donald Trump is threatening to close parts of the U.S.-Mexican border as record numbers of migrants surge through the legal loopholes created by Congress and judges.
“CONGRESS MUST CHANGE OUR WEAK IMMIGRATION LAWS NOW … If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States throug [sic] our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING….. ….the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week,” he said in a series of three tweets Friday morning.
Border officials are ramping up their estimates for the number of migrants who will grab the opportunity created by Congress. Predictions for 2019 have climbed from 900,000 to 1.2 million during the last few weeks.
Others experts suggest the 2019 number may be far larger. A February report from Jim Clifton, the chairman, and CEO at Gallup said:
Forty-two million seekers of citizenship or asylum are watching to determine exactly when and how is the best time to make the move. This suggests that open borders could potentially attract 42 million Latin Americans. A full 5 million who are planning to move in the next 12 months say they are moving to the U.S.
Pro-migration Democrats deny the migrant wave and say it is smaller than the surges seen under President George W. Bush. But the numbers under Bush were high because individual migrants were overcounted as they made repeated attempts to sneak through the border. The current count excludes overcounts because each migrant is counted once before they are released into the United States to move into blue-collar jobs, neighborhoods, and schools.
The growing wave of migrants from Central America is being welcomed as a “humanitarian crisis” by most Democrats leaders because it provides them with a new bloc of ‘dreamer’ illegals who may become voters in the 2030s. The surge is also welcomed because it gives elite progressives an opportunity to simultaneously display favoritism to subordinate outsiders and disdain towards the mass of ordinary Americans who demand respect, civic solidarity, and higher wages.
Business interests welcome the migration because it provides a new block of cheap workers, consumers, and renters, and also because it helps distract Washington from Trump’s “Hire American” policy and his “Four Pillars” immigration reforms. The “Hire American” policy opposed by business groups because it is giving Trump’s voters important pay raises before the 2020 elections.
Business interests will rally to block Trump’s threat to shutter the border until Mexico helps stop the mass migration, which is being aided by new bus lines which ferry migrants up to the U.S. border.
Trump’s statement comes as border official are trying to warn Congress of the problems.
For example, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a Thursday letter to all members of Congress that, “We face a system-wide meltdown … We are witnessing the real-time dissolution of the immigration system.”
She added, “I will be working with the Office of Management and Budget to provide you additional details in the near future, but the situation is so dire we want to make notification to you now that we will require additional resources … to ensure immediate safety and care of individuals in our custody.”
On Monday, border commissioner Kevin McAleenan provided reporters with some details about the Central Americans’ rush into Americans’ society, jobs, and schools. The March inflow alone will include roughly 15,000 parents and 40,000 children in “family units” who will ask for asylum — and then will be released — plus roughly 35,000 single adults who will try to evade border officers, he said.
McAleenan pinned the blame on Congress and the judges who have jointly cut legal holes in the border fences by allowing migrants to stream into U.S. cities, jobs, and schools if they merely ask for asylum, saying:
The increase in family units is a direct response to the vulnerabilities in our legal frameworks where migrants and smugglers know that they will be released and be allowed to stay in the U.S. indefinitely pending immigration proceedings that could be many years out. This is due to court orders that undermine the integrity of our immigration system. There is no questioning [about] why this is happening.
Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after high school or university. The federal government then imports roughly 1.1 million legal immigrants, refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar guest workers and roughly 500,000 blue-collar visa workers, and it also tolerates about eight million illegal workers.
In 2019 — because of catch-and-release rules mandated by Congress and the courts — the federal government also will likely release at least 350,000 migrant Central American laborers into the U.S. job market even as at least 500,000 more migrants sneak past U.S. border defenses or overstay their visas.
This federal policy of using legal and illegal migration to boost economic growth for investors shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors by flooding the market with cheap white-collar graduates and blue-collar foreign labor.
This cheap labor economic policy forces Americans to compete even for low wage jobs, it 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.
But Trump’s “Hire American” policy has crimped the supply of new workers, so allowing blue-collar Americans to get a four percent wage increase in 2018.