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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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Are you conflating encounters and admissions?

Regardless, I don’t think the average illegal alien is voting. They don’t appear to have done so in the last election, at least.

I don't have data on the "average illegal alien," but it does seem like some will make the attempt.

https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1839371055728918923

Biden-Harris TPS program is flying migrants directly into small communities with government subsidies. They released a special app for immigrants to apply to while waiting in other countries. Pew estimates just under a million immigrants:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/29/how-temporary-protected-status-has-expanded-under-the-biden-administration/

(The figure cited shows a few countries with TPS approval older than the current administration, subtract those for an estimate. Notably Trump rescinded TPS for a few countries during his administration and it was treated as a big deal.)

Hundreds of thousands of illegals are coming in across the border. Here's a pew post about how Biden stopped Title 42 expulsions, leading to Title 8 Apprehensions (they get a court date and then leave lmao):

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/migrant-encounters-at-the-us-mexico-border-hit-a-record-high-at-the-end-of-2023/

This article tries to put a positive spin on it by claiming Republicans are overestimating. The result is, still, alas, of course, millions of illegals coming in through the border:

https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/breaking-down-the-immigration-figures/

Of those 6.5 million encounters by CBP, 2.5 million people have been released into the U.S. with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the future, or other classifications, such as parole.

Here's another great AP fact check which concludes that Biden and Harris aren't flying hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the country, because they're actually just flying hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the country on purpose:

Trump said during his speech, “Today it was announced that 325,000 people were flown in from parts unknown - migrants were flown in airplane, not going through borders ... It was unbelievable. I said that must be a mistake. They flew 325,000 migrants. Flew them in over the borders and into our country.”

But migrants are not being flown into the U.S. randomly. Under a Biden policy in effect since January 2023, up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter the country monthly if they apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at a specified airport, paying their own way.

[...]

Biden has exercised parole authority far more than any of his predecessors, which Trump calls “an outrageous abuse” that he will end if returned to the White House. Biden has granted entry — by land or air — to at least 1 million people using parole, not just the 327,000 who flew from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua or Venezuela though December.

The article then alleges that paroled immigrants can't become citizens, but that's not really true: eventually they simple stop being paroled immigrants because their status increases to some other status. There are law firms scattered all over the country dedicated to figuring out how to give legal citizenship to these kinds of immigrants. The government pays them!

I don’t think the average illegal alien is voting.

They acquire citizenship and then overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. Which is Musk's claim: if Harris wins election, these immigrants will stay in the US and form a voting block that will vote Democrat in 2028, by which time there will be even more and more immigrants on the path to citizenship.

Anyone who is going to be voting in 2028 already has a green card, unless they are married to a US Citizen (meaning a 3-year rather than a 5-year qualifying period) and their naturalisation happens unusually quickly.

All those anchor babies grow up with citizenship. Give it time

Unless you have some wildly compelling evidence otherwise, most of what I've seen indicates that those born in the US, raised in the US, even to immigrant parents tend to vote at least in broad strokes similar to their peers, and don't follow their parent's preferences to any abnormal degree. Certainly it's hard to imagine an 18-year-old voting Democrat for the sole reason they are eternally and perpetually grateful for their parents being allowed into the country by Democrats 18+ years earlier... that's just not how people vote.

Who are their peers?