What Happens When America Becomes The Free Donut Shop?

We should have at least one simple rule when it comes to legal immigration: If you are here to sponge off the American taxpayer, get the hell out. 

Don’t plan on working? Out. Bring an entire family, most of whom will draw on the taxpayer dime? Nope. 

This is what the Trump administration is arguing. 

And New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the rest of the Democrats are screaming bloody murder.

The question is: Why? Why are Democrats so desperate to import people who are dependent on the American taxpayer? Why aren’t Democrats concerned with the people who actually pay the taxes in the United States? 

When my great-great-grandparents came here from Lithuania and Russia more than 100 years ago, they had pretty much nothing. And they were entitled to pretty much nothing because that’s the way that things work. 

This was true of virtually all immigrants to the United States for roughly the first 160 years of our existence. They came here knowing that they probably weren’t going to get anything. There were some mutual aid societies, perhaps some friends and family who were already here, who might be able to help them out. 

But the government was not going to be the primary means of support for these people. And they knew it. They were coming here because they were coming for the opportunity. 

First, all of that meant high levels of assimilation. If you couldn’t get paid without a job, and if you couldn’t get a job without assimilating, you actually had to assimilate. 

My great-great-grandparents came here speaking Yiddish, and within a generation everyone was speaking English. This was very common among immigrants from the places that my ancestors came from. They came here, and they said to their kids, “You are not allowed to speak Yiddish in the home. You actually have to speak English so that you can learn English and then assimilate.”

Second, it meant much greater involvement with social institutions. If you were a Christian immigrant and needed help, you went to your local religious institution. That was good, because when you go to your local religious institution for help — as opposed to going to the government — that comes with strings.

If you’re part of a community and you’re drawing from the communal pool in terms of support, you owe something to the community. You’re not simply getting a faceless check in the mail.

Third, the situation drew a certain type of immigrant, a type of person who came here for the opportunity, who wanted to work, and who was upwardly mobile. That was the basic bargain. 

It’s the difference between a store putting out a “help wanted” sign and a store putting out a free donut sign; the stores draw two very different types of people. “Help wanted” brings people looking for a job; “free donuts” brings the people who want free donuts. 

If you change the incentive structure, you are going to draw different people. 

For nearly 150 years — longer than any modern federal welfare or entitlement program has existed — U.S. immigration law has included some form of public charge exclusion. In the Immigration Act of 1889, Congress excluded paupers and persons likely to become a public charge.

Congress recognized that, given the fact that the United States is very wealthy, a lot of people would come here and be better off as paupers than they would be staying in their native countries. That remains very true today.

The current form of the public charge rule is found in the Immigration and Nationality Act. It provides that any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa or in the opinion of the attorney general at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge, is inadmissible.

The problem is pretty much no one is getting deported on this basis. No one. The current standard is based on a 1999 interim field guidance issued during the Clinton administration. That standard is not particularly hard to meet.

In 2017, roughly 1,000 immigrant visa petitions out of 1 million were rejected based on the public charge rule, which is insane. The idea that you have over 1 million people who are coming here, many of whom will become public charges, and only 1,000 of whom get rejected on those grounds, is nuts. 

What happened? Why wasn’t the public charge rule really implemented? Look at the history of how immigration worked in the United States. In the beginning of the 20th century, there was vast migration to the United States, but virtually no federal welfare programs. Then, in the 1930s, you had the New Deal programs, which were accessible to legal residents, but immigrant households were less likely to receive welfare than native-born households.

It progressed from there.

One of the reasons that you have seen a vast spate of right-wing upsurges in Europe is not just because of a lack of assimilation or no-go zones across the continent, from Sweden to France to Germany. It is also because of welfare dependency.

Welfare dependency and crime have a heavy overlap because if you are coming to a country to take advantage of its welfare benefits and not integrate into the system, the same mentality that says that the government owes you something, that says society owes you something, makes it easy to justify stealing from people.

So why do Democrats favor this? 

Because Democrats love importing people who become dependent on the government. They want them to become citizens, and they want them to vote. That is the goal, because that fosters the kind of government they seek. 

Zohran Mamdani would love to import millions more people into Manhattan, increasing demand without increasing supply, to have those people be dependent on public welfare benefits and then vote for him.

If you can vote with other people’s money, you will keep doing so until the end of time. 

Thus, the Trump administration announced that it was going to start strictly applying the public charge rule that insists that if you come here and you’re dependent on welfare benefits, out you go. 

The Democrats have gotten very upset about this. Mamdani joined other mayors across the country in a joint lawsuit to challenge the new public charge rule on Monday.

Entitlement programs are a massive problem. They drive our national debt. They bankrupt cities. They bankrupt states. They bankrupt the country. The very idea that these programs are titled “entitlements” as opposed to what they actually are, which is the dole, is a way of changing the mentality people have toward drawing from the state.

In the movie “Cinderella Man,” the main character, James J. Braddock, has to go on welfare in the 1930s. In one scene, after he becomes rich again by boxing, he brings money back to the welfare office and drops it off. 

No one in America would do that now because of the entire mentality shift about taking taxpayer dollars.

Remember, taxpayer dollars, even ones that are created out of thin air by racking up the debt, are someone else’s dollars. They do not belong to you. But because we keep saying “entitlement” over and over and over, the basic idea is that you’re entitled to draw on the taxpayers. You’re entitled to it. 

I don’t care who you are in the United States; if you are healthy but you are taking advantage of the entitlement programs to avoid working, you are doing something morally wrong.

It’s even worse when we’re importing vast numbers of people to do this. We should not be standing up entire programs, opening our doors wide and saying, “You are entitled to this,” but that is what Mamdani wants. 

I have a question. Why is Mamdani more worried about people coming here who want to become citizens and are already on the dole than the people paying for them? 

Because Zohran Mamdani is an “Eat the rich guy.” There’s nothing he wants more than that.

Of course, we get the usual routine: “People will die,” which is the stupidest form of politics. Unless you can show an actual correlation between the policy change that is being made and the malicious death of people, that is the dumbest argument possible. 

Every public policy argument has risks and benefits. All of them. Going all the way to “people could die” is malicious. He is saying that you maliciously want those people to die. 

There is no data that says if people don’t have Medicaid because they are immigrants, there will be mass death.

This is part and parcel of a broader worldview for people like Zohran Mamdani. It is not just about importing people who are dependent on the federal government and on the state government and local government. 

It is also about importing people who fundamentally hate our country and what it stands for. 

It is about destroying America.