The following question was recently posed in Just Facts Daily. The question stimulated The Prickly Pear Editors’ comments follow the explanation of the answer.

 

What portion of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. have false identity documents that might allow them to illegally work, vote, and receive welfare?

Is it 10%, 25%, 50%? And your answer is?

The correct answer is…about 100%. Only about 20% of people surveyed got the answer correct, according to Just Facts.

“In 2017, California Senate Leader and Democrat Kevin De Leon testified that “anyone who has family members who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification.“ This is corroborated by (1) a 2013 report by the Social Security Administration that estimated there were 0.7 million unauthorized immigrants who worked by using SS numbers obtained by using “fraudulent birth certificates” and 1.8 million who worked by using SS numbers “that did not match their name”; (2) a 2002 Government Accountability Office study that found “the use of fraudulent documents by aliens is extensive”; (3) a 1998 bust in Los Angeles that “seized nearly two million counterfeit documents” such as “permanent resident cards and SS cards”; and (4) a 2005 NY Times article that reported: “Currently available for about $150 on street corners in just about any immigrant neighborhood in California, a typical fake ID package includes a green card and a SS card.”

 

Editors’ comment: The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, a man of libertarian leanings, who believed in the free flow of capital and people, once made the comment that you can’t have both open borders and a welfare state at the same time. 

Libertarians have been ineffective or have given up on closing down the welfare state while they are active in promoting open borders. 

Progressives and Liberals support both open borders and the welfare state, a sure-fire combination to both attract illegals and bankrupt the nation. 

And some conservatives look the other way because they need the cheap labor and give little thought to the externalities, that is the cost they throw on the taxpayer for the allegedly cheap labor. They show little interest in what happens to Americans at the lower end of the wage scale. When the full cost of welfare, healthcare, and government pensions, and wage reduction for native Americans is included, that illegal labor may not be all that cheap.

Then, there are the corrosive aspects of people entering the country illegally, that extend well beyond just monetary costs. It starts with breaking the law and then committing a series of further illegal acts in order to stay. This is not exactly the best way to introduce new members of the American society to concepts of citizenship. If it is OK to break laws because to do so is clearly in your own self-interest, then why stop with immigration laws, or those of the Social Security Administration?

And, you have a further corrosive influence on the law, where laws remain on the books but are selectively enforced. Legal immigrants go through all the proper hoops, while millions of others simply defy the law and politicians refuse to enforce the law. Once you concede that some will be treated differently, there goes equality before the law. In this case, you actively discriminate against those that have followed the law.

This concept of equal treatment extends to other factors as well.  Open borders assume that the cultural heritage that people carry with them, has a superior interest in society to the cultural heritage of the citizens who already live in the country. Progressives often argue that all cultures are equal, a dubious proposition to be sure. However, they don’t act that way. They assume the illegal immigrant should be granted an advantage so to speak, by overwhelming the educational and healthcare systems of the people already living in the country. Once sufficient numbers migrate, it may change the culture and language of the country they are invading. For those who liked the culture the way it was, well that is just tough.

There is in addition a national security aspect to immigration. In a world of international terrorism, we have again unequal application of the law.  We have native-born citizens being spied on and having their finances probed supposedly to protect the country, while open borders let anyone in, whether from Mexico, Iran, Yemen, or China. That does not seem very bright, does it?

Clearly, a system that allows immigration in a controlled way, from a variety of nations and cultures, is preferable to open borders. It is preferable that immigrants do not start their experience in this country by breaking multiple laws and stealing false identities. But the Biden Administration and the Democrat Party view the crisis as another opportunity to grab power. 

Let all the illegals in, look the other way as they obtain false documents, and then recruit them as voters. Political power is more important than the finances of the country, the rule of law, or treating the native-born with the same cultural respect you do the illegal migrant. A crisis at the border? What crisis?

Democrats say they are against the wall, but what they are for are open borders and a welfare state.

As for Republicans, they can’t seem to get their act together when they had majorities in Congress and the White House.

One thing you can say about Donald Trump. At least he tried.  Sure, he was an outsider. Maybe under current circumstances, that is required.

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This article is adapted from information developed by James Agresti at Just Facts. Our editorial comments are our own.