In nearly four years in office, President Joe Biden has let in nearly the same amount of illegal foreign citizens that Ellis Island accepted legally in 60 years. Democrats don't want, however, to acknowledge all the problems with such an influx because they can use a ballooning foreign-born illegal population to fundamentally alter U.S. elections.
Between 1892 and 1954, perhaps the height of the “Melting Pot” Americanization, more than 12 million legal U.S. immigrants came through Ellis Island. Ellis Island was the nation's most trafficked immigration center in those decades.
Yet under Biden, U.S. Customs and Border Protection have encountered more than 9.4 million illegal immigrants in fewer than four fiscal years. That number represents encounters with illegally present foreigners nationwide and not strictly at the southern border.
These estimates also understate the true presence of foreign-born illegal migrants, as there is no way to account for those who evade encounters. If Biden is voted out of office this fall, by the time he leaves office the number of illegally present foreigners he allowed into the United States is likely to approach Ellis Island's 12 million, assuming current record-breaking numbers of illegal entrances continue. That number would also likely continue increasing even further should Biden win re-election.
Adding the more than 9.4 million recent illegal immigrants to the already roughly 10.2 million that were living in the United States as of 2020, and we're suddenly talking about an illegal immigration population that rivals entire states like New York.
Democrats politically benefit from ignoring this foreign invasion. Congressional and Electoral College apportionment depends on the number of persons residing in a particular area. While former President Donald Trump tried to bar illegal immigrants and non-citizens from artificially inflating the census and diluting the voting power of legal citizens, Biden reversed the policy.
This means states that accept more illegally present foreigners can gain a congressional seat or electoral vote, penalizing states with relatively low illegal immigrant populations. It's a compelling political motivation for Democrats to promote “sanctuary cities” that vow to defy federal immigration laws.
More than 175,000 illegal immigrants have flooded just the Big Apple in recent months, draining taxpayer resources and violently assaulting police officers. As New York sees an exodus of native-born Americans to states including Florida or Texas, those states stand to gain a congressional seat and the Empire State to lose one or more.
Democrats use illegal immigrants as political pawns to inflate politically important population counts even when those migrants technically can't vote. They even say that outright. Democratic New York Rep. Yvette Clark said during a 2021 hearing that her district “can absorb a significant number of these migrants” because she needed “more people in my district, just for redistricting purposes.”
Perhaps more concerning about the lack of urgency from Democrats to secure the border is the lack of election safeguards against fraudulent votes. Current federal law stipulates a voter need not provide any documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in a federal election. They must simply check a form declaring they are a citizen, essentially trusting people who have already broken U.S. law to abide by a voting honor system.
States that have tried to implement voter identification laws have been smeared as discriminatory and supporters of Jim Crow-esque laws. Democrats are pushing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to federalize all elections and prevent states and local jurisdictions from changing election processes without approval from the federal government.
That means, for example, a state that currently does not require voter ID would need the Department of Justice to approve any change to ID requirements. Attorney General Merrick Garland has already made clear the Biden administration finds safeguards like that “unnecessary” and “burdensome.”
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