{"id":23335,"date":"2020-08-07T10:10:07","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T14:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=23335"},"modified":"2020-08-07T11:59:57","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T15:59:57","slug":"joe-biden-illegal-aliens-enriching-us-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/08\/07\/joe-biden-illegal-aliens-enriching-us-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Biden Touts Amnesty, Claims That Illegal Aliens \u201cEnrich\u201d America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a July 28 statement posted on Medium<\/a>, former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden asserted that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and other foreign nationals living in the United States illegally are \u201cenriching our country.\u201d He further promised mass amnesty and \u201ca roadmap to citizenship for Dreamers and all 11 million undocumented immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Biden\u2019s statement comes in the wake of the Trump administration\u2019s decision to extend DACA while blocking any new applications<\/a> \u2013 itself a walk-back from the president\u2019s stated intention to re-rescind his predecessor\u2019s unconstitutional executive quasi-amnesty after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the original decision to end the program was \u201carbitrary and capricious.\u201d The Biden statement also called what was already a de facto concession a \u201ccruel step\u201d in a \u201cmisguided crusade,\u201d further charging that President Trump \u2013 who, by the way, is married to an actual immigrant \u2013 \u201cwill stop at nothing to push his anti-immigrant political agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, neither \u201cDreamers\u201d in particular \u2013 nor other unauthorized foreign nationals in general \u2013 are actually \u201cimmigrants\u201d in the proper sense of the term. Immigrants are foreign citizens who come to the United States permanently and \u2013 here comes the key part \u2013 do so by following the legal process. Those who either overstay their visas or simply sneak across the border, regardless of whether they were brought here as children, are by definition illegal aliens<\/a>. Rewarding them with blanket amnesty, and eventual citizenship to boot, is unfair to legal immigrants who followed the rules \u2013 people whom Joe Biden seems much less concerned about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Admittedly, this isn\u2019t the first time candidate Biden has promised mass amnesty plus a \u201cpath to citizenship.\u201d It was a plank of his original immigration plan<\/a>, and remains a key part of the even more radical Biden-Sanders Democratic \u201cunity\u201d platform<\/a>. (For a succinct summary and analysis, see a recent FAIR blog<\/a>.) However, the fact that the supposed \u201cmoderate\u201d Joe Biden speaks the same language on amnesty as does the radical socialist Bernie Sanders demonstrates how central the idea is to the modern-day Democratic Party and the degree to which open-borders extremists are calling the shots within it, not to mention Mr. Biden\u2019s unwillingness to stand up to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democratic candidate\u2019s assertion about illegal aliens \u201cenriching\u201d the United States may be pandering to the above mentioned pro-illegal-alien radicals. It is also undoubtedly an attempt to court Hispanic voters (true, not all illegal aliens are from Latin America, but a large majority<\/a> are, and not all Hispanic voters support amnesty). But it is nevertheless important to address because it is also the narrative that is consistently pushed by the mainstream media, many politicians, influential business interests, and vociferous \u201cimmigrant rights\u201d groups on the left. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was Mr. Biden referring to \u201cenrichment\u201d in a broader, socio-cultural\nsense, or in a more monetary-economic context? We do not know, because he did\nnot specify, but let us address both possible interpretations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the cultural point of view, the former vice president is likely alluding to the leftist notion of cultural, ethnic, and\/or linguistic (but, ironically, not political) diversity as an absolute and unadulterated good, one that there can never be too much of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, as author Douglas Murray reminds us<\/a>, \u201cthe knowledge or benefit or a culture does not increase incrementally with the number of people from that culture.\u201d Moreover, the U.S. already has sufficiently plentiful numbers of legal <\/em>immigrants from diverse corners of the world to more than satisfy our need for cultural enrichment and diversity. Finally, the left\u2019s unquenchable desire for ever more diversity should not negate the common-sense necessity of a modicum of national cohesion, or a sovereign nation\u2019s right to have its border and laws respected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an economic sense, illegal migration certainly helps\nenrich some people, mainly certain employers who benefit from cheaper and more\nexploitable labor. Illegal alien workers also admittedly earn more money in the\nU.S. than they would in their homelands. But that is not the whole story,\nbecause many disadvantaged, lower-income Americans are economically harmed by\nmass illegal migration through either depressed wages or losing work to cheaper\nunlawful alien competitors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are additional, more tangible costs. Based on research, FAIR estimates that the approximately 14.3 million illegal aliens in the U.S. \u2013 plus their U.S.-born children \u2013 cost the American taxpayer roughly $132 billion annually<\/a>, a figure that is likely to rise to $200 billion by 2025. But that pales in comparison to the estimated $6.3 TRILLION (yes, you read that right \u2013 trillion!) cost of amnesty<\/a>, according to a 2013 report by the Heritage Foundation. (For the sake of comparison, keep in mind that the U.S. national debt currently stands at $26.6 trillion<\/a>.) From the perspective of the average American, that surely sounds much more like massive-scale highway robbery than any sort of \u201cenrichment.\u201d And, considering that mass amnesty will very likely trigger further illegal migration, the potential future fiscal burden may be even higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a July 28 statement posted on Medium, former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden asserted that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and other foreign nationals living in the United States illegally are \u201cenriching our country.\u201d He further promised mass amnesty and \u201ca roadmap to citizenship for Dreamers and all<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":5385,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[7],"tags":[1499,454,1524,536],"yst_prominent_words":[2019,2015,5406,2474,5571,6294,3812,2013,2008,9085,1980,5570,3026,3998,5113,9540,9539,1939,1933,5214],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23335"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23340,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23335\/revisions\/23340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23335"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}