Mayorkas : We Can Solve the Border Crisis by Opening the Border

Council on Foreign Relations
Neil Munro

The border crisis can be solved by letting 10 million migrants take American jobs, says President Joe Biden’s pro-migrant border chief.

Alejandro Mayorkas was asked on April 21 if there was room for a compromise on border security before a deal on migration policy. Mayorkas, a lawyer, responded with an answer that mimicked the style used in law books:

I am an unrelenting optimist, but I will share with you the following:

What was articulated this week [by congressional legislators at hearings] is that  …  “We have 10 to 11 million vacant jobs, we have an incredible supply of [migrant] labor, and … we will not fix something like that until you secure the border.”

And my view of that is, it is a remarkable formula that [Congress] is holding the solution hostage until [Congress] fixes the problem. (Emphasis added)

Converted into English, Mayorkas is arguing Congress can solve the border crisis and the claimed shortage of workers by allowing the migrants across the border to take the jobs.

Mayorkas did not address the economic impact of letting millions of desperate migrants into the U.S. job market.

As usual, none of the questions to Mayorkas asked him to describe the economic impact.

The question is not asked because the damage would be — and is — huge, especially to less-educated Americans, and recent immigrants, legal and illegal.

Since the 1990s, the migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.

Mayorkas knows that his open-borders answer is shared by many GOP politicians. For example, GOP Tony Gonzales (R-TX) and presidential candidate Nikky Haley are both arguing that illegal immigration be stopped and that CEOs be allowed to hire foreign migrants instead of Americans.

The legal inflow “needs to be where anybody who wants to come and work can do so,” Gonzales told Semafor.com for an April 9 post.

Mayorkas justified his policy of opening the borders by claiming the U.S. global superpower – which is now at war with another global superpower in Ukraine — does not have the power to  stop migrants from crossing the border:

Desperation is the greatest catalyst for the migration that we are seeing.

…

So the level of desperation would suggest that whatever deterrence we could impose, whether it’s a facility or otherwise, will not work alone. So our model is as follows: Build lawful pathways, cut out the smugglers who exploit these vulnerable individuals. Build lawful pathways, give individuals an opportunity to reach the United States safely in an orderly way to avail themselves of the humanitarian relief our laws provide, and then deliver a consequence for those who do not avail themselves of those lawful pathways. It has worked extraordinarily well.

But many migrants are not desperate. They rationally travel from despotic governments to the U.S. border for Mayorkas’ dangled offer of economic opportunity — not because of fear or hunger. In fact, Mayorkas’  incentivized exodus often helps dispositive governments by converting likely rebels into U.S. -based workers who send taxable remittances back to the dictatorial governments of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

Also, Mayorkas’ catch-and-release policy allows even the poorest people to fund their travel by offering to pay high-interest loans to smugglers. Without catch-and-release policies viaMayorkas’  various asylum, parole, and family unification excuses, smugglers would quit because the migrants would be unable to repay their loans, no matter their level of desperation.

Mayorkas is a pro-migration zealot. who argues that laws curbing migration as subordinate to the “Nation of Immigrants” narrative that was established by lobby groups during the Cold War, when immigrants were just 7 percent of the population

He has said his border management is “all about achieving equity, which is really the core founding principle of our country.”

WATCH: Migrants Stream Across Rio Grande Ahead of Texas, Mexico Border Security Operation

Congress’ immigration law “needs to be changed if it does not either meet our highest ideals or actually proves to be functional in the service of those ideals,” said Mayorkas said in February 2023.

“We cannot have the rights and the needs of individuals who are seeing humanitarian relief in the United States be exploited for political purposes,” he told ABC News on January 2023.

But this ideological perspective is aligned with investors’ demands for an ever-growing inflow of desperate and compliant workers, apartment-sharing renters, and tax-payer consumers.

Extraction Migration

The federal government has long operated an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration. This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries, reduces beneficial trade, and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.

The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.

The lethal policy also sucks jobs and wealth from heartland states by subsidizing coastal investors with a flood of low-wage workers, high-occupancy renters, and government-aided consumers.

The population inflow also reduces the political clout of native-born Americans, because the population replacement allows elites to divorce themselves from the needs and interests of ordinary Americans.

In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elite opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.

Migration — and especially, labor migration — is unpopular among swing voters. A 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR). The 54 percent “Invasion” majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats

 

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