Don’t let rural America become the next New York City



Elect strong conservative leaders in your state — or watch it go the way of New York City. That’s the unmistakable warning conservatives should take from New York voters nominating a Hamas sympathizer and self-proclaimed socialist for mayor.

How could this happen just one generation after 9/11? How does the city that suffered most from jihadist terrorism now embrace a foreign-born Islamist who wants to “globalize the intifada”?

When Trump calls for more farm labor from the third world — so long as the workers aren’t 'murderers' — he misses the deeper issue. Violent crime isn’t the only threat.

Several factors explain the city’s decline, but one stands out: immigration. Forty percent of New York City’s population now consists of foreign-born residents — not including the children of immigrants. Mass immigration on that scale, especially from Islamic and third world countries, doesn’t just change the labor market. It imports foreign values and embeds them in the culture.

Trump should think twice about demanding more foreign agricultural workers for red-state America. His arguments about labor shortages miss the larger picture. This isn’t just about harvesting crops — it’s about reshaping schools, neighborhoods, and eventually, the ballot box.

In 2022, the Center for Immigration Studies mapped 2,351 Census Bureau-defined Public Use Microdata Areas to show the percentage of schoolchildren from immigrant households. No surprise: Urban districts in places like New York and Los Angeles show overwhelming majorities of immigrant families.

But that trend now stretches deep into red states. Cities and even rural counties are seeing shockingly high proportions of students from immigrant families.

In southeast Nashville, 65% of public-school students come from immigrant families. Iraq ranks as the second-largest country of origin. In Dallas, all 20 school districts report at least one-third of students from immigrant households. In most of those districts, a majority of families are foreign-born.

This trend extends well beyond major cities. In southwest Oklahoma City, 43% of students come from immigrant families. Greenville, South Carolina, stands at 35%. Birmingham and Chattanooga each hover around 20%.

Red-state cities and midsize towns now reflect immigration levels once limited to coastal urban hubs. That leaves rural America as the last holdout — and even that is changing.

The so-called farm labor trade has transformed heartland communities. These public school districts report the following immigrant family enrollment rates:

  • Texas Panhandle (outside Potter and Randall Counties): 31%
  • Oklahoma Panhandle: 21%
  • Southwest Kansas (Dodge City, Garden City, Liberal City): 55%
  • Central Nebraska: 27%
  • Canyon and Owyhee Counties, Idaho (Caldwell and Nampa): 30%
  • Whitfield County, Georgia: 43%
  • Woodbury and Plymouth Counties, Iowa (Sioux City): 26%
  • Washington County, Arkansas: 26%
  • Fargo, North Dakota: 23%

Until recently, these areas were overwhelmingly native-born. They maintained a strong continuity of American culture and civic tradition.

What happens when the next generation of these children grows up, votes, and brings in more from similar backgrounds? These red counties may not stay red for long.

Mitt Romney won Washington County, Arkansas, by 16 points in 2012. Just 12 years later, Donald Trump carried it by only six — even as he expanded his statewide margin. What changed? More than a quarter of the local student body now comes from immigrant households.

RELATED: New York City’s likely next mayor wants to ‘globalize the intifada’

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Trump won rural Sampson County, North Carolina, by a 2-to-1 margin. Yet, by the 2022–23 school year, Hispanic students made up 44.2% of public school enrollment. The district now runs extensive English as a Second Language programs to meet ongoing demand. Even if Hispanic voters shift modestly right, when has such rapid demographic upheaval ever worked to conservatives’ advantage?

The pace of change is impossible to ignore. Importing foreign labor into rural counties inevitably reshapes culture — and, soon after, voting patterns.

Greene County, Iowa, illustrates the point. In 2023, Hispanic residents accounted for just 3.3% of the total population. But that number underrepresents their influence. Iowa State University researchers found Latino populations in rural Iowa tend to skew young, meaning they disproportionately fill the schools even when their overall numbers look small. That imbalance compounds over time.

When Trump calls for more farm labor from the third world — so long as the workers aren’t “murderers” — he misses the deeper issue. Violent crime isn’t the only threat. The more serious loss lies in surrendering the very communities that naturally align with traditional American culture.

As Vice President JD Vance put it during his Republican National Convention acceptance speech: “America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

That is the nation Trump must promise to defend — not just with words but with sound policy.

Six years to removal? Inside America’s broken immigration courts



In drab, windowless rooms strung along a tight corridor, migrants who have flooded into the United States in recent years trickle before immigration judges each weekday morning.

These makeshift courtrooms are a far cry from the scorched border with Mexico and busy ports and airports through which these millions of immigrants have entered the United States, almost all illegally. But despite the differences in miles, atmosphere, and often language, the people appearing in U.S. immigration court (“alien respondents,” in legal terms) know what is afoot.

Migrants displayed a savvy understanding of immigration law that allows the adjudication of the proceedings to stretch for years.

In many cases, they are making their first appearance after being in the U.S. for years, and with careful pleadings and use of appeals, many know they can stay here for years to come. While Trump administration immigration tactics — such as arrests and deportations — dominate the headlines, the situation in court, where most of the final decisions will be made, is another thing the administration is trying to change.

“A surprising number of the aliens know how to work the system in an attempt to run out the clock on the Trump administration, by requesting serial continuances and filing frivolous or otherwise questionable appeals and by motions to reopen,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge now with the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes wide-open immigration. “Some will be successful, but as the recent immigration court arrests indicate, the administration is attempting to limit those efforts.”

Recently, RealClearInvestigations observed days of immigration court proceedings to gain insight into the current state of a system with a backlog of more than 3.6 million people, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks immigration court figures through monthly Freedom of Information Act requests. New Orleans is but one thread in a sprawling web of often obscure courts, stretching from Massachusetts to Washington and from Saipan to Puerto Rico.

From a first appearance to an asylum hearing, the New Orleans courts seemed busy. This reflects the fact that historically, most immigrants to the U.S. follow their legal schedule, which begins with a “Notice to Appear” being issued to them either when they are apprehended at the border or subsequently after they have been paroled into the 48 contiguous states.

RELATED: Mass deportation or bust: Trump’s one shot to get it right

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“It’s never been the case that people aren’t showing up en masse,” said Kevin A. Gregg, an immigration attorney in California who hosts the weekly “Immigration Review” podcast. “The number of those who show up has always been very high, especially among people who have been in the U.S. a very long time.”

Paradoxically, however, the Trump administration’s recent vow to push arrests of illegal immigrants to 3,000 a day, along with some changes it has made to how it handles court cases, could serve to make attendance less regular, according to Gregg and others critical of Trump’s push. As attorneys and court officials told RealClearInvestigations, “Never underestimate the community,” meaning arrivals know the system from those who have gone through it before them. Now, if conventional wisdom says court appearances could lead to an earlier expulsion from the U.S., those here illegally will shy away.

“With immigration court specifically, ICE has been dismissing court proceedings in order to then immediately detain noncitizens and place them in expedited removal proceedings where they have far less rights and no eligibility for bond,” Gregg said. “Whether correct or not, many noncitizens will likely begin to view this as a trap and may not show up to immigration court out of fear. I don’t condone not showing up, of course, but I believe it’s a possible foreseeable consequence of what ICE is doing right now.”

Already, the Trump administration’s aggressive approach has sparked litigation and civil disturbances, from a Milwaukee judge allegedly helping “alien respondents” escape criminal proceedings to the recent riots in Los Angeles.

A long process

One late May morning, there were four New Orleans immigration courts operating, with a total of nearly 140 people on the docket, most of them first appearances. On this day, no-shows composed a very small percentage of those on the “master calendars,” as the morning dockets are known. In Judge Joseph La Rocca’s courtroom, for instance, only five of the more than 30 respondents listed on the master calendar did not appear; they were quickly handled “in absentia” and deemed removable.

That same day, in Judge Alberto A. De Puy’s courtroom, as many as six languages were used. The court has a Spanish translator present at all times, but for other languages, interpreters on the East Coast join by phone. In the hearings RealClearInvestigations witnessed, these involved Arabic, Hindi, Hassaniya, Turkish, and Konkani, reflecting a large percentage of Middle Eastern or Asian immigrants. Paperwork in the court’s small waiting room is available in seven languages, including Creole and Wolof, an African tongue.

De Puy’s master calendar hearing was a Zoom session with migrants at the federal detention center in Jena, Louisiana. There, men in dull gray scrubs sat in rows, while De Puy scrambled to find translators. This proceeding was further complicated by a protest outside the Jena facility, which has gained notoriety by holding the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil and other foreign nationals arrested by federal authorities since President Trump took office.

No one knows exactly how many people appear in U.S. immigration court each day. “That would be a great statistic, wouldn’t it?” said Susan Long, director of Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. But there are more than 700 U.S. immigration judges, whom the attorney general appoints to the administrative posts under the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. If somehow the New Orleans morning sessions RealClearInvestigations followed could be extended daily to each judge’s courtroom, perhaps a dent could be made in the backlog, which includes more than 2 million pending asylum cases, according to TRAC.

That’s a fanciful assumption, of course, and at first glance, the looming numbers seem daunting to the Trump administration’s goal of sharply reducing or clearing the dockets. Still, some experts see promising signs as the figures for illegal crossings plummet.

If conventional wisdom says court appearances could lead to an earlier expulsion from the US, those here illegally will shy away.

“The situation is improving,” Arthur said. “It’s as if Trump patched a hole in the side of a boat, and now he’s bailing out the water the boat took in.”

For all the hue and cry about due process protections that have captivated activists and the federal bench over the past four months, the migrants appearing in New Orleans displayed a savvy understanding of immigration law that allows the adjudication of the proceedings to stretch for years.

The respondents sat quietly on wooden benches, in some cases accompanied by children. Most were neatly dressed and with their hair carefully braided or combed. The children appeared to be something of a prop, as each time they appeared, the judge asked that they attend school instead of court. Even on a first appearance, many of the respondents seemed to have a good idea of what would happen.

Most master calendar cases involved a “notice to appear,” and few of those were recent. For example, most of the people RCI observed in court the morning of May 22 had received their notice to appear a year and a half ago, in 2023, although a handful had received them as recently as last December.

Few of the immigrants had lawyers, which court observers called a wise move. If it was a first appearance, the judge asked if they wanted representation, noting that while the Sixth Amendment does not entitle them to an attorney, the court maintains a list of immigration attorneys who may offer their services at affordable rates or pro bono. Invariably, the person requested time to find a lawyer and thus received another court date — on these May days, that was set for seven months later in December.

For the others not requesting more time to find a lawyer, the judge rapidly read boilerplate language and determined that the person had entered the U.S. illegally and was subject to removal. At that point, the judge asked the respondents if they wanted to “designate a country for removal should removal become necessary.” Here, the respondents or their attorneys invariably declined.

This is a well-understood delay tactic that often fails. Despite the lack of response, the judge quickly set a country for removal and moved to do the same for a removal hearing. The judges perused their computer screens, presumably for scheduling purposes, and in some cases then scheduled that hearing for 2029.

In other words, almost all the “alien respondents” were given a lot more time. It was not unusual to see people having six years or more in the U.S. between the day of their arrival and a removal proceeding.

‘A lot more detention’

The legal process is different for those in detention, and attorneys and court officials told RCI that “there is a lot more detention” now under the Trump administration. Judge De Puy’s master calendar involved the detained men in Jena on one screen, with the occasional immigration lawyer cutting in from a separate office and a government lawyer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor appearing on yet another video screen.

De Puy gave those making a first appearance months to try to obtain counsel, but he was less forgiving of those who were making a second appearance and asked for more time after failing to obtain representation. Several men — all those appearing were men — requested more time, but De Puy did not grant it in the cases RCI observed.

Some men requested “voluntary departure.” Arthur said this is a ploy that, in the past, allowed immigrants to melt into the interior, thereby delaying their cases, and the government lawyer seemed to have that in mind as he agreed to “voluntary departure” only “with safeguards,” which meant the men would remain in detention until their travel arrangements were made. Just how that might happen and when, given that the migrant is responsible for them, was unclear.

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  Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

There were other oddities. For example, De Puy twice asked a man from India, who entered the U.S. in December 2023, if he would like to “designate a country of removal.” After not answering the first time, the man then replied, “I can’t go back to India.”

“The court is going to designate India as the country of removal,” De Puy said immediately, at which point the man said he would “like to go back to India” and requested “voluntary departure.”

Of those migrants held at Jena who appeared that morning, only those seeking voluntary departure seemed destined to leave the U.S. soon.

The emphasis on detention is not the only major change the proceedings appeared to have under Trump, compared to when RealClearInvestigations first visited immigration court in 2022. Then, the government attorney would often offer what was dubbed “prosecutorial discretion.”

This amounted to a “get out of court free” pass. The judge told the person receiving prosecutorial discretion, “You are free to go and live your life, and the government has no interest in removing you from the country.”

Biden-era prosecutorial discretion

It’s not clear how many illegal immigrants benefited from the Biden-era prosecutorial discretion, as the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about it in 2022 or now. Those who received it were in addition to the more than 2.8 million the Biden administration simply paroled into the country immediately, a novel twist to immigration law subsequently ruled illegal by federal judges.

Under Trump, a similar step is taken with a different tone. In some instances, the Department of Homeland Security’s lawyer announced the government was “dropping charges” as the person is “no longer an enforcement priority.” Doing so does not change the fact that these people have previously been ruled “removable,” and by dropping the charges, the Department of Homeland Security can arrest and deport the illegal immigrant.

Of those migrants who appeared in court that morning, only those seeking voluntary departure seemed destined to leave the US soon.

That has led to arrests right outside immigration courts from Boston to New Orleans and elsewhere. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can’t be outside every courtroom every day, this emphatic new move is precisely the one that could lead immigrants to eschew court as word spreads in the community about what is happening.

Judge La Rocca seemed concerned about this development, which, like some of the novel twists to immigration law under the Biden administration, has sparked federal litigation. At one point, when the government suddenly moved to drop the charges, La Rocca asked the immigrant if he wanted to accept that arrangement, which would leave him “without status” and still eligible for removal, or if he wished to continue to a removal proceeding. The overarching message was that the U.S. may move to deport the person.

La Rocca warned the government to be up front about what this might mean for the respondent, saying he “had heard of cases where he walked out the door and was arrested.”

Although the administration has endured criticism over the lack of due process for migrants deported on planes to El Salvador, judges in New Orleans unfailingly made clear to those in court the options available to them. In nearly every case, when the judge asked a person if he wanted to request asylum, the answer was “yes.”

Seeking asylum

That requires another future court date, usually years down the road. Asylum proceedings are not open to the public absent approval from the judge and the seeker, but RCI obtained such permission to witness two hearings.

In the first, a couple from Honduras who came to the United States in April 2022 had requested asylum on the grounds that they were afraid to return. The woman testified that her brother had been murdered and that when they tried to bring information about the case to Honduran police, in a town hours away from their hometown, a masked man brandished a gun at them. Suspicious cars then began to lurk around their home.

The government attorney asked why they could not move somewhere else in Honduras, or if they had tried to go anywhere other than the U.S. They had not, they testified. The husband said his sister is associated with drug gangs, and consequently, the couple did not feel safe anywhere in Honduras. The woman testified she never planned to immigrate, but for their family’s welfare, they fled here.

La Rocca considered the case privately for some 90 minutes, then denied the asylum application. He told the couple he believed their testimony, but that their case did not meet the asylum requirements, which specify credible evidence that the applicant fears discrimination at home because of race, sex, religion, membership in social groups, or fear of torture.

RELATED: Majority of Americans support deportation of all illegal immigrants

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But that does not end the couple’s immigration court odyssey. La Rocca asked if they wished to appeal his decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. When they said they did, La Rocca told them they must file that appeal in the next 30 days, which would lead to yet another court appearance.

The second hearing RCI witnessed was before Judge Eric Marsteller. That case involved a 2022 application from an El Salvador woman and her two sons, who have each also filed separate asylum claims.

For unclear reasons, the woman’s attorneys withdrew in February, and she told Marsteller that she had been unable to find a replacement since then. Although she has family in the U.S. — a sister who has been granted asylum, a brother, and her mother — all of the supporting evidence for her claim of horrific abuse from her father came from a letter sent by a former partner in El Salvador.

Marsteller accepted the letter but told her it couldn’t be entered into the record because it was in Spanish. A man in court, identified as her stepfather, stated that the woman and her sons live with him in Louisiana, and he informed the judge that he would be responsible for them.

After more than an hour of the hearing, during which the sons departed the courtroom when the woman described her allegations of abuse, Marsteller asked the government for its position. The government attorney informed the court that the notice the woman had received was for a master calendar appearance, not an asylum hearing. Startled, Marsteller was forced to schedule another hearing. It will be in December 2026.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

Clear messaging, closed border: Homeland Security’s campaign is working



The Trump administration can claim many historic victories but none greater than securing the southern border. This wasn’t just the fulfillment of Trump’s signature campaign promise — it was a demonstration that “law and order” means nothing without real enforcement.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has become the face of that message. She appears in a series of high-profile ad campaigns — aired nationwide and internationally — warning illegal immigrants to self-deport or face permanent removal. The ads sparked predictable outrage, but the message remains clear: The days of catch-and-release are over.

After four long and chaotic years, this country is once again speaking up for our sovereignty, our citizens, and our way of life.

But the ads aren’t brazen — they’re brilliant.

Democrats have slammed the ads as a waste of money or a form of political advertising. But the truth is, they hate the ads because of how powerful they are.

These ads reflect a basic truth: DHS has a duty to enforce federal immigration law. Campaigns like these aren't new. The Biden administration ran its own digital push in 2022 under Customs and Border Protection, urging migrants to “Say No to the Coyote.”

But the results now speak louder than any slogan. Trump and Noem haven’t just increased removals or tightened border security — they’ve changed the calculus entirely. Fewer migrants are even attempting to enter the country. That’s the power of clear, consistent messaging.

Biden told the world illegal entry wouldn’t carry consequences. Trump has made it clear those days are done.

As Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies once noted, the power of presidential messaging became undeniable in 2016. Compare the “Trump effect” to the “Clinton effect”: In November 2016, border agents logged more than 63,000 apprehensions. By March 2017 — just two months into Trump’s first term — that number dropped to just over 12,000.

By the end of that term, Trump had slashed both legal and illegal immigration by a staggering 92%. The world took notice.

It’s happening again. After four catastrophic years of Joe Biden, Trump’s return to the Oval Office has triggered a collapse in border crossings. Overall encounters have dropped 93% since he took office. In Panama’s Darien Gap — one of the most notorious corridors for illegal migration — crossings have plunged by 99%.

The message is getting through: America’s borders are no longer open.

Law and order depends, first and foremost, on clarity. It’s one thing to enforce the law, but it’s another thing to make sure everyone knows that you’re enforcing the law. The only way someone can play by the rules is if he knows what the rules are and what the penalties are for breaking those rules.

Why do we write down our laws? Any healthy human society already knows that things like murder, theft, and fraud are wrong. That law is written in our hearts. We write down laws and penalties so that everyone knows exactly what the rules are for living together and what happens otherwise. Advertising the information is the entire point of putting it down on paper in the first place.

RELATED: ‘Self-deport’ flights begin as some illegal migrants take advantage of Trump's tempting offer

  Photo by J. David Ake/Getty Images

If our laws are to be truly just, they must be stated clearly and enforced faithfully. This is the entire point of having a written set of laws, so that everyone knows the rules of the game and the penalties for breaking them.

Laws don’t enforce themselves. Without consequences, they’re just suggestions.

Kristi Noem understood that early. She was the first governor to deploy National Guard troops to the southern border in support of Texas during Biden’s open-border disaster. In one meeting with Border Patrol agents, she heard it straight: “There are no consequences right now. Without consequences, there is no enforcement, and there is no law.”

That’s changed.

Under Trump and Noem, consequences are back. And the whole world knows it.

We are no longer seeing mobs of illegal aliens rushing the border wearing Biden campaign T-shirts, expecting to receive free, taxpayer-funded handouts that candidate Biden promised them on the campaign trail. Instead, the corporate left-wing media is forced to churn out pearl-clutching sob stories about how illegal aliens are choosing to self-deport or how businesses that depend on immigrant traffic through the Darien Gap have collapsed due to the decline in immigration.

The famous chart from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) proves that President Trump accomplished in just 100 days what it took him four years to do last time. And he’s just getting started. These results are not just a function of enforcement. They are a result of messaging.

When America speaks, the world indeed listens. Now, after four long and chaotic years, this country is once again speaking up for our sovereignty, our citizens, and our way of life.

The real labor crisis? Too many visas, not too few workers



After two generations of record-breaking immigration, we’re still flooding the labor market with millions of foreign students and visa workers — gutting entire industries and boxing Americans out of their own economy. On what planet does this country need more foreign labor?

Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it had selected 120,141 H-1B visa applicants in its random annual lottery for fiscal year 2026. While the number is slightly lower than during the Biden years, it reflects the same endless pipeline we’ve seen for decades.

So much for putting American workers first.

A shrinking job market

At any given time, roughly 1.5 million white-collar foreign workers operate in this country on a mix of visa categories — H-1B, H4EAD, L-1, J-1, O-1, TN, OPT, and CPT. That doesn’t even count the more than 1 million foreign students or the birthright citizenship granted to their children, despite many of them being here on “temporary” visas.

The real number of new H-1Bs that should be admitted next year? Zero.

If we truly had a shortage of skilled labor, wouldn’t wages be rising? Shouldn’t entry-level pay be going up?

The only reason we allow India to monopolize graduate programs and entire sectors of the tech and medical industries is to suppress wages. Meanwhile, American companies continue to lay off workers while lobbying to import more foreign labor. That contradiction exposes the lie.

Last September, the Wall Street Journal described what young tech workers now face.

Once heavily wooed and fought over by companies, tech talent is now wrestling for scarcer positions. The stark reversal of fortunes for a group long in the driver’s seat signals more than temporary discomfort. It’s a reset ...

Job postings for software developers are down more than 30% since February 2020, according to Indeed. Layoffs in tech have continued into this year, with around 137,000 jobs eliminated since January, per Layoffs.fyi. Many workers — especially younger ones — are experiencing their first taste of a shrinking job market.

And yet the foreign labor machine rolls on.

If we truly had a shortage of skilled labor, wouldn’t wages be rising? Shouldn’t entry-level pay be going up?

In fact, the opposite is true. The Journal reports that median pay dropped 1% to 2% for software engineers, product designers, and technical managers — precisely the fields dominated by the Indian slave trade, a system of corporate-sponsored indentured labor enabled by the H-1B program.

The wage gap between job-switchers and job-stayers has nearly vanished. Historically, job-changers earned more. Now, thanks to artificially depressed wages and a labor market flooded with visa-bound foreign workers, that advantage has all but disappeared. Wages have nowhere to rise.

Corporations win, workers lose

Federal law technically requires H-1B employers to pay prevailing wages, but enforcement is a joke.

The Center for Immigration Studies found that in 2023, the average salary employers promised new H-1B workers in computer-related fields was 25.2% lower than the average for U.S. software developers.

RELATED: How H-1B visa loopholes are undercutting American wages and jobs

 filo via iStock/Getty Images

And what about the claim that these are the “best and brightest” minds from around the world? According to CIS, H-1B workers in tech were paid 41% less than Americans in the 75th percentile and 53% less than those in the 90th percentile.

So much for “high-skilled labor.” The reality is simple: This is about corporate access to cheap, compliant, and easily controlled labor.

Trump can stop this

So why is the Trump administration approving another 120,000 H-1Bs while American tech workers struggle to find jobs?

While courts have limited the administration’s ability to remove those already here, the Supreme Court has ruled that the president has plenary authority under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to block prospective visa applicants. Section 215(a)(1) gives him similarly broad power to regulate all entries and exits of foreign nationals.

Congress may set the cap — but nothing stops the president from suspending the program entirely in the national interest, as Trump did with the refugee program in his first term.

Here are a few reforms Trump could impose immediately.

  • End the random lottery: Select applicants based on highest salary offers. If this program is truly about skilled labor, prove it.
  • Blacklist diploma mills: Deny visa applications from unaccredited or fraudulent institutions.
  • Reject firms that fire Americans: Companies that lay off U.S. workers shouldn’t receive new batches of foreign replacements.
  • Terminate the OPT program: Created without congressional approval, OPT allows employers to hire foreign students tax-free for entry-level jobs. Trump can end it with a stroke of the pen.
  • Cap foreign workers at 10% per company: No corporation should be allowed to replace Americans en masse with foreign labor.

Trump began cracking down on visa abuse late in his first term, but Biden quickly reversed those gains.

Now Trump is back. So what happened to the promise of putting American workers first?

New immigrants struggle to assimilate — and we all pay for it



When it comes to addressing mass illegal immigration, most people agree that the first ones to deport are the violent criminals who pose a direct threat to Americans. Aside from a few open-borders radicals, few people will defend the presence of “bad hombres” in the country.

But what about the dumb hombres?

We need to acknowledge the challenge of integrating immigrants into our economic, political, and cultural system.

According to a recent report from the Center for Immigration Studies, most of the new immigrants who have come into the country in recent years are poorer and less educated. The report found that “41 percent of adult immigrants who had lived in the country for less than three years had at least a bachelor’s,” that “the share of new arrivals with no education beyond high school increased from 36 percent in 2018 to 46 percent in 2024,” and that “the median earnings of new adult immigrant men fell from 80 percent of the median for U.S.-born men in 2018 to only 52 percent in 2024.”

These numbers might come as a shock. After all, prominent faux conservatives like David French or tone-deaf political aspirants like Vivek Ramaswamy have assured us that incoming migrants were smarter and harder working than the mediocre mass of working-class Americans.

The report easily refutes this narrative. Already bad in past decades, the demographic situation predictably worsened during the Biden administration: “The surge in new arrivals with less education means that immigration has added enormously (3.5 million) to the nation’s low-income population in just the last three years.”

Ideally, American institutions would work their magic and turn these huddled masses into fully assimilated, thriving American citizens. Sure, many of them come with nothing except the clothes on their back, but they came for a better life and are willing to do what it takes to succeed in this country. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Unfortunately, this social alchemy becomes less plausible when the immigrants in question are far less educated and far more numerous than those in the past.

The American dream denied

Rather than live out the American dream, these people will be shut out from the economy and general culture and live out their days as members of a permanent underclass. They may learn a few scraps of English and do honest work, but many will be tempted to criminal activity and remain ensconced in their ethnic enclaves.

For those who think that fast-tracking citizenship and increasing social welfare entitlements can mitigate such an outcome, they can see for themselves how this is going in Western Europe, where every major city now has large suburbs of poor immigrants who refuse to assimilate. Why bother with formal education, working a job, or following the host country’s laws when they can count on receiving a generous check and free services from the government?

To avoid this fate, American leadership traditionally has leaned on public schooling to help new arrivals. True, some immigrants may be relegated to low-skilled work and living on public assistance, but their children and their higher-potential peers could make use of America’s local education systems to learn the skills and concepts to successfully adapt to the American way of life. We just need to train up and pay some more educators to teach ELLs — English-language learners — and deploy them in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.

In all fairness, this approach has proven surprisingly effective. Although many will criticize American public education (I most of all), it is the best in the world at taking in immigrants from the third world and teaching them to operate in the first world. Even if American education fares poorly when compared to that of other countries, this changes when the numbers are broken down. Most immigrants perform better academically than the natives of their home countries.

Nevertheless, educating ELLs, especially from the undeveloped world, comes with tremendous costs that few pro-immigration advocates fully appreciate.

One-size-fits-all doesn’t

In my own state of Texas, every school and district have a sizable ELL department staffed with highly credentialed specialists working through a complex web of requirements of assessing, accommodating, and properly placing ELLs. In most districts, it is mandatory for teachers to be ELL certified, a process that involves several hours of professional learning and passing a four-hour exam.

As one might expect, this eats up a huge portion of state and local budgets. It’s also the very opposite of equitable. For every tiny ELL class with a team of teachers tending to the needs of a handful of students, there are several large AP classes with throngs of students pestering their one poor teacher about their grade. For every ELL regulation to be fulfilled, some other instructional objective goes unfulfilled.

Always remember, no matter how many resources schools commit to this effort, many students will inevitably complete the ELL program without learning to speak English or develop useful skills.

Americans have a few options for educating newly arrived immigrants. The first is to maintain the current system, which is unsustainable given the overwhelming number of arrivals. The second is to deport every illegal alien and their household — a deeply unpopular and likely impractical approach that could violate civil and human rights.

The third option is a middle ground that deports a sizable number of illegal immigrants by expanding criteria to include those with little or no education while reforming ELL policies. Instead of the current bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all approach that burdens many school districts, English-language education should be decentralized and subsidized on an individual basis for greater effectiveness.

At a minimum, we need to acknowledge the challenge of integrating immigrants into our economic, political, and cultural system. While education remains a worthwhile goal, it involves trade-offs that many Americans may not accept. To preserve civil harmony and sustain economic progress, we must adopt a realistic approach that balances national needs with a workable path forward for both current and future Americans.

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America is full. Beyond the ongoing waves of illegal immigration, the country has admitted 36 million legal immigrants since 1989 (68 million since 1965), bringing the foreign-born population to a record 51.6 million. Every year, the U.S. issues 1.1 million green cards, 1 million guest worker visas, and 1.1 million foreign student visas. This level of immigration has transformed the nation over the past generation in unprecedented ways.

The real debate should focus on how much immigration we can curtail. Unfortunately, influential forces connected to Trump donors and transition team leaders are pushing to expand the foreign-worker pool, even though America already has more than enough.

Eight years into the MAGA movement, conservatives should not have to play defense to prevent further increases in immigration after four years of Biden’s disastrous policies.

Calls for more foreign workers come from multiple sources, including Elon Musk, who advocates for increasing foreign-worker visas and green cards. The “tech bros” even persuaded Trump to echo Mitt Romney’s half-baked suggestion of “stapling green cards to the diplomas” of foreign students.

We don’t need more foreign workers

After the election, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) emphatically declared, “We need more work visas,” as though it were an unassailable truth. However, the idea of a foreign-worker shortage exists only among those who believe new jobs should be reserved for foreigners while sidelining Americans.

In reality, all net job growth in the U.S. since 2019 has gone to foreign-born workers. Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni notes that, over the past year, native-born workers have lost 773,000 jobs on net, while foreign-born workers have gained more than one million jobs.

Since before the pandemic, the foreign-born workforce has grown by 3.7 million, while the native-born workforce has shrunk by 873,000. These numbers challenge the narrative that America needs more foreign labor.

  

What began as an argument that Americans won’t do manual labor has evolved into a claim that Americans won’t work in accounting, engineering, computers, or nursing. This belief creates self-fulfilling momentum, working against Americans in numerous industries. As more industries become saturated with workers from India or other countries accustomed to lower wages, salaries are depressed, and Americans are increasingly sidelined — especially as government policies often pay them not to work.

Indian contract companies like Infosys, HCL, Wipro, Cognizant, and Tata have exploited the H-1B, L-1, F-1, and Optional Practical Training visa pipelines to flood Silicon Valley and American tech companies with cheap labor. This approach not only boxes out American workers but also treats many Indian recruits as indentured servants. Over the past few decades, 71% of jobs in Silicon Valley have gone to foreign workers, while 74% of American STEM graduates have failed to secure jobs in STEM fields.

As industries like tech and computers become increasingly saturated with Indian workers, they develop cultures of parochialism and discrimination against Americans. In October, a federal jury found Cognizant, the largest recipient of H-1B visas for many years, guilty of discriminating against American IT workers. During the California-based discrimination lawsuit in Palmer v. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., evidence revealed that tech firms were actively terminating American employees to replace them with H-1B workers, primarily from India.

The population of Indian nationals in the United States has grown 13-fold since 1980. Every year, Indian nationals consistently rank as the second-largest recipients of green cards, with more than 100,000 issued annually. Additionally, there are 330,000 foreign students from India studying in the U.S. On what planet do GOP donors believe we don’t already have enough?

Toward a more balanced approach

The goal of economic policy — including tax, regulatory, welfare, and immigration measures — should focus on bringing sidelined American workers back into the labor force. Yet, one of the primary arguments for admitting so many immigrants is the supposed lack of available workers. This narrative ignores the significant rise in working-age Americans (16 to 64) not participating in the labor force. These individuals are not counted as unemployed because they are no longer actively seeking work.

The combination of welfare incentives and immigration-driven wage suppression has discouraged an entire generation of workers from rejoining the labor force. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, “If the same share of U.S.-born men (16 to 64) were in the labor force in 2023 as in 1960, there would be 9.5 million more U.S.-born men in the labor force. Even if the share returned to the 2000 level, it would still add 4.8 million men to the labor force.”

Instead of flooding the market with more cheap labor, further discouraging these sidelined workers, policymakers should consider a more balanced approach. Combining immigration reform with welfare reform could help incentivize Americans to re-enter the workforce and reverse these damaging trends.

We constantly hear about the supposed shortage of STEM workers, but labor scholar Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies raises an important question: “If employers are desperate for more STEM workers, why have they been lowering the compensation offered?” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compensation for STEM workers in 2023 was actually 7.1% lower than in 2019. If there is a tight labor market, it’s not for Americans but for the growing segment of third-world imports willing to work for less.

Congress banned contract labor immigration in 1891 for good reason. Sections 3 and 4 of the Immigration Act of 1891 prohibited companies and travel agencies from marketing or soliciting immigration with the promise of employment. The Founders envisioned a system that attracted productive immigrants who would assimilate into America’s political system and work freely, rather than one that functioned as a foreign labor mill designed to depress wages for Americans.

As Trump said during the 2016 campaign, “The time has come for a new immigration commission to develop a new set of reforms ... to keep immigration levels, measured by population share, within historical norms ... and to establish new immigration controls to boost wages and to ensure that open jobs are offered to American workers first.”

Trump made these promises before the record-setting immigration years under the Biden administration and before all the new job gains were captured by foreign nationals. Now is the time to fulfill those promises and return immigration to historic norms. Eight years into the MAGA movement, conservatives should not have to play defense to prevent further increases in immigration after four years of Biden’s disastrous policies.

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Illegal aliens’ attempted breach of military base was ‘dry run’ for future attack, says former staffer



Dave Katz, a former federal firearms instructor who worked at Marine Corps Base Quantico near Triangle, Virginia, told Fox News Digital that the attempted breach of the base earlier this month by two foreign nationals may have been a "dry run" for a future attack.

Katz, a former DEA agent and the CEO and founder of Global Security Group, warned that a similar, more dangerous incident could occur again. He told Fox News Digital, "Driving the box truck was a dry run for driving a box truck that was not going to be empty the second time."

"Can I prove that? No. But it's like the 9/11 hijackers trying to get aboard planes with box cutters on other occasions prior to actually perpetrating the act," he added.

'This would be the very first terror attack on US soil from somebody who crossed the border illegally.'

Katz called the incident at the military base the "equivalent of a feasibility study" for the two Jordanian nationals who allegedly executed the stunt.

On May 3, two males driving a box truck attempted to enter the base when they were stopped by security, Blaze News previously reported. The men told the guards they were contracted drivers trying to complete an Amazon delivery. After failing to produce proper identification, law enforcement authorities instructed the men to wait in a holding area so that a secondary check could be conducted.

Captain Michael Curtis told Potomac Local News, the local media outlet that first reported the incident, that the men ignored the guard's instructions and attempted "to move the vehicle past the holding area."

Authorities quickly engaged the vehicle-denial barriers, preventing the box truck from proceeding. Curtis reported that the two men were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It has since been confirmed that both of the individuals were in the United States illegally.

One of the men illegally crossed the southern border into California in April, while the other male was in the country with an expired student visa.

Katz told Fox News Digital that he is skeptical of the men's cover story.

"A student overstay somehow gets in contact with someone illegally crossing into the U.S. on the other side of the country. Both of them wind up in that truck," Katz stated. "There is no possible explanation for what happened other than a sinister one."

"Can anyone come up with any reasonable explanation as to why two illegal aliens from Jordan would be driving a box truck in a sensitive area, other than to try to make a dry run for a future incident?" Katz continued. "If you can't provide an explanation for that, it's terror related."

Fox News Digital reported that neither ICE nor the FBI responded to a request for comment.

The federal government has not announced any evidence of a terrorism motivation, but it has not been ruled out either, Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration Studies recently reported. He believes the incident marks the "first-ever border-crossing terror attack."

During a recent interview on the "Conservative Review with Daniel Horowitz," Bensman said, "If this is what I strongly believe it is, a terror attack on a highly symbolic U.S. military base ... then, this would be the very first terror attack on U.S. soil from somebody who crossed the border illegally."

Bensman told Horowitz that such an event would be "highly significant in an electoral sense."

"The Biden administration is already failing on that issue in such a significant way that he could lose the election over the border crisis. If you were to add a terror attack — national security consummation of a national from a terror attack — then, Donald Trump would obviously grab that like a sledgehammer and start swinging it non stop. I don't think Donald Trump even knows about this yet," Bensman continued. "But even more important than the political aspect of it is the fact that if they don't tell us that this wasn't a terror attack, if they don't rule it out, or rule it in, and ... it just goes away. That means that they are opting to just not fix a major problem at the border."

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