The immigration surge at our southern border has not only created a humanitarian crisis but also has the potential to collapse our immigration system. There simply are not enough ICE agents and other government officials to effectively deal with this illegal immigration invasion.
Some members of Congress believe this was intentional, that is was part of a Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm America. Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were professors at Columbia University (where the president attended as an undergraduate student). They proposed a strategy intended to overload America’s welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis. Doing so, they believed, would force politicians to replace the current welfare system with a national system of “a guaranteed annual income.”
Representative Steve King (R-IA) said he feels the current crisis in an “attempt to flood the border with illegals” and “is playing out the Cloward-Piven theory.” Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) also believes the administration “is trying to do a Cloward-Piven thing with the border.”
Was this immigration surge intentional or accidental? There is good evidence at least that the government was preparing for this. Back in January the Department of Homeland Security put out a purchase order for escort services for 65,000 unaccompanied illegal alien children. A funding report for the Department of Justice asked for funding for “a pilot unaccompanied alien children program.”
Whether this immigration surge was intentional or accidental is a topic for others discuss. The reality is that we have tens of thousands of unaccompanied children crossing into America. They are not being sent back. A leaked Homeland Security memo admitted that “only 0.1 percent of the Central American minors illegally entering the U.S.” were deported in the last fiscal year.
There is no reason to believe that many more will be sent back to their home countries. I expect some liberal judges to rule against deportation, and we all know that continuous media stories will drive public opinion against deportation. Whether intentional or accidental, the Cloward-Piven strategy is unfolding before our eyes.