3 hours Ago
If you caught the CBS debate between Vice Presidential candidates, you saw Trump’s running-mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, connect three out of every four questions to one issue: the Biden-Harris Administration’s failure to secure the U.
S. border. In one exchange CBS moderator Margaret Brennan attempted to “fact-check” Senator Vance on whether a meaningful connection exists between immigration and rising housing costs.
Even though CBS promised not to “fact check,” Vance took the challenge and promised to post evidence from the Federal Reserve establishing the connection. Minutes after the broadcast, he posted on X the following quote from Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman: “Given the current low inventory of affordable housing, the inflow of new immigrants to some geographic areas could result in upward pressure on rents, as additional housing supply may take time to materialize.” What is astonishing is how Harris defenders will, with one breath, point out that birth rates in the U.
S. are falling and immigration is needed to keep our workforce responsive to demand. Then with the next breath they appear to deny that these additional bodies need houses.
Constitutional conservatives approach the immigration issue with empathy and compassion. Since 1868 American courts have recognized an individual’s “freedom of movement” is one of those “unalienable” Constitutional rights granted by a Creator to all humans. The concept is deeply engrained in Judeo-Christian ethics, starting with the divine directive to Abraham’s family to flee Sodom and Gomorrah by “voting with their feet.
” Leaving an evil dictatorship to save yourself and your family has since been recognized as a basic human right. But in every and all cases the immigrating family is expected to seek out, study and comply with the rules and customs requested by the intended host country. The failure on which Vance indicts Harris is not “immigration” per se, but apparent lack of any rule of law governing border crossing.
We are simply not screening entry into the country the way our laws require. This became obvious in a September 25, 2024, letter from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency answering an inquiry from Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas.
The congressman had requested crime statistics on undocumented immigrants. The astonishing numbers revealed that over 600,000 citizens from foreign countries now reside illegally in the United States with serious criminal convictions or charges pending. Again, the Harris apologists have picked the ICE response apart, countering that ICE’s data only discloses federal incarceration and doesn’t reflect that some among these numbers may already be in custody in state and local prisons.
But that misses the point. Take the number of illegal immigrants convicted or facing charges of homicide: nearly 15,000. That is 15,000 out of the 14 million illegal immigrants that the Center for Immigration Studies currently estimates residing in the United States.
Three million of those entered just during the Biden-Harris Administration. Now compare that to the rate of murder in Idaho, currently reported at 2.2 per 100,000.
At that rate, one would expect the nation’s illegal immigrant population to be responsible for no more than 308 murders. The reported 15,000 convicted or charged cases of murder put the undocumented population at a rate nearly 400 times more “murderous” than Idahoans in general. “Invited into the United States” should mean “vetted and found worthy live peaceably in our free society.
” That’s not just an aspiration embedded in our Constitution; it also happens to be current U.S. law.
It is clear from the Vice-Presidential debate that the Trump-Vance ticket isn’t relenting in their attack on Harris for cataclysmic failure at the border. And unless Harris and Walz find better answers between now and November 5th, they don’t deserve any slack..
