Joe Biden praised young ‘DACA’ illegal migrants as more American than Americans during a Thursday campaign event in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
“We have to find a [amnesty] pathway for dreamers … These kids who come, and they end up doing well. They become American before a lot of Americans become Americans — No, I’m serious, they get in school, they do well, they contribute to the community, they contribute to the country,” he said.
Biden’s praise for illegals was tied up with his view of America as a land of working immigrants — rather than of Americans and their children — and with his sympathy for migrants. For example, he described the Statue of Liberty as an invite to migrants from around the world, saying:
The idea that we are changing the nature of our people by not allowing the notion of [Central American] people seeking asylum. Asylum! What’s that Statue of Liberty about? It’s about asylum! Asylum!
In fact, the Statue was created to champion Americans’ culture of liberty, not to convert Americans’ homeland into a refuge.
Biden also urged the closure of border detention centers — “close them down” — and the quick transfer of migrants into the asylum courts. But he dodged the vital question of whether the U.S. government would repatriate migrants who lose their courtroom pleas for asylum by suggesting he would provide aid to Central American countries if they send more migrants:
If they in fact don’t qualify for asylum, what I also do when I was U.S. Senator and then Vice President of the United States, we put together a bipartisan effort of $740 million to the three states where most [migrants] were coming from — Honduras , El Salvador, and Guatemala —and said “Here’s the deal: You go ahead and improve your police force, stop the corruption, we will pay for that … You go ahead and provide jobs for people, we will help you.”
Biden repeatedly showed much sympathy for migrants. “The people who come are people who have courage, who have resilience. People who have optimism,” he said, before repeating himself:
Since the 1700s, there has been a constant unrelenting wave of immigration, met by xenophobia, three or four times, lasting for anywhere from a year to sometimes longer, but always being overcome … Look at the people who have the courage to come!
In fact, U.S. immigration laws largely barred immigration from 1924 to 1965. That long immigration pause allowed Americans’ wages to rise sharply each year from the 1950s to the early 1970s. Since immigraiton was restarted in 1965 and doubled after 1990, Americans’ wages have stayed flat in a job market flooded by imported labor.
Biden’s support for migrants is also tied to his desire to expand the economy by boosting the number of workers in the United States, regardless of whether Americans will earn nore money per capita. For example, Biden said the economy would grow if extra child-care spending encourages more women to work instead of raising their children:
If we gave every single parent who is working, if we gave a tax credit of $8,000 a year that they can deduct of the bottom line, there would be almost 700,000 more women in the workplace, increasing the Gross Domestic Product by almost 1 percent a year, [and] increasing [the economy] over a period of ten years by over trillions of dollars.
Biden’s comment reflect the establishment’s consensus view the federal government should stimulate business and the stock market with waves of imported immigrants, consumers, and renters.
Morning Consult poll shows strong opposition to additional immigration beats strong support for extra migration, by 2:1 or 3:1 ratio among registered voters. https://t.co/FKO2ThfvSb
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 29, 2019
Immigration Numbers:
Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university. This total includes about 800,000 Americans who graduate with skilled degrees in business or health care, engineering or science, software, or statistics.
But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of about 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately 1 million H-1B workers and spouses — and about 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.
The government also prints out more than 1 million work permits for foreigners, it tolerates about 8 million illegal workers, and it does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.
This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth for investors because it transfers wages to investors and ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.
This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations.
The cheap-labor economic strategy also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the Heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, undermines suburbia, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.
The New York Times laments that reduced immigration does force wages upwards and also does force companies to buy labor-saving, wage-boosting machinery. Instead, NYT prioritizes “ideas about America’s identity and culture.” https://t.co/t0ZlbjC1p8
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 26, 2019
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