END-OF-YEAR MESSAGE FROM NUMBERSUSA PRESIDENT ROY BECK
Dear John, Here's a number to bring you some holiday cheer: 505,000 a year That is the extra number of foreign-born who left the country in each of the first two years of the Trump Administration (latest available data). Nearly all the extra departures were illegal aliens or people on long-term visas (who are susceptible to illegal overstays), analysis of the Census data suggests. We need to remember and protect this success as NumbersUSA raises the funds needed for the constant battle we expect in this coming year. As you already know, President-Elect Biden has pledged to reverse course and make it easier and more comfortable for illegal aliens to remain in this country. President Trump, on the other hand, spent four years making it UN-comfortable to live here illegally. I'm disappointed that the President fell short on many of his immigration promises. HOWEVER, if the trend of 2017-18 continued through 2019-20 (which seems likely), it would mean that TWO MILLION more illegal aliens and other foreign-born decided to leave the country during this Administration than during previous ones. This massive exodus may be Pres. Trump's most significant immigration accomplishment. Think of all the additional Americans who obtained jobs because of that exodus! I don't know about you, but giving Americans a first chance at new jobs is huge for me. And I am convinced this would not have happened without the years of efforts of the NumbersUSA Action Network -- and of the people like you who help fund such critically-important work.
Here's why: In the sixty years prior to Donald Trump, no President of either Party had clearly, boldly, publicly, and consistently declared that illegal immigration was harmful to our national community. I alluded to this in my first congressional testimony soon after I founded the NumbersUSA website in 1996. Prior to the hearing, I was asked for measures that could turn the tide of illegal immigration inundating the country. I contacted dozens of active and retired immigration agents to help me compile my list. I'm sure I sounded a bit naive to some in that hearing room when I told the congressional panel that one of the most effective -- and certainly the cheapest -- actions would be for a President to publicly state that illegal border crossers and visa overstayers are not welcome in this country and should return home. I said it would do wonders if people living and working illegally in this country knew that our President agreed with the laws that made it illegal -- creating a kind of "unwelcome mat." But there wasn't much interest. So, we set out to use the NumbersUSA website to build the first grassroots immigration-reduction army on the internet in 1997. We mobilized that network of activists to continually press not only Congress but every candidate in the presidential primaries to make bolder statements against illegal immigration -- to emphasize concern for the American economic victims of it, rather than treating it as an annoyance that couldn't be solved because of its inevitability. Our initial efforts met with success in persuading some presidential candidates to do just that, beginning in 2008 as our army of activists approached one million strong. By the 2016 primaries, the size of NumbersUSA's internet grassroots network was one of the largest on any issue in the country. Here's another number: 60 million That is the number of faxes, emails, letters and phone calls from NumbersUSA activists to federal officials over the years. It worked. The Republican field in 2016 was dominated by candidates making the case for helping the victims of illegal immigration instead of trying to help the law-breaking illegal aliens and the employers who hire them. With candidates Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz leading the way, Donald Trump seized on the opportunity and made immigration his signature issue, riding it into the White House while aggressively criticizing those who would break immigration laws. PROOF OF CONCEPT #1: Illegal Aliens WILL Voluntarily Go Home Finally in 2016, after nearly 20 years of NumbersUSA pushing the issue to the top of the political debate, voters elected a President who sent a clear signal that illegal immigration was no longer going to be winked at from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. So, what happened? At the end of Pres. Trump's term, his promises of mass deportations have not been carried out. There has been barely any increase in workplace enforcement against the scofflaw employers who are the primary magnets of illegal immigration. Congress was not jaw-boned to enact a mandatory E-Verify law. Open-borders organizations with divisions of lawyers successfully shopped for enough compliant judges to stymie many of the administrative efforts Trump did attempt. But the Trump Administration's very public "unwelcome mat" for illegal aliens, which reflected citizen sentiment, was apparently enough to cause an exodus of an extra half-million people a year who decided it was more comfortable to return home than to stay. This applied both to illegal aliens and to the lawful foreign visitors who in the past would have become illegal aliens but decided instead to abide by the expiration date on their visas. Now, if you've been reading my letters and emails for very long, you would suspect that I did not agree with the tone of a lot of the President's rhetoric on immigration. But the point I want to emphasize is this: Despite the flaws, missed opportunities, and barriers listed above, the results were phenomenal: 505,000 a year! Opinion elites had insisted for years that nothing short of mass military roundups and deportations would cause illegal aliens to go back home. The Trump administration proved this to be flat wrong. Imagine what could happen if the jobs magnet were simply removed. How to do that? Pretty simple: Pass mandatory E-Verify for every American employer. Our activists and our advertising pushed it hard. But Pres. Trump did not respond. However, even without tackling outlaw employers, the yearly foreign-born departures (975,000) from July 2017 to July 2019 were more than double the annual departures (470,000) of July 2010 to July 2017. And note that the report on accelerated departures is based on data that end in July of 2019, long before the pandemic-caused jobs collapse. The extra million additional foreign-born were leaving during a two-year period in which the economy was booming, official unemployment was low, and new jobs were being created rapidly. The "unwelcome mat" worked in spite of the robust economy.
PROOF OF CONCEPT #2: Americans WILL Fill Vacated Jobs The Trump Administration's success in making departure look more advantageous than remaining for so many has disproved another myth: That the economy might falter if there were a slowdown in the foreign labor supply. Pushing hundreds of thousands of additional foreign workers out of the country each year during a time of economic expansion theoretically might have left employers with a true worker shortage. Instead, employers had to do a better job of recruiting and were able to persuade millions of sidelined Americans to reenter the labor market. Dr. Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies has recently analyzed the latest federal data that shed light on this hopeful trend among working-age Americans who had left the labor market entirely. People outside the labor force are those who don't even try to find a job because they are so discouraged by some combination of poor working conditions, low pay, inadequate benefits, and, most importantly, employers not interested in trying to recruit them. For more than half a century (since Congress renewed mass immigration), the percentage of working-age Americans in the labor force had been falling. But the trend finally reversed in 2015 during the upturn in the economy that began under Pres. Obama and continued under Pres. Trump until the pandemic. Dr. Camarota explained: "The increase in labor-force participation began in 2015, with most of the improvement coming after 2016, as immigration fell. Of course, labor-force participation can and does fluctuate and is impacted by many things. But the pre-COVID-19 upturn is the most sustained period of improvement in labor-force participation among prime-age men since 1962." Conventional wisdom among the opinion elites was that there wouldn't be enough Americans to fill the jobs being created by the growing economy. But Pres. Trump stood against the appeals to increase the flow of foreign workers INTO the country. Instead, his "unwelcome mat" escalated the flow of foreign workers OUT of the country. We now have another proof of concept as a powerful defense against the so-called "experts" that the mainstream media love to trot out. Their claims are that the remaining tens of millions of Americans sidelined out of the labor force are either too lazy, too demanding, or too ignorant to fill the jobs that the foreign-born are actively recruited to do. As Dr. Camarota concluded: "(T)hings clearly improved for American workers even as immigration slowed. So the idea that very high levels of immigration are required to increase opportunities for Americans is invalid. . . . (R)ecent trends in labor-force participation are consistent with the possibility that American workers benefit when there is less immigration. In sum, the strong economy coupled with lower levels of immigration that characterized the first years of the Trump administration seems to be the best of all worlds for American workers, at least with regard to labor-force participation." FACING HARD AND LIKELY REALITIES OF A BIDEN ADMINISTRATION Colleagues, there is no question that our cause will suffer some setbacks in 2021. That's because the new Administration will be able to unilaterally kill some excellent new regulations and procedures that have made it more uncomfortable for illegal aliens to stay here. But other anti-enforcement executive moves by the new Administration can be slowed down and even blocked by your vigorous grassroots action guided by the expert behind-the-scenes work of our NumbersUSA staff. The Biden promises about deportations make it clear that no present or future illegal foreign worker will ever have to go home unless he or she is convicted of a violent felony. We have to find another way to keep pushing illegal workers to leave. NumbersUSA is preparing a SHAME CAMPAIGN to try to persuade the Biden Administration to protect American workers with workplace enforcement against unscrupulous employers. That could dry up enough illegal-alien jobs to keep the out-migration flowing. This is our opportunity. THIS IS OUR JOB! Biden has pledged, in his first 100 days, to send a bill to Congress that would GIVE AMNESTY TO NEARLY ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS so they will never have to leave. But sending a bill to Congress is one thing. GETTING IT PASSED is quite another. Here at NumbersUSA, we've proved multiple times over this quarter century that our Action Network can stop bad immigration bills dead in their tracks. But we currently are far short of the level of funds that were required for us to beat back the Bush/Kennedy amnesties of 2006 and 2007, and the Gang of Eight amnesty of 2013. Thanks for all you have done, and thanks in advance for what you can do now. There are three ways to donate: 1) Make a recurring or one-time donation via our web page, using your credit card or Paypal. 2) Check -- see the instructions and a form to print out and send with your check. 3) Call (703) 816-8820 to arrange a wire transfer, stock donation, or to make a credit card donation over the phone. If our office is closed, please leave the time and your phone number and we will call back. ROY BECK Important: NumbersUSA Action is where we need funds the most. If you need a tax deduction, however, you can also give to NumbersUSA Education and Research Foundation, where gifts are tax deductible. All donations to the Foundation must be postmarked or given online by December 31. Thank you!
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