As swelling numbers of illegal aliens head across America’s southern border, immigration enthusiasts are giddy about the changing of the guard in Washington.
In a series of video conferences hosted by the National Immigration Forum (NIF) this month, open-borders advocates laid out game plans for the Biden administration to:
That last point came from Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh, who compiled a most expansive wish list: more “flexible” parameters for admission, more “portability” for foreign workers in the labor market, and even more importation of low-skilled workers. When he calls on Congress to “whittle down the population of unlawful immigrants,” he’s not talking about deportations; he means amnesty.
These moves, he asserts, “will get control of the border and reduce visa overstays.” The libertarian’s definition of border control is nonsensical, but he could well be correct that enactment of such radical policies “will put people like me out of business.”
In pushing for evermore immigration, the NIF crowd blurs the line between legal and illegal status to a vanishing point. To them, no established levels will ever be enough. Nowrashteh even opposes rational points-based admission systems like those in the RAISE Act. Instead he argues that the U.S. must “lengthen and widen” the number of jobs taken by foreign workers.
While immigration enthusiasts may be enthralled by Biden’s policy pronouncements and titillated at the prospect of Democrats capturing the U.S. Senate via runoff elections in Georgia, ritual vilification of President Donald Trump requires a reality check.
Fact is, the number of immigrants obtaining permanent U.S. residence during his administration is in line with previous years – more than 1 million annually. From 2000-2018, foreign-born residents legally in this country increased 44 percent to 44.8 million, and now account for 13.7 percent of the total population (versus 5.4 percent in 1960).
With new polling showing support for reducing immigration at its highest levels since last December, open-ended demands for “more” are badly out of sync with public opinion and detrimental to the national interest.
