Posts

Reich and Immigration

reichRobert Reich is an American political commentator, professor, and author. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. He was Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997. He was a member of President-elect Barack Obama’s economic transition advisory board. Recently, he put out a video in association with moveon.org that accused President Trump of lying about immigration and he sets out to destroy several of Trump’s statements as myths.

The problem is that Reich overlooks a lot of research and statistics that reinforce Trump’s stance and, given the obvious left-leaning political disposition of Reich, you can’t help but want to pop the hood on what he’s saying to see if he has a point.

You be the judge…

I) Immigrants Take Away American Jobs

This is the first lie that Trump is supposedly circulating. Reich insists that immigrants add to economic demand and therefore create the need for more jobs.

On the surface, that might seem like a credible perspective, but here’s the problem: It’s not the number of jobs, it’s the fact that immigrants are willing to work for a lot less than their American counterparts. As a result, illegal immigrants are working those jobs that would otherwise be staffed by American citizens.

It’s interesting because back in 1995, Reich himself  said, “Undoubtedly access to lower-wage foreign workers has a depressing effect [on wages].” If an employer is looking at two equally qualified candidates and one is willing to work for $7.00 an hour and the other isn’t willing to work for less than $10.00, who do you suppose gets the job?

II) We don’t need Any More Immigrants

Reich says America is aging and we therefore need more people to support those will be retiring. The problem with that idea is that 52% of legal immigrant households with children are on government assistance. In all, nearly 60% of immigrants – illegal and legal – are on government assistance compared to 39% of native households. It’s virtually impossible to be supporting other people when you can’t support yourself.1

III) Immigrants are a Drain on Public Budgets

Here, Reich attempts to combat this reality by saying that undocumented immigrants paid 11.8 billion dollars in state and local taxes in 2012 and that would increase another 2.2 billion assuming comprehensive immigration reform would occur.

Champions of illegal immigration will quote statistics like the fact that in 2014, the IRS collected over 9 billion dollars in income tax from those filing using an ITIN (Individual Tax Identification Number). This coming from roughly 4 million illegals. On the surface, that doesn’t look especially unhealthy. However, when you consider the number of illegal immigrants that live in this country, that figure becomes disconcerting.

The number of illegal immigrants is a figure that comes from census data. In other words, it’s assuming that an illegal immigrant is answering a survey. People who have left their families, paid hefty sums to smugglers, travelled thousands of miles and have broken American law in order to enter this country have little incentive to answer a US government questionnaire.

When you look at bank deposits going from the US to Mexico, when you consider the number of housing permits that are being granted, when you look at school enrollment – when you consider information beyond statistical info based on surveys of people who don’t want to answer surveys, you come up with a much larger number.

Bear Stearns is a global investment bank. In 2005, they had some financial interests that were linked to, what needed to be, an accurate number of illegal immigrants in this country. Unfettered by any kind of political agenda, analysts Robert Justich and Betty Ng estimated the total number of illegal immigrants at being around 20,000,000. Bear in mind, they were advising clients about something important: their money!2

The very next year, Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele – two Pulitzer-prize winning journalists for Time magazine, did their own study and concluded that “the number of illegal aliens flooding into the U.S. this year will total 3 million – enough to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners, or 60 flights every day for a year. It will be the largest wave since 2001 and will roughly triple the number of immigrants who will come to he U.S. by legal means.”3

That was 2006. So assuming that number has stayed consistent, that means today we have an additional 36,000,000 illegals in this country. So, let’s not be too excited or too casual when we hear that we’ve collected 9 billion dollars from 4 million illegals. That’s a toxic number when you compare it to the actual number of illegals that are living in this nation.

IV) Legal and Illegal Immigration is Increasing

Reich says that he net rate of illegal immigration into the US is 0%. Again, this is going to be based on census data which is not reliable. As the aforementioned analysts Justich and Ng told the Wall Street Journal, “the assumption that illegal people will fill out a census form is the most ridiculous concept I have ever heard of.”4

Conclusion

Reich concludes his video by suggesting that Trump, or anyone who thinks like him when it comes to illegal immigration, are looking to blame immigrants for the economic tensions facing the middle class. He says it’s all part of a game that’s rigged to favor the wealthy and the better approach is to work towards “comprehensive immigration reform” that gives illegals a pathway to citizenship.

Question: What is it that makes illegal immigration so difficult to define as a problem when the facts are so obvious? And bear in mind, we’re just looking at what the Left chose to address in the context of Reich’s video. We’re not looking at the criminal activity that’s happening within the ranks of illegals. It truly is a problem! Who is it that gains by defending illegal immigrants?

This comes from the “Center for Immigration Studies” in an article entitled, “Immigration, Political Realignment, and the Demise of Republican Political Prospects” written in 2010.

A comparison of voting patterns in presidential elections across counties over the last three decades shows that large-scale immigration has caused a steady drop in presidential Republican vote shares throughout the country. Once politically marginal counties are now safely Democratic due to the propensity of immigrants, especially Latinos, to identify and vote Democratic.

Again…

You be the judge.

 

 

 

1. “Adios America”, Ann Coulter, Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C. 2015, p15

2. Ibid, p74

3. Ibid, p74

4. Ibid, p73

Robert Reich and His 5 Points to Counter the NRA

reichRobert B. Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He is very much a Left leaning educator and public speaker and reveals himself as such by praising Socialism, a single payer health care system and a 90% income tax rate.

It’s important to acknowledge his political paradigm because any time you hear someone with that kind of background voice their problems with the NRA or any other issue that is traditionally supported by a Conservative viewpoint, you want to be extra diligent in the way you process his statistics and his platform overall.

He recently published a video where he articulates “Five Points to Counter the NRA.” It’s an effort to counter what he refers to as “NRA propaganda.” It’s a tragedy when the defense of one’s Second Amendment right is referred to as “propaganda,” but then, this is how Progressives champion their rhetoric – by implying that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is evil, cruel and ignorant.

His platform is well presented, but there’s more to what he would say than what he communicates and in the end, his presentation isn’t so much a refutation of NRA or the logic he would use to edit the Second Amendment as much as it’s yet another example of how the Left manipulates the facts in an effort to undermine the truth.

Here we go…

1) First off, “Gun laws save lives.”

Reich quotes figures that come from a 1994 assault weapons ban that supposedly resulted in a decrease in instances of gun violence in which six or more people where shot and killed by 34%. To cite that legislation as a slam dunk is misleading. Fact is, the ban had a very small effect on gun violence and you can check that out at https://www.factcheck.org/2013/02/did-the-1994-assault-weapons-ban-work/.

Bottom line: You don’t need an assault rifle to kill several people in one episode. You can do it with any one of a number of options which is referred to in a report by Christopher Koper in 2003 dealing with mass murders that said whatever decline might’ve occurred in large scale killings that resonated as conclusive was “offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns equipped with [large-capacity magazines].”

And as far as the number of victims increasing by 200% since 2004, it’s not the frequency of the tragedies, it’s the body count. The number of mass shootings today isn’t much different than what they were in the 80’s and 90’s. It’s not the weapon, it’s the character and the decadence of the one holding the weapon.

2) The Framers’ intent was to allow for a “well regulated militia” not the means by which people could terrorize their communities.

True. But if you refer to James Madison, the one who is considered to be the “Father of the Constitution,” he defined the militia as something that was composed of the “body of the people.” In other words, you cannot state that the Founders were referring to the National Guard in the Second Amendment without overlooking the intent and the supplemental writings of those involved in crafting the Bill of Rights. You can see an example of that when you look at a comment made by Madison on June 8, 1789:

“The right of the people to keep and bear…arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country….”
(James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 [June 8, 1789]).

The emphasis being on “the body of the people.” Not weekend warriors in uniform, rather the general populace.

3) More guns will not make us safer.

Reich refers to 30 careful studies that show that guns are linked to more crimes, rapes and others. He elaborates by stating that most violent crime involves a weapon. Exactly. That’s part of what makes that particular genre of criminal activity so destructive. But if the law was sufficient in and of itself, then the fact that murder is illegal should be enough of a deterrent to prevent one person from killing another. But it’s not. How do you suppose someone who has no regard for the law is going to be affected in his resolve to procure a weapon simply because it’s “illegal?” Can you not see the nonsensical dynamic of this whole argument?

And by the way, polls and studies have their place. But anytime you see a poll or report cited by the Left, you need to pop the hood on said study and see what questions were being asked and how they were posed. For example:

Question: “Do you support common sense precautionary measures where guns in the home are concerned?”
Answer: “Yes!”
Conclusion: The majority of America supports rewriting the Second Amendment.

There is very little that one can be certain of when it comes to “statistics” when the entity conducting those studies has an agenda directing their findings.

One other example is this article in Vox where the author insists that fewer guns result in fewer gun related deaths and quotes the gun control / confiscation that happened in Australia in 1996. Very few journalists will even mention the fact that in the aftermath of 650,000 guns being confiscated, Australia saw a spike in manslaughter, sexual assault, kidnapping, armed robbery in the aftermath. Did they involve a gun? Some did, some didn’t but the notion that less weapons means less crime is bogus.

4) The vast majority of America supports stronger gun control laws.

It all depends on how phrase the question. Click here to see a study that shows how less than half of America favors stricter gun control laws:

5) The NRA is a special interest group with a stranglehold on the Republican party.

Anytime the Left is interested in making a point, they will focus on “feelings” and indict anyone who differs with them as either being hopelessly stupid or genuinely sinister. This claim is an example of that. Does the NRA make political contributions? Absolutely! Over the course of the last 20 years, the NRA has contributed 3.5 million dollars. But compare that dollar amount to what Tom Steyer, the anti-global-warming activist gave to Democrats in 2016 alone: 90 million. In terms of lobbying and political contributions, the NRA and the gun industry generally spend next to nothing compared with the big players. According to OpenSecrets, the NRA spent $1.1 million on contributions in 2016 and $3 million on lobbying. The food and beverage industry has spent $14 million on lobbying in 2017 alone. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, spent $9 million on contributions in 2016 (click here to read more).

Dems act all indignant when it comes to lobbying provided the lobbying is done by an entity that they despise. But pop the hood on the lobbying that occurs in their camp and not a critical word is spoken.

And bear in mind as well that it’s not so much about the money as much as it’s about the votes. The NRA doesn’t have to spend much money to clarify to their political allies that their constituents care deeply about about gun rights. That isn’t the case with some of their liberal counterparts and the topics they want to force down the throats of the American populace. Still, any money spent by the NRA will be underscored as a sinister mechanism despite the excessive amount of cash and favors that occur under the table in the world of Progressive politician.

Any content coming from the Left needs to be examined for literary slight of hand and statistical padding because, in the end, they don’t have a point as much as they have a problem. That being that they’re not in charge and the promises Trump made during his campaign are being honored which leads to the strengthening of the nation that Obama so zealously strove to weaken.

There you have it!