Voters handed us a much changed Congress for immigration. NumbersUSA lost and kept some great allies. And voters replaced some F-graders with new allies. How this all shakes out over the next two years still remains to be seen. Here are some initial thoughts.
With all the sensational campaign coverage of immigration issues this month, NumbersUSA commissioned Pulse Opinion Research to find out how those issues are affecting the views of likely midterm voters in congressional districts with the closest races. Those are the races that will determine which Party controls the U.S. House of Representatives.
The closest races for the U.S. House of Representatives include 16 with a candidate committed to lower immigration who is competing with a candidate who is not. Most of these 16 -- who are as likely to lose as to win -- are incumbents with good reduction records in Congress.
A memo from the Center for American Progress warns vulnerable Democrats to spend "as little time as possible" talking about immigration. Will open borders prove a bigger albatross than family separations? The last twelve months of immigration punditry provides some clues.
Christopher Browning, a professor of German history, published a long essay in The New York Review of Books. The topic wasn't a book review but a vituperative attack on President Trump, including a denunciation of those, Trump supporters or not, who seek to restrict immigration. It is shockingly shoddy work by someone of Browning's stature, and any effect it may have will only serve to inflame political passions.
In Donald Trump's run for the White House, he promised bold changes on immigration. Those changes, if enacted, would boost American workers and put the country on a more sustainable path by reducing legal immigration and deterring illegal immigration. No person in the Administration has done more to advance Pres. Trump's immigration agenda than Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
When news first broke of the arrest of illegal alien Cristhian Rivera, it was reported that his employer, Yarrabee Farms in Brooklyn, Iowa, had used E-Verify to check if he was eligible to work in the United States. The farm's owner has since backtracked and that the company did not run Rivera through E-Verify. But that initial claim called into question the effectiveness of E-Verify and its ability to deter illegal immigration.
"Vox explains the news." Or so they say. Last week a Vox writer tried to explain how Baby Boomers are dependent upon immigrants to fund their Social Security. This is untrue. The Social Security system is in dire straits, but immigration is not going to save it. In fact, our current immigration system is putting strains on the system, and more immigration would only make matters worse.
The Western Growers association is working to sabotage the effort to pass a House bill containing E-Verify, despite the fact that the rest of the agribusiness lobby has signed off on the bill. This Western Growers continues to try to defeat any serious attempt to end illegal immigration, and will only accept a permanent "solution" that amounts to indentured servitude for agricultural workers.