Дональд Трамп - Triggered

Any immigrant deemed “liable to become a public charge” was denied entry to the United States. To Ellis Island inspectors, this clause, which has been a cornerstone of federal immigration policy since 1882, meant those who appeared unable to support themselves and were therefore likely to become a burden on society. Influenced by American welfare agencies that claimed they were being overwhelmed by requests for aid from impoverished immigrants, the Ellis Island inspectors carefully weighed the prospects of new arrivals, especially those of women and children intending to rejoin husbands and fathers in this country.

Those words were in force during a time when immigration truly made our country great. (And I’m sure the sign will be removed about five minutes after this book is published. Facts hurt!)

You have to give him credit: Teddy was playing the long game. He knew that the Democrats needed poor immigrants if they were going to stay in power. He knew that the trap of the welfare state was waiting for them. Once they started to feed off the system, they would start families who would be Democrats forever. That is what Democrats won’t tell you, and it might trigger many of them: they want immigrants to rely on welfare. They want individuals to depend on the government from cradle until grave. Forget upward mobility; Ted Kennedy had his yacht and his parties, but he envisioned a dependent class that would forever vote Democrat. Without dependence on big government, the Democrats have nothing to offer. It’s their power source, and self-sufficiency and independence are their Kryptonite. I believe the saying goes: teach a man to fish, and he’ll probably still vote for the guy who gives him a fish for free.

Ted and his brother Robert Kennedy, who happened to be the attorney general of the United States at the time—something I like to remind people of when they start talking about “nepotism” in the Trump White House—helped draft the legislation. But I digress. No one pretends that we will be held to the same standards.

Although debate on the bill raged for months, it ended up passing by a good majority. When Lyndon Johnson signed it into law in 1965, Ted Kennedy assured the American people that “Our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually” or “cause American workers to lose jobs.” Nothing could have been further from the truth.

The result of the bill was the single most significant wave of immigrants entering the United States in modern history—more than 18 million legal immigrants and “uncountable numbers of illegal immigrants,” according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Many of those immigrants came from poor Third World countries. Few of them could read and write in English. Because of provisions added late in the game, early versions of “chain migration” were incentivized, meaning that for every immigrant who came into the country, a whole family was waiting to come in behind him or her. Subsequent studies have also shown that the bill increased the education gap between citizens and noncitizens by close to 50 percent and that it decreased the number of immigrants who eventually returned to their home countries. In other words, thank the Kennedys for enabling a permanent welfare state for which their Democrat descendants blame us.

Today the cost of illegal immigration to the American people is staggering. According to a recent report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a supposed media watchdog that is actually fair only to the left, taxpayers “shell out approximately $134.9 billion to cover the costs incurred by the presence of more than 12.5 million illegal aliens, and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens.” The real number might be $250 billion.

Forget about a wall; with that kind of money we could build a dome! The bottom line is that the cost of illegal immigration is unsustainable. And the strain on our social services is only part of the price we pay for illegal immigration. Those most hurt by it are not the rich and powerful. Candidly, they often benefit from cheap labor. It’s hardworking, everyday Americans who foot the bill.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the percentage of Medicaid funds that were paid to illegal immigrants rose from 6 percent in 2007 to 17 percent in 2017, while the increase of US citizens on Medicaid was half that or less.

“The average immigrant household consumes 33 percent more cash welfare, 57 percent more food assistance, and 44 percent more Medicaid dollars than the average native household,” according to Jason Richwine, an independent public policy analyst for the CIS.

More than just our money, however, illegal immigration and its by-products take the very lives of our children. According to the State Department, about 90 percent of all heroin consumed in the United States comes from the same three or four cities in Mexico. The death toll in the American opioid crisis has now reached just over 72,000 people a year. When you consider the violence of the people who produce and sell the drugs, the Mexican cartels and their loyal soldiers, the need to act now increases dramatically. As more drugs pour over the border, more people become addicted, the demand for heroin and other drugs increases, and those brutal groups grow more powerful. As they grow more powerful, the violence expands.

Just last year, there was record-breaking bloodshed and death in Mexico, much of it occurring less than a few hours’ drive from the southern border of the United States, much of which, because of Democrat inaction, is little more than a negligible line in the desert. The Mexican Ministry of the Interior estimates that there were 29,168 murders in Mexico throughout 2017, most of which were committed by members of drug cartels. And that’s not even counting the number of murders carried out in secret and never discovered by the government. When it comes to the cartel’s unique brand of brutality, much of the horrible stuff isn’t in the statistics—that’s the stuff that corrupt officials and criminals bury with the bodies.

There are five or six cartels that are always at war over who gets the rights to ship drugs and other contraband into the United States. Battles with firearms and other military-grade weapons regularly occur in public places and spill out onto the streets. The streets of many Mexican cities are filled with blood, and because of a recent shake-up involving the Sinaloa Cartel, the battles are only getting worse—and they’re spreading to the United States.

Members of these cartels come to the United States by both illegal and legal methods, including through our seriously flawed “amnesty” and “sanctuary city” policies set up by local Democrat administrations. Not too long ago, in Huntsville, Alabama, a thirteen-year-old girl was beheaded by Sinaloa Cartel soldiers after she watched them stab to death her grandmother, a woman with ties to the drug trade. The Sinaloa Cartel is known to hire members of the MS-13 street gang to do “wet work” for them in the United States. MS-13, you might remember, is another notorious organization of ruthless, bloodthirsty thugs who come into the United States from Central American countries such as El Salvador. Once existing mostly in Los Angeles, MS-13 has spread to other cities with high populations of illegal immigrants. Many MS-13 members came into the United States as “unaccompanied minors.” They are children who, during the Obama administration, were sent alone to the border, where the US government was legally required to take them in. According to the Obama administration, not to take those minors in and give them free food and shelter for eternity would have been a severe human rights violation.

Since 2015, there has been a dramatic spike in the number of “unaccompanied minors” who show up at the southern border. Studies have shown that many of them are sent by relatives who have ties in the United States and want to take advantage of the system. Many are used as pawns by violent gang members who claim the child is theirs to get in. Many of the children have ended up in communities that already have very high populations of immigrants from Central America, particularly towns on Long Island such as Huntington Station and Brentwood. This means that the kids don’t have to learn English or assimilate into their new communities because there are already subcommunities there for them to join—little clubs that are often ruled by violent members of MS-13. According to multiple studies by experts in gang activity, these new unaccompanied minors are the best pool of recruits MS-13 has ever had.