Speaker 1: The fact is when you violate your oath, when you
Speaker 1: do not take care to see that the laws are
Speaker 1: faithfully executed, when in fact you have American citizens who
Speaker 1: are getting harmed, you have people dying from fentnel poisonings,
Speaker 1: you have wide open borders that are empowering cartels and
Speaker 1: empowering China. That is a blatant disregard of his duty.
Speaker 1: And importantly, he did in fact lie to me under oath.
Speaker 1: When I presented him with the statute that says that
Speaker 1: you were supposed to maintain operational control of the border,
Speaker 1: he said one thing to me in a Judiciary committee,
Speaker 1: went to another committee, and went over to the Senate
Speaker 1: and said totally different things. And that actually matters, because
Speaker 1: he was trying to tell the American people that they
Speaker 1: were in fact having operational control of the border, and
Speaker 1: they didn't, and he was using the language to try
Speaker 1: to skirt around it.
Speaker 2: I pressed him on it.
Speaker 1: Mark Green did a great job at Homeland Security demonstrating that,
Speaker 1: in fact, he did lie to.
Speaker 2: Us under oath.
Speaker 3: That is Chip Roy of Texas one of about a
Speaker 3: half dozen congress people who I am confident actually believe
Speaker 3: anything and then say what they believe talking about Alejandro
Speaker 3: Mayorcis is just utterly indescribably incompetent and dishonest execution of
Speaker 3: his duty, well non execution of his duties as Secretary
Speaker 3: of Homeland Security. The crisis at the border is undeniable.
Speaker 3: Even the lefty media are talking about it. But do
Speaker 3: we fully reckon with how serious a problem this is.
Speaker 3: To do that, we're going to turn to Stephen Camerado,
Speaker 3: director of research at Center for Immigration Studies, really the
Speaker 3: leading organization dealing with the reality of immigration in the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 2: Steven, welcome, How are you, sir?
Speaker 4: Yeah, good, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's our pleasure. It's always good to talk.
Speaker 3: It's got to be at least somewhat encouraging that there
Speaker 3: is practically nobody who can ignore this problem anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 4: that a lot of the coverage has looked at it
Speaker 4: in a systematic way or explain to the public what
Speaker 4: caused it. But still you're right, talking about it is
Speaker 4: better than ignoring it, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. Even as that question was coming out
Speaker 3: of my mouth, it dawned on me. Well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: nobody can ignore it because it's become so horrible. So that's, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe the silver lining in the cloud. But let's get
Speaker 3: a little more specific, because I think everybody's seen the
Speaker 3: galling video of thousands of people, millions, just pouring across
Speaker 3: the border and the lawlessness there, and I think lawlessness
Speaker 3: offends people on its face, just because we understand instinctively,
Speaker 3: if there's lawlessness, we are not safe and our stuff
Speaker 3: is not safe.
Speaker 2: But let's get more specific than that.
Speaker 3: I know you at the Center for Immigration Studies have
Speaker 3: actually looked at the cost of illegal immigration to taxpayers.
Speaker 2: Tell us what you've learned.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there are a lot of issues if you
Speaker 4: just want to know the fiscal impact, putting aside the
Speaker 4: crime or the fentanyl that may come in as a
Speaker 4: consequence or anything like, just what we know about the
Speaker 4: fiscal impact. It's pretty straightforward because the impact of an immigrant,
Speaker 4: legal or illegal, is largely determined by their income and
Speaker 4: then the resulting tax payments and as well as their
Speaker 4: use of public services. And the single best predictor is
Speaker 4: educational attainment. So someone who comes the United States with
Speaker 4: a graduate degree generally doesn't use a lot of services
Speaker 4: generally makes hy inkman pays a lot of taxes, and
Speaker 4: on the other end, someone without a high school education
Speaker 4: tends to be an enormous fiscal drain. It's not because
Speaker 4: they're evil, it's not because they're all free loaders. It's
Speaker 4: not because they all came to get welfare. It's because
Speaker 4: of that. And that's actually true of the US born
Speaker 4: with that skill with that skill profile, and illegal immigrants
Speaker 4: are overwhelmingly on the bottom end of the skill distribution.
Speaker 4: Seventy percent or so have no education beyond high school
Speaker 4: or less than twelve years of schooling if you like
Speaker 4: that on average as well. And so we find that
Speaker 4: they're creating an enormous fiscal drain. So, you know, we
Speaker 4: as to make the fifty nine percent of illegal immigrant
Speaker 4: households use at least one major welfare program. The cost
Speaker 4: of that is somewhere around forty two billion dollars annually.
Speaker 4: If you just look at the illegal immigrants and their
Speaker 4: US born children, the cost of the public education system
Speaker 4: at a minimum, it's about sixty eight billion. Again in
Speaker 4: next time, because they're all chiefs, not because they're all uh,
Speaker 4: you know, here just to get welfare. In fact, illegal
Speaker 4: immigrants have high rates of work. We estimate ninety four
Speaker 4: percent of all illegal immigrant households have at least one workers.
Speaker 4: So I know what your listeners are thinking. Oh wait,
Speaker 4: how did you just say fifty nine percent use the
Speaker 4: welfare system. Yes, welfare and work go together all the time.
Speaker 4: The whole system is designed like that. So if I
Speaker 4: could give you a quick example, you had a family
Speaker 4: making forty thousand dollars a year, a family of four,
Speaker 4: and the children are US born, but the parents are
Speaker 4: illegal immigrants, there's practically no program they couldn't get. They
Speaker 4: could live in public housing, get food stamps, get the
Speaker 4: free school lunches, get the WICK program. They could get
Speaker 4: the E T C and the ACE and and the
Speaker 4: additional Chile text which are cash payments. The bottom line
Speaker 4: is our welfare system is designed to help low income
Speaker 4: workers with children, and that describes illegal immigrants. So that's
Speaker 4: the kind of message I don't know that people want
Speaker 4: to hear, because on the one hand, you point out
Speaker 4: that still legal immigrants work, but and it's not because
Speaker 4: they're not paying any taxes. They're paying billions in Texas.
Speaker 4: It's just nowhere near enough to cover the consumption of
Speaker 4: their public services, and the reason is educational attainment.
Speaker 3: You made a reference to schools briefly, and I'm glad
Speaker 3: you did. We got an email today it was really
Speaker 3: troubling from a listener who had to remove her daughter
Speaker 3: from school in northern California because the influx of immigrant
Speaker 3: kids has been so heavy and we God bless us
Speaker 3: as a people say, look, if you're breathing air in
Speaker 3: this country, we'll educate you. And the huge influx of
Speaker 3: non English fluent students has brought the school to a
Speaker 3: halt in terms of instruction, and there is now, all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, a violence problem, a gang problem, including
Speaker 3: girl gangs, which is specifically the problem in this family.
Speaker 3: Have you guys taken a look at the impact on education.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you have at some level.
Speaker 4: Right the statistic I gave you about sixty eight billion
Speaker 4: dollars in costs to educate the children of illegal immigrants
Speaker 4: assume is an extrud aly conservative estiment. There are about
Speaker 4: four million children of illegal immigrants and public schools now,
Speaker 4: and that is before the current influx. That number is
Speaker 4: likely closer to five million now, and that estimate assumes
Speaker 4: no extra costs associate with kids who are behind in
Speaker 4: grade level or are at language minority. You know, you
Speaker 4: could easily estimate over seventy billion dollars a year in
Speaker 4: cost to educate the children of illegal immigrants. And there
Speaker 4: is no possibility that illegallimigrants pay anywhere near that much.
Speaker 4: And that just even though they work, and even though
Speaker 4: we think the majority of illegal immigrants are actually paid
Speaker 4: on the books. I could explain that to your listeners,
Speaker 4: which I think might be surprising, but just one fact,
Speaker 4: we've gut out about two point five million Social Security
Speaker 4: numbers and green cards. That's work authorization to illegal immigrants. Yes,
Speaker 4: you can be an illegal immigrant but be legally allowed
Speaker 4: to work. The way that happens is you're someone who
Speaker 4: has DOCTA, You're someone who has what's called temporary protective
Speaker 4: that is, you're someone who has some kind of deferred action.
Speaker 4: You are an asylum applicant with the pending case. And
Speaker 4: so we have lots of illegal imitrants with work authorization.
Speaker 4: I know. Again, and if you want to know why
Speaker 4: we have so many illegal immigrants, that's a perfect example.
Speaker 4: Just like the fifty nine percent of illegal immigrants use welfare.
Speaker 4: You know, we offer all these programs, partly directly to
Speaker 4: illegals or partly when they have US born children. So,
Speaker 4: if you want to understand why we have so much
Speaker 4: illegal immigration, it's a non enforcement and there are a
Speaker 4: lot of things that we do offer illegal immigrants, and
Speaker 4: that's why so many people come. Look, so many people
Speaker 4: are showing up at the border because we've created the
Speaker 4: incentive too. And it isn't just these goodies that I've
Speaker 4: mentioned or benefits. It's just that when you show up
Speaker 4: at the border, we mostly are releasing people. I mean,
Speaker 4: we've released at least two point seven or maybe three
Speaker 4: million people who've been what's called an encounter. They either
Speaker 4: presented themselves at a port of entry and claimed asylum
Speaker 4: or some other status, or they were caught trying to
Speaker 4: slip in and we still released them to asylum, or
Speaker 4: we gave them parole. And that's why so many people
Speaker 4: are coming. That's why the asylum system is overwhelmed, and
Speaker 4: that's why so many people keep coming. They know most
Speaker 4: of the time they're going to get released.
Speaker 3: Just a quick comment, because I don't want to let
Speaker 3: this go. It is impossible to quantify the loss in education,
Speaker 3: or at least it's impossible right now, the loss in
Speaker 3: education to the kids who are already in schools, be
Speaker 3: they American kids or lawful immigrants or whatever, and in
Speaker 3: the wake of the brutal COVID learning loss in the
Speaker 3: shutdown of the schools. To have this then happen, it's
Speaker 3: got to be driving parents to despair. But we can
Speaker 3: talk about more of that on another day. You mentioned
Speaker 3: the asylum seekers and they are coming in by the many,
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands. What percentage of those folks end up
Speaker 3: actually being eligible for asylum?
Speaker 4: Oh well, I mean it's going to be I mean
Speaker 4: some ask have been suggested, could be as high as
Speaker 4: you know, fifteen percent, with eighty five percent will get
Speaker 4: denied under this administration, maybe that could happen, but you
Speaker 4: know it's usually somewhere around five or ten percent.
Speaker 3: But maybe So if I'm in that night that eighty
Speaker 3: five to ninety five percent that they said, no, no,
Speaker 3: you're not a refugee. You're just here for a better gig,
Speaker 3: and we can respect that, but no, you're not a refugee.
Speaker 2: What happens to me then? How many people are actually
Speaker 2: getting deported? None?
Speaker 4: So I mean that's basically we're not we don't once
Speaker 4: you've had your day in court and the judge says, no,
Speaker 4: we don't make you go home. But remember when asylum
Speaker 4: system was blown up by the administration, starting when you
Speaker 4: took office, and you know, we went from like one
Speaker 4: hundred thousand or two hundred thousand cases to over a million.
Speaker 4: So it's going to take a decade. So what happens
Speaker 4: is you get a date or you may not even
Speaker 4: get you here at least in the United States, and
Speaker 4: they say they'll contact you or you get a date,
Speaker 4: but it's many years in the future. And that's why
Speaker 4: again so many people show up. They don't they can
Speaker 4: get asylum. They just know that they'll they'll be released
Speaker 4: into the United States. But when we do, we have
Speaker 4: what's called the so called deep state deportation exsconders. That
Speaker 4: number runs like seven eight hundred thousand. These are people
Speaker 4: who've had their day in court, but we don't follow up,
Speaker 4: so they've been ordered removed. That's the you know, they
Speaker 4: have a final order of removal, the technical term what
Speaker 4: most of us would call it importation. But we don't
Speaker 4: follow up. We don't go out and look for them.
Speaker 4: So even the system itself, when we say no. The
Speaker 4: answer is kind of yeah, you can stay as we
Speaker 4: don't really make you leave.
Speaker 3: Stephen Camarata, Center for Immigration Studies Online. Stephen, We've got
Speaker 3: about two minutes. But I was speculating. Yesterday talking about
Speaker 3: The New York Times had a really revealing column by
Speaker 3: David Leonhardt, who occasionally brushes up against honesty, and he
Speaker 3: essentially admitted, without stating it in as many words, that
Speaker 3: a lot of the Democratic Party's policies right now are
Speaker 3: simply because they're not Trumps. They're the opposite of Trump's.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine anything more unpatriotic and just weak willed
Speaker 3: then to utterly chuck all of your principles just for
Speaker 3: that reason. It's bizarre. Is there something else at work here?
Speaker 3: Is there a strategy?
Speaker 4: I mean, I would think of it this way. Wait,
Speaker 4: so all conservatives think, Look, the reason they take the
Speaker 4: reason they're allowing this immigration is they're trying to elect
Speaker 4: the new people. You know, they're trying to swamp the
Speaker 4: country with potential Democratic voters. And I guess there probably
Speaker 4: are people who think that, but I don't think that
Speaker 4: it's an accurate description of what mostly is happening. What's
Speaker 4: happening to the Democratic Party is when it comes to immigration,
Speaker 4: they think of immigrants or showing up at the border
Speaker 4: in particular, desperate people, and that's it. They never think
Speaker 4: them as rational risk takers who are responding to the
Speaker 4: incentives that they're creating. So when I testified yesterday before
Speaker 4: one of the sub committees in the House, people would say, well,
Speaker 4: you know, the whole world is facing on mygasion crisis.
Speaker 4: It's not that they couldn't make the next that if
Speaker 4: you release most of the people you stop at the border,
Speaker 4: you're going to get a massive flood of people at
Speaker 4: the border. They just couldn't get their minds around that.
Speaker 4: They think of the immigrants, not again, as responding the
Speaker 4: incentives we're creating. And I think that's what's really happening.
Speaker 3: Stephen Camarada, Center for Immigration Studies, Steve, and it's always stimulating, informative.
Speaker 2: Let's stay in touch.
Speaker 4: I'm happy to do it again. Armstrong and Getty