DeSantis Aims to Outdo Trump on Immigration

The former president’s pledge to end birthright citizenship is a new low but unlikely to be the end.

Donald Trump was the most anti-immigrant U.S. president in nearly 100 years. He oversaw a family separation policy at the border that traumatized countless children and lost track of hundreds of parents; slashed refugee admissions to record lows; gutted access to asylum; and much more.

But for some of the most influential U.S. nativists and white nationalists — people Republican presidential candidates have decided they need to court during and after the primary season — Trump’s crackdowns were not enough. Some see greater potential in his top rival for the 2024 nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Can DeSantis successfully co-opt Trump’s trademark issue? DeSantis is trying to paint the MAGA leader as soft on immigration.

At the end of May, he attacked Trump as pro-amnesty for his onetime support of a failed GOP bill that would have legalized some immigrants brought here as children in exchange for more border militarization and cuts to legal immigration. And last weekend, DeSantis met with families of victims of the 9/11 terror attacks as they criticized Trump’s decision to host a Saudi-funded golf tournament.

On Tuesday, Trump sought to reclaim his position as the No. 1 anti-immigrant crusader by reviving one of the most extreme ideas explored during his presidency: an executive order ending birthright citizenship.

The proposed order, which he promised to sign his first day in office if reelected, would face immediate legal challenges for its clear violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to everyone born in the U.S. His plan relies on a tortured reading of the amendment from pseudo-intellectuals at California’s Claremont Institute, such as Trump’s former lawyer John Eastman, a key player in the effort to overturn the 2020 election who also wrote an unhinged article questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’ citizenship (it led to an editors’ apology).

If the Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor — not impossible to imagine — it would defy more than a century of legal precedent. And it would create a shadow population of millions of U.S.-born people who could be jailed and deported. In the eyes of restrictionists, it would all be worth it for a decline in “anchor babies,” their slur for the U.S.-born children of people who lack legal immigration status.

But restrictionists are skeptical that Trump would follow through on his promise given his record of sloppy executive orders and their chaotic implementation. Past orders were often blocked by courts.

“I fear this will be one more example of him writing up an executive order and either it fizzles out or they don’t pursue it with the seriousness and professionalism it deserves,” Mark Krikorian, a lead architect of the 21st century movement to strangle legal and illegal immigration, told me. He frowns on Trump’s occasional expressions of support for legal immigration.

“He’s not even a restrictionist,” he complained to me, criticizing Trump’s failure to stop guest worker and other visa programs. Krikorian heads the Center for Immigration Studies, classified as an anti-immigrant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center despite Krikorian’s claims to the contrary. He prefers DeSantis over Trump.

So do some open white nationalists, who cheer on his policies and rhetoric online and see them as signs that he’s more hostile toward overall immigration, which is important for those who fear demographic change.

DeSantis recently signed Senate Bill 1718, which turned Florida into the most anti-immigrant state in the nation. It makes it a felony to give undocumented people rides, jobs or shelter; requires employers to verify workers’ immigration statuses and invalidates certain out-of-state driver’s licenses for undocumented people. DeSantis also banned sanctuary cities in his state.

Some of DeSantis’ actions were on the wish list of Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller, whose ideas were shaped by Krikorian’s Center for Immigration Studies and other groups created by John Tanton — a well-connected white supremacist who fathered the modern nativist movement. But although Miller did push Trump in a more hardline direction on overall immigration, he wasn’t able to implement the full Tanton agenda because of his inexperience and an uphill battle in a White House with more moderate voices on the immigration issue, such as Jared Kushner.

Miller remains loyal to Trump. But DeSantis is positioning himself as more in line with Miller than Trump himself, who sometimes caved to pressure to temper his harsh positions, such as when he called off family separations at the border in response to national outrage.

Trump’s promise to end birthright citizenship seeks to correct the notion that he’s the less ruthless candidate. One shudders to imagine how DeSantis will try to one-up Trump’s threat. “Those two guys are in a white nationalist arms race,” Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told me.

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

Gavin Newsom’s Latest Budget Speeds Up Food Benefits Timeline for Undocumented Californians

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest budget moves up the issuance of food benefits for older undocumented Californians after months of criticism from advocates.

The announcement marks a significant change of course for Newsom, who in January proposed a state spending plan that would delay the assistance rollout for undocumented immigrants over 55 until 2027. He held back the money as his administration sought to close the forecast budget gap.

On Friday, Newsom released his revised budget proposal with a shortfall that had increased to $31.5 billion.

But the revision led to a positive outcome for advocates, who had said that California was moving farther away from its goal of becoming the first state to offer food benefits to all undocumented immigrants. Newsom’s new budget proposal now says benefit distribution is estimated to begin in Oct 2025.

Advocates hope this is a step that keeps the goal within reach.

“We see this updated timeline as a welcome sign of progress,” said Benyamin Chao, a health and public benefits policy manager at the California Immigrant Policy Center. “But our leaders still need to act more urgently to address the stark levels of food insecurity that is impacting Californians, especially the most vulnerable.”

The revision included $40 million for automation and outreach to achieve that goal, $5 million higher than January’s outlay. Expansion has been contingent on the state converting to a single system, known as the California Statewide Automated Welfare System migration. The process is now estimated to be finished by July.

About 75,000 Californians are expected to start receiving benefits when the rollout begins, according to a 2022 report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The latest timeline for food assistance comes as two lawmakers are pushing for bills that would provide state-funded food benefits to all Californians currently ineligible due to their immigration status.

Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, has re-introduced the Food For All act, Senate Bill 245, for the second consecutive year. And Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, introduced an identical version in his chamber as AB 311.

Neither of the two bills includes dates for implementation.

But advocates cite a urgent need for food assistance expansion. Nearly half of undocumented Californians deal with food insecurity, according to an April 2022 report by Nourish California.

“No one should experience hunger because of their immigration status, yet hundreds of thousands of Californians struggling to put food on the table remain unjustly excluded from food assistance programs…When every Californian has access to the food they need, our communities and economies thrive,” said Betzabel Estudillo, director of engagement at Nourish California.

NEWSOM KEEPS MEDI-CAL PLEDGE

The governor also remained committed to expanding Medi-Cal to all undocumented immigrants, despite the budget gap increase.

“The work we’re doing to expand health care regardless of your immigration status is in stark contrast to the rhetoric of today, yesterday, tomorrow, as it relates to what’s going on in this country,” Newsom said. “It’s a point of pride and privilege.”

That means that beginning Jan. 1 everyone regardless of immigration status will have access to health care coverage if they qualify for Medi-Cal. The program expansion is expected to provide full coverage for approximately 700,000 undocumented residents ages 26 to 49 and lead to the largest drop in the rate of uninsured Californians in a decade. The state already allows some undocumented residents to join Medi-Cal, the state’s implementation of Medicaid.

In 2015, California began allowing undocumented children to join Medi-Cal. Four years later, eligibility broadened to those younger than 26. And last year, the state started covering people aged 50 and over.

Click here to read the full article in the Sacramento Bee

Title 42 Countdown: 700,000 Migrants in Mexico Waiting to Rush U.S. Border

As many as 700,000 migrants, a foreign population larger than Boston, Massachusetts, are currently in Mexico waiting to rush the United States-Mexico border when President Joe Biden ends the public health authority known as Title 42 on May 11.

In 2020, in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis, former President Donald Trump invoked the public health authority known as Title 42 at the border, ensuring that federal immigration officials have been able to quickly return millions of illegal aliens to Mexico over the last three years.

On May 11, though, Biden will end Title 42 and expand its Catch and Release network to quickly move border crossers and illegal aliens into the U.S. interior — including deploying 1,500 U.S. troops to the border to free up federal immigration officials to process arrivals at a faster pace.

During a Yuma County Board of Supervisors meeting this week, supervisor Jonathan Lines revealed that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have warned them that as many as 700,000 migrants are waiting in Mexico to rush the border when Title 42 ends.

“Border Patrol shared with us their intelligence that there are approximately 700,000, as of three weeks ago, in the shelters in Mexico waiting to come into the United States,” Lines said. “They also shared with us that at the Darian Gap which is at the Panama Canal, they’ve seen a 500 percent surge in people crossing over that gap on their way up to the United States.”

Rep. Andy Biggs’ (R-AZ) office confirmed to Breitbart News that they too have been told by officials of the looming 700,000 migrants waiting in Mexico.

Such a “mass migration event,” as Lines said DHS officials called it, would see a foreign population arriving at the border that exceeds the resident population of cities like Boston and Nashville, Tennessee.

“Right now, all of the people that are coming across the border, 40 percent of them are expelled under Title 42 in Yuma, Arizona,” Lines said. “So 40 percent of the people coming across are immediately expelled and they’re flown back to their countries of origin. That goes away on May 11; they are no longer processed out.”

Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot noted that his law enforcement officers have their hands tied, unable to apprehend and detain border crossers and illegal aliens, as federal law would have them charged with kidnapping.

“[If we could arrest], I would fill the jail in a day with the amount of individuals that we encounter trespassing,” Wilmot said.

“International labor organizations and the cartels are facilitating this trade,” Lines noted. “They’re making a significant amount of money — 27 million were forced into labor over the last two years [and] 6.3 million [forced] into sexual exploitation.”

Americans in U.S. border towns like Yuma are especially hard hit by illegal immigration.

In February, Dr. Robert Trenschel of the Yuma Regional Medical Center detailed how in just one year, local taxpayers were left with $26 million in unpaid medical bills from border crossers and illegal aliens who showed up to the hospital needed care. That amount is set to increase, Trenschel said, when Title 42 ends.

Click here to read the full article at BreitbartCA

Migrants are Dropped Near Vice President Kamala Harris’ Home on Frigid Christmas Eve

Three buses of recent migrant families arrived from Texas near the home of Vice President Kamala Harris in record-setting cold on Christmas Eve.

Texas authorities have not confirmed their involvement, but the bus dropoffs are in line with previous actions by border-state governors calling attention to the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

The buses that arrived late Saturday outside the vice president’s residence were carrying around 110 to 130 people, according to Tatiana Laborde, managing director of SAMU First Response, a relief agency working with the city of Washington to serve thousands of migrants who have been dropped off in recent months.

Local organizers had expected the buses to arrive Sunday but found out Saturday that the group would get to Washington early, Laborde said. The people on board included young children.

Some were wearing T-shirts despite temperatures hovering around 15 degrees. It was the coldest Christmas Eve on record for Washington, according to the Washington Post.

Laborde said employees had blankets ready for the people who arrived on Christmas Eve and moved them quickly onto waiting buses for a ride to an area church. A local restaurant chain donated dinner and breakfast.

Most of the arrivals were headed to other destinations and expected to remain in Washington only briefly.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment Sunday morning. His office said last week that Texas has given bus rides to more than 15,000 people since April to Washington, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, both Republicans, are strong critics of President Biden on his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, where thousands of people are trying to cross daily, many to seek asylum. Officials on both sides of the border are seeking emergency help in setting up shelters and services for migrants, some of whom are sleeping on streets.

Republicans argue Biden and Harris, designated the administration’s point person on the root causes of migration, have relaxed restrictions that induced many people to leave their countries of origin.

Click here to read the full article in the Press Enterprise

By Transporting Migrants, GOPGovernors are Exposing Democrats’ Hypocrisy

Next time, Joe Biden should be more precise when he calls for national unity. Because he and his fellow Democrats don’t like the kind of unity they’re getting from Republican governors. 

The decision by GOP leaders in Texas, Florida and Arizona to “share” their abundance of foreign migrants with northern cities and states that boast of their sanctuary status is apparently not a gift the Dems appreciate. In fact, the president and his party are so mad they’re setting fire to the welcome wagons. 

Shipping the migrants north is outrageous, a stunt, pure politics, they wail. The White House is making noises about assigning its chief partisan enforcer, Attorney General Merrick Garland, to stop it. 

That would be the height of irony because the same White House has for months secretly shipped tens of thousands of migrants around the country, often in the middle of the night with no notice to local officials. No Dems complained then, so where did their love go? 

Naturally, the media is eager to echo the left’s sudden pain, with Chuck Todd of NBC News showing why he deserves to replace Brian Stelter, late of CNN, as the most mocked man in television. Todd declared it “inhumane” to send 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard because it’s a “literal island that doesn’t have any infrastructure designed to help them at all.” 

Hillary Clinton can usually be counted on to say something ridiculous, and she didn’t disappoint. “Literally human trafficking” is what she called the Vineyard dispatch, the brainchild of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Like Todd, Clinton not only doesn’t get the irony, she misses the point. 

The Dems running New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and, yes, Martha’s Vineyard, are being hoisted on their own petard. 

They supported virtually unfettered immigration, but didn’t bargain on thousands of the world’s unwashed popping up in their neighborhoods. In aiming their fire at Republicans sending the migrants north, they’re only shooting the messengers. 

Their hypocrisy is a thing to behold and the GOP governors deserve an award for delivering a comeuppance for the ages. 

More broadly, Biden’s border fiasco is the latest proof that the left has plenty of fanciful ideas about creating paradise but none on how to govern in the real world. The defund-the-police movement led to a sickening surge in violent crime that continues as cops are demonized and criminals are coddled. 

Blunders piling up 

The war on fossil fuels led to the dramatic rise in oil prices and helped fuel the historic inflation eating family paychecks. Biden is so far detached from reality that he actually threw a party to celebrate yet another spending bill that will keep the inflation fires roaring. 

It is simply incredible how much damage he has inflicted on the nation in just 20 months. 

And now the blue havens are getting a taste of the disaster that is the open-border policy. Unprecedented waves of people are crossing over, including many who flew to Mexico from far-off countries, knowing they could simply walk into America. 

Immigration restrictions were a mainstay of both parties for generations, but the leftward shift of Dems led to less tolerance for barriers. Then, as with so many other issues, the presidency of Donald Trump saw them jettison common sense and go nuts as a form of protest. 

Radical activists began preaching the gospel of massive immigration as a key to social and racial justice. 

Biden, a sucker for anything anti-Trump, rejected his predecessor’s success in limiting illegal crossers and the abuse of the asylum system, which lets people stay in the US for years because of bureaucratic inertia. Making them wait in Mexico until their claims were adjudicated, as Trump did, persuaded many the dangerous trek north was not worth the risk. 

Biden foolishly dismantled those restrictions, stopped building the wall and essentially issued an invitation for the whole world to come to America. 

Click here to read the full article at the NYPost

Free health care will attract more illegal immigrants to California

California is expanding its program to provide taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants, though it’s not going as far as many Democratic presidential candidates want the nation to go.

At the second presidential primary debate, all 10 Democrats on stage said they favored government – meaning all of us who pay taxes – picking up the tab for health care for illegal immigrants with low incomes.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law Tuesday that provides free health care to all low-income young people ages 25 and younger in California, regardless of their immigration status. Previously the state funded health care for people 18 and younger with low incomes, including illegal immigrants.

State officials estimate that raising the age of health care coverage from 18 to 25 will benefit about 90,000 people, although the estimate is far from certain.

It’s surprising that California didn’t go further and allow older low-income illegal immigrants to also get coverage under its Medicaid program, which it calls Medi-Cal, right away. …

Click here to read the full article from Fox News

California DMV gave incorrect Real ID to an immigrant with temporary legal status

An immigrant with temporary legal status in California has received an incorrect Real ID from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, raising concerns about the department’s ability to process the enhanced identification cards.

Documents obtained by The Sacramento Bee show the individual received the card with an expiration date that would have allowed the person to stay in the United States four years beyond the immigrant’s legal residency.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the individual was a DACA recipient – someone who was unlawfully brought into the United States as a child and given legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. …

Click here to read the full article from the Modesto Bee

California lawmakers weigh budget proposals to cover health care for illegal immigrants

California lawmakers are weighing proposals this week that would offer government-funded health care to adult illegal immigrants but are at odds over how far to go.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed $98 million a year to cover low-income illegal immigrants between the ages of 19 and 25, but the state Assembly’s bill would cover all illegal immigrants over the age of 19 living in California – a proposal that would cost an estimated $3.4 billion.

The state Senate, meanwhile, wants to cover adults ages 19 to 25, plus seniors 65 and older. That bill’s sponsor, Sen. Maria Elana Durazo, scoffed at cost concerns, noting the state has a projected $21.5 billion budget surplus.

Of the three million in California who don’t have health insurance, about 1.8 million are illegal immigrants, according to legislative staffers. Nearly half those have incomes low enough to qualify them for the Medi-Cal program. …

Click here to read the full article from Fox News

ICE slams California sanctuary policy after suspect in fatal crash leaves jail on bail

Federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement pushed back against California sanctuary state policies which came to a head over the weekend when alleged undocumented immigrant Ismael Huazo-Jardinez was arrested after three people were killed in a drunk driving incident in Knights Landing.

According to ICE spokesman Paul Prince, Huazo-Jardinez was released on bail from Sutter County Jail in Yuba City before ICE learned of the arrest and “before we could lodge a detainer to take him into ICE custody.”

Even if ICE filed a detainer, California law prohibits local law enforcement from honoring them. However, Yuba City’s city council voted against the sanctuary state law.

After Huazo-Jardinez left the jail on bail, deportation officers began surveillance on a previous known address of Huazo-Jardinez and he was taken into custody Tuesday without incident, Prince said. Huazo-Jardinez will remain in ICE custody pending immigration proceedings. …

Click here to read the full article from the Sacramento Bee

Immigration to America is Not What It Used To Be

Maria Ortiz, at left, a Mexican immigrant has been living in the United States for 23 years. "I am single. I work so hard to stay. I never needed support from the government," Ortiz said. She is not a citizen and works as a janitor, she said during an immigration protest outside Rep. Ed Royce's office in Brea. ///ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: – MINDY SCHAUER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER – Shot 111713 – immig.fast.11.19 Advocates for immigration reform will camp our near the office of Rep. Ed Royce for five days, where they will stage a fast. They are asking OC's Republican leaders in Congress to publicly support an overhaul to the nation's immigration laws, including the so-called pathway to citizenship that would create a process for some 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally the right to become citizens.

Speaking at a naturalization ceremony in Texas on March 18, former president George W Bush said that immigration to America “is a blessing and a strength.” He also said that “borders need to be respected,” and praised the work of border patrol agents, but that’s not what the media seized upon.

The Washington Post inserted “blessing and strength” into the lede of their report, entitled “George W. Bush: ‘May we never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength’,” also working into the first sentence the following dig at Trump, “a message that sharply contrasts with President Trump’s rhetoric on the issue.”

CNN Politics covered the speech, making sure to note that “the rhetoric and policy positions from Bush came in contrast to much of the modern Republican Party and President Donald Trump.” The BBC said “Mr Bush’s comments were seen as an implicit rebuke to President Donald Trump’s administration.”

And on and on. CBS News: “Bush urges politicians to ‘dial down rhetoric’ on immigration.” Boston Globe: “described immigration as ‘a blessing and a strength,’ a message that sharply contrasts with President Trump’s rhetoric on the issue.” People Magazine: “it was a soft rebuke of the prevailing anti-immigrant position of some members of the Republican Party, including President Donald Trump.”

Get it? George W Bush has won his grim battle with history. Various photos showed him inviting dozens of new citizens up to the podium, including Muslims in headscarves, Hispanics, and Africans. Apparently including anyone of European descent would have been bad optics. And never mind that if Bush the Second hadn’t bombed, invaded and occupied Iraq, the Middle East might be relatively stable today. Iraq, for all its problems, would nonetheless provide a strategic counterweight to Iran. We would have saved trillions of dollars and spared millions of lives, and additional millions of refugees would have stayed home.

The problem with all this media-spun anti-Trump wisdom from Bush is simple: President Trump is right, and the spin is wrong. It is true that America was enriched in the past by waves of new immigrants. It is true that in the past, these waves of new immigrants benefit the economy. And it is true that even now, if immigration were brought under control, reduced somewhat, and reformed so that only highly skilled immigrants with a commitment to learning English were vetted and admitted, it would again be beneficial to our economy and enrich our culture. But that’s not what’s happening.

According to CarryingCapacity.org, the United States “now accepts over one million legal immigrants each year, which is more than all of the other industrialized nations in the world, combined.” Additionally, according to ImmigrationCounters.com, there are nearly 28 million illegal immigrants currently living in the U.S.

Attempting to quantify the costs and benefits of immigration into the U.S. is not easy. A study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the cost to America taxpayers to provide illegal immigrants government funded education, health care, justice and law enforcement, public assistance, and general government services is estimated at $135 billion per year. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, “63% of non-citizen households access welfare programs compared to 35% of native households.”

Statistics abound – and for every study suggesting that America’s immigration is creating a burden on the economy, there is another that concludes the opposite, that immigrants continue to provide a net economic benefit to the economy. So rather than provide yet another regurgitation of battling statistics, it is important to note some crucial qualitative differences between immigration trends in America today, compared with past centuries in America.

Why Immigration to America Today is Different

(1)  Immigrants today are not coming from nations of equal or greater economic achievement. In the past, immigrants from Europe, for the most part, were emigrating from nations that were as advanced as the United States was, if not more so. Today the overwhelming majority of immigrants are coming from developing nations.

(2) Immigrants in the past came primarily from European nations which had cultural values – educational, religious, and political – that were, if not nearly identical to American cultural values, were on a shared trajectory towards achieving those values. Immigrants today come from nations that, relatively speaking, have far less cultural similarities to America than past waves of immigrants.

(3) Immigrants today, for the most part, are coming from nations that are rapidly increasing in population and, in aggregate, dwarf the United States in population. Related to this is the fact that in the past, the people already in America were themselves rapidly increasing in population, but this is no longer the case, except among populations of recently arrived immigrants.

(4) Immigrants today arrive via ten hour hops on an airliner. In the past, waves of immigrants spent ten months traversing land and sea in a journey of staggering expense and significant dangers. While this isn’t universally true, particularly for the overland migrants that cross America’s southern border, in general it is – coming to America today does not require the commitment it required in the past.

(5) Similarly, in the past, immigrants pretty much renounced the nations of their origin, they made a one-way trip, and they adopted the language and values of America. Today, retaining cultural unity with one’s country of origin is a few clicks on the internet, a cheap telephone call, an affordable airfare. Technology has greatly eroded the forces that used to impel immigrants to become Americans.

(6) Immigrants in the past arrived in an America that had a voracious need for unskilled workers. Today the American economy is relentlessly automating jobs that used to require unskilled labor, and the American population already has a surplus of unskilled workers.

(7) Immigrants today are arriving in a welfare state, where they are assured of food, shelter and medical care that are, in general, orders of magnitude better than anything available to them in their native countries. This creates a completely different incentive to today’s immigrants. In past centuries, immigrants came to America to find freedom and to work. Today they are offered a smorgasbord of taxpayer-funded social services.

(8) Immigrant students today – especially in the coastal urban centers where most of them settle – enter a public education system that teaches them with a reverse-racist, anti-capitalist bias. They are taught in our public schools not to assimilate, but to celebrate diversity; not to earn opportunities through hard work, but through fighting discrimination. They are taught, often in their native language, that they have arrived in a nation dominated by racist and sexist white males, who exploit the world to amass evil profits.

These final three points are the most problematic. If immigration reform advocates made those a priority and addressed them decisively with new policies, the other concerns might be manageable. But we must address the problems caused by immigrants with low job-skills, who encounter the welfare state, and are subjected to anti-Western cultural messaging.

To suggest Americans ought to resist competing with highly skilled immigrants, for example, is not only xenophobic, but it smacks of an entitlement mentality. Allowing immigrants into the United States who are qualified to join our ranks of scientists, engineers, researchers and doctors will only help our economy and overall standard of living. Allowing unskilled immigrants into this country, however, when we already have tens of millions of unskilled workers who are either in our prisons or unemployed and collecting welfare – who themselves could perform this work – is much more likely to constitute a drain on our economy.

Similarly, it is a recipe for disaster to allow immigrants into an America where the curricula in K-12 schools and universities – beholden to powerful left-wing teachers and faculty unions – indoctrinates immigrants to resent the alleged evils of capitalism and the incorrigible racist, sexist core of our American culture. This is particularly true when accompanying this siren song of corruption is easy access to social services of all kinds, including welfare. If new immigrants are taught the cards are stacked against them, and at the same time they are offered a free ride that provides a standard of living many times greater than what they knew in the countries they came from, why work?

Clearly an increasing population, all else held equal, does cause overall economic expansion. It isn’t clear at all, however, that this is the optimal way to create economic expansion. First of all, global human population is destined to level off by 2050 anyway, so rather than expanding the population through immigration, economic policy needs to search for the answer as to how to continue to experience economic growth despite a stable, aging population. In Japan, they have already made this policy decision – with zero net immigration and the oldest population on earth, Japan leads the world in the development of androids that will, presumably, become caregivers to the elderly. Economic growth oriented towards improving the quality of life for the elderly is one example of a sustainable growth sector – economic growth dependent on an immigrant-fueled population expansion is not sustainable.

There is another factor, of course, that makes immigration today far more problematic than it was in past generations. Now more than ever, mass immigration of unskilled economic migrants and political refugees has become a strategy to move America sharply to the Left by dramatically transforming the electorate. What the establishment uniparty is doing in America today is a deliberate devaluation of American votes, and a deliberate thwarting of the general will of the Americans who have lived and worked in America for generations. Trump’s bellicosity may scare the soccer moms, but they along with everyone else who loves America ought to reflect on his actions instead of his tone. He is the only major politician in modern times who has tried to do anything to stop this. George W Bush, God bless him, should stop letting the media use his words as weapons in their war against Trump.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.