Benjamin Brophy recently wrote on the American Spectator blog that conservatives should support amnesty for illegal aliens, as well as, he implies, the present policy of massive legal immigration. He claimed that “immigration reform,” i.e., amnesty is popular and “pro-free market.”
Fact Check: Actually it is neither. He cites a poll showing a majority support for amnesty. What such slanted polls do, however, is provide only two options: amnesty or immediate mass roundup and deportation. They don’t offer a third choice: slow but steady enhancement of enforcement which encourages most illegal aliens to go home on their own. When given this option, most Americans support the latter option. See: Legalization vs. Enforcement What the American People Think on Immigration
Amnesty has nothing to do with genuine free enterprise. The free market depends on the rule of law, which amnesty—the rewarding of lawbreakers—undermines. Also, the cheap labor interests that promote mass immigration, open borders and amnesty are not supporters of free enterprise. The higher profits they reap through cheap labor are a socialistic subsidy provided by taxpayers who have to pick up the tab for immigrants’ social welfare costs.
Brophy claims that poor immigrants generally use less welfare than poor Americans. But even if that were true, why should we have an immigration policy which disproportionately admits poor people who can eventually apply for welfare. In the words of Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation, we are “importing poverty.” Actually with respect to legal immigration, the law states that people likely to become “public charges” who should not be admited in the first place Unfortunately, it is a law almost never enforced.
Next he maintains that immigrants don’t take our jobs because there is not a fixed number of jobs. The economy creates new jobs all the time—enough, he suggests, to provide employment for immigrants and natives alike. If that has ever been true, it certainly hasn’t been the case since the economic downturn beginning in 2008. Today we are far short of replacing the millions of jobs lost since then. And as economic researcher Edwin Rubenstein has noted, a very large share of the newly created jobs have gone to immigrants.
With more than 20 million Americans unable to find full-time jobs, unemployment is still a major problem in this country. The official unemployment figure has declined somewhat lately, but mainly because it doesn’t count people who have completely given up looking for work. Mass immigration isn’t helping matters.
Brophy further claims that whether we like it or not, we don’t have the resources to do a massive roundup of illegal aliens and deport them. Actually we don’t have to. By slowly but surely tightening up enforcement, we can persuade most to go home on their own. See: “You Can’t Deport 11 Million People” Statement Reflects Mistaken Image
Finally he alleges that immigrants are “tailor-made conservatives.” Well, that generally doesn’t apply to Hispanics, who are the largest ethnicity of immigrants. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 75 percent of Hispanics favor Big Government compared with 41 percent of the general population. Again, mass immigration, legal and illegal, is not helping free enterprise. In his summation, Brophy also parrots the cliché that immigrants “come here for a better life.” As our country begins to resemble their Third World homelands, it will become harder and harder for them to achieve that goal. For native born Americans—if present trends continue— “a better life” will become a memory, rather than a hope.