If you are a fiscally conscious voter, we have some good news. Recent research by the Manhattan Institute suggests that border jumpers (no duh! moment approaching) represent a significant cost to taxpayers that their deportation would alleviate.
The complete unroll is impressive (look here), but the gist is that the cost of illegal immigration is enormous and will quickly exceed the US Defense budget. That’s a pretty big number on something that is supposed to be a net good for the nation, and you’d be right to ask how adding this utterly unnecessary burden in addition to all the others is beneficial.
Seriously. If this sort of immigration were good, we’d add revenue, not lose it.
We are already over 35 trillion in debt. The fed meddling isn’t helping, and no one appears interested in stopping the bleeding. Inflation under Biden-Harris has become the economic long COVID, and recessions are inevitable (I’d argue we’ve been there already). And the longer we wait, the worse it will be for everyone, including the illegals.
What to do?
First and foremost, stop doing what we’ve been doing and admit or accept that one election can’t fix it. But you have to start somewhere, and deportations are the beginning of an easy fix. There is support across the political spectrum on the ground. The next congress and president could get it started as part of an effort to slow the rise in debt, an insignificant but meaningful first step toward the change we could believe in.
I’m not saying that will reverse the trend. The blob will resist, but it is one step among many needed alongside trimming federal agencies, eliminating duplicates, and, in some places, gutting them entirely. The states have the bureaucratic infrastructure they love and can manage things without the added federal laundromats. It would be harder to argue that it’s “free money” when you have to raise what the feds used to take for state spending, but that’s only a problem for mismanaged states. Many or most of which happen to be blue.
States that are or claimed to be immigration sanctuaries until the true meaning and cost, fiscal, social, and soon, came home to roost. They would be open to almost anything that would lessen the burden they long advocated and defended until they had to bear it.
We won’t find them all, and we can’t just send the criminals back, but that’s as good a place to start as any.
