(ThyBlackMan.com) I speak about illegal immigration often. Mainly because the folk most negatively impacted by policy that decriminalizes such actions and behaviors negatively are poor and black people. This is a mathematical fact. Normally I speak of it in terms of federal incarceration and the subsequent cost. This is easy to see just by looking at the data. Estimates suggest that anywhere between 13 and 30 percent of inmates in federal custody are illegal aliens. In addition, given the average cost for a federal inmate is $36,299.25 per year, or $99.45 per day according to the Bureau of Prisons it can be extrapolated that this results in a cost of $755,024,400 to $1,742,364,000 yearly. This by no means is chump change and could be money taxpayers are saved simply via deportation. But this will not be the case, although I think the money spent to provide and care for federal imprisoned illegal aliens could be better spent – say on U.S. citizens for example.
The present administration has reportedly given new guidance to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that will lead to fewer arrests and deportations for crimes including driving under the influence, tax fraud, assault, drug offenses and solicitation. This policy change would mean ICE agents will no longer seek deportations for immigrants convicted or charged with a felony.
In addition, Biden’s across-the-board immigration refit will provide a path to U.S. citizenship for the estimated 15 million people presently in the United States illegally and soften Trump era asylum rules. If these changes are put in place, they will have a “disproportionately negative effect on the wages and employment levels of blacks, particularly black males,” as Peter Kirsanow noted during his presentation to the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration March 16, 2016. The research of economist Gordon Hanson demonstrates that illegal immigration represents around 40 percent of the 18-percentage point decay in black employment rates from 1960-2000. One reason for this is just like most illegal immigrants, blacks typically are disproportionately likely to be low-skilled wage laborers who frequently compete for the same jobs. Consequently, this incessant surplus of low-skilled illegal immigrant labor, reduces wages for both populations.
Once there was a time in the U.S. when more than 80 percent of all meatpacking jobs in states like Illinois were held blacks. Those days are long gone. Many will assert that illegal immigrants are doing jobs that most Americans will not do. However, the record states otherwise. Days after an ICE raid lead to the arrest of 680 illegal immigrants at seven Mississippi chicken processing plants, the jobs were quickly taken by most blacks around the area who had previously been replaced from the same jobs because illegals accepted lower wages.
Now it is true blacks will be hurt the most by unfettered illegal immigration from an economic perspective but there is another issue that will reduce the quality of life of our community and the nation in general if these policies are normalized – public safety. When law enforcement officials are not allowed to remove violent criminal offenders from the streets, we all suffer. From rape, to kidnapping, to driving under the influence to murder and armed robbery, the public good is best served when the people who perpetrate such heinous acts are removed from society and preferably deported to their country of origin if they are in the nation illegally. The biggest threat is associated with distribution and trafficking of large amounts of fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine when our borders are not secured, which in many cases will further debilitate poor and economically depressed communities and equally middle-class households.
Mexico, via China is responsible for the uptick in narcotics being smuggled across the southern border into the U.S. Just this week, the Drug Enforcement Administration with assistance from the Mexican Navy seized 2.5 tons of meth and 100,000 fentanyl pills in route to the United States with a street value worth about $90 million, according to the Jacksonville District Office of the DEA. Fentanyl has become the most lethal category of opioid used in the United States and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that more than 47,000 people died from an opioid overdose in 2017.
Based on data from the most recent collected, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reports that drug overdose deaths rose from 2018 to 2019 with 70,630 drug overdose deaths with those due to synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) continuing to increase with more than 36,359 overdose deaths reported in 2019. These must be considered when instituting any changes to immigration policy. Ironically, through diplomacy with the Mexican government, the past administration saw fentanyl seizures increased by at least 486% in 2020.
The last reason we should not take the route of the Biden administration policy, like the above, deals with public health also. As we skate through the present pandemic, the Biden administration has suggested that U.S. citizens flying domestically must test negative for Covid-19 on all flights to land without being quarantined. Now this on face value isn’t a good look but add Covid to the mix and you have a brand-new can of worms. Seeing that the Administration is also bringing back the so-called “catch and release” policy at the southern border just as illegal border crossings are surging and detention facilities are above capacity. These newly apprehended migrants are being released back into U.S. cities along the South Texas border without being tested for Coronavirus. And to be clear, this has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. Just this past week, 11 Iranians were arrested at the southern border attempting to enter illegally.
I do not find it unreasonable to consider the economic, public safety and public health issues primary before implementing immigration policy just to do something or stick a finger in Trump’s eye. This is just dumb. I have nothing against legal immigration, but I am an infectious disease scientist by training and the safety and health of U.S. citizens should be paramount. I have lived in Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa for example two years plus in each. Moreover, I have been to scores of other tropical nations for work and travel. Each time I do, I must have a record of my immunizations. What is wrong or bigoted about wanting the same for my country? For all the talk of systemic racism, I never saw it as I do now through these changes in immigration policy. Blacks are now worthless, and our interest are secondary to progressive’s new minority angels – illegal immigrants.
Staff Writer; Torrance T. Stephens
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