OPINION:
A Politico-Morning Consult poll released this week showed a 14-point drop in support for making illegal immigrants citizens.
For open-border Democrats, who view illegals not as individuals but political paraphernalia, the poll numbers won’t matter. They are willing to accept some political cost for the current situation provided it ultimately serves their purposes.
If current migration trends continue, the number of illegals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border will be the highest in 20 years. A humanitarian crisis is exactly what President Biden wants. Americans will eventually get action, but Mr. Biden’s “solution” will likely bring the border crisis to their backyards. After releasing illegals into the U.S., they will disappear into our cities and suburbs, carrying a heavy price tag with them.
Predictably, Democrats like Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro “it’s Trump’s fault” Mayorkas will throw up their hands, blame the broken system on White nationalism or some other liberal bogeyman, and propose amnesty.
Meantime, the community-organizing left will fill the ranks of the Democratic Party with these new Americans, most of whom would have since been sucked into a cycle of government dependency and thus conditioned to vote for the party of cradle-to-grave programming.
Elite Democrats understand they can’t afford to let this latest border crisis go to waste. After a shellacking at the state and local levels in 2020, and a surprising erosion of their House majority, the structural drift of Asian, Black and Latino voters away from the Democrats and toward GOP candidates requires a bold, long-term strategy to stop hemorrhaging at the polls.
Even the machine politicians of Tammany Hall would never have conceived of the trillions in tax dollars today’s Democrats now use to buy votes. Back then, party bosses got people jobs, helped them become financially independent and achieve the American dream.
Today’s Democratic-socialists care more about controlling the low-income than true empowerment. This isn’t only calculated and wicked, it means average Americans get squeezed.
The costs of this mess go beyond the free hotel rooms or bus and plane tickets to move illegals around the country. Consider that in the recent Biden-Sanders spending bill illegal aliens can receive almost $4.4 billion in taxpayer subsidies, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. The combined federal and state net cost for services and benefits provided to illegals now amounts to nearly $100 billion a year.
During the Obama years, a Heritage Foundation study suggested that amnesty for illegal immigrants could cost taxpayers around $6 trillion. The average immigrant household at that time consumed 33% more cash welfare, and 57% more in food assistance, than native-born households.
The Biden administration acted quickly to drop the sensible “public charge” rule, meaning illegals with little to no resources will be admitted to the country and immediately plugged into a host of welfare programs.
Under President Obama, border crossers were resettled to Kansas, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Oregon, Minnesota and more. Today’s Democrats are discussing plans to construct refugee centers such as the one in Dallas across the country. It’s safe to assume that under Mr. Biden, a historic number of illegals would be resettled in even more locations.
As resettlements continue, local educational and social services will also be strained, increasing pressure on middle-class taxpayers. For example, illegals increase costs on Medicaid by 44% over the average American household. State Medicaid budgets, already stretched by the pandemic, will continue to swell with the influx of new beneficiaries.
Americans embrace diversity. We want this country and our communities to welcome people from around the world to experience the American dream. Breaking the law and living as a ward of the state is not the definition of the American dream our parents and grandparents would recognize. Perhaps then the greater tragedy of this border emergency is the insidious and calculated political agenda driving a redefinition of what a nation of immigrants is really all about.
• Tom Basile, host of Newsmax Television’s “America Right Now,” is an author and adjunct professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches earned media strategy.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.