Getting rid of immigrants isn’t just a betrayal of America’s fundamental moral principles. Getting rid of immigrants is also self-destructive fiscal policy.
The conservative Cato Institute finds that immigrants—legal and illegal—have been a huge boon to federal, state, and local budgets every year for the last 30 years:
- Every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
- Immigrants generated nearly $10.6 trillion more in federal, state, and local taxes than they induced in total government spending.
- Accounting for savings on interest payments on the national debt, immigrants saved $14.5 trillion in debt over this 30-year period.
- Immigrants cut US budget deficits by about a third from 1994 to 2023, and fiscal savings grew to $878 billion in 2023 (Figure 1).
- Noncitizens accounted for $6.3 trillion of the $14.5 trillion debt savings.
- College graduate immigrants accounted for $11.7 trillion in savings, while non–college graduates accounted for $2.8 trillion.
- The cohort of immigrants entering from 1990 to 1993, just before data collection began in 1994, was fiscally positive $1.7 trillion, and was still positive after 30 years in 2022–2023 (Table 1).
- Even including the second generation (see Box 1 for definitions), who are mostly still children who will become taxpayers soon, the fiscal effect of immigration was positive every year.
- Immigrants in all categories of educational attainment, including high school dropouts, lowered the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product (GDP) during the 30-year period.
- Without the contributions of immigrants, public debt at all levels would already be above 200 percent of US GDP—nearly twice the 2023 level and a threshold some analysts believe would trigger a debt crisis [David J. Bier, Michael Howard, and Julián Salazar, “Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023,” Cato Institute, 2026.02.03].
Jeepers: if we really want to deport people to reduce the federal deficit, we should start by deporting Donald Trump, who added $2.25 trillion to the national debt in one year.
South Dakota State University in Brookings has begun using a liquid chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometer to test surface water and the groundwater that traverses within the food chain according to assistant professor and coordinator of the Campus Core Mass Spectrometry Facility, M. Nurul Islam. Professor Islam could be arrested and deported if the ICE raid scheduled for Brookings targets him because the State Senators and Representatives of Brookings County and the Mayor of Brookings are all Republicans.
Legal immigrants have always been a boon to the economy,
Especially the ones who come here to invest in businesses under the EB-5 program.
What’s your point? We want all the immigrants we can get under the EB-5 program? Of course we do.
The United States has always been the world’s brain drain.
Look what a certain immigrant from South Africa has done for the US economy… his name escapes me for the moment, you know, THAT guy.
Larry, a legal immigrant at SDSU is not going to be deported unless he commits a traffic violation.
As for all the contributions legal immigrants like George Kistiakowsky and Werner Von Braun have historically been responsible for, lumping them in with Somalian grifters like they’re all the same is ridiculous.
The fall of the former Yugoslavia is a modern study in how ethnic and religious tensions can lead to civil war, a takeover by an authoritarian strongman and hegemonic foreign intervention from a global empire, namely the United States. US imperialism created the Somali community in Minnesota as well as the other diasporas in parts of the Midwest.
When he was a US Senator former President Joe Biden argued even before the time of the US invasion of Iraq that the states of Sunnistan, Shiastan, and Kurdistan should be the eventual outcome for that nation. The Kurds are more secular while the Sunni and Shia tend to be more sectarian. Opponents of partition argue that independent states are more vulnerable to attacks from Iran. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has never controlled land that is contiguous for long enough that might have given it legitimacy in the wider global community.
The incidents of September 11, 2001 in the United States led to human rights abuses, torture and laws like the so-called Patriot Act that allow indefinite detentions without trial making even innocents “unlawful combatants.” Since that time the US has reinforced agreements with France and Algeria that compel cooperation in prosecuting those suspected of acts suspected of being terrorism. Philippines, Belgium, Iraq, Norway, India, Netherlands and Japan have extradition treaties with the United States while Kuwait and Indonesia do not.
And, as China perceives Taiwan as a rebel province Somalia sees Somaliland as a breakaway non-state and China sees Taiwan as a rival in the Horn of Africa. And, until recently, the United States has had little influence in a somewhat stable Somaliland and failed state Somalia is looking more and more like the next Afghanistan.
Today, international law is whatever Donald Trump says it is and most people know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter but in a perfect world acts of terrorism committed by soldiers of fortune in international waters, are within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
America has brought this on itself since radical christianity has murdered millions but you know what scares me?
Donald Trump has escalated his war on civilians and someone from Yemen, Somalia, Syria or even a modern Timothy McVeigh seeking retribution could simply roll a truck bomb into Rapid City Central or Sioux Falls Lincoln High School after an Ellsworth-based drone pilot or some jock from the 114th Fighter Wing targets a wedding party or religious service.
A son of German immgirants can’t help but raise the at Debt becaue he doesn’t understand finance….
https://fortune.com/2026/02/10/government-borrowing-cbo-report-deicit-lending-interest/
Guess his tariff revenues won’t replace the income tax revenue in anybody’s lifetime.
Algebra, when you refer to “legal immigrants” are you referring to immigrants that have never been convicted of a crime after a judicial process consistent with due process, including indictment and trial by jury? And for those folks that are not included in your concept of “legal” do you mean those people merely accused by ICE and then arbitrarily declared to be “illegal” by a federal bureaucrat without the judicial process set forth in the 5th and 6th Amendments to the US Constitution, such as indictment, jury trial, etc?
And is it your opinion that the USA should deport people with a history of one or more traffic violations (Kristi Noem?) , or just those people who are arbitrarily declared by federal government bureaucrat or ice worker to be “illegal” people, without the above Constitutional judicial process?
And in referring to “Somalian grifters” do you mean Somalians in general or just those actually charged, tried and convicted of committing civil fraud (like Trump and his New York civil fraud convictions) or criminal offenses (falsifying of business records, like Donald Trump)?
And lastly, if you are referring to people not “legal” as those who have actually been convicted of crimes, then why aren’t these people easy to find since they would be in jail? On a side note, if they are in jail why would to you want to free them to commit other crimes or hurt people by deporting them to another country that might not lock them up?
“Original”sin” in a religious context seems to have some logic to it, after all, the Bible’s original humans Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit contrary to a direct command from their creator God. While some might argue that offspring shouldn’t be punished for the actions of their parents, God apparently had other ideas. But at least confessing this and other sins and declaring allegiance to God could avoid that punishment.
I used to think being declared an “illegal immigrant” was essentially the same concept – being held responsible for a parent’s actions over which you had no control, namely where your mother was located when she gave birth. Due to that fact alone, and no other transgressions, the immigrant had to confess this sin to a US bureaucrat and take whatever steps the government directed to cleanse the sin of being born in the wrong location in order to live peaceably in the US.
But now I wonder how the US can justify the mother’s action of giving birth as an original sin, especially with the strong pro-life background of the US that encourages giving birth and even punishes woman that take steps to end a dangerous or unwanted pregnancy.
I guess I’ll have to look for some other logical and rational reason to justify making life much more difficult for another human being simply because of something they had no control over, the location of their birth. Any ideas?
Algebra, the film on Van Braun from 1960 js, ” I Aim at the Stars”, but as Mort Saul said A title should be added ” but Sometimes I hit London.”
I had always thought that an illegal immigrant was an immigrant who crossed
the United States border to enter the United States without checking in, so
to speak, without availing themselves of the proper procedures for citizenship,
work visa, or whatever those procedures might be. I certainly don’t profess
to know. But without adhering to those procedures, we ( the United States),
have no way to know if immigrants are upstanding and moral people, or if they
are criminals.
The Indigenous population in the New World was some 112 million at the time of European invasion and in what is now the United Snakes it was about 25 million. Today’s American Indian population is about 5.2 million with some 2.5 million living on reservations and Thomas Jefferson would be surprised that there are any Natives still alive at all. Now, many catholic schools are in the Hillsdale bubble because the curriculum ignores the church’s role in the Native American Genocide.
Filmmaker Ken Burns appeared with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in a live interview where he shared his perspective on the six-part, twelve hour PBS documentary series, The American Revolution and called that particular (un)civil war the most consequential in human history. They talked about how Washington and Benjamin Franklin simply seized tens of thousands of acres from the Indigenous population and why women, Native Americans, enslaved and free Negro people were excluded from the declaration that “all men are created equal.”
Edwin, how can they come in now? Oh that’s right, they can’t legally. Its a race thing now too.. Noem was glad they came to work the dairys but now she has to tow the line. That’s everywhere in the country. We will see if real citizen’s pick up all those jobs. It will be laughable.
Mark, I don’t know if they can come in legally. But if they can’t we should be able
to create a legal process for them to follow. A country without borders is not
a country.
Mark, I should comment a bit more. I believe it should be the responsibility
of owners of businesses who hire immigrants to make sure they have the
proper documentation.
Feedlot hotspots in South Dakota have high percentages of Latino workers who have no health insurance and exposure to dust and manure stored in lagoons is linked to serious health conditions, including asthma, bronchitis, cardiovascular disease, and leukemia.
The good news? More Republicans will be doing that work and perishing instead.
I don’t want to be the absolute-radical-leftist, but the question has been sticking with me: why does someone else’s life have to be so much more miserable than mine because of an imaginary line of a national border?
Conversely, why does someone else’s some get to be such turds empowered only from being born on the “right” side of that border?
I’m starting to think that citizenship, ALL citizenship, needs to be earned through good works.
Along the lines of O’s comment Edwin, what are the proper “procedures” that people who happen to be born is the US must follow to make sure “we ( the United States), . . . know if they are “upstanding and moral people, or if they are criminals?”
Why should those “procedures” be different or more difficult depending only on where their mother gave birth? How does having more difficult procedures depending only on where someone born (through no fault of his own) help anyone determine who will be morally upstanding or a criminal?
Cory has shown that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, help the USA financially. According to Dr, Google “In fact, multiple studies consistently show that immigrants are, on average, less likely to be involved in criminal activity, arrested, or incarcerated than native-born citizens.”
So exactly how does the USA benefit, or you and I individually benefit, from establishing more difficult “procedures” for someone to live and work in the USA based only on where that person happens to be born?
I am having a difficult finding any moral or rational justification for discriminating against people based only on where they are born, since no one makes the choice to be born in a particular location any more than choosing what eye color to be born with. What am missing?
Bear, perhaps the adage, “if yah like the view yah better own it” applies. Those of us with rightist white attributes, are privileged, only by our very melanin, our “christian” faith (whatever the hell that means), Republican, frat or sorority sister, fiscal conservative/liberal on social issues/civil rights/voting rights/privacy rights, free American, born here of proper parents?
We own it. We didn’t earn it. We ALL built this nation. Elon Musk? Criminal that he is, merely spoke nice to Trump and thought he had answers (he benefited from) outside of 250 years of government decision making. He and Trump have no patience. Billionaires buy shortcuts. Musk can outsoend any prosecution. For now. But it is going to take decades. A hunted years.
And what is this “absolute-radical-leftist”. Is that me? Is it a Republican, a radical conservative, ignorant, a bigot, a racist (oh I know you HATE that label), a concealed-carrying, home-locker filled with ammo and high velocity military grade weapons (we can thank Noem and Sculls’s convenient bunker mentality the training ground for local paramilitary), must we be straight, iron-pumping conservatives?
DEI, higher-educated (does University of Wyoming count or just the ivy leagues?), pardoned Jan. 6 capitol raiders, governor kidnappers, the elite (Who is that? The rich, or educated, or the bigot, Nazi, authoritarian, oligarch, autocrat, dementing (frontal temporal) malicious narcissist w/stubby greasy fingers on the nuclear suitcase; is it NATO, EU, WHO, World Bank, USAID, international courts of law?
Just who are these radicals in the neighborhood? The jury or judge who rules against you, the cops that caught you, the two veteran Texas ICE agents who plugged Alex Pretti dead on a frozen Minneapolis street (I suppose they couldn’t stand the cold), a VA ICU nurse in the street, violenty shoved and after nearly a dozen of them beat him to the ground? Then they shot him 10 times after rummaging the back of his coat to find a holstered legal hand gun.
Was Pretti a radical liberal protestor, or a radical concealed-carry 2d amend. wacko?
NO. Citizenship does not have to be EARNED. We all perform “good work” in countless ways. This fortunate country built on slavery and stolen land, has everything, and we European migrants only knew the ways of war.
Now that we have it (the view), WE OWN IT. Nobody else. Not blacks, browns, yellows, or anyone else we can exclude because of whatever difference we can manufacture that generates our hate. OUR WAYS OF WAR. Ask Mitch McConnell. John Thune. Certainly don’t ask Trump. His big idea is to turn Gaza into an Abu Daube, UAE, an air conditioned vacation playground. Saudi absolute monarch Mb(“bone-saw”)S would likely play a leadership role with Trump’s children.
But oh, “rational” conservatives here require one have proper documentation, and big mean border walls.
Conservatism is dead folks. Trump killed it. You voted for it. The Republican party will NEVER REGAIN CREDIBILITY. If liberals are not lucky, and smart enough to save our democracy, you have totally destroyed any future conservatives think they have.
“All you need is love”, is it. Your hate, ignorance and jealousy was and always will be exemplified in Jan. 6, kidnapping a governor, alternate “electors”, shooting Alex Pretti, and shooting Renee Good in her Honda Pilot, that bitch (gay). And the hundreds and thousands slain in mass national shootings, so people like you, not Alex Pretti, can concealed-carry and shoot people with military grade AR-15 assault rifles, without sufficient REGULATION.
And drink raw milk.
And spread measles (again).
Well, BCB, most, if not all countries have rules about who can enter their
country, how long they can stay, etc. You will be fighting a huge battle
if you think you can change that. It seems to me that you need a passport
to get into Canada now.
Yes, having the good fortune to be born in the USA is a tremendous
advantage. No doubt about it. Being the third generation on the farm
is a great advantage. Good luck generally plays a part in success.
No doubt about it.
Since Trump has canceled ANY immigration and closed the border we will soon find out if all those conservative children will take the shet jobs that illegals do now. Prices will have to go up on virtually everything. The REAL consequences of this policy will come into focus. Immigration has been essential in America now we will find out when we don’t have them.
Remember the immigration deal that the Democrats forged with Republicans that Trump killed so he could win the election? When the Democrats win the midterms they have to again do something.
Thanks for your observations and analysis Leslie. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of truth in what you have written.
Edwin, your point about the state of current immigration restrictions in various countries may be accurate, but doesn’t identify either a moral basis or rational reason to discriminate against anyone based only on where they happen to have been born.
As for changing the current discriminatory attitudes, I reflect on changes made in the USA over time. Indeed, according to Dr. Google the 1st anti-immigration laws based solely on place of birth were not enacted until the 1882 Chinese Exclusion laws and the opening of Ellis Island to screen immigrants wanting to come into the USA. So for over 100 years after the Declaration of Independence the USA did not discriminate against anyone based solely on there place of birth. Analysis of why that change occurred and subsequent hate/fear based immigration restrictions occurred did not reveal to me a rational or moral reason for the new laws.
But that history seems to show that our founders encouraged free immigration. Indeed the Declaration of Independence itself lists as a grievance against the King of England rule Britain’s unfair immigration restrictions to the USA.
And for changing unfair discrimination, we also know from the history of slavery that things can, with perseverance and difficultly can be changed for the better, if, and only if, people face the reality that immoral, irrational, and cruel laws hurts our fellow human beings. Current federal ICE behavior highlights each of those aspects of current discriminatory immigration policies. While current Republican politics seem to benefits from ginning up fear and hatred, It still does not seem far fetched to believe that future generations (however they label themselves) will take action similar to the radical Republicans of the 1850’s and fight to end this irrational and cruel practice.
Incidentally, a Country can have borders and deportation laws without discriminating against anyone based only on where they happen to have been born. If the USA doesn’t want criminals, then the immigration laws could prohibit anyone, regardless of place of birth, from entering the USA., if they have been convicted of a crime. Likewise, the laws could also provide for deportation or banishment anyone convicted of a crime, regardless of place of birth.
In other words, the USA could restrict both entry and remaining in the USA based on actual behavior rather than an accident of birth. Currently, however, USA laws irrationally follow the lead of the Chinese Exclusion Act and make place of birth the key and most important factor for excluding people and deporting people.
Morality and rationality have been in short supply for quite a while now.
Republican is not only just another word for Earth hater; it’s another word for misanthrope.
National service should be a pathway/requirement for citizenship (and all the rewards of citizenship) for all US residents — no matter their birth location.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-court-of-history/id1867022920?i=1000749476385
Blumenthal and Wilentz insist the “radical Republican Right of the House” (@ 17:00 ) have killed bipartisan efforts over the decades.
““right-wing Republicans in the House, using the House of Representatives, have systematically suppressed immigration reform. And they have been determined to stoke division in the country for their partisan advantage. They are against any bipartisan solution.”
“So in 2006, just let’s review the history. President George W. Bush was in favor of a comprehensive bipartisan bill. It had passed the Senate with 62 votes. It was the bill sponsored by Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John McCain on opposite sides of the aisle. And Bush delivered a nationwide address in favor of it.”
His words are really interesting now because they echo against exactly what Trump is doing and what the Republican Party is endorsing today. And what President George W. Bush said in 2006 is, “some in this country argue that the solution is to deport every illegal immigrant and that any proposal short of this amounts to amnesty. “I disagree. It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States and send them across the border. There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program” of mass deportation.
“There have been repeated bipartisan attempts over decades to solve this. And the solutions are out there.
But it is Trump and MAGA who have opposed this for political reasons in order to make sure that Trump and the MAGA faction have control of the Republican Party. And it’s entirely for political reasons.”
Any of the 16 Democratic governors (especially having trifecta power) could return to the bipartisan immigration solution. Pritzker, Shapiro or Newsome come to mind. Clever assertions of power…
““Democrats could respond to a situation in which they have no power within the federal government. All three branches are under the thumb of Donald Trump. It’s been very difficult for the Democrats to get traction politically under that situation.” We are not very good at this., but Lincoln said “as at times are new, we must think anew, we must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”
We “could easily hold votes in the 16 Democratic states in both chambers. Governors could issue messages about it.
It could be a very public thing. They could have hearings. They could have experts. They could bring in the witnesses who have been subjected to the ICE abuses. They could formulate their resolutions. They could pass their resolutions.”
We have favored the civil rights issues of the 60s approach, but the immigration issues are different. There is another source of political power.
1. Declare no federal funds for ICE to carry out policing. 2. Define undocumented person. 3. Ice would be limited to removal only of these. 4. Not those who have secured or applied for asylum. 5. Or those in the process of securing naturalization. 6. Or those qualified for DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood, which is defined as those who arrived in the US before age 16 and lived here quite a while. 7. Or those who have met education or military service requirements.
“Those should all be exempt. They were all parts of the bipartisan action of the past that the radical Republican right in the House killed over the decades.”
8. State should “assert the sanctity of the Fourth Amendment which protects all people against search and seizure without legal warrants from Article 3 courts, (not administrative warrants nonsense, to work around this protection).”
This is who we are. Democrats, American values!
9. “ICE shall have no authority to appear in any way with lawful protests and assemblies of citizens, or with the public recording of their activities, or freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Republican control of elections? NO. States control elections! Given what Trump is saying about nationalization of elections, and what Steve Bannon is saying about deploying ICE to polling places—
10. ICE agents and any form of paramilitary or National Guards shall be forbidden from deployment on any day in any locality where an election is being cast.
The formation of the Democratic Party was a reaction to the fig leaf of legality Trumps now threatens, the Alien Sedition Act of 1798. Jefferson wrote, “ A little patience, and we shall see, the reign of witches pass over. Their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. If the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns. And then we shall have the opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.”
CRUEL mass deportation is not a solution. Democracy is.
Many ideas identified in Leslie’s posts sound like a great start to correcting the problem of using the government and the laws to irrationally and immorally take away individual rights and freedom. Thanks for that effort Leslie!
I repeat: immigrants who have come here under the EB-5 program are welcome to come in and bring lots of money with them.
There is no problem with them.
One of the wealthiest families I knew growing up in the 50s was from China, bugged out just ahead of the 1949 communist takeover and arrived with buckets full of money or gemstones and gold (I don’t know what it was, all I knew was that they were loaded.)
In the 60s we had wealthy Cubans move to town.
Millionaire refugees always make good neighbors. It’s the riff-raff we don’t want
Arabic, Mandarin and Spanish in South Dakota schools? Sure, that’s cool; but learning where students are steeped in Native languages is giving the next generation of Indigenous people opportunities to preserve their heritage. The good news? Now that brown workers can take the driver’s license exam in Spanish white people can spend more time snorting and shooting meth.
the felon’s gubmint is now seeking ways to take citizenship away from Americans born abroad. I have noticed numerous members of the felon’s cabal that aren’t white at all and have funny sounding foreign names. Why haven’t they been beaten up and thrown into holding cells for deportation?
Greetings, bcb.
Speaking of fully-loaded (with cash) immigrants, Prince Harry is supposedly worth $65 million or so. I think the house in Montecito was $14 million.
There is some discussion of his visa, that it’s an A-1 which allows him some tax breaks. being a type of visa reserved for heads of states and members of royal families..Except he’s no longer a “working royal,” so maybe he can be deported.
And speaking of rich foreigners. The TV reality show “Say Yes to the Dress” featured the daughter of an Angolan politician who flew into New york City to drop $200,000 in a single visit to Kleinfelds. That was great. Our US AID money was spent on a bespoke wedding dress for a political princess. . Considering it was our money to begin with, I was happy to see it brought home.
Hell yeah, immigrants contribute a lot of money to the economy..
Melanoma got an Einstein Visa but had no outstanding catalog of daring good deeds done dirt cheap. The felon depends on immigrants to work at all his properties.
The Trump Organization is planning to spend some $38 billion for concentration camps.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-warehouses-convert-detention-centers-b2920277.html/
Hi mfi! Don’t you mean the Trump Cartel?
Algebra, $200,000 from an allegedly corrupt foreigner seems like peanuts. Dr. Google reports “A 2024 House Oversight Committee report revealed that businesses owned by President Trump received at least $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments, including China, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, during his presidency.” And how about that colorful character Changpeng Zhao and his company Binance: Dr. Google reports that ” Binance and its affiliates engaged in significant financial maneuvers, including spending at least $800,000 on lobbyists and facilitating a $2 billion investment into a stablecoin project linked to the Trump family, World Liberty Financial, prior to Trump granting Zhao a pardon in October 2025.”
Denigrating deporting people who have little or no resources dodges my fundamental question: what is the moral or rational reason for targeting only those people born in a place through no fault of their own? What moral or rational reason supports treating them differently based only on where their mother birthed them any more than based on their eye color or some other factor over which they had no choice or control? I do admit this is a tough question, which I suppose explains the tendency to dodge it with non sequitur responses.
That 1st sentence in the last paragraph should begin “Denigrating people.” The word deporting should not be there.
And to clarify the reason for my inquiry. I believe most people, including MAGA people and people contributing to the blog are good people that want to treat others fairly and do the right thing. I just wonder people that support what the Trump Cartel is doing to migrants tell themselves that treating folks this way solely because of where they were born is a good and fair thing to do.
Incidentally, this treatment seems to fall in the category of “othering,” which is exactly what Germany did to Jewish folks and a variety of people:
https://humanrights.ca/story/us-vs-them-process-othering#:~:text=Story%20text,mentality%20to%20alienate%20the%20group.
Am I overlooking something that makes “othering” moral, rational or just? Any help or guidance Algebra?
400, 500, even 600% right about the cartel, Sir. In other news, Scott Bessent bagged how the US created a shortage of dollars in Iran to destabilize their currency and cause yooge demonstrations. Sounds like there be plans for an Iranian incursion that could last weeks.
mfi, upon reflection it appears that “cartel” is probably not a technically accurate label for Trump and his cohorts that are currently in control of the US government, even though Trump is a convicted felon. Cartel is often defined as a drug organization and that doesn’t necessarily fit despite Trump’s recent pardon of a convicted drug kingpin. Cartel is also used to described agreements between companies, often working to maximize profits, which doesn’t seem to fit. Cartels are also described as agreements between governments, and since Trump has broken ties with many US allies, this also seems not to fit. I guess I will have to find another more accurate term to described what is currently happening to the US federal government under Trump.
The reason, BCB, is that national sovereignty is not compatible with open borders.
I realize that may not satisfy your place of birth question, but there it is.
Edwin, no, I fully agree that open borders are incompatible with national sovereignty. My issue is who a Nation chooses to exclude and who it includes when policing its sovereign border. I ask why in the USA this decision is based solely on where a person was born, since like the color of the person’s eyes – both are totally beyond the control or culpability of that person and thus seem equally arbitrary, immoral and irrational.
Why not exclude or admit people at the border based on their conduct rather than something they have no control over. Exclude criminals, people that pose a threat, grifters, drunks, communists, liberals, priests, conservatives, MAGA cult members, Democrats, or any other measurable characteristic within the control of that person. We should make a rational choice and act accordingly, but excluding people based on eye color, skin color, height, place of birth, or any other condition over which they had, and continue to have, no control makes little if any sense that I can figure out.
The Trump Organization is a cabal rather than a cartel and Adolf Hitler modeled his Final Solution on the American Genocide.
I defer to larry – Trump “Cabal” does sound more accurate. Thanks larry.
Edwin wrote: “. . . national sovereignty is not compatible with open borders.”
Edwin, why is that? The US (for one example) can still be a nation of laws and expectations for anyone inside its acknowledged border. I would even concede that there can be division of rights and privileges for “residents” and “citizens.”
I would concede that if the US were to move to more open boarders (nobody wants fully open border chaos), I think economic decisions have to be made in unison with that decision. Creating an economy to support an influx of manpower would be essential. I would argue we have already done that to an extent: immigrant labor is the backbone of MANT US industries. I also t=would argue that we need more manual labor/factory labor to support an increased population — we cannot have everyone working in service industries.
All of this would require a YUGE change in paradigm: we could no longer be about intensified corporate profit and financing but would have to focus more on the worker and managing industry to engage a workforce. That is a big ask, but is it really an unreasonable expectation for a nation to put its people first?
MFI: “Why haven’t they been beaten up and thrown into holding cells for deportation?”
Because the one thing Trump has clearly established, rules, laws, and norms are for the “other guys.”
O, as you astutely point out, that would be a huge shift. I don’t know how
old you are, but have at it. Good luck.
“Dachau was converted from a shuttered factory into a concentration camp in 1933.”
Trump: “They’re poisoning the blood of our country.”
“currently the largest ICE detention center in the country, what’s known as Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, on Fort Bliss, is a military base.”
““the US is openly embracing that large detention camp model. For those who … have committed no crime save for crossing the border without documentation.”
Given “the number in the tens of millions that the administration is promising to detain or deport, … the network of planned facilities that we already know about, … is … on the scale that only the very largest concentration camp systems in history, Soviet Gulag, Nazi concentration camps, and Chinese labor camps in the People’s Republic of China, have attempted.”
“This administration actively… aspires to reshape society to its racial, political and cultural preferences for generations to come.”
“administration has already acquired the funding and the means to carry out.”
“through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, they may end up creating a new detention system that rivals the entire size of the federal prison system.”
(edited quotes)
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-comes-what/id1779885475?i=1000749464532
https://andreapitzer.com/
O wrote, “The US (for one example) can still be a nation of laws and expectations for anyone inside its acknowledged border.” Except under the felon’s cabal there apparently is no law that won’t be broken by them.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/15/south-texas-latino-republicans-immigration-00782129
immigration policy and deportations, like truth is kryptonite to magats.
Trump’s retreat from Minneapolis may be among his final acts as POTUS before he dies of his poor life choices so Epstein, murder and failure will be his legacy.