As Congress is gearing up to discuss a new amnesty, it’s striking how many falsehoods and bad assumptions made by liberals are driving the debate. Maybe it’s time to start talking about the truth.
1. Any sort of legalization or amnesty encourages more illegal aliens to come here
During the Reagan administration, we had a “one-time” amnesty that featured promises of security in return for three million illegals getting to become citizens. Today, most estimates seem to put the number of illegals in the United States somewhere between 11-12.5 million. In other words, seeing that we weren’t serious about enforcing our immigration laws led to more illegals than ever coming here in hopes of getting amnesty. If this amnesty goes through, we can expect to see the exact same problem repeated in a few decades.
2. A wall would make a major difference
A wall was never intended to be a fix for illegal immigration in and of itself. To the contrary, it’s a force multiplier. What we see everywhere that we have full fencing up is that illegals overwhelmingly avoid those areas. In other words, you can use a wall to direct illegals to certain areas and concentrate the border patrol in those areas. As we’ve seen in Israel and even around the White House and the Vatican, walls work. If you’re serious about stopping illegal immigration, you support a wall.
3. Illegal aliens hurt the poorest American workers
Because illegal aliens don’t need health insurance and car insurance and they can lie on their taxes to get the earned income tax credit, they can work cheaper than American workers. So, not only do the 11-12.5 million illegals outright take jobs that citizens would otherwise have, they drive wages down for all the workers competing with them. That’s Economics 101. When supply outstrips demand, the price drops.
