Immigration Nation: A Crisis of Our Own Design

George H. W. Bush + Ronald Reagan Debate On Immigration In 1980

George H. W. Bush: Look, I’d like to see something done about the illegal alien problem that would be so sensitive and so understanding about labor needs, and human needs, that that problem wouldn’t come up, but today, if those people are here, I would reluctantly say, I think they would get whatever it is that they’re, you know, what the society is giving to their neighbors, but the problem has to be solved.

The problem has to be solved because, as we had kind of made illegal some kinds of labor that I’d like to see legal, we’re doing two things: We’re creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people that are in violation of the law, and secondly, we’re exacerbating relations with Mexico.

The answer to your question is much more fundamental than whether they attend Houston schools, it seems to me.

I don’t want to see a whole, if they’re living here, I don’t want to see a whole thing of six and eight year-old kids being made you know, one, totally uneducated, and made to feel that they’re living outside the law. Let's address ourselves to the fundamentals. These are good people, strong people. A part of my family is Mexican.

Ronald Reagan: I think the time has come that the United States and our neighbors, particularly our neighbor to the south, should have a better understanding and a better relationship than we’ve ever had, and I think we haven’t been sensitive enough to our size and our power. They have a problem of 40–50% unemployment. Now, this cannot continue without the possibility arising, with regard to that other country that we talked about—of Cuba and what it is stirring up—of the possibility of trouble below the border, and we could have a very hostile and strange neighbor on our border.

Rather than making them, or talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here, and when they want to go back, they can go back, and they can cross and open the border both ways.

By understanding their problems, this is the only safety valve right now they have with that unemployment that probably keeps the lid from blowing off down there, and I think we could have a friend, a fine relationship, and it would solve the problem you mentioned also.

As the war in Ukraine rages on, a refugee crisis has taken hold in Eastern Europe. As of this recording, it’s estimated that 10 million Ukrainians have fled their homes, with 3.5 million seeking refuge outside of Ukraine. The vast majority have sought asylum with family members or organizations in neighboring countries, such as Poland, Romania and Hungary. Some have even gone to Russia to stay with family and escape the bombings in their home cities. A small percentage of those fleeing the crisis have been able to make it across the Atlantic to seek safe harbor in North America. And, as impossible as it sounds, Russians and Ukrainians have even found passage through Latin America, only to find themselves huddled amongst tens of thousands of asylum seekers from Mexico and Latin America at the U.S. southern border.

“The United States has a public health order in place because of the pandemic, which says that it can reject just about anyone who is asking for asylum, apart from unaccompanied children. And what that means in practice at entry points like this one is that it can really pick and choose who it lets in, and it seems that at the moment that’s Ukrainians. Yes, dissident Russians like the ones in the camp—not so much—and the Mexicans and Central Americans that say they’ve been living in unofficial conflict zones for years now, with next to no hope of getting into the U.S.”

This excerpt is from an Al Jazeera report filmed at the U.S./Mexico border. It paints an interesting picture of Ukrainians being shuttled aside and admitted across the border, while Russians sympathetic to the Ukrainian plight remain in place with Hispanic asylum seekers. The reporter spoke the quiet part out loud by questioning the difference between those seeking refuge from conflicts that we arguably have a larger role in creating and those coming in from the crisis in Ukraine. I’m not minimizing anyone’s reason for seeking entry into the United States, and will let you draw your own conclusions as to the prevailing calculus with respect to who’s allowed in and who’s not.

I thought it a perfect time to dig deeper into one of the conservative media’s favorite bogeyman and the thing that scares white people more than anything: Illegal immigration.

Chapter One

The 411 on NIM

We’ve done a good amount of work already to understand how much we’ve meddled in Central and South American affairs. So I’m going to make a broad assumption at the beginning here that we don’t need to rehash how we’ve created economic and human safety issues and imbalances among some of our siblings to the south. We’re not going to rehash how we invaded or helped overthrow countries like El Salvador.

MANNY: How about Honduras?

No.

99: We could go over Allende’s assassination again when we helped overthrow the government of Chile.

No, 99. Unf*ckers know this already.

MANNY: What about installing then uninstalling a dictator in Nicaragua?

99: Or Cuba!

MANNY: Honduras!

99: Supporting coup attempts in Panama?

MANNY: Or Cuba!

99: The Dominican!

MANNY: Grenada!

99:  Puerto Rico!

MANNY: Or Cuba!

99: Why don’t we re-release our Washington Consensus episode?

No, no, no. It’s unnecessary. Unf*ckers have been following along. They know how much we’ve destabilized the south. How we exported Uncle cheesenipple’s neoliberal free trade policies…

MANNY: Yes, he’s already talking about Milton Friedman.

… to use both dollar diplomacy and gunboat diplomacy in an effort to squeeze their economies of natural resources and install puppet governments that allowed U.S. companies to occupy some of their most important industries under threat of invasion or insurrection from U.S. armed and funded guerrilla groups.

99: So what do you want to talk about then?

I just want to talk immigration. Specifically, on the southern border. And, while I don’t want to rehash why hundreds of thousands of people attempt to enter the United States each year through Mexico, I do want to rehash the numbers a bit.

In an earlier Quickie, we talked about Net International Migration, or NIM. And I promised to bring it back in this episode, so here we are. Understanding this concept and the figures behind it is really important because it sets the table for us to show how the debate around Hispanic immigration especially has dramatically changed over the past few decades. How we have gone from two of the biggest neocon assholes in our opening clips talking about the importance of Latin immigration, the need for a humane policy and the economic advantage of open borders to all out demonization of families crossing the border under almost any circumstance.

So let’s review.

Most of the hysteria around undocumented workers and asylum seekers is accompanied by enormous figures that make the border sound like it’s in a constant state of panic and unrest. Fox, in particular, likes to throw around figures in the hundreds of thousands of arrests and detentions, millions of attempts and an already massive population of so-called illegal immigrants already living in the United States. Fucker Carlson has been stretching lately to claim that the generally accepted number of 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally is drastically undercounted. And I’m actually willing to concede this to a degree because I think this is a very blurry area that is impossible to tabulate.

Now, before we talk about people who are already here, let’s review NIM. It’s really important that Unf*ckers speak with the same language about this.

We quoted James Risen of The Intercept in that previous Quickie, who ran through the numbers compiled by joint agencies during the pandemic to try and get the most accurate count possible. Here’s his quote again:

“Net international migration into the United States increased by just 247,000 people in 2021, the lowest annual level for any year since at least 2010. That’s about half the number of people who came into the country between 2019 and 2020, during the Trump administration, when net international migration totaled 477,000. The 2021 figure was also far below the 1,049,000 who came into the U.S. between 2015 and 2016, the highest level for any year in that decade.”

Right? So for all the bluster on Fox and other conservative sources, the real figure is around a quarter of a million people because it takes into account people who also left the country. And the reality is that, so far under Biden, the situation at the border has improved quite dramatically. A narrative they do not want to promote, obviously. So the equation for NIM is as follows as a refresher:

Foreign-Born Immigration - Foreign-Born Emigration + Net Puerto Rican Migration + Net Native-Born Immigrants = Net International Migration or NIM for short.

Foreign-Born Immigration is the number of people that gained entry to the country from foreign nations. Legally, illegally, or what have you.

Foreign-Born Emigration is the outflow; the number of people from those same categories who left the United States.

Net Puerto Rico Migration is the total increase or decrease to the Puerto Rican population.

Net Native-Born Immigrants are babies born to immigrants in the United States, or “anchor babies” as right wing douchenozzles like to refer to them as though they’re not human.

Add them all up and you get NIM.

Chapter Two

Closed Minds and Open Borders

The 247,000 represents about .06% of the U.S. population. Again, this is just net new inflow or outflow and doesn’t address the existing population. Oh, and there’s one thing I want to convey because there are two sides to the coin. Immigrants, whether lawfully or unlawfully entering the country, typically wind up in just a handful of states. But there are border towns that catch the brunt of the initial influx and are absolutely overwhelmed. I get it. If this were a court of law, these Americans would have what’s called “standing.” I’ll listen to their side of the debate all day every day because they’re living the chaos created on both sides of the border and are legitimately caught in the middle.

And if you’re one of those leftists who says, “well they have the freedom to move,” then knock it off. That’s the argument that the right loves to use when we talk about injustices at the state and local levels. “You don’t like it? Well why don’t you just fucking move? It’s a free country.” Freedom of mobility isn’t necessarily afforded to many in the U.S., so let’s not stoop to that level.

Anyway, one of the biggest criticisms one hears, especially from Fucker Carlson—the head nativist in charge at Fox News—is that the generally accepted figure of 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is vastly underreported. As I said, I’ll allow space for this because the 11 million figure is somewhat outdated and even the Census Bureau admits that this is an inexact science.

The reason they stand more firmly behind the NIM number of 247,000 in 2021 is because they partnered with multiple agencies during the pandemic to get a more precise figure. I suppose we could also allow for the idea that it could be less than 11 million as well, since we don’t really know. But let’s use Fucker’s logic, split the difference and use 15 million as our number because that’s as reasonable as anything, I suppose. That would represent about 4% of the U.S. population.

Now this is the fun part, because we get to use Fucker’s logic and bring in one of our oldest and dearest friends into the conversation. Here’s a quote from Fucker talking about the economic downside of having 11 million people sucking off the American teat, even though he believes the number is much higher than that. Take it away, Fucker:

“Now it doesn’t take an economist to know that giving free healthcare, which obviously will include gender transition, by the way, to 11 million new people could easily capsize the entire U.S. economy, very easily. As Milton Friedman once wisely notes, you can have a welfare state or you can have open borders, but you cannot have both.”

I like this because it puts it on the record that I didn’t bring up Uncle Stinkyfart. He did. So before we move on, let’s see the actual quote from Uncle Scrotumtuck himself to really flesh this out and understand where Fucker is coming from.

“Look, for example, at the obvious, immediate practical case of illegal Mexican immigration. Now, that Mexican immigration over the border is a good thing. It’s a good thing for the people—illegal immigrants—it’s a good thing for the United States. It’s a good thing for the citizens of the country. But it’s only good so long as it’s illegal. That’s an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal, and it’s no good. Why? Because, as long as it’s illegal, the people who come in do not qualify for welfare. They don’t qualify for Social Security; they don’t qualify for all the other myriads of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket into our right pocket. And, so as long as they don’t qualify, they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take.”

There’s a lot to think about here. And, by the way, if you haven’t listened to our F*ck Milton Friedman episode or the two-parter we did on libertarianism, this clip might seem really strange. But it actually lines up really well with Friedman’s world view. But, it poses really big challenges to anti-immigration narratives. Let’s break it down.

Uncle Fuckbreath believes that the downside of immigrants streaming across the border is that they’ll suck up the great American welfare state services. On this, Fucker agrees. But Friedman goes further to suggest that illegal immigration that has no carrot waiting for a migrant, other than the prospect of dirty work that our citizens refuse to do, is a healthy part of the economic engine of a nation.

On this idea, Friedman was a fan of open borders, which would obviously drive many in both major parties crazy. But it tracks with his hardcore free market view of the world. Labor, like money, should be able to move freely in a market that poses no barrier. If that labor winds up driving down wages, then that’s a good thing, because it means employers are free to hire people for less. It’s why the thing he hated most was the minimum wage.

Right away, we can see that Fucker has a problem here. He’s quoting Milton Friedman, and considers him a hero, by the way; but he’s adamantly against undocumented workers migrating across the border. Open borders is a nightmare to Fucker and his ilk.

Chapter Three

Debunking the Welfare Argument

This gets us into the welfare state. A couple of ways to think about this. Fucker and Friedman are aligned in the sense that they don’t believe undocumented people should be able to access welfare benefits. But for different reasons, and this is where Fucker has a convenient interpretation of Friedman. Friedman didn’t believe anyone should have them, citizen or not. Welfare of any kind is an unnecessary control and kills free markets and the incentive to work. Fucker believes that migrants are crossing the border, not for work opportunities, but to live on the largesse of the American welfare system.

Fucker hammers this point over and over. It’s the centerpiece of his talking points against immigration. That, and his assertion that we have nothing to do with suppressing Latin American economies and societies, so everyone below the border should go fuck themselves. You even saw it before when he talked about giving healthcare to 11 million people, and then threw in a crude reference to that including gender transition, just to drive it home that he’s a fucking asshole.

But the cold hard facts of the matter undermine his theories on immigration entirely. The things we typically define as welfare like Medicaid, child welfare payments, SNAP—formerly food stamps—unemployment insurance, disability, Social Security. etc. None of these things is available to undocumented workers. In fact, as we’ve covered before, there’s a hidden benefit to the United States when it comes to Social Security that pundits and politicians rarely talk about.

According to policy groups that study Social Security and even Social Security’s actuary, undocumented workers pay about $13 billion a year into Social Security. They do this either through deductions from privately held payrolls or from providing false Social Security numbers. That’s $13 billion a year going directly into the Social Security trust that will never benefit the workers who contributed because they’re not eligible to take them out.

There are only two benefits in pure economic terms that are available: Public school education and emergency healthcare. Let’s talk about this for a moment, before we reveal the real bad guy in our story.

Public Education

First off, public education is a real thing. No child can be turned away from public school, regardless of immigration status. If their parents or guardians can prove residency with an address or utility bill or what have you, then the child can attend school. Bullshit, right?!! How dare they? Here’s the problem with hating on this. And don’t get me wrong, teaching English as a second language (ESL) students is a great challenge for teachers and something we are not properly equipped to handle in most districts across the country. That being said, from a funding perspective, because we fund school districts through the local tax base, then these students are underwritten in the same manner as the 40% of the country that rents and does not own housing. If you pay rent to someone, then the homeowner or apartment owner pays real estate taxes that support the local school district.

Healthcare

In terms of healthcare, we talked about this in a prior episode that covered the role of think tanks in shaping public policy. Recall that Obamacare was based upon Romneycare in Massachusetts, which was a policy designed by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation as a way to punish poor, uninsured people, most notably undocumented immigrants. Their idea was that if everyone was compelled to take health insurance coverage, then poor people would have to pay private insurers and stop seeking emergency room care for even the most basic ailments. Obviously, that’s a whole different story. The way we portion out care in this country is stupid, mean and brutal. But Obamacare, or Romneycare, was specifically designed to punish poor people and line the pockets of insurance companies. Of course, that’s not a popular narrative for liberals, but it doesn’t make it false.

So the one benefit you have if you’re an undocumented human in this country is that you are still free to walk into an emergency room and receive emergency care and treatment.

99: So not Medicaid?

Nope.

99: Medicare?

Nope.

99: Temporary Aid to Needy Families, or TANF?

Nope.

99: Child care?

Nope.

99: Adoption assistance?

Nope.

99: Low Income Home Energy Assistance?

Nope.

99: Social Security?

Nope.

99: SNAP food benefits?

Nope.

Conservative outlets like to claim, as Donald Trump often did, that more than half of all immigrant households in the U.S. receive welfare benefits. It’s a great spin, and effective talking point. In fact, I’ve read numbers as high as three quarters of all non-native born households receive “some” welfare. Here’s how they get there, because it’s true, but also doesn’t include any of the programs we listed above.

First off, we have legal immigration into this country. We have work visas, student visas, temporary visas, refugees, etc. When conservatives quote the 50% figure—which is the most consistent talking point—they’re talking about documented and known immigrants as well. And the one program that they’re including to skew all of the figures is subsidized school lunches. If you take just that element away, native born and non-native born households receive pretty much the same benefits.

So the real story here is that undocumented people might get a school lunch, but they don’t qualify for any of the big stuff that Milton Friedman and Fucker Carlson have pointed to.

Now, you can argue whether or not undocumented people are deserving of welfare of any kind. Happy to talk that out. But our mission today is to debunk the talking points around illegal entry into the United States, the economic impact of this phenomenon and the racist underpinnings of the entire conversation. But we should talk about the asshole who designed the system we’re under today. The one that stripped away any and all protections from undocumented workers, and the one who actually created the crisis at the border. Hint… it was a President of the United States.

Chapter Four

And the Asshole Is…

Now, before we reveal the asshole President who fucked the immigration process and created the mess we’re in today, let’s hear from a proper President who understands the human condition and the economic value of being a nation of immigrants. Here’s Bill Clinton on Conan O'Brien shortly after his wife lost the election to Trump:

“The median age of the workforce is a big deal in terms of the economic potential of a country. So, in a sense, the birth rate of native-born Americans, of all races, is just barely at replacement level. We need immigrants to come in and keep diversifying the country and helping us grow.”

Ah, the soothing words of slick Willy. I have to admit, it’s always refreshing to listen to an intelligent former president who understands both economics and the human side of politics. Which brings us to the guy who really fucked things up at the border. In fact, we’ll go to the very moment it all began:

“All Americans, not only in the state’s most heavily affected, but in every place in this country are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants; the public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by borrowing welfare benefits to illegal aliens.

 

“In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes to better identify illegal aliens in the workforce, as recommended by the commission headed by former congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong, and ultimately self-defeating, for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years and we must do more to stop it.”

That’s from Bill Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union address, in case you’re wondering where the language and shift in policy truly began. Our current system and manner of thinking about immigration is a Clinton invention.

At some point, we’re going to Unf*ck the '90s because the Clinton Administration is responsible for so much legacy evil in our system, it’s amazing. He fucked poor, marginalized and immigrant people with a trifecta of legislation that fucked generations of Americans right in the starfish.

The big one that we’ve covered is obviously the crime bill. But there were two others that worked in conjunction with the crime bill to strangle the immigrant population and set the country up for failure with respect to immigration policy to this day.

The first came on the heels of the Oklahoma City bombings, called the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Among other things, it allowed the deportation of any immigrant ever convicted of a crime, no matter how long ago or how serious. The great historian Howard Zinn called this bill a “throwback to the notorious Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 and the McCarthy-era McCarran-Walter Act of the 1950s.”

MANNY: Hold up, hold up. Wasn’t the Oklahoma bombing carried out by a U.S. born white dude who served in the military?

That’s correct Manny!

When white people carry out crimes in the United States, we do what any reasonable nation would do: Create laws that punish black and brown people.

Anyhoo, the third in the trifecta was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. I’m going to quote directly from a Cornell University report on the bill to describe it.

“The Act was designed to improve border control by imposing criminal penalties for racketeering, alien smuggling and the use or creation of fraudulent immigration-related documents and increasing interior enforcement by agencies charged with monitoring visa applications and visa abusers. The Act also allows for the deportation of undocumented immigrants who commit a misdemeanor or a felony.

 

“The Act mandates that immigrants who are unlawfully present in the U.S. for 180 days but under 365 days must remain outside the United States for three years unless pardoned. If they remain in the United States for 365 days or more, they must stay outside the United States for 10 years, unless they obtain a waiver. However, if they return to the U.S. without the pardon, they must wait 10 years until they may apply for a waiver.”

Imposing punishment on criminal activity of any kind is always pretty popular in the U.S. And that was Clinton’s aim. At the time, he was trying to appeal to Republican voters and centrist Dems because the country was still shifting to the right and he was losing confidence among centrist Dems. So, on the surface, nothing about the crime bill, the immigration bill or the terrorist bill seemed offensive to the public or to Congress.

But as an article in The Atlantic from an immigrant writer so perfectly states, “The 1996 laws took the harshest elements of the criminal-justice system—mass incarceration, discriminatory policing, zero tolerance—and injected them into the immigration system.”

This doesn’t even get into the economic conditions for manufacturing employees that worsened in the United States, and wage slavery in Mexico that resulted from NAFTA. That’s for another day.

Recall the opening excerpt from neocons Bush senior and Ronald Reagan in their primary debate. Just a generation later, the country had turned so hard to the right that Democrats believed they had to move into the angry right wing swim lane to retain power.

Chapter Five

Bring It Home, Max.

The immigration debate can be disorienting. There are emotional, economic, security, education and social components, not to mention an inherent nativist and racist thread through nearly every discussion. And, by the way, if you really want to have some fun talking about immigration and rights, reach out to my buddy John Kane’s Let’s Talk Native show and ask him what he thinks.

Anyway, one of Fucker’s consistent talking points is the Great Replacement Theory. The idea that Democrats want Hispanic people streaming across the border because they’ll take benefits, get hooked on welfare and become lazy Democratic voters. Yes, this really is his take.

Forget the naked racism in all of this for a second, though I know it’s hard. He has a point about the tendencies of Hispanic voters in the United States. But, I wonder whose fault that is?

Historically, the Hispanic block of voters leans Democratic for sure. Though, it’s important not to paint the community with a single brush. For example, the majority of Cuban-American voters identify as conservative, and they’re an extremely important voting block in a vital swing state. That being said, perhaps the most Hispanic-friendly president that we’ve ever had was George W. Bush, who brought the difference in Democratic to Republican voting to within 18 points. Just two cycles prior, the disparity was above 50 points when Clinton beat Dole.

Losing Hispanic voters who are culturally more conservative than most people realize was a self inflicted wound on the part of the Republican Party. Their racism and fear mongering has cost them the fastest growing voting block in the country.

Fine. Fuck ‘em.

The problem is that the fucking Democratic Party is feeding into it by propping up Clinton-era legislation that unfairly targets people trying to enter the country lawfully or seeking asylum or employment without going through proper channels; people who have been here for years; and people who are contributing to the economy.

And now, the right is bitching about labor shortages. The native-born American birth rate is in decline, and we’re drowning in job openings because A) we won’t support low-wage workers with a proper minimum wage or social safety nets and B) we’re preventing the labor force from growing by shutting down immigration pathways. The agriculture sector remains in full crisis mode from the labor shortage, worsened by rising prices and real supply chain issues, not the bullshit ones we’ve covered before.

But, for some fucking reason, we cannot break from this bizarre right wing rhetoric that has infused every corner of the conversation. Look at how even Joe couches the immigration issue in terms of security. Here’s Joe in his SOTU:

“If we’re to advance liberty and justice, we need to secure our border and fix the immigration system.”

A white guy bombs a federal building and we pass terrorism legislation against immigrants.

We claim brown people are streaming across the border for benefits that mostly white people get.

Libertarians like Fucker rely on Milton Friedman’s economic logic, but Friedman was in favor of open borders because it allowed companies to abuse workers.

Pundits wail and cry about labor shortages, but won’t let anyone in.

Hispanic immigrants used to move more freely across the border with the seasons because they followed the work. The reason they started staying is because we threatened them if they left.

In every way imaginable, we created this crisis. Not just Republicans. Democrats as well. Because we’re in a 50 year race between the primary parties to see which one can out xenophobia the other. It’s really fucking madness.

There’s no economic rationale behind our immigration policy. We’re cutting our nose to spite our face. There’s no human rationale behind it either, because we are absolutely responsible for many of the societal ills and instability within so many Central American nations. But when white Ukrainians come to the Mexican border, it’s another story entirely.

So here’s the real story. The real conclusion that really fucking blows. Racism sells. It really does. All of Fucker’s arguments? Built on lies. All of them. But the reason we can’t spot them easily or hear them clearly is because we are so tuned to the language of racism. It’s comfortable. Familiar. And it lets us off the hook when things are bad.

White Ukrainians are walking across the U.S. Mexican border.

Tucker Carlson is a dangerous racist.

A nation of immigrants indeed.

Here endeth the lesson.