Once again Donald Trump has inartfully stumbled on a truth—and our thoroughly corrupt media, race-baiting Democrats, and too many amnesty-loving GOP politicians couldn’t be angrier.
Of course, it would be best if the president didn’t denigrate other countries, even in a semi-private setting. And of course, his language was crude. And yes, of course, America gets a lot of wonderful immigrants from all around the globe, and we should always point that out.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t profound geography-related differences in how successful our immigrants are. The UN Human Development Index, the most widely accepted metric for how not like a well — you know what — a given country is, ranks Norway (the country Trump mentioned he wanted more immigrants from), as No. 1 in the world. El Salvador ranked 117th. Haiti was 163rd, and every single one of the 25 countries ranked below it (with the exception of the garden spots of Afghanistan and Yemen) was in Africa. All other things being relatively equal, why shouldn’t we want immigrants from countries with healthy functioning societies that are doing well, people who have grown up enmeshed in strong institutions—rather than some of the world’s most impoverished and dysfunctional places?
The Center for Immigration Studies has exhaustively examined welfare use by immigrant area of origin. Central America and Mexico are at 73 percent, the Caribbean at 51 perrcent and Africa at 48 percent. Europe was far lower at 26 percent. East Asia was at 32 percent and South Asia the lowest of all groups at 17 percent. And such disparate outcomes for immigrants by nation-of-origin continue multi-generationally.
Of course, even within continents, America gets immigrants of widely varying skills and suitability. I’ve inveighed at length against our Somali immigration insanity but coming from the same continent, large numbers of Nigerians have thrived, largely due to the fact that unlike the Somalis, many of the Nigerians America has attracted are highly educated. But there’s no requirement for the president to parse these subtleties in every statement of entirely justified frustration at the amnesty-loving swamp.
A great deal of the justified anger of the immigration patriot community is that we are told again and again by the media and politicians that we’re not allowed to care that say, the average El Salvadoran immigrant may be three times more likely as the average Norwegian immigrant or four times more likely than the average Indian immigrant to be on welfare, supported by the U.S. taxpayer.
We’re outraged like Donald Trump was when he saw the truly offensive deal conjured up by Senators Graham, Flake and Gardner in conjunction with Democratic leaders that would give mass amnesty (far beyond DACA) in exchange for a pitiful charade of border security. He’s outraged that these senators would betray GOP voters and interests when, even in his weaker moments, he’s always declared (as he tweeted last night) that building a wall, moving to merit-based immigration, and ending the visa lottery and chain migration are mandatory components for the amnesty deal for DACA. The scandal here isn’t Trump’s predictably profane tongue—it’s that Senators Graham, Flake and Gardner would dare to show him this s***hole of an amnesty deal, in blatant defiance of the core issue positions that led the GOP to 100 year-high legislative majorities, and expect him to bless it.
Lindsey, Jeff, and Cory—you’re fired.
Furthermore, it’s a scandal that the GOP has yet to launch entirely justified impeachment proceedings against the San Francisco activist judge whose outrageous and blatantly illegal ruling is currently stopping the president from ending the DACA amnesty. Conservatives can complain with justification all they want, but if our elected officials are too weak to do anything about it, our complaints don’t matter. Are conservatives supposed to smile sweetly while America’s sovereignty is sacrificed on the whims of a single judge in San Francisco? While it’s certainly true that the president can break the law, so can judges, and despite one outrageous ruling after another from liberal judges, their attempts to stop the president from using his rightful Constitutional authority on immigration, there has been absolutely no move to rein them in either through impeachment or by using Congress’s Article III Constitutional powers to strip the courts of jurisdiction in these areas.
Finally, it’s a scandal that the Democrats are so dead-set on bringing in millions more government-dependent voters through amnesty that they’ve completely abandoned even the pretense of caring about border security and rule of law that they used to feign even a decade ago. And it’s a scandal that they suggest that it’s racist to notice, as the president does and his pseudo-sophisticated media critics do not, that on average, immigrants from different parts of the world have dramatically different success rates in America.
In his usual blunt way, Trump cut to the core of the debate. As he’s said time and time again, the correct gauge of our immigration policy is what is best for American citizens—we’re running the greatest nation in the world, not the greenroom for Oprah’s next sob-story special. That means if the Democrats actually really care about their beloved (and fraud-ridden) DACA amnesty they can get a deal done in exchange for a wall, a merit-based immigration system, and ending chain and lottery migration. Those are the promises the president was elected on — and GOP voters should accept nothing less.