The only people claiming the "bipartisan" immigration bill was "tough" are democrats.
There were a lot of terrible things hidden in that bill that democrats hoped to sneak by, and once people found out, that was the end of republican support.
The left supports open borders because they think immigration laws are racist and they hope it will buy them Hispanic voting support. It is nothing more complicated than that.
The left pretends it doesn't support open borders. But most of that is just gaslighting.
Everything else I said was spot on.
Trump didn't kill the immigration bill. Sunlight did. And the left's immigration policy is driven by the Hispanic vote and keeping the activist intersectional left happy.
You certainly don’t sound like you voted Democrat. Maybe you live in Canada or are a foreigner living here on a tourist visa. Who cares? You are fact-starved regardless so better that you didn’t vote.
Didn't vote democrat either. Trump is a noxious man; the democrats are a noxious ideology.
Not a republican. My ideology is best expressed as anti-leftist
I am not "fact-starved." I don't believe the democrats or the media act in good faith. If I think the used car salesman is lying to me, I am not going to bother finding out exactly where the used car salesman is lying to me. I am going elsewhere.
I'm not a Democrat and I believe it was tough if imperfect. It addressed the asylum crisis and provided the president a legal way to turn people away if the volume of people coming in were too high. Absent legislation like that bill, the president has no way to turn away people seeking asylum. The bill was killed because Trump wanted it killed, because chaos at the border helps him. It is nothing more complicated than that.
There is also the 'Demographics is Destiny' which a lot of democrats believe to be in their favor. Jeff makes a great point that this is probably slipping away.
What was a terrible thing hidden in the bill?
I am cynical that democrats only decided to negotiate because they knew it would kill them at the polls not to. Now they get to keep the open borders chaos and simultaneously say they tried to do something. Seems like a win for democrats there. I am equally cynical that republicans didn't take the deal, you should at least take what you can get, and work for better solutions in the future. It ain't like the issue would disappear once a bill passed.
the media and the democrats were going to claim victory no matter the outcome. But the bill granted vast new discretionary powers to Mayorkas, and basically said we will allow X illegals to come in per day.
The problem with the "democrats tried to do something" narrative is that nobody who isn't already in the left's camp believes it
I mean, how hard is it to just enforce the law? See, that gives away the game right there, along with going after Texas for enforcing the border.
Interesting how the first point you make is that Democrats are too stupid to work out a conspiracy. Aside from the obvious political games and gaslighting that most of the public is not too stupid to decipher (but apparently is lost on you,) one question remains on the issue of border security: Why did the Biden administration end Trump's successful border control policies and sabotage the near completion of the border wall?
I have a couple of points I'd like you to clear up for me.
First, you state that Eric Adams and Brandon Johnson are ardent "controlled immigration" advocates. You also mention that Governor Abbott has made things worse by exporting all those illegals from Texas. When Adams and Johnson both took office, they appeared to me to be just as ardently for open borders. Wasn't it because of Greg Abbott's "exporting" of illegal immigrants from Texas that caused Adams and Johnson to completely change their positions? While Adams was damning Abbott for causing immigrants to flood NYC, he quite began, in November of 2022, to give illegal immigrants bus tickets to Canada. Will you help me understand how Adams' actions were different than Abbott's? Also, as Nellie Bowles suggested in one of her recent articles for the Free Press, although our unbiased media blamed Abbott for exporting all those people from Texas, they were not originally from Texas. They were from Mexico, and Central and South America for lthe most part.
As a former Federal employee myself, I totally agree that there actually hasn't been a "conspiracy" as such. However, it seems that the Democrat part feels that it has pretty much got the "Black" and "Latino" vote. Look at how the mainstream media treats anybody who is Black or otherwise intersection when they actually dare to support republican issues. Remember in late 2020, when Biden was being interviewed by Charlemagnethe God, and Biden said in effect: "If you're African-American and you don't vote for me, then you ain't black." Was this one of Biden's mis-statements, or was he actually expressing a belief held by a lot of the parfty faithful.
As to lthe Republicans not supporting Biden's recent immigration bill, is this in large part the Democrats trying to put a good face on an immigration policy that has encouraged between 7.2 and 7.3 million immigrants to come to the U.S. since Joe took office. While you're studying this issue, will you take a look at the millionaires who own second homes on Martha's Vineyard, including former President Obama, who got rid of the fifty immigrants flown up from Florida in less than two days. Does he, with his two homes valued at 19 million dollars, or our former Democrat speaker of the house and her husband Paul, not have room for people who are poor and tired and hungry? Not in their gated compounds.
Regardless of how we both see these issues, thank you for allow respectful, open discussion. Lets all look for common ground on the things that divide us. y
I like most of this, but you lost me with this part:
“Signature verification and proof-of-citizenship requirements have almost nothing to do with illegal immigration because illegal immigrants can’t register to vote. You can’t mail in a ballot that says ‘Hey, Joe Illegal here — this is my vote,’ because Joe Illegal has to register, and he can’t register. The only way for an illegal immigrant to vote is to mail in a ballot in the name of a registered voter.”
Illegal immigrants “can’t” vote or register to vote in the same sense that illegal immigrants “can’t” do a lot of things, like work in the United States, or obtain a state driver’s license – you know, things they aren’t technically allowed to do, but nevertheless do all the time. You say you can’t mail in a ballot that says, “Hey, Joe Illegal here, this is my vote“ – but what if Joe illegal says, “Hey Joe T. Legal here [the “T” stands for “Totally”], here are my fake documents, please register me to vote.“ I know the idea of illegal immigrants obtaining and using phony documents might blow your mind, but I can assure you it happens. I can also assure you that the illegal immigrants registering to vote and voting happens as well, although we can certainly debate how much. It might be a large number and it might be a small one, but it ain’t zero.
We agree that it's a small number. To register to vote, you need a SSN at a minimum, and that's a level of putting yourself on the grid that simply isn't worth it for most illegal immigrants. As a vote-generating strategy, opening the door to illegal immigrants in the hope that they will cast illegal ballots for you remains idiotic.
To be clear, I said it "might" be a small number. I don't think you need a real Social Security number to vote. Plenty of illegal immigrants have a fraudulent Social Security card. That's how they manage to work. No doubt some of them find their documents worked so well at their place of employment, they try them out to vote as well. How many, I have no idea--and I don't think anyone who has a particularly strong interest in finding out, also has the ability to do so.
I think the rest of your piece is great though and your Substack is generally very high quality. Lotta good facts in this one. I really like the approach.
Even half of citizens can't be bothered to vote. Why would illegal immigrants - who are generally low-education and not politically active in the first place - care so much about voting they'd be willing to risk doing crimes for it? And if they could do it, why wouldn't citizens (who are generally much more politically engaged) do it instead of them? They can get fake IDs too.
Let’s say half of citizens want to vote and half don’t. These days I don’t get the impression that a lack of education makes people politically apathetic (see: Trump) so we’ll assume a good percentage of the uneducated citizens want to vote too. Illegal immigrants are people and probably have similar percentages of people who are not inclined to vote but maybe some who would like to. If it’s half and half, that’s about 5.5 million (not all above voting age) who would like to but may or may not feel deterred. I have no idea how many are voting age but it is certainly millions.
Some people in the world risk their lives to vote. Not everyone in the world is apathetic.
So how much are they deterred by the possibility of getting caught? I mean many Americans don’t work just like they don’t vote. Yet plenty of illegal immigrants do work, and have phony documents that have worked just fine so far. Some percentage of them must decide l that hey why not use these same phony documents I already possess to register to vote?
1) You’ve brought facts and logic to a derp fight. Well done, but there’s no winning with those weapons, as some of your commenters are at pains to show.
2) To your your last point, many immigrants and immigrant communities haven’t tended to be conservative and vote Republican. I’m old enough to remember Ronald Reagan’s embrace of immigrants during the 1986 celebrations surrounding the reopening of the Statue of Liberty (and the ongoing restoration of Ellis Island), not to mention the immigration reform law he signed the same year.
A point I almost worked into the article (but it seemed ancillary): If passing policies that favor illegal immigrants is a path to undying party loyalty, then why have ~2/3 of Hispanic voters gone for Democrats as far back as the data goes (https://tinyurl.com/ms9jfmuj) even though the only president to grant amnesty is Ronald Reagan?
The problem is with this piece is that it's written from the perspective of a six-figure earner. You can read all the studies you want but until you get knifed in a dark alley by our gig economy. Yay, FREEDOM!!! (To pick which 18 hours of the day you work).
The unchecked immigration the Democrats are pushing is devouring working-class people and six-figure Democrats don't see it because it's another world. It's not hatred of immigrants; it's desperately trying to stay above water doing DoorDash on the side of your 50-hour a week package delivery gig (which doesn't provide insurance, natch).
It's not your fault. If I hadn't been wiped out during the pandemic I probably would have never noticed, either. In this economy, the same one the corpse of Joe Biden is crowing about, there are many adults eating Ramen and who have to check prices to see if they can afford the box of cereal their five-year-old wants. Many have to tell them no.
The idea that working people are struggling is real, but the notion that Democrats want unchecked immigration is hogwash. Congressional Dems just tried to pass a bill to meaningfully restrict immigration, and Republicans torpedoed it just to have an election talking point. Trump cares as much about immigration (or for that matter, the struggles of working people) as he cares about women’s personal space. It’s not about fixing problems, it’s all about his ego.
I generally disagree, sure some of these things are 'beneficial' symptoms of Democratic policies driven by other motives rather than a conspiracy per se, but it's not like it was never noted or heralded as the death knell of the GOP for over a decade now (https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/demographics-shifting-but-gop-isnt-015791)
Also the shift of the GOP to be more of a working class party has mitigated some of that, but it's still not to the point where the average voting trends of those coming in hurt the DNC, just doesn't help as much. But even if it was to that point the party can't completely flip when the motives that drove said policy still exist (namely the whole 'no human being is illegal'/social justice mindset)
Lastly I will dispute that 13 seats can't be a much greater amount of elective power than its literal proportion of the government given the number of bills that are decided on less. A brief review of the most recent hundred bills the house voted on almost 40% were decided by less than 13 votes
You should absolutely make a video of this and post it prominently online, preferably linked to the original. It would bring more traffic to this site and also perform a valuable public service. If the video could be entertaining, extra bonus points, as people have busy lives and short attention spans. There are too many people taking this ludicrous theory seriously, and given the partisanship in the country, that’s no laughing matter!
Ok, you need to write an open letter to Pershing Square investors: "Pay attention to your withdrawal notices. This is the thinking that's managing your money!"
The only people claiming the "bipartisan" immigration bill was "tough" are democrats.
There were a lot of terrible things hidden in that bill that democrats hoped to sneak by, and once people found out, that was the end of republican support.
The left supports open borders because they think immigration laws are racist and they hope it will buy them Hispanic voting support. It is nothing more complicated than that.
These are the talking points. They just aren't true.
The left pretends it doesn't support open borders. But most of that is just gaslighting.
Everything else I said was spot on.
Trump didn't kill the immigration bill. Sunlight did. And the left's immigration policy is driven by the Hispanic vote and keeping the activist intersectional left happy.
You and I agree we need to enforce border laws but you have no grasp of reality. I don’t blame you; I blame disinformation on right wing media.
Obama deported many more undocumented persons than your hero Trump. See
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/politifact/article/fact-check-ron-desantis-deportation-18591863.php
i didn't even vote for trump skippy. but you do you
You certainly don’t sound like you voted Democrat. Maybe you live in Canada or are a foreigner living here on a tourist visa. Who cares? You are fact-starved regardless so better that you didn’t vote.
Didn't vote democrat either. Trump is a noxious man; the democrats are a noxious ideology.
Not a republican. My ideology is best expressed as anti-leftist
I am not "fact-starved." I don't believe the democrats or the media act in good faith. If I think the used car salesman is lying to me, I am not going to bother finding out exactly where the used car salesman is lying to me. I am going elsewhere.
I'm not a Democrat and I believe it was tough if imperfect. It addressed the asylum crisis and provided the president a legal way to turn people away if the volume of people coming in were too high. Absent legislation like that bill, the president has no way to turn away people seeking asylum. The bill was killed because Trump wanted it killed, because chaos at the border helps him. It is nothing more complicated than that.
No, it was the turning people away if the volume of people coming in was too high.
It was interpreted as a quota. Rightly so.
Trump doesn't have the influence the left thinks he does.
There is also the 'Demographics is Destiny' which a lot of democrats believe to be in their favor. Jeff makes a great point that this is probably slipping away.
What was a terrible thing hidden in the bill?
I am cynical that democrats only decided to negotiate because they knew it would kill them at the polls not to. Now they get to keep the open borders chaos and simultaneously say they tried to do something. Seems like a win for democrats there. I am equally cynical that republicans didn't take the deal, you should at least take what you can get, and work for better solutions in the future. It ain't like the issue would disappear once a bill passed.
the media and the democrats were going to claim victory no matter the outcome. But the bill granted vast new discretionary powers to Mayorkas, and basically said we will allow X illegals to come in per day.
The problem with the "democrats tried to do something" narrative is that nobody who isn't already in the left's camp believes it
I mean, how hard is it to just enforce the law? See, that gives away the game right there, along with going after Texas for enforcing the border.
> how hard is it to just enforce the law
Trump didn't reduce illegal immigration either (just legal immigration). Are you assuming Trump was also secretly pro open borders?
Interesting how the first point you make is that Democrats are too stupid to work out a conspiracy. Aside from the obvious political games and gaslighting that most of the public is not too stupid to decipher (but apparently is lost on you,) one question remains on the issue of border security: Why did the Biden administration end Trump's successful border control policies and sabotage the near completion of the border wall?
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/20/biden-remain-in-mexico-immigration/
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration-fy2020
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/migrant-encounters-at-the-us-mexico-border-hit-a-record-high-at-the-end-of-2023/
Nicely done. Here's a thought--maybe Elon and Bill love this video because a) it says something they "feel" is true; and b) they're not that bright.
And the guy who asserts that "the left supports blah blah woof woof" without any support besides his own opinion is a hoot.
Jeff, thanks for discussing this issue.
I have a couple of points I'd like you to clear up for me.
First, you state that Eric Adams and Brandon Johnson are ardent "controlled immigration" advocates. You also mention that Governor Abbott has made things worse by exporting all those illegals from Texas. When Adams and Johnson both took office, they appeared to me to be just as ardently for open borders. Wasn't it because of Greg Abbott's "exporting" of illegal immigrants from Texas that caused Adams and Johnson to completely change their positions? While Adams was damning Abbott for causing immigrants to flood NYC, he quite began, in November of 2022, to give illegal immigrants bus tickets to Canada. Will you help me understand how Adams' actions were different than Abbott's? Also, as Nellie Bowles suggested in one of her recent articles for the Free Press, although our unbiased media blamed Abbott for exporting all those people from Texas, they were not originally from Texas. They were from Mexico, and Central and South America for lthe most part.
As a former Federal employee myself, I totally agree that there actually hasn't been a "conspiracy" as such. However, it seems that the Democrat part feels that it has pretty much got the "Black" and "Latino" vote. Look at how the mainstream media treats anybody who is Black or otherwise intersection when they actually dare to support republican issues. Remember in late 2020, when Biden was being interviewed by Charlemagnethe God, and Biden said in effect: "If you're African-American and you don't vote for me, then you ain't black." Was this one of Biden's mis-statements, or was he actually expressing a belief held by a lot of the parfty faithful.
As to lthe Republicans not supporting Biden's recent immigration bill, is this in large part the Democrats trying to put a good face on an immigration policy that has encouraged between 7.2 and 7.3 million immigrants to come to the U.S. since Joe took office. While you're studying this issue, will you take a look at the millionaires who own second homes on Martha's Vineyard, including former President Obama, who got rid of the fifty immigrants flown up from Florida in less than two days. Does he, with his two homes valued at 19 million dollars, or our former Democrat speaker of the house and her husband Paul, not have room for people who are poor and tired and hungry? Not in their gated compounds.
Regardless of how we both see these issues, thank you for allow respectful, open discussion. Lets all look for common ground on the things that divide us. y
I like most of this, but you lost me with this part:
“Signature verification and proof-of-citizenship requirements have almost nothing to do with illegal immigration because illegal immigrants can’t register to vote. You can’t mail in a ballot that says ‘Hey, Joe Illegal here — this is my vote,’ because Joe Illegal has to register, and he can’t register. The only way for an illegal immigrant to vote is to mail in a ballot in the name of a registered voter.”
Illegal immigrants “can’t” vote or register to vote in the same sense that illegal immigrants “can’t” do a lot of things, like work in the United States, or obtain a state driver’s license – you know, things they aren’t technically allowed to do, but nevertheless do all the time. You say you can’t mail in a ballot that says, “Hey, Joe Illegal here, this is my vote“ – but what if Joe illegal says, “Hey Joe T. Legal here [the “T” stands for “Totally”], here are my fake documents, please register me to vote.“ I know the idea of illegal immigrants obtaining and using phony documents might blow your mind, but I can assure you it happens. I can also assure you that the illegal immigrants registering to vote and voting happens as well, although we can certainly debate how much. It might be a large number and it might be a small one, but it ain’t zero.
We agree that it's a small number. To register to vote, you need a SSN at a minimum, and that's a level of putting yourself on the grid that simply isn't worth it for most illegal immigrants. As a vote-generating strategy, opening the door to illegal immigrants in the hope that they will cast illegal ballots for you remains idiotic.
To be clear, I said it "might" be a small number. I don't think you need a real Social Security number to vote. Plenty of illegal immigrants have a fraudulent Social Security card. That's how they manage to work. No doubt some of them find their documents worked so well at their place of employment, they try them out to vote as well. How many, I have no idea--and I don't think anyone who has a particularly strong interest in finding out, also has the ability to do so.
I think the rest of your piece is great though and your Substack is generally very high quality. Lotta good facts in this one. I really like the approach.
Even half of citizens can't be bothered to vote. Why would illegal immigrants - who are generally low-education and not politically active in the first place - care so much about voting they'd be willing to risk doing crimes for it? And if they could do it, why wouldn't citizens (who are generally much more politically engaged) do it instead of them? They can get fake IDs too.
Let’s say half of citizens want to vote and half don’t. These days I don’t get the impression that a lack of education makes people politically apathetic (see: Trump) so we’ll assume a good percentage of the uneducated citizens want to vote too. Illegal immigrants are people and probably have similar percentages of people who are not inclined to vote but maybe some who would like to. If it’s half and half, that’s about 5.5 million (not all above voting age) who would like to but may or may not feel deterred. I have no idea how many are voting age but it is certainly millions.
Some people in the world risk their lives to vote. Not everyone in the world is apathetic.
So how much are they deterred by the possibility of getting caught? I mean many Americans don’t work just like they don’t vote. Yet plenty of illegal immigrants do work, and have phony documents that have worked just fine so far. Some percentage of them must decide l that hey why not use these same phony documents I already possess to register to vote?
How many? I don’t know.
Two points.
1) You’ve brought facts and logic to a derp fight. Well done, but there’s no winning with those weapons, as some of your commenters are at pains to show.
2) To your your last point, many immigrants and immigrant communities haven’t tended to be conservative and vote Republican. I’m old enough to remember Ronald Reagan’s embrace of immigrants during the 1986 celebrations surrounding the reopening of the Statue of Liberty (and the ongoing restoration of Ellis Island), not to mention the immigration reform law he signed the same year.
A point I almost worked into the article (but it seemed ancillary): If passing policies that favor illegal immigrants is a path to undying party loyalty, then why have ~2/3 of Hispanic voters gone for Democrats as far back as the data goes (https://tinyurl.com/ms9jfmuj) even though the only president to grant amnesty is Ronald Reagan?
The problem is with this piece is that it's written from the perspective of a six-figure earner. You can read all the studies you want but until you get knifed in a dark alley by our gig economy. Yay, FREEDOM!!! (To pick which 18 hours of the day you work).
The unchecked immigration the Democrats are pushing is devouring working-class people and six-figure Democrats don't see it because it's another world. It's not hatred of immigrants; it's desperately trying to stay above water doing DoorDash on the side of your 50-hour a week package delivery gig (which doesn't provide insurance, natch).
It's not your fault. If I hadn't been wiped out during the pandemic I probably would have never noticed, either. In this economy, the same one the corpse of Joe Biden is crowing about, there are many adults eating Ramen and who have to check prices to see if they can afford the box of cereal their five-year-old wants. Many have to tell them no.
PS. My talking points are ALL TRUE. I know too many people who are living them.
The idea that working people are struggling is real, but the notion that Democrats want unchecked immigration is hogwash. Congressional Dems just tried to pass a bill to meaningfully restrict immigration, and Republicans torpedoed it just to have an election talking point. Trump cares as much about immigration (or for that matter, the struggles of working people) as he cares about women’s personal space. It’s not about fixing problems, it’s all about his ego.
I generally disagree, sure some of these things are 'beneficial' symptoms of Democratic policies driven by other motives rather than a conspiracy per se, but it's not like it was never noted or heralded as the death knell of the GOP for over a decade now (https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/demographics-shifting-but-gop-isnt-015791)
Also the shift of the GOP to be more of a working class party has mitigated some of that, but it's still not to the point where the average voting trends of those coming in hurt the DNC, just doesn't help as much. But even if it was to that point the party can't completely flip when the motives that drove said policy still exist (namely the whole 'no human being is illegal'/social justice mindset)
Also I won't counterpoint every part I disagree with but Abbot didn't start transporting illegals, that's been going on for a long time (https://www.bostonherald.com/2014/07/13/illegal-immigrants-flown-to-bay-state/) Also counterpoint to #4 "If passed, the county will have no ability to work with ICE to deport asylum seekers convicted of murder, rape and child molestation after their release from prison." (https://abc7news.com/san-mateo-county-sanctuary-co-asylum-seekers-convicted-immigrants-deportation/13156977/) and while I agree the benefits are minimal regarding the specific individuals involved it sends a larger message (How that's a winning message is lost on me, but they still do it)
Lastly I will dispute that 13 seats can't be a much greater amount of elective power than its literal proportion of the government given the number of bills that are decided on less. A brief review of the most recent hundred bills the house voted on almost 40% were decided by less than 13 votes
I need to have a copy of this to distribute at all times. Great job, Jeff.
You should absolutely make a video of this and post it prominently online, preferably linked to the original. It would bring more traffic to this site and also perform a valuable public service. If the video could be entertaining, extra bonus points, as people have busy lives and short attention spans. There are too many people taking this ludicrous theory seriously, and given the partisanship in the country, that’s no laughing matter!
Ok, you need to write an open letter to Pershing Square investors: "Pay attention to your withdrawal notices. This is the thinking that's managing your money!"