Conquer Club

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. border agents detained nearly 100,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in February, according to two people familiar with preliminary figures, the highest monthly total since a major border surge in mid-2019.

The figures, which have not been previously reported, show the scope of a growing migrant influx at the southwest border as U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, seeks to roll back some of the restrictive policies of former President Donald Trump, a Republican. February was Biden’s first full month in office.

Last month’s total would represent the highest tally for the month of February since 2006. The sources who provided the figures to Reuters spoke on the condition of anonymity.

An increasing number of children arriving at the border without a parent or legal guardian has forced U.S. officials in recent weeks to scramble for housing options and take steps to speed up their release to sponsors in the United States.

(CNN)US authorities arrested and encountered more than 100,000 migrants on the US-Mexico border over the past four weeks ending on March 3, according to data obtained by CNN, marking the highest levels for the same time frame in five years.

The number of migrants arrested on the southern border has been increasing in recent weeks, causing alarm among officials as they scramble to provide resources for the increase in minors and families who are unlawfully crossing into the US.

'It's life or death': Migrants desperately wait for Biden immigration policy changes at US-Mexico border

President Joe Biden’s administration has announced in recent weeks a series of immigration-related executive orders and memoranda aimed at reversing many of former President Donald Trump’s restrictive immigration policies. But at the border, migrants’ soaring hopes in Biden’s election are fizzling to frustration as the White House has indicated policies will be rolled out slowly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bumps in immigration policy shifts are common when new administrations take over, said Theresa Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank. But few transitions have been so starkly different than the one between Biden and Trump, making rollout trickier, she said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday said that there is a "large flow" of child migrants coming to the United States, but denied that the southern border is open -- after stats showing the scale of the migrant surge were released.

Psaki spoke a day after Customs and Border Protection announced that the agency encountered 100,441 individuals in February, a 28% increase over January, the agency said. Of those, 19,246 individuals were in family units; 9,457 were unaccompanied children (UACs) and 71,598 were single adults.

She pointed out that the majority of those encountered were turned away via Title 42 health protections put in place during the last administration.

"We certainly also recognize because the president and our administration has made a decision that the way to humanely approach immigration is to allow for unaccompanied children to come and be treated with humanity and be in a safe place while we’re... trying to get them into homes and sponsors homes that some more may be come to our border," Psaki said.

She continued: "And there have been, of course, a large flow of children across the border, we recognize that -- but we made a policy decision because we felt it was the humane approach."

The Biden administration has refused to call the dramatic increase in migrants -- particularly child migrants, who cannot be expelled under Title 42 -- a crisis.

Re: The BOOK Burnings have began...
Post by saxitoxin on Thu Mar 11, 2021 2:32 am

President Harris has now reactivated several Trump initiatives (initiatives she initially cancelled) to deal with the swirling chaos at the border she created ---

DHS begs for volunteers to rush to border, admits migrant surge is 'overwhelming'

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday begged for volunteers from agencies within his department to rush to the border to help with an “overwhelming” surge of illegal immigrants.

In an email to department employees, Mr. Mayorkas said he was copying an idea the Trump administration used in 2019, during the last surge.

“Today I activated the Volunteer Force to support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they face a surge in migration along the Southwest Border,” Mr. Mayorkas wrote in his note.

He pointed to the 900 employees who stepped forward in 2019 and asked for a similar effort.

“It is astonishing that instead of actually trying to stop the surge, the secretary of Homeland Security is focused on bringing in volunteers under a Trump program to manage it,” said Rosemary Jenks, vice president at NumbersUSA, which advocates for stricter immigration limits.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... rge-migra/

jusplay4fun wrote:We in the USA do not have the resources, money and jobs for every poor person in Latin America to enter the USA, legally or illegally.

We find that both high- and low-skill migrants raise labour productivity. There is no evidence of major physical or human capital dilution, as investment adjusts over time to the larger pool of workers, and migrants are increasingly high-skilled. Instead, our results suggest that the complementarities that earlier analyses uncovered mostly at the micro level are also relevant at the macro level. The evidence from the microeconomic literature suggests that the positive productivity effects come from increased TFP and human capital. High-skilled migrants contribute to productivity directly, including through innovation, and indirectly through their positive spillovers on native workers. Low- and medium-skilled migrants can also contribute to aggregate productivity, to the extent that their skills are complementary to those of natives, promoting occupational reallocation and task specialisation. For instance:

Migrants can take jobs in sectors for which natives are in short supply, such as in agriculture, nursing, housekeeping, and landscaping. Without migrants, natives would have to be incentivised to provide these essential services, and the result would be lower supply at higher cost.
When migrants take up more manual routine jobs, natives move to perform more complex tasks (associated with abstract and communication skills), which promotes their skill upgrading (D’Amuri and Peri 2014).
Last but not least, there are complementarities between low-skilled migrants and high-skilled native females. In fact, we find empirical support for this so-called ‘nanny effect’ – when help from low-skilled migrants is available – through greater availability of childcare and household services, then native women – especially those with higher skills – increase their labour supply (Cortés and Tessada 2011).

highly motivated cheap labour

Dukasaur wrote:

jusplay4fun wrote:We in the USA do not have the resources, money and jobs for every poor person in Latin America to enter the USA, legally or illegally.

The idea that immigration is a cost is bad economics. An influx of highly motivated cheap labour always results in vast increases in productivity, resulting in a net benefit for the host country.

The rise of Britain as a world power can be traced back to the influx of refugees fleeing Europe's religious wars in the 16th century. The rise of the U.S. as a world power can be traced to an influx of refugees fleeing Europe's dynastic wars in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Of course, there can be short-term frictional costs. Newly-arriving refugees may need subsidized health care and housing for a short time. Refugee communities can be havens for gangs as unemployed youth are recruited into criminal organizations. These growing pains are brief. The costs to the public purse generally are reversed within a couple of years as the new arrivals find their way into the workforce, and within a couple of years are paying far more in income tax than they received in benefits. Social problems can persist in isolated ghettoes, but wherever migrants are accepted and integrated into general society those problems rapidly disappear.

Look back at the "sky is falling" headlines from Europe's refugee crisis of 2014 and 2015. Today, the sky has not fallen, the majority of the migrants have been integrated into society, and Europe's economy is going strong. (It's hard to separate good data from the background noise of the covid hangover, but until the covid lockdowns started Europe's GDP was rising about 1.25% annually.)

Xenophobes want you to keep your eyes focused on the problems, but any balanced look will show you that the downsides of immigration are always outweighed by the upsides.
https://voxeu.org/article/immigration-and-economic-prosperity

We find that both high- and low-skill migrants raise labour productivity. There is no evidence of major physical or human capital dilution, as investment adjusts over time to the larger pool of workers, and migrants are increasingly high-skilled. Instead, our results suggest that the complementarities that earlier analyses uncovered mostly at the micro level are also relevant at the macro level. The evidence from the microeconomic literature suggests that the positive productivity effects come from increased TFP and human capital. High-skilled migrants contribute to productivity directly, including through innovation, and indirectly through their positive spillovers on native workers. Low- and medium-skilled migrants can also contribute to aggregate productivity, to the extent that their skills are complementary to those of natives, promoting occupational reallocation and task specialisation. For instance:

Migrants can take jobs in sectors for which natives are in short supply, such as in agriculture, nursing, housekeeping, and landscaping. Without migrants, natives would have to be incentivised to provide these essential services, and the result would be lower supply at higher cost.
When migrants take up more manual routine jobs, natives move to perform more complex tasks (associated with abstract and communication skills), which promotes their skill upgrading (D’Amuri and Peri 2014).
Last but not least, there are complementarities between low-skilled migrants and high-skilled native females. In fact, we find empirical support for this so-called ‘nanny effect’ – when help from low-skilled migrants is available – through greater availability of childcare and household services, then native women – especially those with higher skills – increase their labour supply (Cortés and Tessada 2011).

A comprehensive report by the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) breaks down the cost of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers: $115.9 billion annually.

Based on the most recent data reported in 2017, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigrants examines the fiscal impact of illegal immigration in federal and state budgets. It also highlights which U.S. citizens pay the most: Californians, Texans and Floridians.

The estimated coast to California taxpayers for more than six million illegal immigrants and their children is more than $23 billion.

The estimated cost to Texans for the more than four million illegal immigrants and their children is nearly $11 billion.

“Illegal aliens are net consumers of taxpayer-funded services and the limited taxes paid by some segments of the illegal alien population are, in no way, significant enough to offset the growing financial burdens [they] impose on U.S. taxpayers,” the report states.

The report calculates taxpayer burden by adding total federal, state and local expenditures, and adding total federal, state and local taxes paid by illegal immigrants. It relies on federal, state and local tax and resident demographics data, and outlines its proportional calculations and methodology.

For example, using a 2010 Social Security Administration report that estimated illegal immigrants paid a total of $13 billion into the fund annually, FAIR calculated by percentages of payments and dollar amounts paid that illegal immigrants also contributed $5.9 billion toward Medicare.

Its examination of federal budget money spent on illegal immigration was about $46 billion, with some state budgets spending an estimated $89 billion annually, FAIR calculates.

The annual bill of $135 billion equates to more than $8,000 per illegal immigrant and dependent, per year. While some illegal immigrants do pay certain taxes, the report states, many employers pay them lower wages, or in cash, and do not deduct their wages from payroll taxes, with most of their income unlikely being reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), FAIR states. Due to these varying factors, FAIR argues the federal, state and local governments are not collecting enough taxes from illegal immigrants to cover the costs of federal benefits they receive.

FAIR estimates that illegal immigrants pay nearly $19 billion in combined state, local, and federal taxes, or 14 percent of the amount spent annually on them.

FAIR now estimates that there are about 12.5 million illegal immigrants based on available data from the Department of Homeland Security, other federal and state government agencies, and research compiled by think tanks, universities and other research organizations.

The total national illegal immigrant estimate includes about 11 million adults of whom 350,000 receive Temporary Protective Status (mostly Central Americans), and 730,000 are DACA recipients.

The ten states with the largest estimated illegal alien populations account for nearly three-fourths (73.7 percent) of the national total. They are Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Washington.

California estimated state and local governments spent $2.95 billion in FY -93 on illegal aliens and their U.S. citizen children for Medicaid, corrections, primary and secondary education and AFDC. Spending of state and local funds on four programs for refugees and their children reached $885 million. Amnestied aliens and their children required total state and local outlays for AFDC, Medicaid and the state share of supplemental security income (SSI) of $520 million. Total spending in the five programs assessed for these three populations was estimated at $4.34 billion. Costs of public education for children of refugees and amnestied aliens were not included.

HOW DOES ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IMPACT AMERICAN TAXPAYERS AND WILL THE
REID-KENNEDY AMNESTY WORSEN THE BLOW?

=======================================================================

HEARING


BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

jusplay4fun wrote:first:
What many forget is the COST of these immigrants in terms of those factors: health care, schools, housing, food

jusplay4fun wrote:One hundred years ago and more, immigrants came (mostly) to Ellis Island and had to be LEGALLY allowed in.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Alien Contract Labor laws of 1885 and 1887 prohibited certain laborers from immigrating to the United States. The general Immigration Act of 1882 levied a head tax of fifty cents on each immigrant and blocked (or excluded) the entry of idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become a public charge.

jusplay4fun wrote:Once here, there was NO SOCIAL NET of welfare, housing, EBT, etc. Either the immigrant worked and survived or did not WITHOUT government help.

jusplay4fun wrote:THOSE JOBS are NOT there NOW.

jusplay4fun wrote:another source to support my assertion:

Most economists agree that illegal immigrants impose a net fiscal cost on American government and American taxpayers.

Economic analysis finds little support for the view that inflows of foreign labor have reduced jobs or Americans’ wages. Economic theory predictions and the bulk of academic research confirms that wages are unaffected by immigration over the long-term and that the economic effects of immigration are mostly positive for natives and for the overall economy.

Economic analysis finds little support for the view that inflows of foreign labor have reduced jobs or Americans’ wages. Economic theory predictions and the bulk of academic research confirms that wages are unaffected by immigration over the long-term and that the economic effects of immigration are mostly positive for natives and for the overall economy.

That was true of everyone, whether immigrant or not. The social safety net we enjoy nowadays did not exist 100 years ago. We live in a kindler, gentler world, and I'll posit that it's a good thing. You may think it's a bad thing. Fair enough, we can agree to disagree on that. Either way, though, whether someone is an immigrant or not is completely irrelevant to that statement. The world of 100 years ago was harsher, to everyone, whether locally born-and-raised or just off the boat.

These were the laws they had to satisfy:
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Alien Contract Labor laws of 1885 and 1887 prohibited certain laborers from immigrating to the United States. The general Immigration Act of 1882 levied a head tax of fifty cents on each immigrant and blocked (or excluded) the entry of idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become a public charge.

In fiscal year 2020, the government’s net outlays for interest totaled $345 billion, equal to 1.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and accounting for 5.3 percent of total spending.

What Are CBO’s Projections of Net Interest?
In the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent projections, which incorporate the assumption that current laws governing revenues and spending generally remain the same, the cumulative deficit from 2021 through 2030 totals nearly $13 trillion. Borrowing to finance that deficit—at a time when interest rates are expected to rise—would cause net interest outlays to more than double over the next 10 years, from an estimated $290 billion in 2021 to $664 billion in 2030.

jusplay4fun wrote:
THOSE JOBS are NOT there NOW.

Not sure what you mean by "now". There is a momentary blip due to Covid, and there are periodically downturns due to various recessions and stuff, but overall the story of the last 50 years is the story of a long, sustained boom economy with a chronic labour shortage. Every businessman I've ever talked to -- and I've talked to hundreds over the years, in many different fields, farmers, building contractors, software designers, publishers, bar owners, retailers, etc., etc., -- talks about the difficulties in finding help. Everywhere I've ever gone I've seen 'Help Wanted' signs on every street (well, obviously excepting a few ghettoes like South Bend, Indiana). I'm not sure where you live, but 99% of the places that I've been a shortage of labour is more of a problem than a shortage of jobs.


In any case, Say's Law still holds. Production, not consumption, is the limiting factor in the economy. Having more people to work results in more production. There's never any lack of consumption.

EMPLOYMENT PROJECTIONS -- 2019–2029


Employment is projected to grow from 162.8 million to 168.8 million over the 2019–29
decade, an increase of 6.0 million jobs, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
today. This reflects an annual growth rate of 0.4 percent, slower than the 2009-19
annual growth rate of 1.3 percent, which was bolstered by recovery from the 2007-09
Great Recession.

Occupational Employment

--Occupational groups in which employment is projected to grow markedly faster than the
average include healthcare support occupations, community and social service occupations,
and computer and mathematical occupations.

--Healthcare occupations and those associated with healthcare (including mental health)
account for 13 of the 30 fastest growing occupations from 2019 to 2029. Demand for
healthcare services by aging baby boomers, along with people who have chronic conditions,
will drive the projected employment growth.

--Several of the fastest growing healthcare occupations--including nurse practitioners,
occupational therapy assistants, and physician assistants--are projected to be in greater
demand as team-based healthcare models are increasingly used to deliver healthcare services.

--Computer occupations are expected to see fast job growth as strong demand is expected for
IT security and software development, and as new products associated with the Internet of
Things (IoT) are developed. These occupations include software developers as well as
information security analysts.

Exclusive: 'Migrant president' Biden stirs Mexican angst over boom time for gangs

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico’s government is worried the new U.S. administration’s asylum policies are stoking illegal immigration and creating business for organized crime, according to officials and internal assessments seen by Reuters.

--Ever since President Joe Biden won the White House vowing to undo the hardline approach of his predecessor Donald Trump, Mexico has both looked forward to an end to migration burdens imposed by Trump, and braced for a new influx of people.

Detentions on the U.S border have surged since Biden took office on Jan. 20. Mexico has urged Washington to help stem the flow by providing development aid to Central America, from where most migrants come, driven by a humanitarian crisis.

“They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said of Biden the morning after a virtual meeting with his U.S. counterpart on March 1.

“We need to work together to regulate the flow, because this business can’t be tackled from one day to the next.”

Previously unreported details in the internal assessments, based on testimonies and intelligence gathering, state that gangs are diversifying methods of smuggling and winning clients as they eye U.S. measures that will “incentivize migration.”

“I did not make it,” she sobbed into the phone as she spoke with her husband, a butcher in Chicago.

“Biden promised us!” wailed another woman.

Mr. Biden is now directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help manage the thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who are filling up detention facilities after Mr. Biden said, shortly after taking office, that his administration would no longer turn back unaccompanied minors.

https://nyti.ms/3bMm513

Dukasaur wrote:

jusplay4fun wrote:We in the USA do not have the resources, money and jobs for every poor person in Latin America to enter the USA, legally or illegally.

The idea that immigration is a cost is bad economics. An influx of highly motivated cheap labour always results in vast increases in productivity, resulting in a net benefit for the host country.

Manhattan/Population
1.632 million (2019)

DoomYoshi wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:

jusplay4fun wrote:We in the USA do not have the resources, money and jobs for every poor person in Latin America to enter the USA, legally or illegally.

The idea that immigration is a cost is bad economics. An influx of highly motivated cheap labour always results in vast increases in productivity, resulting in a net benefit for the host country.

The idea that growth is good for the country is bad economics.

Manhattan used to be the most beautiful piece of land imaginable, with thousands of deer, beavers, wolves and scores of fish swimming the river. Then the immigrants showed up, and now it's an uninhabitable piece of garbage worth nothing. Yet still somehow, if it was a country, it would be bigger than all but the G20.

DHS Secretary Mayorkas grilled by lawmakers over border crisis

Mayorkas' testimony comes a day after he said the U.S. is on pace to reach the highest number of apprehensions at the border in 20 years.

March 17, 2021, 9:54 AM EDT / Updated March 17, 2021, 1:30 PM EDT
By Rebecca Shabad
WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced hours of tough questioning from lawmakers Wednesday on how the Biden administration is handling the growing humanitarian crisis at the U.S. southern border.


Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee spent the hearing blaming the administration’s immigration policies for the significant increase in people apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border over the last two months.

Democrats, meanwhile, said the situation is a product of the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration rules.

Responding to GOP criticism that the U.S. border is effectively open, Mayorkas clearly stated the “border is secure and the border is not open,” but acknowledged a “surge of individuals attempting to cross the border,” a situation that he called “undoubtedly difficult.”

“Most are single adults who are expelled within hours back to Mexico, pursuant to the CDC's public health authority," Mayorkas said in opening remarks, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Families who are apprehended at the border are also immediately expelled under the same public health authority unless we confront, at times, a limitation on Mexico's capacity to receive them.” testimony comes a day after he said the U.S. is on pace to reach the highest number of apprehensions at the border in 20 years.


Mayorkas said the U.S. is “encountering many unaccompanied children, children who arrive without a parent or legal guardian with them. Their families made the heart-wrenching decision to send them on a journey across Mexico to provide them with a better, safer future.”

Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., the ranking member on the committee, said he thinks the humanitarian crisis could have been avoided, and implied that the Biden administration is encouraging people to enter the U.S. illegally.

"Through irresponsible rhetoric and actions by this administration, we are seeing an unprecedented crisis unfold during a pandemic," Katko said. "The situation at the border continues to get worse every day with inadequate action or even proper acknowledgment of the severity of the situation."

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, a former chairman of the panel, echoed the claim, saying the Biden administration is incentivizing people to cross the border by making them think “the United States is open for business again.” The Trump administration “did a masterful job” in its messages of deterrence to prevent people from entering the country, he said.

Mayorkas replied, “Sometimes, the tools of deterrence defy values and principles for which we all stand. And one of those tools of deterrence that the Trump administration employed was deplorable and absolutely unacceptable.”

A senior Biden transition official is warning migrants hoping to cross the southern border into the U.S. during the early days of the new administration that “now is not the time” to come.

“There’s help on the way, but now is not the time to make the journey,” an unnamed Biden official said, NBC News reported.

The Biden administration is looking to end the Trump administration’s policy of requiring that migrants wait in Mexico as immigration courts consider their asylum applications. Those who have been waiting at the border will be considered first for entry over migrants who only recently arrived. Additionally, the Biden administration will scrap the stricter restrictions the previous administration imposed on asylum seekers, which limit who is eligible for entry.

DoomYoshi wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:

jusplay4fun wrote:We in the USA do not have the resources, money and jobs for every poor person in Latin America to enter the USA, legally or illegally.

The idea that immigration is a cost is bad economics. An influx of highly motivated cheap labour always results in vast increases in productivity, resulting in a net benefit for the host country.

The idea that growth is good for the country is bad economics.

Manhattan used to be the most beautiful piece of land imaginable, with thousands of deer, beavers, wolves and scores of fish swimming the river. Then the immigrants showed up, and now it's an uninhabitable piece of garbage worth nothing. Yet still somehow, if it was a country, it would be bigger than all but the G20.

ConfederateSS wrote:Duk, you gave examples of 16th ,18th and 19th cen...even The 20th cen...can be added to the U.S...With the 2 World Wars....You left out One Super Fact!!!!!....When those who came before.........Came...Worked hard..... That's How The West Was Won... ...In America...They came ,They worked hard....They did not come for free hand outs....

IRS estimates that about 6 million unauthorized immigrants file individual income tax returns each year.[20] Research reviewed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office indicates that between 50 percent and 75 percent of unauthorized immigrants pay federal, state, and local taxes.

Estimates indicate that about 4% of the school-age population is made up of children who are illegal immigrants.[26] Many require remedial assistance in language skills, which increases costs to the public schools. During April 2006, Standard & Poor's analysts wrote: "Local school districts are estimated to educate 1.8 million undocumented children. At an average annual cost of $7,500 (averages vary by jurisdiction) per student, the cost of providing education to these children is about $11.2 billion." Other estimates of the costs to educate unauthorized children and US-born children of unauthorized immigrants reached $30 billion in 200

Economists have different conclusions regarding the impact on wages from immigration, both legal and illegal. It is challenging to separate the impact of illegal immigration (generally workers with lower educational attainment) from immigration overall. Studies generally conclude there is a small adverse impact on the wages of lower-skilled workers from immigration and some benefit for higher-skilled workers:

mookiemcgee wrote:It was @dooms sig....

Hunter S. Thompson wrote:
The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over..

@jusplay... let's be specific here. What taxes do you believe illegal immigrants don't pay? Which ones do you think they do pay?

In my experience 95% of illegal workers in the USA pay:
sales tax
state income tax (deducted directly from their checks via their employer)
federal income tax (deducted directly from their checks via their employer)