Priorities, Limitations, Other Complimentary Initiatives, and Conclusions

Priorities

Top priority should be given to fast implementation of aspects of these projects that…

• Can be funded on at least a pilot project basis in FY2019 using funds:
  • From the additional $4.6 billion to address Latin American Illegal migration that was authorized in late June 2019
  • That can be reallocated within the budgets of Trump Administration DHS, DOD, DOJ and DOS
• Are focused on parts of the US that are not sanctuary cities. The cost benefits that flow from this strategy to communities in other parts of the country should be used to incentivize sanctuary cities, states and other jurisdictions to repeal their sanctuary status.
• Maximize simplicity by minimizing the need for inter-departmental cooperation.

 

Limitations

This strategy and implementing projects are not primarily focused on reducing the amount of illegal drugs, human trafficking, and the number of violent criminals that come across the US-Mexico border.  However, it would free up Border Patrol and ICE personnel and other resources that are now focused on catching and detaining the massive number of illegal aliens, especially those who come as families, who are just economic migrants, coming to the US just to look for better low-skilled jobs.

 

Other Complimentary Initiatives

The program described here will have tremendous benefits.  However, it should be part of a larger strategy that includes:

• President Trump’s Second Chance Initiative, which helps give US citizens who are leaving prison a second chance to be hired, contributing to their opportunities to succeed.  These American citizens generally have substantially higher levels of education and English proficiency than the illegal aliens that they will replace in the work force.
• The establishment of Safe Zones in Latin American countries that are ravaged by gang and drug-related violence.  These safe zones would be similar to what President Trump for Syria when he was a presidential candidate.  These safe zones should be established, not by the US military, but by the governments of the Latin American countries using their own militaries, supplemented perhaps by US military contractors.  Funding for these safe zones should be made by those Latin American countries, in part using the foreign aid at no more than current levels that is being given to them by the US.
• The US Justice Department should much more aggressively prosecute…
  • Employers who hire illegal aliens without using E-Verify to check the employability status of those aliens.
  • Illegal aliens (and those who aid and abet them) who steal or falsify identity documents in order to qualify for work.
• Begin an aggressive effort to track down illegal aliens who are working in the United States using stolen or falsified social security numbers.
  • Start by having the IRS query their databases to determine if the same the same social security number is being used by more than one person as the basis for withholding taxes.
  • Have the IRS cross check their list of social security numbers that are used as the basis for tax withholding against those that have been legally issued by the Social Security Administration.  This will also identify employees/employers who are using falsified social security numbers that have not yet been issued.
  • Conduct similar checks against the system of record US government databases that contain the tax identification numbers of aliens who have valid work permits/visas.

 

Conclusions

The United States is not primarily a place or an ethnic group.  We are more than anything a set of ideas, a set of very successful and attractive ideas, if the number of people who want to come here is any indication.

• We cannot afford to take in everyone from other countries, especially third world countries, who wants to come to the US.
• Our emphasis should be on encouraging people to replicate in their home countries the ideas that have made the US successful and attractive.
• Most people who are willing to take the initiative and suffer the hardships involved with coming to the US illegally are precisely the kind of people that their home countries need to make that kind of transformation.
• The people of the United States paid a steep price when we fought our Revolutionary War and our Civil War to gain our independence and correct a grievous wrong.
  • But that’s the price of freedom, and we must insist that other countries, for example those ravaged by drug violence, be willing to pay a similar price.
  • As Thomas Jefferson said, “We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the guarantors of only our own.”
• The United States must be much more aggressive with respect to fighting drug use here.  But allowing a free flow of illegal aliens from other countries is not the answer.

 Again, this strategy and the projects to implement it require no additional action by Congress to change our immigration laws.  The Trump Administration could legally do all of this on its own using its “prosecutorial discretion” under current US immigration law and start doing it within the scope of the current, FY2019 budget.

Implementing these three projects would be…

• A huge win for our most economically vulnerable US citizens
  • Who compete for jobs against unskilled illegal aliens and
  • Whose wages are driven down by job competition with those aliens.
• A monumental relief for our communities that have been burdened by the healthcare, education, housing and other costs imposed by illegal aliens.  Reductions in these costs would more than offset the cost of this approach.

This approach would be a decisively critical addition to the defensive measures (such as Border Patrol interdiction of illegal aliens and building The Wall) that the Trump Administration is already executing.

And most important, the strategy and the projects described here will eliminate the incentive for Latin American economic migrants (especially those using sham asylum claims) to come to the US illegally.  Many of those economic migrants spend their life savings to finance the trip to the United States for all or part of their families.  Latin American women are often raped on the trip north.  Taking this approach should convince at least the vast majority that they won’t be released into the interior of the US, that they won’t be allowed to stay in the US for a long period, that they will be sent home, and that the costs and risks are not worth the benefits of making the trip illegally.