All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
13:13
Remember When Democrats Cared About Illegal Immigration and Border Security? | Larry Elder
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
On illegal immigration, Democrats used to sound just like Donald Trump.
Peter Beinhardt is a self-described liberal who writes for a center-left publication called The Atlantic.
He was honest enough to write the following.
In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants and that the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.
His conclusion?
We'll need to reduce the flow of low-skilled immigrants.
End of quote.
Care to take a whack at who that liberal columnist was?
Paul Krugman, an economist and professor emeritus at Princeton.
Also a known Trump hater.
Mr.
Beinhardt also wrote, that same year, a Democratic senator wrote, when I see Mexican flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment.
When I'm forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.
End of quote.
The senator in question?
Barack Obama.
Is this thing on?
As I said, Democrats used to sound exactly like Donald Trump on illegal immigration.
Ben Bucci, roll that tape.
Those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law.
All Americans Not only in the states most heavily affected, but in every place in this country are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country.
The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants.
The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers.
I think we can enforce our borders.
I think we should enforce our borders.
If making it easy to be an illegal alien isn't enough, how about offering a reward for being an illegal immigrant?
No sane country would do that, right?
We've got a couple of different issues we're talking about.
Do we have a commitment to secure the border?
Yes.
What are the options that we have available to us?
Let's make sure they work.
Because while we need to address the issue of immigration and the challenge we have of undocumented people in our country, we certainly don't want any more coming in.
In approaching immigration reform, I believe we must enact tough, practical reforms that ensure and promote the legal and orderly entry of immigrants into our country.
People who entered the United States without our permission are illegal aliens, and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who entered the U.S. legally.
To have a situation where 40% of the babies born on Medicaid in California today are born of illegal immigrants creates a very real problem for the state, which is in deficit.
Let me finish.
To have 17% of our prison population at a cost of 300 million a year be illegal immigrants who come here and commit felonies, that's not what this nation is all about.
Do we have a commitment to secure the border?
Yes.
What are the options that we have available to us?
Let's make sure they work.
We all agree on the need to better secure the border and to punish employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants.
That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before.
And the Commission sees no justification to the continued entry of unskilled foreign workers unless the rationale for their admission otherwise serves a significant national interest.
But at the same time, along with that, we have to beef up the border.
So there's some point at which you say, now you're here and these are the people that are here and these are the other people that aren't here because otherwise you have people who are legally trying to get in and they're on waiting lists to get in and then other people are getting in.
It doesn't make any sense.
No sane country would do that, right?
I continue to believe that we need stronger enforcement on the border and at the workplace.
All illegal aliens present in the United States on the date of enactment of our bill must quickly register their presence with the United States government or face imminent deportation.
That means a workable, mandatory system that employers must use to verify the legality of their workers.
We will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the work face as recommended by the commission headed by a former congresswoman, Barbara Jordan.
I urge the congress to adopt tough policies needed to verify employment authorization.
When we use phrases like undocumented workers, we convey a message to the American people that their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration.
If you don't think it's illegal, you're not going to say it.
I think it is illegal and wrong.
If you break our laws by entering this country without permission to give birth to a child, we reward that child with U.S. citizenship and guarantee a full access to all public and social services this society provides.
And that's a lot of services.
Is it any wonder that two-thirds of the babies born at taxpayer expense in country and county-run hospitals in Los Angeles are born to illegal alien mothers?
So, that's why we need to start by giving agencies charge with border security new technology, new facilities, and more people to stop, process, and deport illegal immigrants.
We certainly don't want any more coming in.
A biometric-based employer verification system with tough enforcement and auditing is necessary to significantly diminish the job magnet that attracts illegal aliens to the United States.
By cracking down on illegal hiring...
We also need to crack down on employers that are hiring illegal immigrants.
One of the things that's happening, and I've talked to people in towns in our state where this is happening, is that it almost creates a shadow workforce where employers are illegally employing these people.
They are sadly willing to take jobs that are more unsafe, for less wages, and then it hurts our other workers that are here in this country.
So bringing this out of the shadows and making clear who's legal and who's not legal, beefing up the border security is where we need to head.
Right now we've got millions of illegal immigrants who live and work here without knowing their identity or background.
But we are also a nation of laws.
It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years and we must do more to stop.
When immigrants are less well-educated and less skilled, They may pose economic hardships for the most vulnerable of Americans, particularly those who are unemployed or underemployed.
We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.
Let me repeat.
We need strong border security at the borders.
We are also a nation of laws.
I think we can enforce our borders.
I think we should enforce our borders.
And those Democrats, well, they aren't the only ones.
These folks.
I know it's hard in Mexico.
In fact, I'm one of the biggest proponents against oppression in Mexico, Central America, and Guatemala.
I consider myself their best friends.
So I know their oppression is horrible.
But they're seeking a better lifestyle.
And their lifestyle is literally taking the life out of us.
If we want a bigger economic pie because of immigration, some people lose, mainly the workers, and some people gain, mainly the employers.
The immigrants gain a lot, too.
So, to choose an immigration policy, you're really making a decision about how much you care about natives as compared to immigrants and how much you care about this particular group of natives versus that particular group of natives.
There were at least three hearings that we conducted, one of which was designed specifically to determine the effect of illegal immigration on black workers.
We had a panel of experts in this area, I mean some of the finest in the field, who testified, and they spanned the ideological spectrum from far left to far right.
Regardless of whether or not they disagreed on discrete policy issues, each and every one of them agreed that illegal immigration has decidedly negative issues.
impact on black wage levels and employment levels.
Now some of you might know this Vermont senator who by some polls is the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination for the year 2020.
Something that is in what you said about being a democratic socialist is a more international view.
But I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the U.S. are considered out of political bounds.
Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders, about sharply increasing...
Open borders?
That's a Koch brothers proposal.
Really?
Of course.
I mean, that's a right-wing proposal which says, essentially, there is no United States.
But it would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?
And it would make everybody in America poorer.
Then you're doing away with the concept of a nation-state.
And I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that.
If you believe in a nation-state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, You have an obligation, in my view, to do everything we can to help poor people.
What right-wing people in this country would love is an open border policy.
Bring in all kinds of people who work for two or three dollars an hour.
That would be great for them.
I don't believe in that.
I think we have to raise wages in this country.
I think we have to do everything that we can To create the millions of jobs.
You know what youth unemployment in the United States of America today?
If you're white, a white kid, high school graduate, 33%.
A Hispanic, 36%.
African American, 51%.
You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers?
Or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?
So I think from a moral responsibility, we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world.
To address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.
And that was just a few years ago in 2015, and Sanders got hammered.
Even his dentist was upset.
Is it safe?
- Look, I told you I can't do it. - It was likely even dangerous for Sanders to go to one of his favorite watering holes.
And so Senator Sanders simply stopped talking about illegal immigration that way.
On immigration, what exactly happened to the Democrats?
Back to Mr.
Beinhart.
A larger explanation is political.
Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats became more and more confident that the country's growing Latino population gave the party an electoral edge.
To win the presidency, Democrats convinced themselves they didn't need to assure white people skeptical of immigration as long as they turned out their Latino base.
End of quote.
We reform the immigration laws.
It puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters.
Can you imagine if we have even the same ratio?
Two out of three.
If we have 8 million new voters that care about our issues and will be voting, we will create a governing coalition for the long term.
By the way, I kind of feel bad for Mr.
Beinhardt of The Atlantic for writing so honestly about illegal immigration.
He probably can't even get a table at Fatburger.
And I wouldn't advise him to return to one of his old hangouts either.
Now, we've been getting a lot of feedback on our videos.
May I ask that you keep the feedback coming?
Certainly.
I'm Larry Elder, and this has been The Larry Elder Show.
▲
Export Selection