Brooks Urges Reevaluation of Mass Immigration Policies

Text of Congressman Brooks’ remarks:

Mr. Speaker, if not for the massive immigration wave of the last 40 years, America’s population would have stabilized or had modest growth.[i]  Instead, America’s population has exploded to 321 million people due primarily to 62 million foreign born people plus their minor children.  As an aside, illegal aliens are estimated to account for roughly 25% of that growth.[ii]  Overall, America’s foreign born population grew from 4.7% of total population in 1970 to over 13% of total population in 2015. 

Consistent with the above, the Census Bureau estimates that, within seven years, America’s population will have the highest percentage of foreign born people since the Revolutionary War, adding another 74 million people to America’s population over the next 45 years.[iii]  Although Americans are supportive or tolerant of legal immigration, they are showing a growing unease in the face of this record-breaking immigration tidal wave that drives up welfare costs, overcrowds schools and hospitals, and increasingly subjects American citizens to growing crime and terrorist attack risk. 

Consistent with this growing concern, a recent poll found that 61% of Americans believe “continued immigration into the country jeopardizes the United States.”[iv]  Notwithstanding America’s concern, America’s wealthy elite use their campaign contributions, political influence, and popular media to glorify legal and illegal immigration to ensure their continuance. 

Puppet-like politicians expand visa programs, ignore laws that protect Americans from illegal aliens, and seek to legalize those illegal aliens who have broken into our home.  Left-wing media, Democrats, and even some Republicans, brand as racist and small-minded the working class Americans who object to massive immigration and label concerned politicians as paranoid isolationists.

What drives the craving by America’s wealthy elite for more foreign workers?  Follow the money.  Throughout history, from lords to merchant princes, elite have acquired great wealth by exploiting cheap slave or low-cost foreign labor. 

Even here, America’s two great immigration waves depressed incomes of working citizens as large numbers of immigrants blew up the labor supply while also competing for and taking jobs from American citizens.[v]

On the plus side, back when America had seemingly unlimited natural resources and great spaces of open land,  immigrants were self-sufficient, were not a financial burden on other Americans, and grew America’s wealth and gross domestic product. 

In Ecclesiastes in the Bible, a very wise man, Solomon, once said, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”[vi]  Times have changed.  America’s natural resources are limited.  We must import metals and energy to sustain our economy.  Great spaces of usable land are long gone.

Further, technological advances and the intelligent machine age are dramatically changing labor markets.  Rather than just more productive tools that must still have a human in the operational loop, intelligent machines produce value independently with minimal to no labor requirements.  No longer is massive population growth essential to grow America’s gross domestic product. 

America must recognize our challenges and opportunities.  While over 5 billion foreigners want to migrate to America, in part because they earn only $10/day in their home countries,[vii] America has enough citizens and technology to assure our common defense and economic advancement. 

Each foreigner imported consumes space and resources, neither of which is infinite.  Hence, we must be much more selective in our immigration policies to ensure incoming immigrants are both self-sufficient and are able and willing to be properly absorbed into American society.  If we aren’t, America’s population will explode and America will lose its special place in history.

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