The D Brief: Immigration hits record; Costs, consequences of deportation plan; Aviators’ battered brains; Army: too top-heavy?; And a bit more.

By admin On Dec 11, 2024

Deportation watch

More immigrants came to the U.S. during President Biden’s first few years than at any similar point in American history, including the famous Ellis Island period, David Leonhardt of the New York Times reported Wednesday, citing data from Goldman Sachs as well as the Congressional Budget Office and the U.S. Census Bureau.

That includes a net migration total of about eight million people during Biden’s time in office, with an average of about 2.4 million annually from 2021 to 2023. “Even after taking into account today’s larger U.S. population, the recent surge is the most rapid since at least 1850,” Leonhardt reports.

But is it a national-security problem? No, as numerous studies show. (See, for example, here, here, here, and here.) What’s more, “crime fell nationwide over the past few years as immigration levels spiked,” the Times reminds readers. Immigrants also buoy military recruiting and help drive technological innovation in the United States.

It does, however, create problems of assimilation and acceptance, which the persistence of Donald Trump’s nativist rhetoric as a political force revealed. He was elected after promising “the largest mass deportation program in history,” and the Times reported in October “57 percent of voters said they supported deporting immigrants who were living in the country illegally.” (An AP poll from November put that number at 4 in 10 Americans supporting such a policy.)

That’s partly because the Biden-era surge of migrants has added “pressure on social services and increased competition for jobs,” Leonhardt reports. While the latest U.S. unemployment rate remains strong at 4.2%, the impacts of migration are especially acute for those Americans with only a high school education, as the CBO reported in July.

Relatedly, “wage growth for Americans who did not attend college will be lower than it otherwise would have been for the next few years because of the recent surge,” Leonhardt writes. On the other hand, higher immigration has been shown to “reduce the cost of services and help Americans, [including] many with higher incomes, who do not compete for jobs with immigrants,” Leonhardt notes, citing CBO data. Read on after the jump…

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S., following Washington’s declaration of war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Trendspotting: “Approval rates for asylum seekers in the U.S. are dropping dramatically,” and “it’s become particularly difficult for Latin American immigrants to get asylum,” Russell Contreras of Axios reported Wednesday citing October data curated by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Indeed, “Asylum grant rates had declined to just 35.8%” in October, which is “the lowest rate since May 2021,” Contreras writes.

“Mexico had the lowest asylum grant rate” at 16.6%, while Russia and China were first and second at 85.4% and 76.6%, respectively, according to data from TRAC.

What’s going on: During fiscal year 2024, “People fleeing war or socialism in Eastern Europe and Asia” found their applications were easier to process than those from Central and South America. Relatedly, “Venezuela and Cuba had the highest asylum grant rates of all Latin American countries, highlighting how those fleeing socialist regimes historically have had an easier path to asylum in the U.S.,” Contreras reports. But parallel to those trends, “After Mr. Biden tightened enforcement in June, the number of people crossing the border plummeted,” the Times reports.

Recall that lawmakers drafted a massive immigration reform bill early last year updating and reforming asylum procedures, but Trump convinced Republicans to abandon the effort in order to campaign on the issue for the general election. “Any immigration package in Congress next year likely would have new asylum regulations, along with money for more immigration judges,” Axios predicts. Read more, here.

Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, Trump’s mass deportation plans—and possible military involvement—went under the microscope in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Among several angles considered, retired National Guard Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner spoke about the likely impacts of Trump’s deportation plans on the U.S. military, which he said posed four “significant risks.” Those risks include, in his words:

“Using military assets for mass deportations would negatively impact the military’s readiness and capability to accomplish its core mission of national defense…Our National Guard units are stretched thin, responding to natural disasters at home, while also regularly deploying overseas in active duty status, additional training or deployments to support deportation operations would absolutely harm operational readiness and reduce the military’s ability to counter adversaries or respond to crises in combat.”
“My second concern is that the military is simply not trained to do this mission. Immigration Enforcement is the responsibility of federal law enforcement agencies like ICE and CBP,” he said. “A small number of National Guard units receive a mere four to eight hours of civil disturbance training per year. This lack of training and experience greatly increases the risk of significant and potentially deadly mistakes in a charged operational environment.”
“My third concern is the effect on recruiting, retention and morale…Involvement of the military in a politically-charged domestic deportation efforts would only add to those challenges,” creating what he described as “a recipe for disillusionment and a poor advertisement for potential recruits.”
And “Finally, involving the military in a politically charged domestic issue like mass deportation would erode public trust in the military,” Manner argued. “Americans trust our military because it protects all of us, regardless of our politics, from the possibility of foreign aggression. when the military is tasked with carrying out domestic policies that may be controversial to some, it undermines the foundation of that trust. That, in turn, will increase risk and morale, recruitment, retention and readiness.”

Cost projection: “We estimate that mass deportations would cost $968 billion in total,” and likely “cause economic chaos,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council told lawmakers. That’s because “on average, a single deportation cost the U.S. government in today’s fund money slightly under $24,000.” With some Trump aides looking at deporting 13 million people, the costs soar quickly. And “As millions are expelled, the U.S. population and labor force would shrink—so too would the economy,” he predicted.

“Houses would become more expensive, as would groceries, restaurants, travel and childcare,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “Every American would feel the pinch of inflation. After all, we estimate that a mass deportation campaign would lead to a loss in total GDP of 4.2 to 6.8% at minimum, as much as the Great Recession, and just like then, many Americans would lose their jobs.”

“In fact, a single worksite raid in 2018 under the Trump administration at a beef plant in Tennessee led to ground beef prices rising by 25 cents for the year that the plant was out of operation following the raid,” he explained.

“But mass deportation is not the only option,” Reichlin-Melnick said. For example, “Congress could instead create a new path to permanent legal status, allowing many people already living here to file an application, go through a background check, pay a fee and get their papers in order.” After reviewing the impacts of President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty, he said the American Immigration Council “concluded that legalization would be the cheapest Federal Workforce Development and anti-poverty program for children in history. It would also raise overall wages, create new jobs, increase tax revenues and create a level playing field and fair competition for U.S. workers.”

“The president-elect’s mass deportation plans would crash the American economy, break up families and take a hammer to the foundations of our society by deporting nearly 4% of the entire U.S. population,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “But Congress has a choice,” he offered to his audience in the Judiciary Committee. “Instead of going down that path, we can instead crack down on exploitation, strengthen millions of families and build American prosperity by providing undocumented immigrants a way to fix their papers,” he said.

Related reading:

Around the services

In a first, a Guam anti-missile battery downed a ballistic missile in test. On Tuesday, a Standard Missile-3 Block IIA interceptor missile was launched from the Aegis Guam System at Andersen Air Force Base and intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said. Newsweek has a bit more, here.

Related reading:

“Military pauses Osprey flights again after more metal failures are found in near crash in November,” AP
“Climate stress is affecting US missions, driving conflict in Africa, official says,” reports Defense One’s Meghann Myers off a Defense Writers Group meeting with Maureen Farrell, deputy assistant defense secretary for African affairs.
“Lawmakers tee up efforts to keep spyware off troops’ devices” with provisions in the compromise 2025 defense authorization bill that’s slated to be voted on in coming weeks. That’s from Nextgov/FCW.
“Defense officials hopeful incoming administration keeps funding cutting-edge tech,” writes Defense One’s Patrick Tucker from the Reagan National Defense Forum in California.
Watch: “How Navy Pilots are Harmed by Their Own Planes,” a New York Times video that says years of heavy cockpit g-forces take their toll on aviators’ brains.
Commentary: “The Army is too top-heavy,” argues R.D. Hooker a former National Defense University professor now at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “Surplus generals, swollen staffs, and excess headquarters drain headcount and resources from warfighting units,” Hooker writes at Defense One.