John Kerry says 'Trump was right', Democrats allowed migrant 'siege' of border
By: Anthony Zurcher (BBC)
Immigrant labor won't be supported by offshoring jobs. That's common sense. It's not a debate, it's a choice. If Democrats want a more liberal, lenient immigration policy then they'll need to get tough on trade. But if Democrats want an interconnected world order made possible by free movement of goods and money then they'll need to get tough on immigration.
Immigration and Free Trade work against each other.
The Democratic old guard, like John Kerry, may actually think the problem can be resolved by scapegoating Joe Biden. But the root of the problem has been the Democratic agenda supporting both Free Immigration and Free Trade. The Democratic Party tried to avoid the conflict by throwing taxpayer money at all the problems created by those Pollyanna policies. Joe Biden pushed immigration and Free Trade to the limit which broke the Democratic agenda. Now Democrats have neither and are lost.
There's no debate over immigration. If you want immigration then jobs are a prerequisite. If you want globalism then too many workers becomes a problem. Choose. Which do you want? You can't have both.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Former US Secretary of State John Kerry has told the BBC his fellow Democrats allowed the US-Mexico border to be "under siege" during Joe Biden's presidency.
In sometimes sharp words, Kerry - who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004 and a US senator from Massachusetts - said he told Biden the party had "missed" on the issue of immigration for years.
He said this had allowed Republicans like Donald Trump to gain political advantage.
The comments, made during an interview with BBC special correspondent James Naughtie, underscore an ongoing debate within his party over whether their pro-immigration policies cost them in recent elections.
Democrats have also wrestled with how they should handle Trump's recent nationwide attempts to detain and deport undocumented migrants
"The first thing any president should say - or anybody in public life - is without a border protected, you don't have a nation," Kerry said. "I wish President Biden had been heard more often saying, I'm going to enforce the law."
Such words have been a familiar refrain for Trump during his time in national politics and were included in the 2024 Republican Party policy platform.
But Democrats - many of whom advocate more relaxed immigration laws and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants - attempted to portray Trump's positions as harsh and discriminatory.
According to Kerry, that was a mistake.
"Trump was right," Kerry said. "The problem is we all should have been right."
In the first six months of Trump's second term in office, illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border have dropped to near record lows - although the downward trend began during the last year of the Biden presidency, after the Democrat tightened some asylum rules.
The Trump administration has now shifted its focus to identification, detention and deportation of documented migrants across the US, expanding its efforts to include those who have resided in the US for years.
The move has prompted mass demonstrations in some US cities, including Los Angeles, where federal officials have been carrying out some of the most aggressive action.
Over the weekend, armed federal agents and 90 California National Guard troops conducted an operation in the city's MacArthur Park - a gathering place for nearby immigrant communities. The officials swept through the park on foot, horseback and in armoured vehicles.
"To me, this is another example of the administration ratcheting up chaos by deploying what looked like a military operation in an American city," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, said at an impromptu news conference near the park.
"You can spin it anyway you like, but in my opinion, it's a political agenda of provoking fear and terror."
On Tuesday, Los Angeles and seven other California cities joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging that the federal immigration enforcement actions are unlawful. The state of California has filed a brief supporting the lawsuit.
Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, issued a statement denouncing what he said was a "cruel and familiar pattern of attacks on our immigrant communities by an administration that thrives on fear and division".
The denunciations, and the legal battles, echo the tactics Democrats relied on during Trump's first presidential term, when the Republican policy of separating migrant families that crossed the US-Mexico border generated widespread national outrage.
Such concerns faded, however, and by 2024 stringent immigration enforcement once again became a top Republican talking point.
The Trump administration appears to continue to welcome debate on immigration - an issue where, despite some declining support in recent public opinion polls, they believe they still have the upper hand.
When asked on Wednesday about a push by Democrats in Congress for legislation prohibiting immigration enforcement officers from concealing their identities, Trump said the opposition party had lost its way.
"This is the problem with the Democrats," he said. "They have a lot of bad things going on in their heads. They've lost their confidence and become somewhat deranged."
Democrats are used to derisive criticism from Trump, of course. But some - including party elders like Kerry - are becoming increasingly vocal in arguing that they have given Trump an opening to land his political punches.
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If you want a more lenient immigration system then it's necessary to support tariffs. If want globalized international trade then it's necessary to limit immigration. It's not a debate, It's a choice.
What?? The two are unrelated. Tariffs are effectively a consumption tax. The immigration system serves as a control function for determining who can live in the USA and when.
Again, global trade does not require limits on immigration. We should limit immigration to a) ensure we get people who would be good citizens, and b) to manage our national resources.
Global trade is a different issue.
Quite the false dichotomy. To what end do you post something like this?
But they are related. We're lectured that the United States is a nation of immigrants. Well, what did those immigrants do to support themselves?
In the past, immigrants needed jobs. And immigrants supported themselves and their families with factory work. How do we sustain a large immigrant population by offshoring jobs? How do we sustain a large immigrant population without unskilled factory work?
If we wanted a more lenient immigration system then we could do so regardless of what we do with tariffs.
You seem to think that tariffs will bring more jobs to the USA that are suitable for immigrants. That Trump's idiotic notion that he can force companies to open up factories in the USA with his tariffs is valid. First off, the USA cost structure is not competitive for classical labor-intensive manufacturing. Second, we do not want new factories that are labor intensive; we want smart factories that are largely automated. Third, companies do not make multi-billion strategic decisions based on the nonsensical acts of a lame-duck. They will wait Trump out.
We didn't need all those 20 million illegals allowed by Biden to come in and compete with American citizens for jobs.
They will also have to wait out (probably) 8 years of J D Vance. The Dems don't have anyone capable of winning a national election as they continue their nonsensical fight against the American voters
Then how do we sustain a large immigrant population? The history of immigration in the United States really is intimately connected to manufacturing in the United States. So, how do we defy that well documented history and support a large immigrant population without factory work?
We do not. We control immigration commensurate with desire and resources.
The trend (and this cannot be stopped) is towards automation and it is at a rate and sophistication that we face a very serious forced change in our paradigm. Immigration is a tiny problem here. We are talking about the balance of the USA workforce. There will not be enough jobs to continue with our work-to-live paradigm. We will be forced to shift to something that involves people continuing to be productive, but unable to produce sufficient value to generate the compensation we are used to. This will be a profound change and it is not clear how we can pull this off. I suspect it will be very ugly.
20 million illegals did not enter our nation under Biden. We have never even had 20 million illegals in our history, much less have 20 million more under Biden. What is the point in stating something so obviously false?
No rational executive is going to make long-term strategic decisions based on the whims of an irrational lame-duck.
We probably have that many now, thanks to simply legalizing illegal immigrants and letting them stay. Illegal immigrants, bogus asylum seekers, "temporary" protected immigrants who are allowed to stay for decades easily could add up to 20 million people competing with American citizens and taking welfare.
Because Biden and others lost control of the border and Democrat led localities shelter them, we have no real way of knowing how many illegals there are in the country. It's a guess.
What you are suggesting is automation will mark the end of comparative advantage. What you are suggesting is an automated future allows the United States to manufacture everything the country needs.
If we can't create enough jobs to sustain our own population then immigration must stop, just as you have suggested. But that would also mark an end to the consumer economy. Automation would disrupt international trade as well as immigration. There won't be any point for economic development of the 3rd world because those unskilled workers can't compete with our own automation. Automation, as you have described it, poses a risk that the international, interconnected world order could collapse.
Making up your own facts?
We have never had 20 million illegals in our nation.
How you can get that from what I wrote is interesting. No, that is not at all what I suggested.
No, the USA does not have the availability of natural resources to literally manufacture everything we need. But over time, the planet could indeed be in a position where we can produce all that is needed for the population (assuming our population growth is controlled).
That is irrational. The USA benefits greatly from immigration; we control it ... we do not END it! What we also need to do is control the growth of our population.
Good grief, calm down.
What I described is a pending major problem in our current work-to-live paradigm. It is complex and serious. But it is certainly not a risk for a collapse of the global economy.
Pssst.... U.S. Fertility Rate Drops to Another Historic Low
A good trend. We need that to apply worldwide.
You did not comment on the complex discussion but chose instead to point out a nuance. Have you nothing to offer on the discussion of automation, jobs, and a pending forced paradigm shift?
The entire global economy really is based upon a work-to-live paradigm. The problem is not isolated to the United States.
We've been told that manufacturing won't return to the United States because of the comparative disadvantage of high labor costs. Since automation reduces the cost of labor, our foreign suppliers lose their comparative advantage of low cost labor. Automation levels the playing field. Reducing labor costs will elevate the importance of reducing transportation cost to improve productivity. That will turn the idea of comparative advantage on its head.
What you have outlined is automation drastically reducing the number of available jobs. We won't need unskilled immigrant labor which dominates immigration. Based on automation reducing the number of jobs, it's reasonable to speculate that the number of career paths will also be reduced. More of the domestic population pursuing a reduced number of career paths suggests there will be less need for skilled immigrants, too.
That's economic idiocy.
Correct. And the problem is indeed global. But it is more immediate to nations like ours, which are moving beyond labor-based manufacturing.
Correct. The USA will not see labor-intensive manufacturing as it was in the 1980s and before.
Correct.
It is wrong to deem all immigrant labor as unskilled.
Get out of the 1980s. Become aware of the fact that we are moving out of the industrial age where we needed an increasing population to man the machines and produce.
Human manufacturing labor is not the backbone of our nation. Our economic prowess is now and will continue to be even more based on scientific discoveries, engineering innovation, solving key problems, natural resources, good faith, and our economic momentum.
It will be driven by AI, robotics, and competing in an environment unlike what we have experienced to date.
Absolutely, it's going to be a shitshow.
I expect we're going to see a dramatic increase in labor-intensive manufacturing as more people lose access to corporate hiring and jobs. What we're likely to see is a revival of cottage industry. Today's side-gigs could become the main source of income in the future. People are going to continue to work to support themselves but automation will be unaffordable.
I agree that the assembly line mega factories of the 1970s and 1980s won't come back. The productivity gains derived from economy of scale has been depleted. Automation can't extend productivity gains much farther.
You are citing 10 year old data from a source that doesn't provide services for those who cannot legally work.
Right. when we could actually fund our social welfare progams.
Boomer economics. Run up 70 trillion in unfunded liabilities for future generations, fight like hell to add more people (and foreigners) to welfare rolls to exacerbate the problem and then advocate for fewer people to pay of those debts they ran up, so those few descendants they do have will spend their lives paying for them and pay the price of reduced benefits themselves. .
So you shift from claiming that reducing population growth (and immigration) in the USA is NOT an important factor ("economic idiocy" were your words) given the pending substantial reduction in USA jobs, to talking about funding social programs, borrowing money, adding more immigrants, etc.
Do you understand that the USA will be running short of jobs and that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future or not?
Make up your mind.
The jobs are not there.
You cannot be serious.
Then cite a counter.
I didn't shift from anything.
given the pending substantial reduction in USA jobs,
So you must be a hardcore immigration restrictionist and remigration supporter than.
to talking about funding social programs, borrowing money, adding more immigrants, etc.
Yes, do you not understand what a shrinking population will do?
So your response is 'nuh-uh'.
Non sequitur.
My position on immigration is this (easy to see from what I already wrote): we should manage our immigration to ensure that we accept people who provide value to the USA (predominantly) and commensurate with our ability to assimilate the numbers (resources, etc.).
I am not, however, in favor of rounding up illegals who have been living and working in the USA for years and who have been, while domiciled, gainfully employed, not criminals, and especially if they are raising a family.
You apparently do not recognize that fewer jobs will be available as we progress into the future.
(NOTE: manufacturing does show up on the list.)
Manufacturing showed up on my list too. So what do you think you are refuting?
You cite the trend towards freelance work. The fact that jobs shift into new forms is not in question. I noted that the number of jobs is decreasing.
If you think you can counter that then show how the unstoppable momentum of AI and robotics will create more jobs (or, for that matter, keep available human jobs stable).
Focus on the actual question / challenge instead of deflecting to a non-disputed side issue.
You requested citations. That's what I provided.
Then explain how a market based economy can continue without a work-to-live paradigm. AI and robotics cannot sustain a stable market based economy with income for consumers. If government falls back on redistribution through taxation to maintain a market based economy, then the fewer high value jobs created by AI and automation won't benefit from productivity gains.
My counterpoint, using freelance and gig work as examples, is that people will continue to work. They will create their own jobs that directly provide benefit. Displaced workers across business sectors won't be traditional workers or traditional consumers in the work-to-live paradigm of market based economics.
By displacing large numbers of workers and fundamentally changing how a market placed economy works, the economic justifications for AI and automation become meaningless. Productivity, GDP, and profitability won't mean the same thing in that new economy.
By the end of this century, if not before, the unemployment rate in the US will be , permanently , 75% or higher. People will be paid a universal basic income so they can afford to be consumers to buy all the products and services robots will be creating and doing better than humans can. Whether this set up will be considered a utopia or dystopia will be the only remaining question.
If one asks for a citation for 'X' and one delivers a citation for 'Y', that is not actually providing a citation.
I do not have a solution. Why do you think I expressed this as a complex and profound problem?
A nice fantasy. The idea that so many people will have the entrepreneurial / creative / business-savvy / etc. skills to generate value (and thus money) is a nice dream. But it is just a dream.
One can only hope we will evolve to such a nice end state. But what you present is merely an end-state, not a solution to the problem; not a means to achieve that end.
Freelance, as described, merely describes a different form of employment. It does not in any way illustrate how new jobs are created. To make this crystal clear, we have freelance reporters (again, just one obvious example) today. They could work for a media company as an employee or freelance. When someone freelances, they have not created a new job; they merely changed the mode of their employment.
Creating new jobs means increasing the size of the market in such a way that human beings are required to sustain the market.
Possibly.
I agree the unemployment rate is going to rise unless we can come up with a way to grow our economy to the point where we have sufficient jobs. This strikes me as near impossible because as time goes on, the rate of growth of the economy will have to increase as more human jobs are automated away.
UBI is certainly one alternative (solution?) that is being proposed. But I haven't seen any explanation for how the few who do work can provide enough money to support those who don't?
IMO it seems more likely that work requirements would be a consequence of that UBI future. Those who work and pay the taxes will expect others to work, too. By limiting access to jobs and earned income to a smaller number of workers, those workers will have more leverage to demand work requirements for those on Medicaid (or UBI).
There will be a relatively small amount of corporations or individuals who own all the robots. The UBI will be funded through taxes paid by these monopolistic owners of the robots. The robot owners will still be the richest people in the world, even after high tax rates.
What does moving the goalposts accomplish? Channeling TACO?
Will deployment of AI and automation be democratic or autocratic? What will be the role of government? Will the voting public have a voice in its own future?
Doesn't that suggest a possible solution?
Are homeless people entrepreneurs? Or are they more akin to hunters/gatherers?
Entrepreneurship is a byproduct of the work-to-live paradigm that AI and automation will overturn. People will be working for themselves and not to participate in a market economy as we know it.
IMO freelance work, as described, means self employment. It's still work but it is not a traditional, defined job. Freelance and gig work doesn't conform to the same sort of work-to-live paradigm we have been discussing.
I agree. Should job creation be democratic or autocratic?
How do those corporations or individuals owning the robots make money? The majority won't have jobs which means they won't have income to buy things from corporate and individual robot owners.
If the idea is to tax corporate and individual robot owners to give people income that they give back to corporate and individual robot owners then what's the point? The corporate and individual robot owners would only be getting their money back. That's not going to sustain an economy.
Exactly. So when I ask for citations for how freelance will create new jobs (as in grow the jobs in aggregate), delivering citations of how more people are using freelance does not suffice.
Probably a bit of both. Government will do as it always does, it will do some regulation and the politicians will spend most of their efforts finding ways to enrich themselves. The voting public always has a voice. The question is if they will use it wisely. Given the election and support of Trump, one wonders.
If you are not going to be serious, I am not interested.
To a degree. As noted, the majority of people are followers (not leaders). That has been true for all of recorded history. I doubt that will change much.
If you work for a plumbing firm and then become a one-man-show freelance plumber, there is no net job growth. The market did not expand.
Ideally it would be democratic, but a purely democratic approach would likely fail. As with all things in life, it will likely be a mixture. There will be those who lead and those who follow and the general population (the demos) will provide guard rails.
Monopolies can and will manipulate the economy to their advantage.
How will they make money ? They will charge more for the products and services than it costs to produce them. When there is a 75% unemployment rate you have to have 75% of the population on welfare.
This is not my prediction , it is the prediction of futurists.
That's exactly what I provided. The statistics show that more freelance jobs are being created. It's true that businesses and government are not creating those jobs. Nevertheless jobs are being created by individuals. Isn't that a more democratic form of job creation?
Why is it not a serious question? Homeless and street people are not institutionalized. They take an active role in supporting themselves. Their subsistence is their business. Why would that be considered entrepreneurship? Is it because they do not work for profit?
Isn't self employment a more democratic form of job creation? The predictions that traditional jobs will disappear means a lot of people will have a lot of time on their hands to do whatever work they choose.
One last time, Nerm. The idea is to increase the number of jobs, not merely substitute one mode of employment for another.
They're not displaced workers. These are people entering the labor force as self employed workers. They are creating a new job for themselves. Hasn't this been a contributing factor for employers having difficulty finding workers?
It is a choice of freelance or direct employment. That is zero sum. Even if this is their first job. It does not increase the size of the market.
While I recognize that some percentage of these are entrepreneurs who are indeed expanding the market, the vast majority are not. As I noted before, few leaders, mostly followers in human history.
New jobs are created when new markets are created or extant markets are expanded (without stealing from other markets). The existence of freelance work does not show how we would net expand our markets to keep everyone employed.
You mean, like Uber or DoorDash? The pandemic created a new class of self employment. What the freelance statistic suggest is that job creation no longer depends upon job creators. The politics of 'job creators' is beginning to become obsolete without the involvement of AI and automation.
What you have suggested is that AI and automation will do away with job creation, to a large extent. That will make everything associated with job creation obsolete; education, investments, politics, etc. The forecasts you've made is suggestive that the bulk of the human population will become parasitic and unnecessary. And you've claimed the loss of the work-to-live paradigm will become an intractable problem.
My contention is that people will begin working for themselves. People will find ways to provide for their survival and comfort without the job-creator paradigm. The statistics on freelance work supports that contention; these are not displaced workers, they are independent workers. And that is the likely future that will result from deeper integration of AI and automation into the work-to-live and job-creator paradigm. By eliminating workers (and consumers) AI and automation could force themselves into niche markets. Attempts to redistribute the productivity gains as some sort of UBI (or welfare) would undermine the incentive to adopt AI and automation.
To me the idea that AI and automation will be so disruptive as to change the way market capitalism works seems irrationally dystopian.
Not sure it is possible to get you to acknowledge the difference between shifting jobs and actually creating NEW jobs. You continue to pretend that an independent worker means a new net job. The key is to net increase jobs in the USA, not just change them. The key is to go from n jobs to n*m jobs where m > 1.0
That requires an increase in our production and it would need to be at an accelerated pace because the percentage of human jobs (vs. AI) is diminishing.
You will believe whatever suits you. Irrelevant. AI is reducing the number of jobs in the USA. We either create net new jobs to keep up with this or we face a change in paradigm. People working more independently (not conventional employment) does not provide the solution. The solution (to keep our current paradigm) necessarily must create new markets or expand existing markets and do so at an accelerated pace.
That's not how job creation works. That's not what reported unemployment numbers mean. The number of jobs fluctuate for a variety of reasons. The recovery of jobs following a recession has been termed 'job creation' according to institutional metrics for employment, jobs, and job creation.
What the data shows is that freelance and gig work has become a new class of job. And the growing number of freelance workers does show job creation according to the institutional metrics.
The traditional metric of unemployment has been falling while the number of freelance workers have increased. That one, simple metric provides data suggesting that jobs have gone from n jobs to n*m jobs where m>1.0. The real world measures of employment, jobs, and job creation satisfy your requirement.
Job creation ≡ more net jobs in the USA
It's not 1950 anymore.
Unskilled jobs are now everywhere.
This.
The tariffs will be gone years before they can finish building the factory, and they know it.
Except it's never actually worked that way before.
There will simply be different jobs. There will be more career paths, not fewer. That's how it always works.
This is like announcing 2 plus 2 =4. Sadly for the so many democrats, they still don’t get it.
Oh puhlease, the muddle of MAGAs can't even count that high.