The political conflict behind the recent federal government shutdown and consequent suspension of SNAP benefits has led to a larger debate. Given the fiscal burden of public benefits, welfare dependency, and entitlement, Americans are rightfully questioning whether foreign nationals – especially illegal aliens – should be receiving taxpayer-funded benefits. These are extremely important conversations; particularly since, as Nobel-Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman put it succinctly, “it’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” Thus, those who wish to salvage the social safety net should support reducing mass migration.
While the conflict between mass migration and the welfare state was obvious to Friedman – and remains obvious to many Americans now – it has been ignored by much of our political establishment for decades. Indeed, for 60 years, we have experienced both. In the mid-1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through a significant expansion of the welfare state (building upon Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal), known as the Great Society, as well as the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1965.
The INA of 1965 opened up the floodgates for uninterrupted large-scale mass migration, leading to approximately one million green cards being granted every year. This has driven the foreign-born share of the U.S. population to levels higher than even during the Great Wave of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As Joe Biden, the most pro-mass-migration president in modern American history, left office, that foreign-born share reached 16 percent, topping the previous historical record of 14.8 percent set in 1890. In those days, of course, new immigrants were expected to work hard and assimilate, rather than rely on taxpayer-funded welfare, which was practically non-existent at the time.
One of the biggest problems with the immigration system established by the INA of 1965 is that it is based not on skill or merit, but, overwhelmingly, on the principle of family reunification. While keeping families united seems like a noble goal, this prioritization has – in practice – led to “chain migration,” a process where most of our immigration stream is monopolized by immigrants bringing in an endless number of family members and relatives.
In fact, more than three-fourths of green cards are granted to foreign nationals based on family-based preferences or other sub-categories, such as diversity visa winners, refugees, and asylees. “What you know” is eclipsed by “who you know.”
None of this is to suggest that every single immigrant arriving on the basis on a non-employment-based green card is necessarily unskilled. The reality is that when the immigration system does not prioritize merit, large numbers of immigrants will arrive who simply do not possess the skills and education to thrive in the U.S. and to contribute to their new homeland. However, they will require, and often qualify for, a panoply of taxpayer-funded benefits.
The post-1965 immigration system also arguably laid the groundwork for increased illegal mass migration, which spiked significantly as soon as the message went out to the world that the U.S. was open for mass immigration. Given that illegal aliens are, in general, lower-skilled and less educated than legal immigrants, mass illegal migration greatly exacerbates the problem and further burdens our already strained social safety net.
The anti-borders lobby likes to feign ignorance and confidently proclaim that, theoretically, illegal aliens are banned from receiving welfare benefits. In reality, many illegal aliens do collect welfare, either through fraud or because they were paroled into the country due to the Biden administration’s unprecedented abuse of parole authority.
Moreover, due to our current illegal-immigration-rewarding interpretation of birthright citizenship, the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens receive automatic American citizenship at birth and therefore qualify for every benefit that other lower-income U.S. citizens are eligible for. Many illegal aliens, by virtue of their low incomes, end up qualifying their citizen children for a huge number of means-tested benefits. As a result, illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children impose an annual burden of at least $151 billion as of early 2023 on federal, state, and local American taxpayers. That includes costs for public education, policing, and welfare benefits.
The pro-mass-migration lobby likes to deflect from the subject of welfare use by both legal and illegal immigrants by proclaiming the obvious: Americans receive welfare benefits, too! In reality, per capita welfare use is significantly higher among the foreign-born compared to the native-born. Research shows that 39 percent of U.S.-born-headed households (which, no doubt, includes the children of immigrants) receive some form of welfare. When it comes to all foreign-born-headed households, that number jumps drastically to 54 percent, and further to 59 percent for households headed by a non-citizen (including illegal aliens). The connection between mass immigration and welfare is obvious and undeniable. Given our unsustainably growing national debt, every little bit counts. If we wish to save our social safety net, we need to ensure that the system prioritizes the most vulnerable Americans rather than serving as a magnet for opportunistic low-skilled foreign nationals who wish to take advantage of our taxpayers. To protect this social safety net, we must significantly reduce mass immigration and refocus on merit and what benefits Americans most.
Our own government is forcing the Kalergi plan on the United States to destroy and force the European lineage to become a mixed race brought to us by the unelected who hate the United States, control the money, the media and the narrative and want to have a one world government with themselves in charge