Biden's Border Wall
The Los Angeles Times reported last week that the “Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is considering a policy to force some illegal immigrant family units to remain in Texas by tracking them with GPS monitoring devices, including ankle bracelets…The Times reported that the families would be put through an asylum process to determine if they could stay, and if not, they could be more easily deported due to their proximity to the border.”
Although this proposal has not been implemented, there are plenty of critics who think the Biden Administration is acting politically, saying that it is reacting to the pressure coming from Democratically run cities, which cannot financially take care of the surge of migrants coming from the three states bordering Mexico. These cities are especially angry at the Republican Governor Abbot of Texas, who has authorized the busing from Texas to the self-proclaimed sanctuary cities of Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.
However, according to the New York Times, the number of migrants being bused by Abbot are “a fraction of the number of new migrants boarding buses. Of the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in all 50 states, most began their new lives with a trip from a border city or airport — usually paid for by a relative, an aid group or their own savings, not the Texas Governor…Mr. Abbott devised a plan to approach migrants…and offer them free rides on chartered buses…Many migrants have been grateful for the free transportation, because they often have little money left by the time they complete a monthslong trek to the U.S.-Mexico border.”
The Biden Administration’s open border immigration policies are diametrically opposed to that of former President Trump, who famously implemented in January 2019 his Remain in Mexico program, which required migrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico until their US immigration court date. So how are the new policies of President Biden working? Not very well, we’d say. Republican politicians have been critical from the beginning, but now the criticism is coming from Democratic politicians. Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. led the way saying: "This is a humanitarian crisis because of the understanding across the globe that we now have an open border here. This is a problem that has been created by the federal government.”
This is a big problem, for illegal immigration is surging. Border encounters so far this year are close to 2 million, and that does not include get aways. These migrants typically receive free housing, food, medical care and other assistance, and children are entitled to enroll in public schools everywhere…The border states of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico have borne the brunt of the financial burden, but this has now spread to all over the United States. As a result, American citizens are increasingly angry, and state and local politicians are pushing back.
For example: New Jersey’s Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy is pushing back on a plan to fly undocumented immigrants to his state, suggesting that New Jersey is now effectively off-limits to planned federal flights dropping off undocumented immigrants. Murphy’s declaration followed a Biden administration disclosure of flights to New Jersey’s Atlantic City International Airport. Murphy had campaigned for office on the pledge that New Jersey will always be a sanctuary state, so this is quite a reversal for him.
Chicago has spent nearly $133 million from August 2022 through July 2023 on the ongoing migrant crisis, and it expects to spend another $123 million through the rest of the year. Mayor Brandon Johnson has not ruled out budget cuts or tax increases to pay for a burgeoning humanitarian crisis already costing Chicago upward of $30 million a month. Right now there are nearly 2,000 migrants being housed in police stations and at O’Hare Airport, and there are 6,800 in 18 shelters across Chicago. Chicago has nowhere to house the increasing influx of people, and more are arriving every day, so the plan is to put them into “winterized base camps” equipped with massive tents that would provide meals and recreational and educational programming.
New York City seems to be hit the hardest. Mayor Eric Adams estimates that the influx of asylum seekers will cost $12 billion over three fiscal years. In order to pay for this migrant crisis, he has proposed budget cuts of 5% by this November and up to 15% during the course of the school year. These budget cuts will affect every city agency, but one-third of the city's budget -- $37 million -- goes to schools, so the first-round cut of 5% could cost schools nearly $2 billion.
To cope with this fiscal emergency, leaders in New York, Illinois and Massachusetts have declared states of emergency, urging the federal government to provide resources. Fat chance of that! You might say that ”The emperor has no clothes,” for the US federal government doesn’t have the money. According to CNN, the federal budget deficit is expected to balloon to about $2 trillion for fiscal year 2023, roughly double what it was in the previous fiscal year; and Total Federal debt is fast approaching $33 Trillion.
This mushrooming federal debt hasn’t stopped President Biden from seeking to spend more money. Despite the fact that he and the Congress recently agreed to budget caps, he has requested an additional $40.1 billion in emergency spending for Ukraine, disaster relief and more. This will require additional borrowing, which would increase the federal debt, and would tend to increase inflationary pressures and raise interest rates. There is a cost to that, of course, and that cost would be borne primarily by the poor and middle class.
Speaking of the poor and middle class, there is another, more hidden cost of this migration crisis. Let’s start with these three facts: One, wages for working-class Americans have not kept up with inflation; two, despite there being a low unemployment rate, a near-record number of Americans are now out of the labor force entirely; and three, there are significantly more job openings than there are available workers to fill them.
Concerning fact #3, you might logically ask, if businesses are having trouble finding workers, why not let migrants fill those job openings? Here’s the rub. Basic economics 101 – the law of supply and demand – will tell you that increasing the supply of labor will tend to decrease the price or the wages of those workers. In fact, a comprehensive 2016 report by the National Academies of Science cites numerous studies showing a negative impact from immigration on wages, particularly those with low levels of education.
We agree. We think that one major reason that American citizens have left the labor force is that it is simply not worth it, for wages have not kept up with inflation. If businesses could not fill their needs with cheaper foreign labor, they would be forced to pay up with higher wages and benefits in order to attract American citizens, and that would be a good thing for the poor and middle class.. It would be in everybody’s interest for those underemployed Americans to come back to work; for they would then be paying taxes, and would need less and be receiving less in the way of federal and state social benefits. The natural result would tend to be a reduced budget deficit and a more productive American society.
In sum, we believe that President Biden’s immigration policy is an open border policy, and it has been disastrous for nearly everyone. Remain in Texas? Remain in Mexico was a far better idea.
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