The Immigration Crisis

Crossing the Border to Insanity

Let me begin by stating that I recognize national borders as arbitrary perimeters drawn by and around nation-states. I have no love for the state. In fact, the state should be abolished. I have declared, in no uncertain terms, that the state is a violent parasite that produces nothing—other than misery, that is. The state is an oppressive institution that, among other legitimated crimes, drains the social body of capital, extorts the productive elements of society, interferes in market transactions, distorts markets, and engages in wars to expand its power base and its control over the domestic population. This assessment is especially true of the United States.

But I do believe in society. And I believe that society should be protected—from the state and from all others whose actions are inimical to it. The real political opposition and class antagonism is, and has always been, society versus the state, or the people against the state. The state is our enemy. Once these battle lines are clearly understood, we can correctly assess all political phenomena, including immigration policy.

In terms of immigration, what we are dealing with today—in the US and in Europe—is an intentionally state-induced, NGO-abetted, and leftist-approved trauma to society. The state gains from a traumatized society, which becomes more helpless in its opposition to state power. Where state-induced immigration is concerned, trauma is experienced in terms of the robbing of taxpayers; the draining of the treasury; increased crime, drug, and human trafficking; and the insecurity that all these elements, combined, produce in the social order. The immigration crisis is not the result of “the unrestricted movement of human capital” across borders but rather an artificially induced assault on the social body. The “market” for immigration is being dramatically distorted by state interference and financial incentivization.

The Federal Funding of Immigration

In the US, the federal government largely obscures its taxpayer funding of unfettered immigration through NGOs and other organizations, who receive tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies through several federal departments, including the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Much of this funding ostensibly comes through religious and other “philanthropic” organizations, which makes opposition to the funding appear antihumanitarian and invidious. However, the funding mostly originates from the federal government, which funnels it into NGOs. This means that the funding has been extorted from taxpayers, who not only foot the bill for immigration but also suffer its consequences. This double whammy arguably strikes the poorest in society the hardest. The Department of Homeland Security should be renamed the Department of Homeland Insecurity, as insecurity is what it primarily produces.

According to Forbes, in 2022, the NGO Catholic Charities USA received $1.4 billion in government support, compared with $1 billion in private donations. Meanwhile, News Nation Now reported that the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service received more than $93.1 million in US government grants in its 2021 financial statement, making taxpayer-funded grants more than 80 percent of its total support. In 2022, the “Jewish-American” NGO, HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) received over $23 million from the US Department of Health and Human Services, over $59 million from the Department of State, and over $10 million from the Department of Homeland Security. At least 47 percent of HIAS’s revenue came from the federal government in 2022, with the remainder coming from corporate and other donors.

The United Nations, through its International Organization for Migration (IOM), also distributes social welfare payouts to incoming immigrants. The IOM hands out debit cards and cash payments to potential incoming immigrants, mostly at the border. Mind you, the United States is the UN’s largest donor, contributing, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, 22 percent of its annual budget—which means that a significant share of its budget comes from US taxpayers. The UN’s contribution to Latin American immigrants to the US is confirmed by a UN document entitled “Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan.” The updated plan shows hundreds of millions of dollars targeted for incoming immigrants by national origin, totaling $1.6 billion for seventeen Latin American countries. That means that US taxpayers will have contributed at least $352 million per annum to the UN’s IOM schemes. In all, an estimated $1.6 billion has been earmarked for over thirty “faith-based” nonprofits and UN NGO partners in 2024, much of it coming from US federal government agencies, including the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration and the US Agency for International Development. Money is doled out to incoming migrants and immigrants for debit cards, food, clothing, medical treatment, and transportation.

Conclusion

Real libertarians know that it is not “humanitarian” to rob one set of people to benefit another set of people, regardless of the supposed intent. The extortion of US taxpayers to benefit incoming or resident immigrants, whether the latter are legitimate refugees or not, is still extortion. Legitimate charity is another matter altogether, although “charity” that puts pressure on public services paid for by others is not charity either. If “charities” and NGOs wish to demonstrate their noblesse oblige, they should not do so with other people’s money and resources—especially not with US taxpayer money.

(Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire on July 12, 2024).

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