How Bi-partisan Stupidity and Greed Caused Americans to Lose for Now the Real Immigration Reform Battle

By Donald A. Collins | 23 October 2024
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

Why was neither side of the immigration debate effective in getting us to a solution? Because American politicians in both of our major parties put off sensible decisions to solve the immigration crisis long before it evolved into the present standoff. Efforts were made to put forth solutions for decades by NGOs such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) to no avail.

Since 1965 when our US population was 200 million, the US Congress has dithered with the growing addition of unneeded aliens so now our population is at least 345 million.

Instead of putting in effective criteria such as setting legal numbers needed and carefully ensuring that legally here meant legally here as it does in most developed nations, these Congressional leaders purposely ignored the fact that well over half of all legal American citizens have long wanted legal to mean legal and these elected worthies made no effort to stem the tide. They sold us out.

Now the battle for real immigration reform could well not be well undertaken, surely not by Trump who would deport aliens indiscriminately. A wall was never the way to fix the crisis, but rather a stupid symbol unless backed by other measures. What would have worked years ago was a sterner version of E-Verify which would have kept illegal (don’t ever allow that word “undocumented” to be used) aliens without the ability to be hired.

Simple, but those times when reason and empathy could have prevailed have passed. Now the greedy who sought cheap labor at any cost and/or those wanting more voters who would vote their way, have won the sad victory which has turned the USA into a divided political mess with no solution in sight. Didn’t an old cartoon say, “They brought it on themselves”? Or was it Walt Kelly’s Pogo who said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Trump’s wall has proved ridiculous, and we now need more workers, but Amazon was afraid of being attacked as this attached article reports.

The company was the largest sponsor of H-1B work permits for skilled foreign workers over the past three years and would likely hire far more if allowed. It’s also chronically short of warehouse workers, and since 2022 has run a program to help refugees get work at the company.

Yet Amazon, like much of corporate America, would almost certainly face a backlash if it pushed for more immigration. Public opinion has hardened on undocumented immigrants. And more restrictions may be coming, regardless of whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris prevail in the November election.

The consequences matter. The labor market, while softening, remains tight, with 1.2 job openings per unemployed person. Immigration, meanwhile, ranks as a top issue for voters. How it’s handled by Trump or Harris, along with the next Congress, will impact the country’s economic growth, labor markets, and the U.S. fiscal deficit—none of it positively if immigration is curbed, according to nonpartisan forecasts.

What much of corporate America wants is clear: more work permits for immigrants and visas for their families. Wary of the optics, however, most companies are expressing this view through groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has lobbied Congress to increase work permits for years. Amazon didn’t respond to requests for comment about its stance on immigration policies.

Expanding the labor pool with immigrants helps companies because it gives them more choices of employees and allows them potentially to pay less. Academic studies have found that high immigration has the biggest impact on low-skilled workers. Studies also find that other immigrants bear the brunt of competition more than workers who are already well established in the country.

Read the full article here.

And now as CBS analysis shows in its report on October 17th, “Trump’s plan to deport millions of immigrants would cost hundreds of billions” its begins:

In the last month of the presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump is doubling down on his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in American history.

In Reading, Pennsylvania, last week, Trump drew fervent applause from a rally crowd after saying he would “get these people out” and “deport them so rapidly.” In Aurora, Colorado, on Friday, Trump told rallygoers he would “rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered.”

Immigration researchers, lawyers, and economists have pointed to immense constitutional, humanitarian and economic problems posed by Trump’s oft-repeated pledge. But beyond the anticipated damage to immigrant families, communities and local economies, the roundup and deportation of some 11 million people is near impossible to bankroll, according to an analysis of U.S. budget and immigration court data by CBS News.

Even if Congress approved the hundreds of billions of dollars in spending, deporting every undocumented immigrant living in the U.S. would take far longer than four years, the analysis finds.

CBS News’ analysis of immigration system data found:

Apprehending and deporting just 1 million people could cost taxpayers about $20 billion.

Deporting 11 million people over four years would cost more than 20 times what the nation spent a year over the last five years on deporting people living in the U.S. Most of that would be new funding that would have to be approved by a majority of both chambers of Congress.

Assuming Trump did get the funding and could rapidly expand the staffing in immigration enforcement and courts, the backlog of cases would grow — not decrease — by millions of cases based on what’s happened in the last two administrations.

Trump’s own administration, despite promising to deport millions in 2016, deported 325,660 people during the fiscal years he was in office.

Read the full article here.

Weird dancing, ranting and visiting McDonald’s make the case for Trump’s infirmity. Here’s the McDonald story.

The other day, Donald Trump playacted as a worker at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. But he ran into trouble, evading a question about whether he would support a minimum wage hike, producing scalding headlines. Which gets at a larger scam: Trump enjoys public approval on the economy, even though his agenda for working people is borderline nonexistent, whereas Harris has a detailed economic agenda for working- and middle-class people alike. We talked to HuffPost senior reporter Jonathan Cohn, author of a good new piece on the McDonald’s saga, who explains how this stunt captures the fraudulence of Trump’s economic plans—in contrast to the authenticity of Harris’s middle-class biography.

Read it in full here.

No logic seems to motivate Trump’s MAGA base who seem hell bent in favor of letting him destroy our country, but we keep hoping enough voters of all persuasions can vote for Kamala and Tim on November 5th!!!!!!!

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?” and “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”.

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