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Biden’s Secret Border Agenda: Migrants Fill Our Baby Gap

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Ted Rall

           I didn’t question the incoming Biden Administration when they rolled back the Trump era’s stricter border control policies in 2021. There’s nothing unusual about reversing a previous president’s approach, especially when he belongs to the other party and the policy in question is roundly criticized.

You didn’t have to be a proponent of open borders to feel discomfort about Trump’s zero-tolerance stance toward both economic migrants and political asylum applicants, which led to kids in cages, his draconian family separation policy, which caused nearly a thousand children to get disappeared into the system and were never reunited with their parents, or his Remain in Mexico scheme, which subjected immigration applicants to gang and cartel violence. By the time he left office, Trump’s handling of undocumented people who attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border was viewed as inhumane and highly unpopular.

As we see so often in American politics, we have gone from one extreme to the other. President Biden has swung past the status quo ante toward immigration policies more liberal than anyone alive today can remember. Slightly fewer than two million people illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during Trump’s four years in office; there have been well over six million under Biden, who still has nine months left to serve. Biden has deported more than half of these.

Where the two administrations’ policies really differ is their handling of applicants who present themselves to border patrol agents and followed the federal government’s legal application process for asylum. Fewer than 200,000 asylum seekers were paroled, i.e. admitted into the U.S. pending the resolution of their claim, under Trump. Biden has paroled nearly 500,000, and he still has a year to go, with big spikes over the past two years. Between those people and others allowed into the U.S. under Biden’s special refugee programs for people fleeing conflict zones like Ukraine, Afghanistan and Venezuela, more than 1,000,000 are now in country.

Now it’s Biden’s turn to feel the heat of popular discontent in an election year. More than two-thirds of voters disapprove of the president on immigration (68%) and border security (69%), according to the AP-NORC poll conducted on March 29th. After the economy, healthcare, crime and guns, immigration is tied for fifth with abortion among the issues voters care about most right now.

Like other leftists, I long assumed that Biden’s “open border” approach was driven by a pair of common well-intentioned albeit shortsighted liberal impulses: opposing all things Trump just because and opening America’s doors to the poor and oppressed masses desperate for the chance to make new lives here, à la Emma Lazarus in homage to our history as a Nation of Immigrants.

Now I think something else is going on.

Biden and the Democrats read polls; they know their border policies aren’t playing well with the swing voters they need to win this fall. Trump’s fearmongering seems to be landing punches. So why is the Administration staying the course? Why are they just standing by and watching as cities like New York and Chicago reel under the financial stress of hundreds of thousands of new arrivals they can’t handle?

As James Carville famously observed in 1992, it’s the economy, stupid. It’s always the economy, especially in an election year. And you can’t hit the ideal GDP growth rate of two or three percent a year if your population—your consumer base and your labor pool—shrinks.

But Team Biden is looking far beyond November.

The developed world is facing a fertility crisis. For the population to remain stable, the average woman needs to have 2.1 children. (The fraction over two accounts for disease, accidents and mortality in general.) A study published in The Lancet finds that the fertility rate for Western Europe, 1.53 rate in 2021, is expected to drop further to 1.37 by 2100. A major population drop-off could cause a crisis as a smaller workforce is unable to support an older, larger cohort of retirees. Demand for homes and other trans-generational products could collapse, dragging down consumer goods and leading to a deflationary doom loop.

Fortunately, report co-author Natalia V. Bhattacharjee says, there’s a solution: liberalizing immigration from places like the Global South, where birthrates remain high. “Once nearly every country’s population is shrinking, reliance on open immigration will become necessary to sustain economic growth.” She told Al Jazeera that “sub-Saharan African countries have a vital resource that ageing societies are losing—a youthful population.”

            Here in the U.S., our fertility rate has dropped from 3.65 in 1960 to 2.08 in 1990 to 1.66 in 2021. At the same time, population has risen from 181 million in 1960 to 250 million to 333 million in 2021. Immigration, legal and illegal, has filled the void created by our failure to make enough babies.

            Under Trump, not so much.

            I am increasingly convinced that, behind securely locked soundproof doors in the White House and other corridors of power, top Biden officials are staring at demographic charts that show the rate of population increase leveling off toward even, and dripping sweat over the fact that the current economic model, which is predicated on consistent expansion, is imperiled by a fertility crisis neither they nor the media ever talk about. Where Republicans see an uncontrolled flow of people from Central America and elsewhere pouring across the border with Mexico as threats to American jobholders, possible criminals and perhaps cultural harbingers of a Great Replacement theory, Democratic economists view them, like Bhattacharjee, as a convenient solution to the intractable demographic issues of Americans getting married later and in fewer numbers and thus having fewer children than required to keep growing the economy.

            There are ways to encourage American citizens who already live here to have more kids. One city in Japan, whose economy has struggled against a fertility crisis since the 1990s, has succeeded in growing family sizes by investing free medical care for children, free diapers and, most effectively, free daycare. Other places have achieved similar results. There is a direct correlation between low birth rates and expensive child daycare. But there’s no sign that Washington cares about the issue, much less is about to act.

That leaves immigration. Given the stakes and the undeniable capitalistic logic that necessitates throwing open the floodgates, President Biden might want to take a shot at something he seems both to hate and is not good at: explaining the facts to the public.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

Baltimore Bridge Disaster: Choose Your Explanation

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Ted Rall

The collision between a container ship and a bridge in the port of Baltimore provides an IQ test. Do you accept the obvious simple explanation, that the incident resulted from an accident and outdated bridge design? Or do you try to dredge up a bizarre conspiracy theory involving terrorism despite a total lack of evidence and the failure to pass the smell test?

Follow the Rules, Like Immigrants Used To

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Ted Rall

Nativists and xenophobes appalled by the “open border” policy that has allowed millions of asylum seekers to enter the United States often harken to a nonexistent history when immigrants followed the rules and waited to be invited before entering the U.S. However, Ellis Island was exactly like Eagle Pass, Texas today; German, Irish, Italian and other immigrants were allowed in en masse, without visas, and became the great-grandparents of the vast majority of citizens today.

Ron DeSantis Has a Secret Weapon. He’s a Master of Wedge Issues.

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Ted Rall

           Donald Trump remains the favorite for the GOP nomination. In theoretical 2024 matchups against Joe Biden, however, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has begun to outperform the president where Trump would be projected to lose. But DeSantis might falter once Democratic voters start to pay serious attention to him.

            DeSantis knows that. He plans to undermine liberal opposition with his secret weapon: his consistent ability to identify populist themes tailormade for partisan Republican primary voters, yet are crafted to tear away enough Democrats to become wedge issues in a general election campaign.

DeSantis has staked out a hardline position as the heir apparent to lead the MAGA movement—thank you, Donald, time to pass the torch—whose conservative positions and aggressive tone could turn off moderates and spook liberals into turning out in higher numbers. DeSantis can mitigate that challenge by creating some common ground with his natural enemies.  His current slate of wedge-issues-to-be, which prima facie look like red meat for the growling dogs of the right base, also have potential to pull in centrists and even some progressives who silently concur.

Of the various national and regional responses to the pandemic, Florida initially joined the national lockdown but then landed solidly into the rapid-reopening camp. “People know that Florida is a free state,” DeSantis summarized his position a year ago. “They’re not gonna have you shut down. They’re not gonna have restrictions.” After late 2020 if you wanted to eat indoors or you wanted your kid to attend physical school with flesh-and-blood teachers without a mask, Florida became your beacon—so much so that it triggered a mini-migration to the state.

Critics say DeSantis played fast and loose with Covid death and infection data in order to disguise the failure of a policy in which Floridians had a higher case rate than the national average and Florida seniors had “a higher death rate than any other state” as of late 2022, according to the CDC.

In politics, perception is reality. DeSantis’ “Covid gamble paid off,” as Helen Lewis observed in The Atlantic. “When liberals look at DeSantis, they see a culture warrior with authoritarian tendencies,” Lewis wrote. “But as Americans have tired of pandemic precautions, and as regrets about long school closures have surfaced even among Democrats, DeSantis has been able to attract swing voters [in his gubernatorial reelection campaign] by positioning himself as a champion of both cultural and economic freedom.”

            DeSantis’ nativist stance on the migrant crisis plays a similar tune. Flying clueless asylum applicants to Martha’s Vineyard was counterproductive—it would have  been cheaper to house them indefinitely than to blow a cool $12 million of Floridians’ tax dollars on a stunt—and cruel. But closed-border hardliners loved it.

And some Democrats silently cheered. At least DeSantis did something to draw attention to immigration—which Biden and the Democrats would rather not discuss. The border crisis became a major topic of debate during the 2022 midterms, during which frustrated Democrats in vulnerable districts lashed out at the White House for their failure to grasp immigration as a potential wedge. A Spectrum News/Siena College Poll released a month before the midterms found that DeSantis was onto something: 50% of independents supported Florida deporting migrants, especially to Massachusetts and New York. He retained strong support among his state’s Latinos.

Nationally, Democratic voters remain pro-immigration. But things are beginning to shift in a direction that creates an opportunity for a disciplined Republican message to create inroads among swing voters. “The percentage of Democrats dissatisfied and desiring less immigration was nearly nonexistent in 2021, at 2%, before rising to 11% last year and 19% now,” Gallup reported on February 13th. “Independents’ dissatisfaction and preference for less immigration has about doubled since 2021, rising from 19% at that time to 36% today.”

DeSantis’ attacks on “woke” education and AP Black Studies presents as a classic racist dog whistle to Biden Democrats. “He’s gone full-blown white supremacist,” columnist Jennifer Rubin cried in The Washington Post.

But many left-leaning voters also wonder whether public schools really ought to offer AP courses outside core subjects like history, math, English and foreign languages, as well as whether queer studies or intersectionality are appropriate topics for discussion in high school. Overall, most voters do not oppose DeSantis’ proposed ban on AP Black Studies. A surprisingly high 19% of Democrats, more than enough to make a difference in a tight race, side with DeSantis.

DeSantis’ judicious deployment of well-timed wedge issues—now that trust in the news media is so low people actually think the press misleads them intentionally, he says it should be easier to sue reporters for libel—has already endeared DeSantis to Republicans looking for a Trump-like candidate without the baggage. If he beats his former mentor and goes on to fight a Democrat, he’ll look somewhat reasonable in some respects to some liberals and some moderates. That’s a tricky slalom ride, one he’s navigating well so far.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Ron DeSantis: the Other White Meat

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Ted Rall

Liberal media outlets and many liberal politicians are urging Republicans to nominate Florida governor Ron DeSantis instead of former president Donald Trump. They say he is just as right-wing as Trump but more electable. Then why would Democrats want to run against him?

DMZ America Podcast #67: Russian Plebiscites in Ukraine, Migrants up in the Air and the Midterms

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Ted Rall

Left-leaning editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and right-leaning editorial cartoonist Scott Stantis debate the two major developments in the Ukraine Russia war. Russia is calling up more troops and wants to hold plebiscites in the territory it controls with a view toward annexation. Ted and Scott have differing views about which aspect could lead to further escalation in the conflict. The governors of Texas and Florida are deporting asylums seeking immigrants to Northern states. We discuss the humanitarian and political aspects of this strange story. Finally: where are we in the upcoming key midterm elections?

 

 

E Pluribus Nada

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Ted Rall

If a two-party democratic system is to be viable, it has to have a basic shared set of facts, values and issues about which people may differ, and should differ, about solutions. At this point in time, however, the United States doesn’t qualify because the American people are obsessed about totally different things depending on their political orientation.

The Border is Open Again!

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Ted Rall

Comprehensive immigration reform is here. Construction on the wall, to the extent that it ever happened, is ending. Joe Biden wants you to know that you can come to America anytime you want. But why would you want to?

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Meet the For-Profit Prison Industry Raking in Billions of Taxpayer Dollars from Trump’s Mass Deportation Boondoggle

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Ted Rall

The Washington Post recently published a revealing and heartbreaking story about forced separation of children from their illegal immigrant parents — not the Trump-ordered fiasco we’ve watched over recent weeks at the U.S.-Mexico border, but in the Midwest as the result of brutal ICE raids that have ripped families apart under Presidents Obama and Bush before him. It’s beautifully written, worthy of a literature award if not a Pulitzer for journalism.

One line leapt out at me: “Who benefits from this?”

Nora, an 18-year-old girl who lost both her parents to ICE raids and is now raising her 12-year-old brother like something out of a dark 1970s ABC Afterschool Special or a Dave Eggers story, wondered why the U.S. government carries out such vicious policies and tactics, like using offers of free food to lure poor migrants into the clutches of heavily-armed immigration goons.

“Was it American taxpayers, who were paying to finance the raid and resulting deportations? Or American workers, most of whom were so disinterested in low-paying farm work that Ohio had announced a crisis work shortage of 15,000 agricultural jobs? Or Corso’s Nursery, a ­family-owned business now missing 40 percent of its employees?”

OK, so the canard about Americans being unwilling to fill low-paid agricultural jobs is transparent BS. The key phrase is low-paid. If all the illegal immigrants disappeared tomorrow the labor-market version of the law of supply and demand would force agribusiness employers to offer higher wages. Plenty of Americans would be happy to pick fruit for $25 an hour. Sorry, Corso’s — if you can’t afford to pay a living wage, you deserve to go out of business.

Still, Nora’s question is a good one. Whether you believe in open borders, want Trump to build The Wall or fall somewhere in between like me (build the wall, legalize the people already here who haven’t committed serious felonies, deport the criminals), everyone who cares about immigration should know the why and wherefore of how the U.S. government carries out deportations.

Contrary to what some liberals seem to believe, there is nothing unreasonable about border control. Determining who gets to enter your country’s territory, and who gets turned away, is one of the principal defining characteristics of a modern nation-state. Just you try to sneak into Latvia or Liberia without permission and see what happens. You can probably make it into Libya, but that’s because it’s a failed state.

After you catch illegal immigrants the question is, how do you deal with them?

Some countries, like Iran, deport unauthorized persons immediately, no due process. That’s what Trump wants to do.

Others treat them like criminals. Illegal immigrants caught in Italy face a hefty cash fine and up to six months in prison.

The United States falls in between. Applicants for political asylum are theoretically entitled to a hearing before an immigration court. Economic migrants receive no due process. Both classes face lengthy detentions before removal.

Lengthy detention is the key to Nora’s question.

So who benefits?

The answer is: America’s vast, secretive, politically connected, poorly regulated $5 billion private-prison industry. “As of August 2016, nearly three-quarters of the average daily immigration detainee population was held in facilities operated by private prison companies—a sharp contrast from a decade ago, when the majority were held in ICE-contracted bedspace in local jails and state prisons,” writes Livia Luan of the Migration Policy Institute.

Crime rates have been falling for years. So prison populations have been declining too. Adding to the down trend has been a rare area of bipartisan agreement in Congress; Democrats and Republicans agree that we need criminal justice reform centered around shorter sentences.

Originally sold as an innovative market-based solution to alleviate overcrowding in government-run prisons and jails for criminals, the private prison sector had been facing hard times before Trump came along. Private institutions were sitting empty. Until two years ago, private prisons had been scheduled to be phased out entirely by the federal sentencing system.

Trump made private prisons great again.

According to the UK Independent ICE arrests during Trump’s first nine months in office increased 43% over a year earlier. “Many of those immigrants are funnelled into a multibillion dollar private prison system, where between 31,000 and 41,000 detainees are held each night. In many cases, those private prison corporations — led by the behemoths GeoGroup and CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America — have contracts with the federal government guaranteeing their beds will be filled, or that they will receive payment regardless of whether they have a full house on any given night.”

With profits guaranteed by pro-business government contracts, Wall Street is bullish on prisons for profit. “The Trump administration’s tough-on-immigration policies are unlikely to fade anytime soon, meaning investors should expect continued strict enforcement, more arrests by ICE and the need to accommodate a growing number of arrested individuals,” an analyst advised investors.

That’s likely to continue. In a classic example of the revolving door between government and private industry, the CEO of GEO is Daniel Ragsdale, who left his post as #2 at ICE in May 2017. Talk about swampy: ICE is extremely cozy with for-profit prisons.

When your customer base is as disenfranchised, unpopular and defenseless as convicts and undocumented workers, it’s tempting to cut corners on costs for their care. Reports of abuse and neglect are even more widespread in the private prison sector than in traditional government-run lockups. “The conditions inside were very bad. The facilities were old. The guards were poorly trained. If you got sick all they would just give you Tylenol and tell you to get back to your cell,” said Adrian Hernandez Garay, who served 35 months for illegal immigration at the Big Spring Correctional Institution, a Texas facility run by the private corporation GEO. He told Vice he was fed rice and beans seven days a week. He described Big Spring as “far worse” than other prisons where he was held.

Even if you think illegal immigrants are criminals who should be tossed out on their ears, you ought to be highly suspicious of the private prison industry. After all, they don’t want illegals deported. They want them housed indefinitely in their sketchy facilities. And you’re paying the bill.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Francis: The People’s Pope.” You can support Ted’s independent political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

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