THE BORDER, IMMIGRATION, THE ECONOMY, AND OTHER KEY ISSUES

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Link to the section of interest or scroll down the page to view all sections:

IMMIGRATION

An Immigration Crisis Beyond Imagining

THE FOLLOWING CONTENT IS FROM THE IMPRIMIS PUBLICATION OF HILLSDALE COLLEGE, January 2024 | Volume 53, Issue 1. tHE AUTHOR IS TODD BENSMAN.

Of the over 7.6 million illegals encountered by Border Patrol since January 2021, the number allowed to stay inside the U.S. is somewhere north of five million. But with the percentage of those allowed to stay now approaching 100 percent, if current trends hold, the total allowed to remain in the U.S. under the Biden administration will reach ten million by next January.

The U.S. has experienced surges of illegal immigration in the past, but these have been brought quickly under control by implementing policies to deter, block, detain, and deport illegal immigrants. Not this time. To put the current numbers in perspective, consider that Jeh Johnson, President Obama’s Director of Homeland Security, told MSNBC that in his time in office—when the number of illegal crossings was relatively low—he considered it bad if apprehensions exceeded 1,000 a day, because anything more than that “overwhelms the system.” Over the past three years, apprehensions have averaged about 6,940 per day.

Even with a surge in illegal crossings in 2019—this was due to a legal loophole that encouraged illegals to cross with minors—the Trump administration had brought apprehensions down to between 800 and 1,500 a day in his final year in office, the lowest numbers in 45 years. Four months into the Biden administration, apprehensions spiked to about 6,000 per day. There were 2.4 million apprehensions in 2022, a daily average of 6,575. In 2023 there were three million apprehensions, a daily average of 8,219. Entering 2024, apprehensions were up to 12,000 to 15,000 per day.

The reality is even worse, because these numbers do not include the people who entered the U.S. illegally without being apprehended—sometimes referred to as “gotaways”—a number the Border Patrol estimates but does not make public. That estimate over the past three years is two million, bringing the three-year total of illegal immigrants to ten million—a number equivalent to the population of Greater London or Greater Chicago.

But these are just numbers. Who are these people? They are internationally diverse: 45 percent come from 170 countries outside the traditional origin countries of Mexico and Central America. Many are unaccompanied minors: 448,000 to date. More than 330 as of November 2023 are on the FBI’s terrorist watch list. Many are murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and violent criminals. More than a million have been lawfully ordered deported by judges in the U.S. but remain in our country regardless. The dismissal by the executive branch of our government of hundreds of thousands of cases of immigration law violations is unprecedented.

It is worth noting some other firsts: Mexico’s crime syndicates and their paramilitary forces have never earned so much money from cross-border smuggling, and it is reported that their proceeds from human smuggling are surpassing those from drug smuggling for the first time. Never before have the Border Patrol’s 19,000 agents been ordered to abandon vast stretches of the border to conduct administrative intake duty. Never have so many immigrants died to take advantage of policies that all but guarantee quick release into the U.S. Never has our government explicitly refused to enforce immigration laws requiring detention and deportation of illegal immigrants on the grounds that those requirements are cruel and inhumane—instead adopting ad hoc policies aimed at providing “safe, orderly, and humane pathways” into the U.S. for illegal border crossers. And never has there been anything like the current conveyor-belt policy to distribute millions of illegals throughout the American interior.

This crisis is not the result of incompetence, but of purposeful policies. What is more, America’s establishment media has largely abdicated its duty to report on the crisis, refusing to acknowledge an event that is having a greater impact than almost any other in the world today. One can only assume that the reason for this is partisan bias: after all, the crisis can easily be traced to an identifiable moment in time—Inauguration Day 2021.

Link to the IMPRIMIS article to continue reading.

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Democrats Say Illegal Migrants Included in ‘All Americans’

The link above takes you to a September 1st article on the Breitbart News website - by Neil Munro

Here is key content copied from this article:

“Making the American Dream of home ownership available to all people is something we have to do for people here now,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told Bill Maher on August 31

Pelosi was endorsing a bill by California Democrats to allow illegal migrants to get homebuyer loans worth up to $150,000. The California Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loans program gives Americans a loan worth up to 20 percent of the purchase price of a house or condominium, capped at $150,000. The favorable loan is very valuable because it need not be repaid until the home is sold.California Democrats have passed a bill — AB 1840 — to include illegals in the program amid the record housing prices caused by the Democrats’ surge of illegal migration.

“This [bill] is for the undocumented,” Maher asked Pelosi. “What I would like to do is move them to ‘documented'” status, Pelosi responded.

The determined redefinition of “all” gives Democrats a new code to show their support for mass migration while they hide their very unpopular goals from angry voters.

“A Harris-Walz administration can help us move past some of the tired, old debates that keep stifling progress,” former President Barack Obama declared in his convention speech where he demanded the United States society be rebuilt on “diversity”:

Because at their core, Kamala and Tim understand that when everybody gets a fair shot, we are all better off. … They understand that we can secure our borders without tearing kids away from [migrant] their [illegal migrant] parents.

“We all deserve the opportunity to build a decent life,” former first lady Michelle Obama said in her convention speech, just before denying Americans any right to their own borders: “All of our contributions deserve to be accepted and valued — because no one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American — no one.”

Michelle Obama mentioned “Americans” just four times during her speech as she denied the distinction between Americans and foreigners. Barack Obama mentioned “Americans” nine times while he subordinated American society to the progressive demand for commingled “diverse” nations.

“I promise to be a President for all Americans,” Vice President Harris said in her convention speech as she endorsed an amnesty for millions of migrants in the name of “unity”:

“My mom would love to buy a house,” California GOP Rep. Bill Essayli (R-CA) said in a state assembly’s debate, adding:

“Downpayments are one of the biggest hurdles to being able to afford a house, so her slot could be given to someone who just entered our country unlawfully. That is offensive, and I hope every single American in California is watching … We do not have a country if we don’t have borders.

What does it mean to be a citizen? Does it mean anything? Why do all that if you can get all the benefits of citizenship without being a citizen? It makes no sense to me. It’s almost like government suicide.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly, strongly urge that we vote against this, but I know they’re going to pass it, and I hope the people of this state are watching. They’ll have the ultimate say in November.

“There are a million Californians who live in deep poverty and nearly 200,000 who live on the streets without a home, and here we are talking about giving out free home loans to illegal immigrants,” California Republican Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez said. “Do we have no shame?”

 

FACING UP TO THE CHINA THREAT

Link to the IMPRIMIS periodical issue of September 2020 on the website of Hillsdale College: Facing Up to the China Threat  by Brian T. Kennedy, President of the American Strategy Group  and a board member and senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, where he served as president from 2002 to 2015. He has written widely on national security affairs and public policy, including in The Wall Street JournalNational ReviewInvestor’s Business Daily, and RealClearPolitics. He is the author of Communist China’s War Inside America.

The following is sample content of this excellent article:

We are at risk of losing a war today because too few of us know that we are engaged with an enemy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that means to destroy us. The forces of globalism that have dominated our government (until recently) and our media for the better part of half a century have blinded too many Americans to the threat we face. If we do not wake up to the daFnger soon, we will find ourselves helpless....

 

As an indication of the CCP’s treatment of Christianity, Chinese school textbooks are now promoting a false account of Christianity and of Jesus’s life and teaching. In the Chinese version of the story from the Gospel of John about the adulteress threatened with stoning, for example, Jesus explains that he too is a sinner and then stones the woman to death after the crowd disperses. ...

 

We know with certainty that after the virus began spreading in Wuhan in the fall of 2019, the Chinese government closed down flights from Wuhan, which is in Hubei province, to the rest of China. At the same time, it allowed flights from Wuhan to continue to go to Europe and to the U.S.—where the Chinese knew with certainty that the virus would spread. And when President Trump closed the U.S. to flights from China, its foreign ministry and one of the CCP’s propaganda arms, the Global Times, pushed for a reversal of this policy—again, knowing full well how contagious the virus was. Indeed, the Chinese government locked down Wuhan and released videos of men in hazmat suits welding doors shut so that people could not leave their homes.

 

The U.S. government and its Centers for Disease Control, which has offices in China, asked to be let into Wuhan to investigate. To this day China has denied us access. The initial gene sequencing for the virus that we received from China—evidence that led the now famous public health bureaucrat Anthony Fauci to say that China was being open and cooperative—was incorrect, a fact that made testing Americans for the virus all the more difficult. Were these decisions by the Chinese government part of the People’s War?

 

When challenged on its dishonesty regarding the virus’s origins, the CCP’s Xinhua News Agency threatened that China could plunge America into a “mighty sea of coronavirus,” pointing out that China controlled the supply chain for the active pharmaceutical ingredients used in the production of 90 percent of our medicines. This fact alone—the result of the loss of the U.S. manufacturing base to China and other nations, an explicit policy of our government until recently—is a scandal of immense proportions that our government is now working to correct.

 

Regardless of whether the COVID-19 virus was a by-product of biological weapons research or resulted from inadequate safeguards in a virology lab, it is the CCP that is to blame for its spread throughout the world, and it was criminal for the Chinese government to keep the world in the dark about the nature of the pathogen.

 

THE U.S. ECONOMY: 2020 VS. 2024
PRESIDENT TRUMP'S RECORD VS. BIDEN/HARRIS RECORD

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INFLATION RATE

Refer to the preceding chart* (to the left on your PC monitor):

During President Trump's Administration, 2017 through 2020, the U.S. annual inflation rate averaged 1.9%.

During the Harris/Biden Administration, 2021 to 2024, the U.S. annual inflation rate averaged 5.0%, 2.5 times higher than the Trump Administration levels.

For an assessment of the impact of this inflation on the average American, link to this article on the Breitbart News website: Electricity Cost Up 32% Under Biden-Harris Leadership

* sourced from  https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/

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CONSUMER PRICE INDEX

Refer to the preceding chart (to the left on your PC monitor):

During President Trump's Administration, 2017 through 2020, the Consumer Price Index averaged 252.

During the Biden/Harris Administration, 2021 to 2024, the Consumer Price Index steadily climbed, to 314 as of July, 2024, an increase of 23% over the Trump Administration levels.

For the source of the above data link to USInflationCalculator.com (which is reached by a link from the website of the U.S. Bureau of Statistics)

For an assessment of the impact of these extreme price increases on the average American, link to this article on the Breitbart News website: Groceries Up 22 Percent in Kamala Harris’s America

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Kevin O'Leary (of Shark Tank) appraised Kamala Harris's proposed strategies for addressing the 23% increase in grocery prices that has occurred to data during the Biden/Harris administration. Link here to the site of msn for excerpts from MSN's August 17th interview with Kevin O'Leary

In an interview with CNN on Saturday, the 70-year-old investor tore into several components of Harris’ plan to make the cost of living more affordable for everyday Americans, beginning with her proposal to implement a federal ban on price gouging on groceries.  “They tried that in Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, the USSR,” O’Leary said. “No, that’s not going to work.”

Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary said Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime” that Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic plan to pass a federal ban on price gouging was “not America.”

O’Leary said, “Price fixing, we tried that in the seventies. That is beyond crazy. Can you imagine an America where there is a ministry of pricing for groceries that tells a farmer what an apple can be sold for and what you can buy it for? I mean, that is a horror film on Netflix no one has even written the script for it. That is not America.”

He continued. “Price-fixing was tried in Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, USSR in the late eighties. It just reduces the supply like crazy. It’s a really bad idea.”

I really need these policies and these ideas of which for example, $25,000 to an individual to buy a home in a constrained market? I’m a real estate guy that is beyond insane. The amount of inflation that would create, all of that capital that would go to the seller.”

 

Wall Street Journal Editorial Board on Kamala Harris' Proposed Economic Policies:

Link to the Wall Street Journal website for the Editorial Board's August 16th evaluation of Kamala Harris's economic proposals. Here are excerpts from this article:

We wrote Friday that Kamala Harris was likely to continue President Biden’s unfinished Build Back Better agenda, but it turns out we were far too optimistic. The policy priorities the Vice President laid out Friday are much worse, including a plan to impose national price controls on food and groceries.

Ms. Harris’s political problem is that the Biden-Harris economic policies have delivered inflation and declining real incomes. The high price of food is a particular sore point, and the Vice President’s response is to make it worse by resorting to Venezuelan-style left-wing populism. That’s no exaggeration.

On Friday she floated a “first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries,” including “new authority” for the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to punish companies for charging too much.

This sounds like legislation introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren that would ban “grossly excessive prices” as determined by the Federal Trade Commission. Business violations would carry a penalty of up to 5% of annual revenue. This would effectively let the FTC set prices. But what is an excessive price? Is $4 too much for a gallon of milk in Omaha? Is it a different price in Miami? FTC Chair Lina Khan and her army of bureaucrats would presumably decide.

 

EDUCATION:

Harris supports Teachers Unions. Trump supports School Choice.

The link above takes you to an August 15th article on the website of the New York Post - by Corey DeAngelis.

Here is key content copied from this article:

Former President Donald Trump has supported school choice and has said "parents must have a voice in their child's education."REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

The difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in November could not be clearer when it comes to education.

Trump believes parents are the primary decision-makers for their children and supports the money following the child to the school that best meets their needs and aligns with their family’s values.

In a May Truth Social post, Trump said, “School Choice is the CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE of our time, and parents must have a voice in their child’s education! When I am your President again, I will protect Parental Rights, support Teachers, and expand Educational Freedom for all American Families!” At a June campaign rally in Philadelphia, Trump said, “I will support universal school choice. It’s such a big thing.”

Red states are already unleashing education freedom.

When teachers unions fought to keep the public schools closed for so long starting in 2020, parents were able to see what was happening in the classroom through “remote learning” and they were not happy about schools focusing more on far-left indoctrination than education.

We’ve seen more advancement on school choice in the past three years than in the preceding three decades. Twelve states have passed universal school choice — meaning all families are eligible — since 2021.

School choice is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Public schools up their game in response to competition because it gives them an incentive to cater to the needs of children and their families.

In Florida, for example, 10 out of 11 rigorous studies on the topic find school choice improves outcomes in public schools.

Florida’s results have improved substantially as they’ve expanded school choice, with the latest US News and World Report ranking putting the Sunshine State at number one for education.

They are also now at the top of the pack for student achievement as measured by the Nation’s Report Card after adjusting for differences in student demographics across states.

Harris is in lockstep with the teachers unions and thinks your kids belong to the government.

A teacher at a Harris campaign rally in August said she originally wanted to get into teaching because she “saw education for what it really was: the greatest instrument of social justice in this country.” Call me crazy, but I thought education was supposed to be about education.

Harris further demonstrated her allegiance to the teachers unions by speaking at the American Federation of Teachers convention in July, just a few days after Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

At that event, Harris called their president, Randi Weingarten, “a force” and “an incredible friend and an adviser.”

That relationship should be disqualifying. No one did more to hold children’s education hostage by fighting to keep schools closed during the COVID era than Weingarten and the teachers unions.

Weingarten’s union lobbied the CDC to keep schools closed, threatened strikes over reopening, and engaged in fearmongering every step of the way. In fact, the Chicago Teachers Union posted and later deleted a tweet in December 2020 ridiculously claiming, “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.”

The problem is the Democratic Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the teachers unions. More than 99% of the campaign contributions from Weingarten’s union went to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle, and it has been that way for decades.