Immigration to the United States

"“What can they say?” said Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a watchdog of rightwing media. “There’s no way for anyone at Fox News to really issue a convincing and compelling, forthright denunciation of great replacement theory, because it’s being discussed on the network’s primetime hour on a near constant basis.” Great replacement theory, or white replacement theory, states that a range of liberals, Democrats and Jewish people are working to replace white voters in western countries with non-white people, in an effort to achieve political aims. It is not a new concept. But Carlson has led the charge in reintroducing it to mainstream rightwing thought. In April a New York Times investigation found that in more than 400 hundred of his shows Carlson had advanced the idea that a “cabal of elites want to force demographic change through immigration”."

"In April 2021, after [[Tucker Carlson|[Tucker] Carlson]] claimed on his show that Democrats were "diluting" his vote by "importing a brand-new electorate", the Anti-Defamation League wrote to Fox News to sound the alarm. "Make no mistake: this is dangerous stuff. The 'great replacement theory' is a classic white supremacist trope that undergirds the modern white supremacist movement in America," wrote Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the ADL."

"Laura Ingraham, who hosts an hour-long show at 10pm, has told her viewers that Democrats “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever increasing number of chain migrants”, while Jeanine Pirro claimed on a radio show that liberals were engaged in “a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals who will vote for the Democrats”. “To be clear, Fox News is far from the only place where you might hear such dangerous rhetoric,” wrote Tom Jones, a senior media writer at the Poynter institute. “[But] the size of Fox News’s audience is what is notable. Fox News is the most-watched cable news network, and Carlson’s show is the most-watched on cable news, routinely drawing more than 3 million viewers a night.”"

"While 53 percent of unauthorized immigrants are from Mexico, the remainder are from a diverse set of countries. The other top countries of origin are El Salvador, Guatemala, China (including Hong Kong), and Honduras. Mexico was the top origin of the unauthorized population in 36 of the 41 states for which more detailed analysis could be done. In Rhode Island, however, Guatemala was the leading country, in Hawaii the Philippines was the leading source, and El Salvador was the top origin in Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. In most states, the second most common origin was a country from the Northern Triangle of Central America: El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras (see Figure 1). Several states in the Midwest and Northeast had China or India as the second-most common origin."

"David is among the estimated 42,000 asylum-seekers who’ve been returned to Mexico in recent months under President Trump’s new asylum policies. The Trump administration calls the policy “Migrant Protection Protocols,” but far from offering protection, the policy has led to a brutal wave of kidnappings in some of Mexico’s most dangerous border cities."

"VICE News spoke with multiple asylum-seekers who have been kidnapped or narrowly escaped being kidnapped upon being returned to Mexico. All of them said they suspected Mexican immigration officials were working in coordination with the cartels. Often, they were grabbed at the bus station or along the three-mile stretch from the Mexican immigration office to their shelter. The stretch between the border and the shelters may be a few miles, but it is among the most dangerous part of a migrant’s journey."

"“It’s pretty clear that the Department of Homeland Security is essentially delivering asylum-seekers and migrants into the hands of kidnappers, and people who are attacking the refugees and migrants when they return,” said Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee protection at Human Rights First. She added that in these regions of Mexico, “it’s absolutely pointless to go to the police.”"

"Insinuating that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ echoes nativist talking points and has the potential to cause real danger and violence. We have seen this kind of toxic rhetoric inspire real-world violence before in places like Pittsburgh and El Paso. It should have no place in our politics, period. And when anyone has a large platform, they need to be careful with their voice, but when you’re the former president of the United States, you absolutely need to recognize your responsibility because this kind of rhetoric is explosive and must end, full stop."

"According to a 2010 ' study, almost a quarter of the world's adults looking to emigrate list the United States as their ideal destination. And once they arrive, these immigrants make an enormous contribution to innovation and growth in the American economy. A Harvard Business School study found that American immigrants of Chinese and Indian descent accounted for 15% of U.S. domestic patents in 2004, up from just 2% in 1975. ' has estimated that a quarter of technology and engineering businesses started in the United States between 1995 and 2005 had a foreign-born founder. Immigration is thus a great source of America's economic strength."

"With an overall average of roughly 1,800 daily migrant apprehensions so far in July, Border Patrol is on pace to record fewer than 60,000 migrant apprehensions this month, the lowest level since September 2020, according to unpublished DHS data. That average, unlike the one used in the asylum regulation's calculations, includes all unaccompanied children. The current situation at the southern border represents a dramatic change from just late last year, when illegal crossings rose to a quarter of a million in December, an all-time monthly high. After that record-breaking influx, the Mexican government, at the request of U.S. officials, ramped up operations to stop migrants from reaching American soil."

"Whoever was last off the boat, finding the doors of honest capital closed, rolled up their sleeves and got to work, getting rich the old-fashioned way."

"Webster's defines "assimilation" as..."the process of becoming similar to something." But imbibing these words, dear reader, we are forced to ask, similar to what? If America is a nation of immigrants, then how does one become American?"

"It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it."

"“We created this tracker because there have been so many accounts of horrific attacks on asylum seekers that we needed a tool to assess the scale and scope of these massive human rights abuses,” said Kennji Kizuka, Human Rights First senior researcher and policy analyst for refugee protection. “There have been more than 400 public reports of rape, torture, kidnapping and other violence against asylum seekers and migrants whom the United States is forcing to wait in some of the most dangerous cities in the Western Hemisphere. As the vast majority of asylum seekers have not been interviewed by journalists or human rights monitors, the scale of kidnappings and assaults is clearly much higher than the 400 public reports this year.”"

"“The United States is knowingly sending vulnerable people seeking our protection to be tortured, kidnapped, raped and attacked in Mexico,” said Kizuka. “The Remain in Mexico policy violates U.S. law and treaties, and reflects this administration’s callous disregard for human life. We will continue to collect evidence of the harm caused by this policy, working in collaboration with many other organizations.”"

"The U.S. government is forcing asylum seekers and migrants, including at least 16,000 children and nearly 500 infants under the age of one, to return to Mexico under the “Migrant Protection Protocols”—better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy."

"As of December 15, 2020, there are at least 1,314 publicly reported cases of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, and other violent assaults against asylum seekers and migrants forced to return to Mexico by the Trump Administration under this illegal scheme. Among these reported attacks are 318 cases of children returned to Mexico who were kidnapped or nearly kidnapped."

"Syrian-American Rama Issa, the executive director of the Arab-American Association of New York, told news website Quartz in June that the Trump administration was "redefining what a family is". She had planned to marry in the autumn, and wants her beloved cousins, aunts, and uncles - who live abroad - to be there. She told the site she had postponed her wedding, after struggling with "the idea that a government can tell me who the members of my family should be"."

"For, whenever the poor immigrant is fleeced by rogues, his judgment is impaired, his energy is diminished, and in general that moral elasticity lost which he needs more than ever to start well in a strange land; and thus a heavy injury is inflicted on his adopted country, which, instead of self-relying, independent men, receives individuals who are broken in spirit, ...useless, [and] ...burdensome to themselves and to others."

"Though the political movement collapsed, the anti-immigrant nativism of the Know Nothings never really went away. Even during the Civil War, when all other issues were subsumed, the passions stirred by the Know Nothings were never far from the surface. The New York Draft Riots of 1863 were in part an uprising of Irish immigrants after years of discrimination, with African-Americans bearing the brunt of their rage. After the Civil War, a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned all immigration for 20 years. Those currents also worked their way into the Populist and Progressive movements of the late 19th and early 20th century, which ultimately became a prominent strain of both parties, the Republicans under Teddy Roosevelt and the Democrats during the Woodrow Wilson years."

"The paradox is that American carbon emissions are partly responsible for wretchedness in Guatemala that drives emigration, yet when those desperate Guatemalans arrive at the U.S. border they are treated as invaders."

"Immigration has had a long history in the United States. For the most part, however, it was seldom treated dispassionately even when an attempt was made only to ascertain the pertinent facts and their reliability. Books and innumerable articles were written to "prove" that immigration did not contribute to the population growth of this country because immigration depressed the fertility rate of the native population: that immigration, if it continued, would result in race suicide of the Nordic element; that immigration was a threat to "American" institutions, etc. For this reason much of the literature on the subject is almost worthless."

"The immigrants they liked to hire to get work done cheap, then use them for every scapegoat situation possible, forgetting they wouldn’t even be there to blame for what they did and for what they didn’t do, if they weren’t offered the jobs in the first place."

"During the mid-1800s, the nation welcome the first wave of large-scale immigration from Europe since the Revoltuion. Prompted by war, famine, and political disruption, and tied to both cheap land in the West and a growing industrial capability in the Northeast, these immigrants, primarily from Ireland and Germany, were largely Roman Catholic. To many native born Americans, such an influx brought with it societal strain and challenge, and also religious tension. The Reformation divide between Protestants and Catholics was still very much alive, and the early nineteenth century witnessed a wave of anti-Catholicism, which included riots and bloodshed. These events helped bolster both Catholic and Protestant identity, each largely independent of the other."

"Most immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe, meaning that in religion they were Catholic, Jewish and Orthodox Christians, and some were atheists. The nation's churches recognized that they needed to reach out to these new Americans. Some Protestants took direct action, opening mission houses to aid immigrants and help in their Americanization. When it came to immigration, the FCC took a measured approach. On the one hand, the Committee on the Church and the Immigrant Problem believed that the pervading opinion of immigrants by most Americans (one of "disparagement") "ill consists with the spirit and teaching of Jesus concerning human brotherhood." On the other hand, the FCC also believed tat it was imperative that nation's churches look after the "religious care" of the immigrants, which implied bringing them into the Protestant fold."

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!""

"Contrary to public perception, we observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years. Our findings help us understand why the most aggressive immigrant removal programs have not delivered on their crime reduction promises and are unlikely to do so in the future."

"We make use of uniquely comprehensive arrest data from the Texas Department of Public Safety to compare the criminality of undocumented immigrants to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens between 2012 and 2018. We find that undocumented immigrants have substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes. In addition, the proportion of arrests involving undocumented immigrants in Texas was relatively stable or decreasing over this period. The differences between US-born citizens and undocumented immigrants are robust to using alternative estimates of the broader undocumented population, alternate classifications of those counted as “undocumented” at arrest and substituting misdemeanors or convictions as measures of crime. The tripling of the undocumented population in recent decades is one of the most consequential and controversial social trends in the United States. Backlash regarding the criminality of undocumented immigrants is at the fore of this controversy and has led to immigration reforms and public policies intended to reduce the crimes associated with undocumented immigration. As recently as June of 2020, the debate on undocumented criminality made its way to the US Supreme Court, where the US solicitor general sought to invalidate California’s “sanctuary” policies because “[w]hen officers are unable to arrest aliens—often criminal aliens—who are in removal proceedings or have been ordered removed from the United States, those aliens instead return to the community, where criminal aliens are disproportionately likely to commit crimes”. Indeed, concerns over illegal immigration have arguably been the government’s chief criminal law enforcement priority for years, to the point where the federal government now spends more on immigration enforcement than all other principle criminal law enforcement agencies combined."

"Foreigners, I esteem them no better than other people, nor any worse. It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles-the oppression of tyranny-to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke, than to add anything that would tend to crush them. Inasmuch as our country is extensive and new, and the countries of Europe are densely populated, if there are any abroad who desire to make this the land of their adoption, it is not in my heart to throw aught in their way, to prevent them from coming to the United States."