Written By: Anton Sawyer
Immigration: Looking At The Numbers, The GOP Isn’t That Serious
It seems there have been factions in the conservative party working overtime to point fingers wildly in all directions. One of their favorites as of late has focused on immigration.
There are currently laws all over the country trying to limit the capabilities of anyone and everyone from coming through the border, all in the name of saving the country. Saving the country from the liberals who want to allow every single illegal immigrant to cross the border with zero problems and then be whisked away to a local voting precinct that will ensure the liberal faction that helped them retains their office seat. After voting, the DNC gives the immigrants free healthcare and education for life. As with most everything else, you have to step back and take a look at the laws and numbers to get the full picture. Let me just say, it’s not all going in the way you may think.
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We have to establish our foundation. This lies in the fact that the Republican Party in America is not the least bit serious about immigration. If they were, they would have tried to end the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). For those of you unaware, beginning in 1996 through regulations set forth from the US Department Of Treasury, the ITIN was a way for those who held no legal documentation allowing them to work in the US ... to work in the US. According to the IRS, the ITIN is a tax processing number issued by the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS issues ITINs to individuals who are required to have a U.S. taxpayer identification number but who do not have, and are not eligible to obtain, a Social Security number (SSN) from the Social Security Administration (SSA). What this means is that you can be an illegal immigrant here with a job and an assigned payment number that allows you to legally pay taxes while you illegally work. Given that this has now been around for 25 years and the RNC has done literally nothing about it, I really don’t think they are going to start now. I know there will be people out there who may use the excuse of “well, [politician/president] probably didn’t know about it. They don’t know every single little thing going on.” That reasoning might fly if it weren’t for the fact that after the first round of Trump stimulus checks went out in 2020, there were a lot of lawsuits against the administration because the verbiage of the stimulus check forbade those with an ITIN to get the check. Also, those who shared a checking account with someone in possession of an ITIN were denied their stimulus check as well. So trust me, every conservative in government knows. Now that we’ve established that, let’s look at some numbers.
One of the many things Trump supporters are absolutely convinced of is in their leader’s incredibly tough stance on illegal immigration during his tenure. These supporters feel that Trump did everything right, and did everything within his power to ensure the American way of life wouldn’t be destroyed by “rapists” and “bad hombres.” The numbers tell a very different story. Pew Research released a 2020 report illustrating some interesting facts about the Trump-era immigration policies. The number of interior arrests made by ICE (known as “administrative arrests”) rose 30% in fiscal 2017 after Trump signed an executive order giving the agency broader authority to detain unauthorized immigrants, including those without criminal records. They went up again in fiscal 2018 but decreased in fiscal 2019. It’s when you look at the specific data behind those numbers and compare them to those of the Obama administration that you get a full picture of how epically Trump’s immigration policy failed in removing those from within our borders. Per the Department of Homeland Security, since 2000 the peak of illegal immigrant removals from within the United States borders happened during the Obama administration in 2013 at 432,281. During Trump’s tenure, he peaked in 2018 with 337,287—a full 100,000 less than his predecessor. In 2020 those numbers further dropped to 185,884. Another Pew Research poll also found that in 2015—again during the Obama administration—that two-thirds (67%) of lawful immigrants eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship had applied for and obtained citizenship by 2015. This is the highest share since at least the mid-1990s. It’s these facts, along with good old-fashioned GOP magic that has allowed such a tidal wave of those with a complete lack of self-awareness to rise.
To those who knew how effective Obama had become at removing illegal immigrants from within the US, many of them perceived Trump’s grandiose statements of capture as being racist. That when someone is that open about targeting specific groups of people based on hyperbole and not statistical data, then it’s done to stoke the fires of the show. Through all of this, there are two perfectly good misdirection tactics being utilized by the RNC. The first comes from the talk show hosts and leadership that speak to the masses about how much they support legal immigration, done the right way (usually involving a thousand hoops and insanely lengthy vetting processes). The second is in the way they have focused the attention of the flock towards voting rights and how immigration is going to cause massive, nationwide voter fraud.
The process to become a legal citizen is arduous at best. To become a US citizen the main steps are as follows:
You have to meet a strict rule of requirements.
You must also have a current green card.
You must pay and submit all files and filing fees.
Go through the legal system that takes two or more years.
Most of the problems stem from the length of time it takes for approval while maintaining your green card or visa status. With the Trump-era green card restrictions put into place, getting and keeping one was incredibly difficult. If you lose it and you get deported before the citizenship approval, the process has to be completely modified and in many cases, being deported is seen as breaking the law (thereby preventing your citizenship as you are a lawbreaker). It seems to me that if so many conservatives were that worried about doing it the “right way,” they would want to make that process easier. By doing so it would reduce immigrant crimes involving deportation drastically, and allow higher-quality people in our country. Unless of course, it has nothing to do with immigrants being rewarded for doing the right things, and everything about keeping people who are not born here out for as long as possible. You can’t have it both ways.
I know that the safety and security of our borders are penultimate to a sovereign society, I get it. I remember September 11th just as vividly as anyone else, and I know what can happen. I don’t think that we should have a completely open border, but the system we have now is in such shambles that it’s not effectively doing the job either. We need something other than what we’ve got. What I do know for sure is that until the RNC can even acknowledge the ITIN’s existence, and until they re-adopt the Obama-era immigration policies, their rants are going to continue to be the epitome of racist technology predicated on a lack of self-awareness and facts.
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