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