Pro-migration advocates are denouncing and urging illegal migrants to reject President Donald Trump’s offer of $1,ooo and free airline tickets to leave the country.
“This option might be WORSE for people who take advantage of it,” claimed Aaron Reichlin, a pro-migration advocate for the Immigration Council advocacy group. “For people [illegal migrants] in immigration court, it would likely mean a deportation order. For others [not detained for deportation], it would abandon clear options for staying.”
The economic payoff from subsidized re-migration home could be a huge economic windfall for ordinary Americans who will see better wages, more workplace investment, and cheaper housing. They will also gain less chaotic diversity in their communities, less crime, fewer road accidents, less competition for community resources, and more recognition from state and local politicians, teachers, and employers.
“The [taxpayer] savings are as much as $1 million per illegal alien family given the long-term costs of free welfare and public support,” Homeland Security Advisor and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller posted to X on May 5.
Reichlin-Melnick also suggested that paying migrants to leave — instead of going through the greater expense of forcing them to leave — “raises VERY serious questions about statutory authority and funding sources.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) suggested that illegal migrants could remain with a lower-caste status that would allow them to legally work for his wealthy donors but not be treated as legally or socially equal to American citizens.
“Why don’t we make them pay a $5k fine, go through a background check and give them a work visa for a few years, renewable with good behavior,” Gallego posted to X.
David Bier at the investor-funded, pro-migration Cato Institute says the federal government cannot incentivize migrants to exit, even after years of supporting the mass inflow accelerated by the administration of former President Joe Biden:
But the pro-migration advocates did not make a fuss when Biden’s administration diverted more than $1 billion allocated by Congress for the border wall.
Unfortunately for Cato, Reichlin-Melnick admitted that “[t]he closest legal authority which might apply here is 8 U.S.C. § 1260, which authorizes using funding to deport “aliens falling into distress” who are “desirous of being so removed.”
Trump’s administration talked up the program, which offers illegal migrants some hope of returning if they exit via the legal program:
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