Tune in later today, at 3:30 PM sharp, to watch Numbers USA’s live webcast. It takes place every Thursday afternoon. Today Roy Beck & Co. will probably discuss his organization’s phenomenal TV ad campaign pressuring Congressman Dave Camp to free the E-Verify bill from his Ways & Means Committee. As I’ve pointed out in the past, this is the only significant immigration enforcement measure with a chance of passing during this session of Congress, which is why this debate is so pivotal. I urge you all to tune in later today to see what Roy has to say about it.

On the day when you’re forced to fork over a portion of your income to our less than gentle overseers, it’s instructive to examine some of the things that your taxes are put towards. And since the focus of this site is our misguided immigration system, I thought it appropriate that we explore this particular aspect of our government’s tax sinkhole.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 70 percent of illegal immigrant households receive payments from at least one government welfare program. Immigrant households in general-including those headed by illegal aliens-do not fare much better, with 57 percent taking advantage of at least one government program intended to assist low income families.

If we travel back to 1995, we find that households headed by illegal immigrants collected over a billion dollars in AFDC and food stamp benefits, a figure that has only increased since the eligibility requirements were loosened in the wake of the Great Recession. Like the President’s Aunt Zeituni, thousands of illegal aliens live in subsidized housing; as many as three percent of public housing residents according to some estimates. More opportunistic illegal immigrants were recipients of taxpayer-backed home loans during the housing bubble, to say nothing of those that misrepresent their identities in order to collect benefits-such as SSI-illegally.

However, all of these instances of exploitation amount to a mere accounting rounding era when we consider the true costs of unfettered immigration and laxly enforced immigration laws. Namely, the exorbitant costs illegal immigrants and their families-due to jus soli-accrue when taking advantage of our generous health care and K-12 education systems. The brunt of these costs are borne primarily by the states, which have to deal with what amounts to a series of unfunded mandates by the federal government that refuses to enforce immigration laws, preferring instead to sue states that are trying to do something to ameliorate the situation, e.g. Arizona and Alabama.

These costs do not even take into account the price we will all pay if amnesty is enacted. According to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, legalizing the 14-20 million illegal aliens currently living in this country will cost upwards of two and a half trillion dollars. In other words, the cost of comprehensive immigration reform-should it be enacted-will be over twice the size of last year’s budget deficit. Keep in mind, these are conservative, but realistic, estimates of what the next great amnesty will cost taxpayers.

So if you think you’re paying an excessive amount of your income to the publican today, just imagine what it will cost you when we are forced to support a group of foreign dependents the size of Illinois.

That, of course, is Roy Beck, the founder and executive director of Numbers USA, which-as I’m sure my readers are well aware-is the single most effective grassroots organization lobbying on Capitol Hill for immigration enforcement. I had the pleasure of listening to a fascinating address he delivered at the Penn Club in Manhattan last month, the penultimate in a series of lectures sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies-events that attempt to cultivate journalists, writers, and intellects living and working in New York who share a common interest in the subject of immigration.

Mr. Beck’s speech focused largely upon the Sisyphean task he and his colleagues face in persuading resistant lawmakers to address our sieve-like system of federal immigration enforcement. Numbers USA was  created from the ashes of the Jordan Commission, whose recommendations-including that the number of immigrants return to its historical norm of 200 to 250,000 per year-were wholly ignored by both Congress and the president at the time, William Jefferson Clinton. The testimony of Congresswoman Jordan is worth revisiting, for it illustrates how far short the federal government has fallen of the goals laid out by  the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. Contrast how she frames her first point:

Our goal should be zero apprehensions-not because aliens get past the Border Patrol but because they are prevented entry in the first place.

With the wholesale abandonment of enforcement at the border by the current administration, which coincides with ICE’s administrative amnesty for over 300,000 illegal aliens. One of the primary objectives of the Jordan Commission is as elusive as it was when first enunciated  nearly two decades ago.

The second plank in the commission’s recommendations, i.e. removing the jobs magnet that attracts so many illegal aliens-and which allows them to remain in this country indefinitely-is still relevant, however. In fact, the movement to eliminate this spigot of illegal immigration through E-Verify formed the basis of Roy Beck’s talk, which focused mainly on his organization’s attempts to move HR 2885, the Legal Workforce Act, through Congress and onto the President’s desk.

Although a contentious issue even among allies-mainly because it preempts statewide immigration crackdowns-the move to implement mandatory E-Verify on a federal level is the only enforcement-specific bill that has a realistic shot at being passed before the end of this session of Congress. That’s why Roy Beck chose this subject as his platform for his speech before the Penn Club. As someone who works Capitol Hill on a daily basis trying to impart patriotic Americans’ point of view to member of Congress, he is in the ideal position to see how immigration law is made, or in the case of E-Verify, thwarted.

The takeaway from his speech, unfortunately, is that the change in House leadership from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner last year has been, if anything, a net negative as it concerns advancing legislation like E-Verify. The new Speaker has done everything in his capacity to see that enforcement measures die in committee, mirroring the open borders dogmatism of his predecessor. While his lieutenants, in this case Chairman Fred Upton of the Ways & Means Committee, obstruct the implementation of employer verification on parochial grounds, i.e. it infringes upon his committee’s jurisdiction over Social Security, Boehner’s opposition is rooted in ideology.

As hard as it is to believe that someone as politically calculating as Boehner could hold any deep philosophical convictions, his hostility to employer verification and enforcement is deeply ingrained. In fact, this longstanding opposition has been noted by many observers-not least by Numbers USA itself-and his superficial support for employer sanctions was merely a pretext to ingratiate himself with skeptical conservatives before attaining power. The remarkable aspect of his stance though is that he maintains it in spite of  Chamber of Commerce support  for E-Verify, a political breakthrough that Roy Beck  admitted would have been unthinkable in 2010.

Numbers USA has conducted polls that demonstrate a solid majority among all ethnic groups and political affiliations back E-Verify-most demographics supporting the measure in excess of seventy percent-but the political appeal of immigration enforcement among the general public has never been a strong selling point among GOP power-brokers. However, a creature of the Chamber of Commerce-which even  Boehner’s admirers would probably admit is a fair description of the current Speaker of the House-doggedly opposing a bill on which the Chamber has signed off demonstrates how committed he and his deputies are to preserving the status quo, i.e.  prolonged unemployment for millions of Americans and an endless stream of unskilled, cheap labor. Two problems that states which take this problem seriously don’t seem to be experiencing.

How, then, do Americans who care about this issue passionately change things? If the leader of a party that ostensibly cares about illegal immigration-or at least makes a pretense of caring during periodic election cycles-won’t do anything to advance a bill that has nearly universal support-even, rhetorically at least, from President Obama-what alternative remains? One of the bright spots of Beck’s talk was his insistence that grassroots citizen activism does have a tangible impact within the Republican Caucus, even at the leadership level.

Although it might not seem like it from public pronouncements, the faxes, e-mails, phone calls and letters sent to Republican congressmen-and to a lesser extent, responsive Democratic congressmen-exert pressure upon them to hold the line, which is why we were able to defeat the Dream Act when it came up for a vote during Harry Reid’s lame duck session of Congress in 2010. However, even Republican members with solid credentials on immigration enforcement are wavering on this issue-as are those GOPers with more opportunistic stances on immigration-so pressure must be constantly applied, even in those cases where you might not think it necessary.

I’m convinced that the fundamental lesson to be gleaned from the experience of Roy Beck and Numbers USA is that the mission of defending America is ongoing and requires extreme vigilance; an anecdote Beck recounted in which Frank Sharry lamented what seemed like the imminent passage of E-Verify during a forum in which they both participated is illustrative in this regard. The forces supporting unfettered immigration and defiance of the law never relent, even after repeated rebukes, because they realize that there is an extensive, well-funded lobby-furnished with copy by almost the entire news media-ready to push on a partially open door-in the form of Congress and this administration-in order to see their agenda enacted.

We have neither the seemingly endless coffers nor the pliant apparatchiks placed throughout media circles enjoyed by our opponents. On the other hand, we do have something that open borders advocates can not lay claim to. Namely, the enthusiastic support of the American public. We also have cadres of citizen activists in the truest sense of the phrase; these are people who are not rewarded with lavish endowments from the Ford Foundation, but rather seek only to protect the lives and careers of their fellow Americans.

This is why Numbers USA serves such a vital function to the immigration enforcement and reform movement. It amplifies our voice and pipes it into the ears of lawmakers who customarily refuse to hear anything that contradicts their shared assumptions about immigration. As Mark Krikorian said in his introductory remarks, while the Center for Immigration Studies has immeasurable work as the think tank of immigration realists, without Numbers USA we would be lost as a country. That’s why I urge all of you to enlist in the struggle and support the work of Roy Beck and his colleagues.

You can start by visiting the action center on their official website, where you’ll be able to reach out to lawmakers-including your own congressmen and senators-who are reluctant warriors-or in some cases, opponents-in this battle. Numbers USA does yeoman’s work, but it can’t do its job without the assistance of thousands of ordinary American citizens fed up with how Washington D.C. works.

Such was the title of a debate held at the Asia Society, sponsored by Thomson Reuters, which I attended several weeks ago. Coming at a time of agonizing societal fissures arising from debates over austerity, stimulus, and the wisdom of government intervention into the economy, this event pitting the backers of a Hayekian view of economics against those who espoused a Keynesian model seemed incredibly timely. After explaining to the audience the general structure of the debate and how it would be judged-spectators were given gadgets similar to those distributed at IQ2 debates, which they were to use to vote for the side they agreed with at the beginning and conclusion of the debate-Harold Evans and Nicholas Wapshott, author of Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, limned the underlying philosophical division that gave rise to this debate. 

As the introductory remarks made clear, the 80 year-old clash between Keynes and Hayek was “one of the most vituperative divisions in economics,” and the fact that this debate still carried resonance many years after the deaths of both men demonstrated the pertinacity of both schools, which reflected in some measure the confidence that both men had that their views reflected the definitive understanding of how economics works at an empirical level. Despite the deep esteem in which Hayek held the world-renowned English economist as a young man in post-war, inflation-wracked Austria-Keynes was celebrated throughout the territory  of vanquished Central Powers for his anti-Versailles manifesto, The Economic Consequences of the Peace-he would eventually become the chief intellectual antagonist of Keynes among neo-classical, liberal economists.

Although attempting to synopsize either man’s complex body of work into a few sentences is impossible, it’s generally understood that where the two men differed was in their philosophies about economic growth. Whereas Hayek was adamantly opposed to the easy money policy pursued by some central banks and felt that inflation was the primary scourge of humanity, Keynes believed that deflation and mass unemployment were more pressing concerns. He felt that there were moments in history where a misallocation between supply and demand because of microeconomic actions led to recession and unemployment. Therefore, the government needed to spur demand in certain sectors of the economy whose stagnancy could not be sufficiently addressed by the free market.

This point was emphasized by one of the Keynesians in particular, Steven Rattner, who most of you might remember as President Obama’s car czar. Others might remember him chiefly for the 10 million dollar settlement he was forced into by Andrew Cuomo after a lengthy SEC investigation involving his private equity firm, Quadrangle. Either way, he maintained that, despite his abiding faith in capitalism, there were moments in history when the government needed to rescue the free market from itself. His chief example of such a case was the large federal bailout of failing Detroit auto-makers Chrysler and General Motors, which he supervised. Rattner asserted that the domestic auto industry would have collapsed, had it not been for the direct intervention of Congress and the White House in 2008 and 2009. The capital markets were simply not willing to lend to GM or Chrysler, with the result being that both companies faced imminent bankruptcy-and their suppliers a similarly parlous fate-if the government did not step in to save both corporations with a desperately needed line of credit. In this case, one extended at the expense of American taxpayers.

It should be noted that the federal government’s response to what Rattner described as a “market failure,” but which his Hayekian opponents-during the question and answer period-labeled a “market verdict,” has come in for criticism from both the left and the right. This critique of the actions by Washington D.C., at least from a Hayekian perspective, is remarkably similar to the criticism leveled against the New Deal policies Keynes played a large role in shaping during the Roosevelt administration. Namely, that the government does not have enough knowledge, and certainly hasn’t the right tools, to redress structural, macroeconomic problems such as unemployment and deflation. Even if there is a place for government intervention-and James K. Galbraith, the lead debater for the Keynesians, was quick to specify all the areas in which Hayek believed the government should play some role-it must recognize the inherent danger of trying to manipulate economic outcomes.

The two most critical areas where that danger manifests itself are fiscal stimulus in the form of deficit spending, which inevitably leads to a greater debt to GDP ratio, and the inflation that results from monetary easing. These were also the two areas that came in for the most criticism from the Hayekian side. In particular, Manhattan Institute economist Diana Furchgott-Roth, who pointed out that our current debt to GDP ratio was higher than at any time in this nation’s history since the Second World War. She also took aim at a report co-authored by former Obama administration officials Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, which attempted to predict future  unemployment rates both with and without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the Stimulus Bill. Romer-then in charge of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors-famously predicted that without the stimulus plan the unemployment rate could rise as high as 8.8%. Of course, our currently unemployment rate, stimulus included, well exceeds that figure.

Sylvia Nasar, a business journalist who teaches business journalism at Columbia University, countered that monetary policy is more effective in dealing with problems like persistent unemployment, citing the work of Milton Friedman, probably the most emblematic monetarist of the latter half of the 20th Century. She also invoked the examples of pre-WWII Sweden and Japan, neither of which experienced the deep economic depressions of Western Europe and North America, yet both of which  ”ignored Hayek’s advice” with regard to monetary policy. Nasar insisted that there was a deep correlation between monetary stimulus and economic recovery, using the two examples above as evidence that determined policy had prevailed against “nature’s cure” in the realm of ideas. This raised yet another point of contention during the debate, which was the Keynesians’ accusation that their Hayekian opponents were complacent do-nothings who had no concrete plan to address pressing macroeconomic dilemmas such as unemployment.

Lawrence H. White, an economics professor at George Mason University, vigorously disputed this assertion, noting that Hayek advocated constancy in the money supply when advising central banks, and advocated the maintenance of nominal spending in order to avoid deflationary spirals. Even so, White reiterated the Hayekian critique of fiscal stimulus, reasserting a classical liberal maxim that we “don’t undertake public works whose costs exceed their benefits.” This jab was aimed at the public infrastructure investment envisioned by the Obama stimulus package, which Diana Furchtgott-Roth described as a thinly-veiled payoff to President Obama’s supporters among organized labor. In a swipe at an iconic passage from Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, White summed up his contempt for this sort of public investment for the sake of stimulating the economy by asserting that “we can’t restore prosperity by having the government build pyramids.” This, in turn, prompted a retort by one of the Keynesians that the construction of the Giza pyramids was an abundant source of jobs for Egyptian laborers. Hence, a boost for the economy of Egypt.

In addition to the standard Hayekian critique that this sort of fiscal stimulus debases the currency, and therefore impoverishes the standard of living, White also tackled what most feel is the proximate cause of the 2008 economic crisis. Namely, the burst of the housing bubble. He claimed that “we had permanently reduced our living standards by over-investing in real estate during the economic boom.” John Cassidy, a staff writer for The New Yorker and perhaps the most solidly anti-Hayek speaker on the Keynesian side, also identified the cause of America’s economic as being the collapse of the housing market, but assigned blame to the private sector. He dismissed the Austrian diagnosis of the causes of the collapse, asserting that the Community Reinvestment Act had little to with the skyrocketing foreclosure rate, and the culpability of GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was minimal when compared to the exposure of private sub-prime lenders who engaged in reckless lending and catastrophically bad or ill-timed investments. Cassidy went even further than most of his colleagues on the Keynesian side, asserting that “Hayekianism is not even a distinct policy doctrine,” and that Hayek himself “gave up the debate with Keynes about macroeconomics.” Cassidy wrapped up his remarks by quoting current chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan, who at a congressional hearing during the 2001 recession encouraged deeper tax cuts that would “juice the economy.” Cassidy, echoing the sentiment of other Keynesians, such as Ezra Klein, claimed that this statement demonstrated the resonance of stimulus spending, even among those who would reject the label of Keynesianism.

For his part, Stephen Moore agreed that tax cuts were an integral component of economic growth. However, he rejected the notion that Keynesianism was responsible for the economic growth the United States experienced during the 1980s. Using September 1983 as a benchmark, since it was the same point in the Reagan presidency as we are experiencing in the Obama presidency, he contrasted that month’s employment figures, which saw the creation of over 1.1 million jobs and a third quarter growth rate of 8.4%, with the anemic growth our economy is currently experiencing. Moore also pointed out that the Paul Volcker-led Federal Reserve had applied precisely the Hayekian remedies that the other side decried, yet his constriction of the money supply not only slayed the inflationary dragon but seemed to disprove the Keynesian assumption-voiced by Keynes followers like Sylvia Nasar-that monetary easing was inextricably linked with economic growth and robust employment. At the same time that Moore praised the policy prescriptions adopted by President Reagan, he faulted his inability to encumber spending by Congress. Of course, John Cassidy took a contrary view, asserting that David Stockmam’s failure to rein in discretionary spending as Chairman of the Office of Management and Budget was a boon to the U.S. economy. He also claimed that the tepidity of the current economic recovery should be attributed to the decline in spending at the state and local level, which is commensurate with the rise in spending at a federal level.

Perhaps the most intriguing statement made during the course of the hour and a half-long debate was the claim by James K. Galbraith that “the United States is not in a debt trap; debt levels, by historical standards, are not that large.” While this might seem like an implausible claim when viewed in the context of a national debt that eclipses 14 trillion dollars, and a government whose payment obligations range from 100 to 200 trillion dollars, it is not an entirely aberrant perspective. In fact, there is a rather popular book whose author attacks the very notion of retiring the national debt.

What was surprising about this debate was the willingness among some of the Hayekians to countenance government intervention into the economy, although perhaps it shouldn’t have been considering the political views of Hayek himself, who supported numerous interventionist policies during his lifetime. To the chagrin of my anarcho-capitalist friends in the audience, Edmund Phelps-a 2006 Nobel laureate in Economics-repeatedly emphasized areas in which he supported government intervention into the economy, at one point during his closing statement even rejecting the label of “Hayekian.” During his opening remarks, he made the point that the depressions experienced by Keynes were monetary in origin-signaled by rapid deflation-and that, as a response, monetary policy had to be altered. Since the economy in our current financial crisis initially faced what was essentially a liquidity problem, “the Keynesians were right to urge the Fed to increase demand for money.” Phelps contended, however, that since today what we are facing is a “structural slump” Keynes’s theory of employment was not applicable. In addition to supporting the first round of quantitative easing undertaken by the Federal Reserve, in his closing remarks Phelps seemed to imply that portions of the jobs’ plan put forth by President Obama were worthy of consideration.

I’m not sure if it was this nuance that led to the ultimate result, but at the conclusion of the debate a slim majority, 52% of the audience, professed themselves to be “pro-Keynes.” It should be noted, however, that this was only an increase of 5% from the outset of the evening’s debate, whereas the “pro-Hayek” side of the ledger gained the support of an additional 9% of the crowd, from a starting point of 33%. The Hayekian interpretation of this result is that the anti-Keynes forces were more persuasive in making their arguments, although strategic voting might have also played a role. In either case, I think the debate over whose ideas are more sound will persist for some time. Perhaps it will even be expanded to include an even more consistently anti-state Austrian viewpoint that will satisfy my disenchanted anarcho-capitalist friends.

Mises vs. Fisher anyone?

When the subject of illegal Palestinians living inside of Israel is broached, we more often than not view it through the prism of  terrorism directed against the Jewish state. Considering the collaboration between Israeli Arabs and Islamic terrorist organizations in the region, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, that’s not an altogether baseless concern.

We’ve also been told countless times of the alleged plight of Palestinians working inside of Israel illegally, often within the context of a broader condemnation of Israel’s construction of homes for citizens living on the West Bank.

What’s less frequently discussed are the problems posed by the large sub-population of Palestinian illegal aliens living within Israel on a daily basis. The gravity of this problem though was made apparent recently when an eleven year-old Israeli boy was habitually raped and tortured at the hands of four Palestinian men. As gruesome as this crime is, it reflects the enormous problems you invite into your country when you sanction the presence of hundreds of thousands-or in our country’s case, millions-of illegal aliens. Peruse New York tabloids from the past decade and you will find hundreds of criminal incidents that illegal aliens lie at the heart of, including one of the most notable cases, the brutal murder of acclaimed actress/director Adrienne Shelly by a nineteen year-old IA from Ecuador.

Nations can continue to ignore this problem-in order to reap the dubious benefits of access to a cheap supply of labor-or they can grapple with the enormous human cost of illegal immigration. As last week’s horrific revelations in Israel demonstrate, this is a problem that all Western nations must face, even if they are reluctant to do so.