Voluntary Deportations Gain Steam

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

On Monday, the Trump Administration announced it is tripling its bonus to $3,000 for illegal aliens who voluntarily self-deport, along with free travel back to their homeland. Liberals can hardly complain about this Christmas gift to those who crossed our border and remained in our country in violation of our laws.

Many illegal aliens are willing to self-deport. Since Trump became president on January 20, a remarkable 1.9 million illegal aliens have voluntarily returned to their home country according to data released by the Department of Homeland Security, although some dispute this total.

Involuntary deportation costs an estimated $17,000 per individual, so it makes sense to share the savings in a way that everyone comes out ahead. There is room to sweeten this pot further while still trimming the overall expense.

The average lifetime cost of an illegal alien for American taxpayers is $100,000, with some estimates higher than that. The demands placed by these migrants on government entitlement programs, remedial education in schools, law enforcement, and our health care system are far greater than the $3,000 being offered for them to return home.

Self-deportation is the primary method by which President Dwight Eisenhower achieved the largest deportation in American history in 1954. It would have been unthinkable then for liberals to interfere with the president in removing aliens from our country.

CBS News had prepared a smear piece against Trump’s forced deportations, and scheduled it to air on its 60 Minutes show on Sunday evening. But merely two hours before airing, the newly installed CBS editor-in-chief pulled its one-sided story off the air, illustrating that Trump is winning on this issue.

Another victory for Trump came last Thursday, when Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan was convicted of a felony count of obstructing federal agents seeking to arrest an illegal alien who was in her courtroom on battery charges. Dugan sent the federal agents in one direction while leading the illegal alien to exit by a private jury door to evade arrest.

It is safer to arrest a suspect in a courtroom than to try to catch and handcuff him on the street, which was a point emphasized by federal prosecutors during the short trial of Judge Dugan. She has continued to collect her full salary of about $175,000 as a judge despite being a felony defendant, and she vows to appeal her conviction.

Liberals are appalled by the jury verdict, as they are accustomed to juries in D.C. rendering every verdict against Trump and his supporters. D.C. and Virginia grand juries have even refused to indict opponents of Trump, despite how indictments are nearly always automatically rendered as prosecutors request.

But Wisconsin is in middle America, and the 12 mostly rural counties that comprised that jury pool are nothing like D.C. Few if any of those jurors in Wisconsin are federal employees, as D.C. juries predominantly are, and Trump won Wisconsin in the last presidential election.

Conservatives who were once disappointed at Trump for not building a full border wall during his first term in office, because Congress failed to fund it, are seeing that deportations have nearly as strong an impact as a wall would.

There has been a 93% decrease in apprehensions at the southern border near San Diego, a 50-year record low of only 1,793 apprehensions. During the Biden Administration a year ago, there were more than 24,700 apprehensions for the same two-month period.

The termination of the catch-and-release program, whereby the Biden Administration would senselessly release illegal aliens in the United States after capturing them, is cited as one reason for the disappearance of nearly all of the illegal crossings. But surely the high-profile deportation program by the Trump Administration is the single biggest factor.

Still, some say that the deportations need to go faster in order to meet the goals set by Trump. There have not been as many workplace raids of illegal aliens as expected.

Where illegals have been arrested en masse and deported, it appears that Republican areas like Omaha, Nebraska, have been targeted more than Democrat strongholds like Los Angeles and New York. The much-publicized raid on a food plant in June in Omaha was in a swing district that Democrats hope to capture in the midterm elections.

The thousands of Democrat loyalists who staff the Department of Homeland Security still have their jobs, and have not been replaced by conservatives. Those staffers appear to be picking regions for deportation for political reasons, rather than to meet Trump’s goals.

Activist judicial rulings have also hindered deportations from Democrat strongholds. For more than two months the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to resolve an emergency petition on this issue by Trump’s Solicitor General, John Sauer, despite quickly ruling in his favor nearly two dozen times on other issues.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Job Visas Are Costing GOP Elections

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The young men who carried Trump and Republican Senators to victory last November have recently been drifting back to the Democrat Party, or staying home, in the off-year elections. The perception that top jobs in America continue to be given to foreign workers is a big reason why.

Last week Democrats flipped a Republican state house seat in a special election in Georgia, an upset that has rattled Republican leaders nationwide. A Democrat who fell short of 40% last November won this seat with a 12-point gain, signaling the potential for landslide GOP losses in the upcoming midterm elections.

Job postings for recent graduates and students have dropped by more than 16% this year on one popular website. Unemployment for recent graduates is higher than overall unemployment, a historic shift that is bad news for young men.

On Saturday the New York Times ran a long story about the dismay among young Trump supporters (dubbed zoomercons) at the continued use of the H-1B visa program that allows ambitious foreigners to grab jobs in fast-growing industries such as robotics and AI. Most of these jobs are entry-level and do not require any special skills other than an engineering degree that many unemployed American graduates have.

The job prospects for college graduates this year are near a record low. Imagine spending four or five years working hard and incurring a pile of debt, only to be unable to find employment as our own government is recruiting foreigners to fill these positions.

Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, and other tech giants are run by foreigners now and, like chain migration, they tend to hire workers from their homeland. In the most recent fiscal year, 71% of H-1B visa workers came from India and 12% came from mainland China, almost none of whom is Christian or likely to assimilate into American culture.

Last week many H-1B visa holders received official notices from their consulate that their visas have been “prudentially revoked” due to their run-in with law enforcement. But these notices take effect only if the foreigner leaves the U.S., so their impact is to encourage these foreigners never to leave.

A commentator in India, lamenting the brain drain from his country, applauds Trump’s new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which is being challenged in court by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a separate lawsuit by 20 Democrat-led states. Very few of the H-1B visa holders ever return to their home country, even though a visa is supposed to be only temporary.

Big Tech companies have amassed record-breaking wealth, at levels never seen before in world history. They do not need the incentive of H-1B visas, which enable them to hire lower-cost foreigners who would face deportation if they leave to work for a competitor.

It is not only Big Tech that is abusing the visa system. Professional sports, particularly baseball and basketball, are also bringing in too many foreigners to take jobs that should be going to Americans.

Many types of visas for entertainers and other highly paid workers are also being abused to give coveted positions to foreigners rather than American citizens. High-paid finance positions, such as investment banking, medical positions such as physicians, and executive management employment are going to foreigners on visas too.

It is wonderful that Trump is rebuilding American manufacturing, which traditionally offers higher wages than unskilled menial labor. But manufacturing is only 9% of the American workforce, so even if Trump were able to double that it would still not be as large, or as well-paying, as jobs in all the non-manufacturing fields that foreigners are taking on visas.

The professional baseball and basketball players who come here on visas should be sent back home after a year or two, or not allowed here in the first place. American teams can play foreign teams, including competing with them at the Olympics, and nothing is gained while much is lost by promoting and overpaying foreigners to play on American teams.

The three largest contracts in Major League Baseball have been given to foreign players. More than half of the players on the Houston Astros this past baseball season were foreign-born, despite how Texas high schools and colleges are rich in athletic talent.

One of the biggest travesties is in college basketball, where foreign players who are not serious students gobble up scarce scholarships and publicity here at the expense of American players. As budget shortfalls hit college athletic programs due to court-imposed liabilities, it makes even less sense to have foreigners playing on American college basketball teams.

There is a panoply of different visa programs available to foreigners to enter the U.S. at high salaries. These programs should all be shut down as part of the MAGA goal to protect and create good job opportunities for American citizens.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

The most important anti-feminist

Michelle Goldberg writes in the NY Times:

In 1982, Phyllis Schlafly, perhaps the most important anti-feminist in American history, debated the radical feminist law professor Catharine MacKinnon. Schlafly believed that sexism was a thing of the past; to her, if women had different roles in society than men, it was due to their distinct talents and inclinations. She herself, she said, had never experienced discrimination.

Dems Try to Thwart Republican Redistricting

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Republican redistricting is sweeping the nation, from North Carolina through Texas. Districts are typically redrawn every ten years following the census, but they can also be revised by a state legislature at any time.

Control of the House of Representatives hangs in the balance, where the majority is determined by a margin of only a few seats. Whichever side controls the House gets to decide what is voted on, and if Democrats regain power there they will surely try to impeach President Trump yet again.

The redistricting movement can allow Republicans to pick up as many as ten seats, thereby enhancing their current margin of control. The Indiana legislature is debating a plan that would yield a net GOP gain of two seats in that small state alone.

The Supreme Court gave a green light to this effort last month when it stayed a lower court decision in Texas that had blocked the redistricting effort there, which could give Republicans up to 5 more seats in that state alone. Several entrenched Democrat incumbents, including Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), announced their retirement earlier this month rather than seek reelection against a younger Democrat in a newly drawn district.

Texas holds a very early primary, which is less than three months away, so the Supreme Court had to act fast to allow the redrawn lines to take effect. The High Court has not rendered a full ruling in the challenge to this, but in another case appealed from Louisiana the Court is expected to weaken a provision of the Voting Rights Act that Democrats have used to thwart Republican redistricting.

The Missouri legislature recently redrew its congressional districts, as many Democrat-controlled legislatures such as next-door Illinois have already done in the past to maximize their representation in Congress. But Democrats just submitted 300,000 signatures on petitions seeking to overturn the Missouri legislature through a vote of the people at an upcoming election.

The initiative process is allowed in roughly 20 states, and Democrats have been using it in Ohio, Missouri, and many other states to advance abortion, gambling, and marijuana. These measures enable dark money-funded groups to bypass state legislatures entirely, and that is particularly improper for redistricting, which is exclusively for state legislatures to decide.

On Monday, a Trump-appointed federal judge dismissed as premature a lawsuit by Republicans in Missouri to preserve the authority of legislative redistricting from being overturned by a ballot measure. U.S. District Judge Zachary M. Bluestone punted the issue to the Missouri Secretary of State, saying that he “has a tool at his disposal that almost no other litigant could boast — the power to declare the petition unconstitutional himself.”

While the Missouri redistricting would achieve a gain of just one GOP seat, unless it is reversed by a ballot initiative, a similar type of redistricting in Florida could net three to five new GOP seats. Currently 20 out of the 28 congressmen from deep red Florida are Republican.

Florida holds a late primary, nearly half a year later than Texas’s, on August 18 of next year. So there is plenty of time for Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature there to do this right.

Florida, too, has a ballot initiative process that bypasses the legislature, but fortunately it requires a 60% threshold for passage while Missouri and other states require only a simple majority. In Ohio a ballot initiative attempted to establish a more Democrat-favorable process for redistricting but it was defeated last November as Trump won that state by a landslide.

Ohio has a redistricting plan expected to swing two seats to the Republican side, but a stronger plan could do even better. A decade ago Ohio sent more Republicans to Congress than it does today, even though Ohio was less Republican then.

Redistricting in Pennsylvania in 2010 was what helped convert that former Democrat stronghold into a state that Republicans can win, as they have when Trump heads the ticket. But now Democrats control the Pennsylvania legislature and the state supreme court, so there is no prospect of a new redistricting effort there helping the GOP, even though Pennsylvania voter registration is on course to give Republicans a majority next year.

The Department of Justice has sued California over its ballot initiative that would add even more Democrat-majority congressional seats. But in that case the popular vote overturned a prior initiative, not the legislature, as Democrats are improperly doing in Missouri by seeking to block the Republicans’ legislative redistricting there.

It is overdue for courts to invalidate wide-ranging ballot initiatives that encroach on the legislative function, and Judge Bluestone erred in not swatting down the Democrats’ ballot measure in Missouri. There could soon be a swift appeal of his decision to the conservative Eighth Circuit.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

The End of Migration

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

While President Trump placed a moratorium on migration to the U.S. from third-world countries, Pope Leo was speaking against migration in Lebanon. These two leaders with very different backgrounds reached the same conclusion.

The Pope was addressing Lebanon, which has the largest Christian population in the Middle East amid a Muslim majority. He declared, “There are times when it is easier to flee, or simply more convenient to move elsewhere.”

He emphasized that “it takes real courage and foresight to stay or return to one’s own country, and to consider even somewhat difficult situations worthy of love and dedication.” He urged people not to leave their homeland, adding that “we must not forget that remaining in our homeland and working day by day to develop a civilization of love and peace remains something very valuable.”

Joe Biden should have adopted that approach for the 200,000 Afghans whom he disastrously brought into our country. One of them has been charged with shooting two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., killing one young woman and critically wounding a young man.

The shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was reportedly living in an apartment without beds, and repeatedly playing the violent video game “Call of Duty” before driving nearly 3,000 miles across our country to go on his rampage. This is not assimilation that is needed for an immigrant to become a productive member of American society.

Biden brought in more refugees than any other president since the end of the Cold War. In 2024 alone, Biden transported 105,500 refugees from multiple third-world countries into the United States, at a time when American college students are struggling to find jobs.

Biden’s lax immigration and refugee policy brings in future Democrat voters, which is the only way that the Democrat Party can survive demographically in the long term. Surveys show that liberal young women are much less likely to have children than conservative young women, and Republican states are growing faster than Democrat states are.

Bringing in hordes of refugees and other migrants has been done by Democrat presidents for political reasons, not because it makes sense for our country or for the migrants. It is impossible to screen so many people from primitive countries like Afghanistan, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that 29-year-old Lakanwal was radicalized after he resettled here.

Refugees are not even required to swear allegiance to the United States upon arrival here. It is only as a final stage in obtaining citizenship that Congress requires an oath of allegiance to our Constitution and laws.

Any foreigner unwilling to swear his full allegiance to the U.S. should not be allowed to remain here, but should be returned to his country of origin. This should be the first step, not merely the last, in every immigration program that is not discontinued.

Trump has properly ordered a “comprehensive review and a re-interview of all refugees admitted from January 20, 2021, to February 20, 2025,” which is when refugees entered our country under Biden’s policies. Trump referenced a Citizenship and Immigration Services finding that the Biden Administration “potentially prioritized expediency, quantity, and admissions over quality interviews and detailed screening and vetting.”

The Biden Administration’s policy allowed millions from all over the world to cross our southern border into our country, with no way to screen them. Many of these illegal aliens were from hostile nations, which Trump has already shut down by beefing up border security.

On November 12, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued its first “Special Message” in a dozen years, to address the migration issue. Although reported by the liberal media as a rebuke of Trump, in fact it included a strong statement against illegal migration.

“We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good. Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation.”

Less than a week later, Pope Leo declared, “No one has said that the United States should have open borders. I think every country has the right to determine who enters, how, and when.”

In September, the Southern Baptist Convention cut its ties with a migration coalition of evangelical groups which has been criticized by Trump supporters for being too permissive toward migrants. White evangelical voters supported Trump by a record 84% in 2024 as he campaigned hard against the open-border policies of Biden and Harris.

But Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), once considered the frontrunner to become Harris’s 2024 running mate, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump’s crackdown on migrants constitutes “the U.S. Government harassing” refugees. The real harassment has been Democrats bringing in migrants who should not be here.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.