President Barack Obama recently spoke on the "executive action" he was taking to deal with the broken immigration system in the United States. Stefan Molyneux breaks down the speech, examining what was said, what wasn't said and the hidden contradictions.
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| So President Obama has released his plan for deferring deportation threats against 4 to 5 million illegal immigrants within the U.S. border, based upon a variety of criteria that you can look up if you want. | |
| But what's interesting is how passionately he opens up his speech with regards to diversity. | |
| So Obama starts off by saying... | |
| For more than 200 years, our tradition of welcoming immigrants from around the world has given us a tremendous advantage over other nations. | |
| It's kept us youthful, dynamic, and entrepreneurial. | |
| It has shaped our character as a people with limitless possibilities. | |
| People not trapped by our past, but able to remake ourselves as we choose. | |
| Now, it's such a common trope that it's become sort of like gravity or breathing. | |
| Nobody really thinks about it. | |
| But why is multiculturalism considered to be so great? | |
| It's always praised, but with no facts whatsoever. | |
| And there are considerable facts that point out the degree to which multiculturalism is really bad. | |
| Harvard professor of political sciences, Robert D. Putnam conducted nearly a decade-long study how diversity affects social trust. | |
| Surveyed over 26,000 people in 40 U.S. communities, and even when adjusting for class, income, and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. | |
| As he writes, people in diverse communities don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people, and they don't trust institutions. | |
| He says in the presence of significant ethnic diversity, quote, we hunker down, we act like turtles. | |
| The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. | |
| And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us in diverse communities. | |
| We don't trust people who are looking like us. | |
| Relatively homogenous societies, according to ethologist Frank Salter, he says they invest more in public goods, indicating a higher level of public altruism. | |
| The degree of ethnic homogeneity correlates with the government's share of gross domestic products as well as the average wealth of citizens. | |
| Case studies of the US find that multi-ethnic societies are less charitable and less able to cooperate to develop public infrastructure. | |
| A recent multi-city study of municipal spending on public goods in the US found that ethnically or racially diverse cities spend a smaller portion of their budgets and less per capita on public services than do more homogenous cities. | |
| How is this multicultural, particularly multilingual tower of Babel supposed to benefit society as a whole? | |
| And why is it that only the white majority that is supposed to embrace diversity? | |
| I mean, Detroit is over 90% black. | |
| I've not seen anyone criticize Detroit for its lack of diversity, or Japan, or China, or sub-Saharan Africa, or Egypt, or Israel, for that matter. | |
| If diversity is such a good thing, why not focus on the least diverse countries and nag them to import different races and cultures? | |
| Why always focus on America, Canada, Europe, and so on? | |
| These countries tend to be more diverse than most. | |
| Why continually push diversity there? | |
| It certainly doesn't have anything to do with objectively promoting the value of diversity. | |
| Obama then goes on to say that, Over the past six years, illegal border crossings have been cut by more than half. | |
| Bah. | |
| It's not because of any increased or better enforcement. | |
| It's mostly to do with the fact that the U.S. economy half-collapsed in 2007-2008. | |
| In fact, despite significant increases in the budgets and manpower of border patrols, the U.S.-Mexico border is about as porous as ever. | |
| One day, people will not mindlessly accept that increasing a government budget means automatically improving an outcome. | |
| But it looks like that day was not yesterday. | |
| Now, that's an interesting kind of doublespeak that shows up in his speech as well. | |
| Obama talks about... | |
| I'll make it easier and faster for high-skilled immigrants, graduates and entrepreneurs to stay and contribute to our economy. | |
| This is the beginning of a fascinating revolving door of high political doublespeak. | |
| First of all, Obama talks about high-value immigrants, i.e. | |
| those with skills and significant economic value. | |
| This is designed to assuage the fears of those who are concerned about the possibility of low-skill migrants entering the U.S., perhaps squatting at the welfare trough and further breaking the backs of state and federal budgets. | |
| Of course, comes on the heels of studies, which talk about how each illegal immigrant costs the country about $24,000 a year, but on average each, of course, only pays $10,000 a year in taxes. | |
| So each illegal really adds about $14,000 a year to the country's debt burden. | |
| You've got $14,000 by 5 million illegal immigrants who might get amnesty, and that's $70 billion billion dollars. | |
| And if you think that the average full-time worker in the U.S. earns about $50,000 a year in taxes, pays 25% or $12,500 in income taxes, how many jobs need to be created to offset the $70 billion that will have to be paid if the president grants amnesty to 5 million illegal immigrants? | |
| Let's see, divide $70 billion by $12,500 and you get 5.6 million new full-time jobs. | |
| Is that really possible? | |
| Of course not. | |
| Since 2009, the U.S. economy has only added about 6 million jobs. | |
| You've got 5 million new workers. | |
| You've got 1 million work visas already granted by the Obama administration. | |
| And you can't possibly make a dent in unemployment, particularly unemployment among the poor, lower classes, with this kind of situation. | |
| So, of course, Obama has to talk about high-skilled immigrants, graduates, and entrepreneurs so that people don't worry about People who, if you make like $24,000 a year, then you're not going to be paying any federal income taxes at all, pretty much. | |
| So he has to talk about high-value immigrants to assuage people's fear about... | |
| People coming in who are going to be a drain on government treasuries. | |
| But, of course, it's hard to drum up the necessary socialist sympathies for Mexican engineers, doctors, and entrepreneurs, so Obama needs to reverse the imagery for the second half of his speech, and he starts talking about immigrants who work hard, often in tough, low-paying jobs. | |
| He mentions single mothers. | |
| Well, okay, which is it? | |
| Are these immigrants high-skilled entrepreneurs who will create jobs and add value, or are they single mothers and manual laborers? | |
| Later, he says... | |
| Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law? | |
| Well, actually, they do have a chance to get right with the law, which is to not enter the country illegally. | |
| So that's one answer. | |
| So now the entrepreneurs are not high-skilled entrepreneurs, but motel maids and fruit pickers. | |
| So this is a big problem. | |
| If he's talking about how valuable they are to the economy, then you shouldn't need to grant them amnesty. | |
| They should be able to come in pretty easily because they're high value and they're going to add money and taxes and create jobs and so on. | |
| So it's hard to have sympathy for those people and of course, those people would do pretty well in Mexico or other countries as well, well-educated entrepreneurial intelligence and so on. | |
| But it doesn't make sense then why they'd be in the country illegally working as fruit pickers and bed makers in Motel 6s. | |
| So he's got to play both sides of the fence. | |
| Oh, don't worry. | |
| They are really great entrepreneurs, going to create a lot of jobs. | |
| Oh, but you see, they're hardworking people who have no skills whatsoever, so we need to cut them some slack. | |
| Obama then, as usual in the speech, starts playing sentimental heartstrings like a master harpist. | |
| Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents' arms? | |
| Or are we a nation that values families and works together to keep them together? | |
| So here, Obama is all about keeping families together. | |
| And he also quotes scripture saying, you know, we should be kind to strangers. | |
| Were we not strangers ourselves once and so on? | |
| Well, in his autobiographies, he talks a lot about his fairly extensive drug use when he was younger, so he actually was that stranger. | |
| Wouldn't it be easier for him to refuse to prosecute and enforce the insane war on drugs? | |
| I mean, that does almost infinitely more to rip apart families than anything related to immigration, because he's all about keeping families together, right? | |
| So why not abandon the war on drugs which regularly puts hundreds of thousands of people in prison, a significant portion of whom are parents and ripping families apart? | |
| Well, you know, he's only for keeping families together when those families, I guess, are going to significantly vote Democrat. | |
| Or, you know, if he wants family cohesion and family unity, why not reform the welfare system? | |
| So at least it doesn't penalize couples who have children while married. | |
| I mean, particularly in the black community, where I imagine he has some significant credibility, illegitimacy is over 70%. | |
| Has he ever chided black men and women for having children out of wedlock if he's all about keeping families together? | |
| Well... | |
| Now, I'm not suggesting it is a moral course of action, but he says the idea, of course, that you can't round up and kick out illegal immigrants. | |
| Well, that's not true. | |
| Under President Eisenhower, a mere 700 federal agents were able to kick out hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in the 1950s. | |
| It's not that hard to do. | |
| So it certainly could be done. | |
| I'm not saying it should be, but when he says it can't be done, I guess he's lying. | |
| Now, this appeal... | |
| Gosh, America was founded on immigrants, and that makes us strong and wonderful and great, as he talks about. | |
| He talks about over the past 200 years and so on, we've had all this wonderful immigration, but the most important fact, the most salient fact, the fact that it's the greatest sticking point for those fearful of new ways of immigration. | |
| For most of those past 200 years in America, there was no massive redistributionist welfare state. | |
| And this is why people care about immigration, you know, which in a free world is just called moving. | |
| Why do people care about immigration? | |
| They care about immigration because immigration, because of the welfare state, affects their pocketbooks, affects their job opportunities. | |
| Most people don't care who comes to a country and who lives there or here. | |
| But they do care about their taxes and national debts and deficits and endless unfunded liabilities. | |
| As we mentioned, illegal immigrants cost about 24K a year, contributing about 10K a year in taxes. | |
| So a $14,000 deficit per immigrant has to be paid for by someone, somewhere, somehow. | |
| And given all of this kick-the-can-down-the-road deferrals of democracies, it's likely that our children or grandchildren will have to pay some multiple of that $14,000 deficit counting interest and inflation. | |
| What happens when huge waves of non-English-speaking immigrants in particular come into a town? | |
| Well, I mean, it's pretty expensive to have government schools that have to deal with a lot of different languages. | |
| Native English speakers, you see, the property taxes go up considerably so that multilingual teachers can somehow struggle to teach classes full of children who speak some language other than English. | |
| Multilanguage schools are going to spend less time teaching kids in any particular language because they have to try and teach children in many languages. | |
| Thus, English speakers are going to end up paying significantly more for a significantly worse education for their children. | |
| That's not something they're going to want to do. | |
| Because of the welfare state, it's a different situation. | |
| Yeah, most people don't care who moves where on the other side of town, but most people do care who, in effect, moves into their house and starts eating at their table and taking their food and playing loud music late at night. | |
| The modern welfare state has put us all in the same house, so to speak. | |
| So, yes, it matters. | |
| Now, another aspect of Obama's speech that I think is fairly important is this basic reality. | |
| He's creating a Democrat-dependent class of political serfs. | |
| So he's only deferring deportations for three years, starting early next year. | |
| He's not providing an amnesty that would free immigrants from any particular political allegiance. | |
| Now, whether non-citizens can vote, well, it's being toyed around with in various political venues. | |
| It used to actually be the case in the 19th century. | |
| Municipalities would attract immigrants by saying, well, you can vote even if you're not a citizen. | |
| It sort of fell out of favor in the 1920s, but it's still not inconsiderable in its effects. | |
| And there is a problem. | |
| You know, some estimates are that I think in 2008, over 6% of the votes cast were votes cast by illegals. | |
| And given how close Al Franken's election was, just a couple of hundred votes, it's very plausible, if not downright virtually certain, that given how many illegal immigrants and how many recent immigrants vote Democrats, massive majority vote Democrat, that Al Franken and others got into power because... | |
| of votes from illegal immigrants. | |
| And he cast a deciding vote for Obamacare. | |
| And so, for those who don't like Obamacare, a very strong case can be made that the reason you have it is because of votes from illegal immigrants. | |
| And of course, I mean, for a lot of the Mexicans, it's family ties. | |
| So if your sister or brother or father or mother Are there because of Democrats? | |
| Are they able to stay because of Democrats? | |
| You're going to vote Democrat if you're a citizen and they're not or they're in these deferred deportation vortexes. | |
| So there is a vote-buying aspect to what Obama is doing. | |
| So he's not giving people a clear path to citizenship when core citizenship can't easily be revoked. | |
| So instead, he's kind of giving you a three-year leash. | |
| So the leash is let out a little bit longer, but it's not removed. | |
| So Obama is kind of ensuring the allegiance of generations of illegal immigrants. | |
| Essentially, it's buying votes. | |
| This is really cheating in any democracy, but particularly in the vestiges of the republic. | |
| So, of course, ideally, both Democrats and Republicans and third parties, if they were even remotely allowed, should make their intellectual, economic and ideological cases to the American people who would then cast their votes based on their acceptance or rejection of those arguments. | |
| However, this is not really how the Democrats want to do it. | |
| The Democrats get most of their funding or significant portions of their funding from Hollywood and forced union dues and recent immigrants. | |
| The Democrats don't really want to engage in a public discussion of ideals and values. | |
| Rather, they want to import voters, funnel money from forced union dues and play touch a celebrity at massively expensive fundraising dinners. | |
| They don't really want to appeal to the American public. | |
| So for Obama, this amnesty occurs right after a significant electoral defeats. | |
| So to me, at least, it's a clear case of fairly rampant vote buying. | |
| Now, some people, I guess a lot of people are sort of rumbling about whether what Obama has done is legal. | |
| And I don't know, why does that possibly even matter? | |
| Just look at the Jonathan Gruber revelations recently that the administration has basically lied about Obamacare. | |
| It's changed the law dozens of times even after Congress has passed it, which is not valid, not allowed. | |
| It's been able to fulfill almost none of the promised savings. | |
| Remember, you're going to save $2,400 on your healthcare costs. | |
| It's not going to add a dime to the deficit and you get to keep your doctor, keep your plan and all lies. | |
| It's all lies. | |
| So a president who's shown such a passionate commitment to dishonesty, what does it matter whether it's legal or not what he does? | |
| Like Bill Clinton before him, but in far more serious ways, Obama has lied to the American public so repeatedly, so passionately, and with such a straight face, that anyone who cares to examine his integrity is as great a fool as anyone who cares to examine Bernie Madoff's accounting system for any potential discrepancies. | |
| I'm not sure if this part is narcissism or megalomania or just, again, outright bold-faced lying, but the fact that Obama says with a straight face that no one who has been here for less than five years gets to stay, that's amazing. | |
| And it shows a staggering lack of insight into basic human cause and effect. | |
| Does Obama really think that someone who's only been here for four years and 11 months is not going to try and take advantage of this proposed plan? | |
| Well, you know, boy, another month I'd be in, but I guess, you know, it's a deal. | |
| Come on. | |
| We all know what's going to happen. | |
| It's the same thing that happened under Reagan. | |
| A staggering amount of backdating forgery is going to spring up in the wake of this proposed amnesty. | |
| An entire industry come to life overnight. | |
| They're going to masterfully forge whatever documentation is required to pass this amnesty test. | |
| News of this new forgery industry is going to spread south of the border and prepackaged five-year amnesty kits will be sold en masse to potential immigrants. | |
| The idea that you can somehow freeze time and rely on the forthright honesty of people who have tragically had to adopt subterfuge as a way of life is complete madness. | |
| So it's going to be far more than four or five million people who are going to end up being part of this plan, and because of the volume, no one's going to be able to verify the fistful of authentic-looking documents that they're going to provide, and so the people are just going to be rubber-stamped, and it's going to be vastly different from... | |
| It is from what's proposed. | |
| It's just another government program which means it's going to be vastly worse, vastly more expensive and vastly more inefficient than anyone can conceivably guess. | |
| Now, I mean, I've talked a lot about consequences and so on. | |
| I mean, just on a personal note, I just wanted to say, like, it's incredibly tragic that millions of people have to live life in these shadows. | |
| They're afraid to drive, afraid of every police car. | |
| Their heart jolts when they hear a siren. | |
| They're afraid sometimes even to see a doctor or a dentist to go to a hospital. | |
| That is a tragic and harsh existence. | |
| But it's an inevitable result of prior expansions of government powers. | |
| Free market economists have noted for centuries expansions of government power always tend to lead to further expansions of government power. | |
| The creation of the welfare state has led to restrictions on immigration since it has become impossible to determine who is coming for work and who is coming to milk the system for government benefits. | |
| And because when you have a free market, there's natural limits on immigration because if jobs dry up, people tend not to come. | |
| And we can even see that with the reduction in border crossings as a result of the somewhat collapse of the US economy. | |
| In a free market, that would sort of be the case. | |
| Right? | |
| People would come in, they'd drive down wages to the point where they'd achieve equilibrium to some degree with their home countries and that would stem the tide of immigration. | |
| That's what of course happened with the Western European and Eastern European immigration of the 19th century. | |
| But that's not the way it works anymore. | |
| Now there's these artificial incentives for people to come and get what they perceive as free stuff. | |
| So that's become a huge problem. | |
| I believe that immigration is a wonderful thing. | |
| I believe that open borders are a wonderful thing. | |
| But you cannot have open borders plus a massive redistributionist deficit-financed welfare state. | |
| You cannot have open borders and publicly funded government schools. | |
| You cannot have open borders and Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and Obamacare and all of this stuff. | |
| Because then you don't know who's coming to work and who's coming to milk the system. | |
| And this is just another example of government controls leading to more government controls. | |
| It is tragic the degree to which the war on drugs has destroyed a lot of the vestigial integrity of the Mexican government, the degree to which America's war on drugs has destroyed the Mexican farmers' capacity for economically efficient farming. | |
| It's horrible the degree to which agricultural dumping of produce in markets such as Africa and Mexico has undercut the capacity, destroyed the capacity for Mexican farmers to make a decent living. | |
| It's horrible the degree to which corruption has invaded Mexico as a result of America's war on drugs. | |
| If you really wanted to help Mexico, of course, you end the war on drugs. | |
| If you really wanted to keep families together and these are families of citizens, well, you would end the war on drugs. | |
| But Obama is not about to do that, at least does not appear to be able to do that. | |
| That would be a massive step forward and would do a huge amount to deal with the immigration problem. | |
| I mean, they're fleeing corruption and economically unsustainable situations back in Mexico, which is tragic, horrifying, horrible. | |
| But it looks like that this is just going to have to play itself out, that government controls like these ever-spreading domino effects are just going to have to lead to more government controls until The system hits a wall and we can finally hit reset. | |
| Abandon this madness of the infinite waving gun of virtue. | |
| The government power will lead to positive outcomes. | |
| We can reset. | |
| We can get back to the freedom club of a smaller minimal state and true human freedom. | |
| But at the moment, it just looks like this is going to have to play out and people are going to have to deal with, very sadly, the massive expansions in this immigration program, the resulting waves of A fraud and criminality and so on that is going to result from all of this. | |
| And then at some point, we will wise up, if not through reason and evidence, through tragic and bitter experience. | |
| This is Stefan Molyneux for Freedom Main Radio. | |
| Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful day. |