In their latest act of silliness, the angry, white mob posing as congressional Republicans are attempting to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Republicans claim Mayorkas is not enforcing US laws and therefore failed to fulfill his oath of office. Typically, when there are record numbers of arrests, one would assume laws are being enforced. But, today’s Republicans won’t let facts spoil a good conspiracy.

According to US Customs and Border Protection data, total enforcement actions by fiscal year are listed below. Fiscal years run from October 1 to September 30 of the next calendar year. Note: Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017 and Joe Biden was inaugurated in January 2021. Mayorkas has been Biden’s Homeland Security secretary since his inauguration.

Fiscal Year                               Total Enforcement Actions

2016                                                    690,637

2017                                                    526,901

2018                                                    683,178

2019                                                    1,148,024

2020*                                                  646,822

2021                                                    1,956,519

2022                                                    2,766,582

2023                                                    3,201,144

*Covid impacted the number of people attempting to cross the border.

Source: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics

Clearly, anyone suggesting that Secretary Mayorkas and his Homeland Security employees aren’t enforcing the law is living in Republican Fantasyland. So, what is the real problem?

The law

Republicans claim the Biden administration is doing “catch and release” with illegal immigrants by letting them apply for asylum. In reality, Democrats are obeying the law.

Anyone that is physically present in the US and is not a US citizen can apply for asylum. Migrants can cut a hole through Trump’s wall or swim across the Rio Grande River. Once they set foot in the US, they find a Border Patrol agent, turn themselves in and apply for asylum. Border Patrol agents photograph and fingerprint the migrants. They also run criminal background checks on them. After that, the law says asylum seekers can remain in the US and they are released. They are given a court date when they can make their case for permanent asylum.  If granted, they can eventually apply for US citizenship.

There is currently a 3-million-person (800 days) backlog for asylum hearings. While waiting for an asylum hearing, a person must wait at least 180 days before getting a legal work permit. Typically, illegal immigrants, whether applying for asylum or not, get a fake Social Security card so they can start working immediately.

Most asylum seekers lose their cases, but they are rarely deported because of staffing shortages and policies that discourage the deportation of migrants with deep roots in the United States. The “deep roots” mean that during the two plus years they waited for their asylum hearing, they got steady employment, become part of their community, married, have kids in school and so on. They may already have family in the US when they arrived.

U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar struck down rules both the Trump and Biden administrations imposed to reduce the number of people applying for asylum. Presumably, he, or another federal judge, will strike down any other attempts to circumvent the law and restrict migrants’ access to asylum.

Many migrants coming illegally into the US ignore applying for asylum. They will get their fake Social Security card and blend into the US population. Republicans claim Border Patrol agents are so overwhelmed by people seeking asylum that they haven’t the resources to pursue people just entering the US illegally and staying.

Whose fault?

Clearly, Mayorkas and Department of Homeland Security employees are enforcing the law by arresting record numbers of migrants. They are also obeying the law by releasing them into the US after they apply for asylum. Federal judges are doing their jobs when ruling that federal laws must be followed.

The big picture, for Republicans, keeping America white is a sacred quest. For them, having a large influx of non-white people coming into the US is a tragedy beyond comprehension.

Mayorkas is an easy target for congressional Republicans covering up their own failings. The real problem is the US has a broken immigration system.

Republicans had a perfect opportunity to fix this and pass new immigration laws in the first two years of the Trump administration when Republicans controlled the presidency, the House and the Senate. Unfortunately for Republicans, Trump was a weak president, and they missed their chance. Right or wrong, Democrats prioritized fixing the broken economy Trump left them and restoring the health of the nation over immigration laws in the first two years of the Biden administration.

When Republicans took over the House majority in 2023, they pledged to pass a comprehensive package of new immigration laws that year. They failed.

Senate Republicans went to work to build a bipartisan consensus to pass a badly needed, improved, comprehensive set of new immigration laws. Unfortunately, Trump destroyed their work. I suspect the real reason for this is that Trump’s puppet master, Vladimir Putin, demanded Trump jettison the border deal since it included funding for Ukraine. Obviously, to Republicans, stopping the waves of new immigrants is much less important than placating their leader.

The big picture

Every time you take a bite of food, thank an illegal immigrant. If you eat away from home, thank an illegal immigrant twice. Illegal immigrants were essential in producing and processing the food. When eating out, they most likely prepared it; regardless of if you are eating at a haute taut restaurant or McDonald’s.

Likewise, when you see a completed house, apartment building or other construction project, thank illegal immigrants. The project probably wouldn’t have gotten done without them. If you check into a clean hotel room, thank an illegal immigrant. If you are Catholic and you notice extra donations helping people in need at your church, thank illegal immigrants that gave whatever they could.

People like Frugal Ron drawing Social Security payments need to thank illegal immigrants for helping keep the system solvent. Undocumented immigrants with fake Social Security cards pay into Social Security and Medicare, but are never able to get benefits. They also pay federal, state, local and sales taxes. The reality is, illegal immigrants are essential to our economy.

Illegal immigrants don’t take jobs away from white people. They take the worst jobs in the US that native born people won’t do. They may send some money home, but the majority is spent here. They buy groceries, clothes and whatever else they need. In each case they are creating jobs for the goods and services they buy.

The pie

Republican economics revolves around the fantasy that there is a finite amount of wealth in a country. This wealth is like a pie. When more people come to the table to eat the pie, that means there is less pie for everyone else.

In 1950, the US population was 148 million. In 2024, it is 348 million. If the people who espouse the fixed pie theory were right, we would have all starved to death decades ago. When the population grows, what I’ve described above happens. More workers generate more jobs as the new workers spend their money and it multiplies as it moves through the economy over and over.

Perhaps even more important, the US birthrate is declining. What this means is we have more and more people in the Boomer generation retiring and drawing Social Security and other benefits. Because of the declining birth rate (that has been going on for years), we have less working age people contributing to Social Security and Medicare. We also have a declining work force to do everything from growing food to high tech jobs. There is no better way to stagnate an economy than having a declining population. Having working age (and reproductive age) people immigrating here is like dropping manna from heaven.

The exodus

Facts are to Republicans  what wooden stakes are to vampires. The reality is “There’s a lot of people (illegal immigrants) leaving the country, and they’re leaving voluntarily,” said Mr. Robert Warren, a senior fellow at the Center for Migration Studies.

The current undocumented population has stayed relatively constant at about 10.2 million over the past several years, after peaking at nearly 12 million in 2008. This is even with the large number of new arrivals at the border.

The primary reason people are returning home is to reunite with their families. Also, the Mexican economy is improving.

Migrants used to come to the US , work for a period, return home and maybe return again. This circular migration was upended in the early 1990s as the United States introduced a spate of policies to fortify the border, erecting barriers and deploying more agents.

But the border restrictions backfired. After facing risks and paying smugglers to cross the border, undocumented workers stayed in the United States, rather than coming and going.

“Most of them never wanted to stay. We gummed up the works when we militarized the border,” said Douglas S. Massey, an immigration scholar at Princeton. “They spent longer and longer time (in the US) and had families.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/us/undocumented-immigrants-exodus-us.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RU0.QPSD.LqXkFTDY4TqV&smid=url-share

The problem

Republicans perpetuate the myth that immigrants are taking jobs away from white people. They also perpetuate the lie that illegal immigrants commit more crimes than native born people. And, there is always the claim that these brown and Black skinned immigrants are “illegal”. We should invite some Native Americans into this conversation and get their views on what an “illegal immigrant” is.

Republican policies are driven by their racism. If the illegal immigrants were blonde haired, blue eyed white people, this article wouldn’t be necessary.

Morality and immigration

“Do onto others as you would have them do onto you”, is the motto moral people live by. Separating children from their legally asylum-seeking parents, warehousing the children hundreds of miles away from their parents and deporting parents without making any effort to reunite families is something none of us would wish on ourselves. Yet, this was a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Note: The Trump appointed Department of Homeland Security Inspector General found at least 348 cases where the Trump administration forced migrant parents to leave the US without their children. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/watchdog-says-u-s-forced-deported-parents-to-leave-kids-behind

Likewise, forcing people legally seeking asylum in the US to stay for months in squalid, overcrowded camps in Mexico where rapes, murders, assaults and robbery were commonplace is also immoral. Both the Trump and Biden administrations used these camps, until Judge Tigar ruled they were illegal.

From a lifetime of being raised with and living and working around Republicans, I’ve learned the great majority believe non-white people are inferior. In many cases, aren’t fully valued as human. This is the definition of racism.

It explains how people that consider themselves moral can justify treating people of color like livestock by putting them in inhumane tent camps and separating families.

It is strange that a party that espouses their devotion to Jesus Christ would ignore His frequent admonition to “be kind to strangers”. (“Strangers” in the Bible are people from other countries.) When Republicans must choose between Christianity and their racism, Jesus always loses.

Summary

Donald Trump claims, “Immigrants are destroying the blood of our country!” Personally, I think a perpetual liar with a record of whoring, payoffs to his sex partners, two divorces (so far), an illegitimate kid, a rape conviction, a fraud conviction and facing 91 felony charges is more of a threat to “destroying the blood of our country” than 10.2 million illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants are one of the US’s greatest strengths. They take jobs nobody else wants. They spend their pay in the US and create  jobs. They send their kids to school so they can add even more value to our future economy; just like other immigrants have done for generations. All along, they are paying federal, state, local and sales taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes. Republicans try to take this strength, using fear and propaganda, and rebrand it as a crisis. Don’t let them get away with it.