Why aren’t secure voting and borders important to Democrats?

February 17, 2025

It is safe to say that nearly everyone believes that elections at all levels are critically important. After all, that activity chooses the people who serve us by operating our towns, counties, states and nation. And in America, we are blessed with the right and privilege of being able to select those people.

Elections therefore should be thoughtfully and efficiently organized, with some level of convenience, and highly secured by rules that protect the election process and results. That way, the candidates that the voters choose actually win the elections.

It is also safe to say that there is some degree of illegal activity in most every election, although sometimes very small.

With this in mind, in 2025, the House of Representatives passed the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. The aim of this legislation is to make elections more secure.

The original SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, but the revised SAVE America Act also increases the security of elections, requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote in federal elections.

Voter ID is hardly controversial. Gallup and Pew Research Center polls, among others, found that more than 80 percent of American citizens support photo ID to vote.

Yet, some oppose the idea of an ID or a photo ID as necessary to vote, saying that this puts some people in a situation where they will not be able to vote. However, why can anyone who is a citizen of the USA, and therefore eligible to vote, not be able to get the required ID with just a little effort?

As to the complaint of having any ID to vote, here are a few things that you need an ID or photo ID for: get a US Passport, get through a TSA checkpoint, apply for government programs, drive a motor vehicle, pick up prescriptions, buy alcohol, buy a gun, open a bank account, rent or buy a house or car, get married, rent a hotel room, and last, but not least: attend the Democrat National Convention.

So, Democrats believe that it is important to show a photo ID to participate in a convention that nominates the party’s candidate for President, but think it is unfair to require the voters who elect the President to show a photo ID.

Other examples of the apparent confused logic: Democrats want ICE agents to show photo IDs when arresting illegal aliens, but oppose photo IDs to vote.

Recently, Georgia Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff required attendees to present a government-issued photo ID to enter his "Rally for Our Republic," but opposes a photo ID for federal elections.

And, Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, noted on X that House rules require members to insert their identification card before voting on legislation.

“Notable that 213 Democrats just used their congressional photo ID to vote NO on a voter ID bill,” he wrote.

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia commented, “The burden of acquiring, possessing, and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe.”

Yes, it is possible, perhaps likely, that some American citizens will have problems under these requirements. No system is perfect. The current system stands as a hallmark of imperfection.

A poll by Newsmax/TIPP shows that Americans view illegal immigration negatively. Overall, Americans think illegal immigration impacts the U.S. negatively by a 50 to 21 percent margin, with 39 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of Independents saying it’s a problem.

On the backing of ICE, while 78 percent of Republicans support ICE, only 22 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of Independents do.

It is difficult to understand why so many oppose ICE deporting illegal aliens with criminal charges, or who are just in the country illegally, which also is a crime. It has not always been like this.

Comparing recent Presidents on the subject of deportations and the reactions to that, data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security show that Bill Clinton deported 12.5 million with no protests/riots; George W. Bush deported 10.3 million with no protests/riots; Barack Obama deported 5.3 million with no protests/riots; and Donald Trump has deported 1.5 million with 350 protests/riots. 

Wonder why there is this huge difference in presidents doing the same thing for the same reason? Could political considerations, or personal feelings be involved?

Newsmax magazine published a piece in its February edition regarding federal government salaries. “The average salary in a large majority of federal agencies now exceeds $100,000 annually,” the article says.

Open The Books, the watchdog group that promotes transparency throughout the federal government, reported the agencies and departments with the highest average pay, and listed 12, along with the average annual pay and the number of employees.

Leading the pack is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with 721 employees, and an average annual pay of $236,006. The largest number of employees is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation with 6,036 employees, and an average annual pay of $173,627. 

And the lowest paid of the group are the Office of Management and Budget, with 811 employees, and the Federal Trade Commission, with 1,302 employee,  both of which have an average annual pay of $164,468.

Border officials and facilities overwhelmed by illegal entrants

The number of illegal aliens captured at the southern border has overloaded the facilities that hold them, and thousands have been released into the country.

Illegal entry has been routinely called a non-crisis by much of the media and Congressional Democrats, and recently Jeh Johnson, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, called it that. Appearing on CBS last month, Johnson said: "So here are the facts: the facts are that illegal migration on our southern border is a fraction of what it used to be." He added, "But a security crisis per se? No. I would not characterize it that way. I think there is some fear-mongering going on."

However, Saturday Johnson said on Fox News’ “Cavuto LIVE,” “By anyone's definition, by any measure, right now we have a crisis at our southern border.” He added, “According to the commissioner of [Customs and Border Protection], there were 4,000 apprehensions in one day alone this past week, and we're on pace for 100,000 apprehensions on our southern border this month.”

Perhaps Congress will finally get the message. Had Congress taken administration warnings seriously and acted to relieve the situation months ago, this crisis could have been resolved.

Representative Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, noted that in the heat of summer “it’s going to be very, very dangerous in this part of the country to have young kids, women and other folks to come in.”

Cuellar said, after speaking to Customs and Border Patrol agents, he had discovered a disturbing trend of adults “renting” children in Central America in order to increase their chances of being able to stay in the U.S. once they cross over.

Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch visited Guatemala earlier this year to get a first-hand look at the first of several caravans headed toward our southern border.

Contrary to reports in the media and those who support unfettered immigration that the migrants were mostly women and children, Farrell observed that while there were women and children in the caravan, he estimated that between 90 and 95 percent of them were men 15 to 45 years old. The children, he said, were “recovered from a human smuggling operation using the caravan as ‘cover.’”

He said that it’s “A highly organized, very elaborate and sophisticated orchestration,” not a sudden movement of thousands of people who just happened to all decide to travel north at the same time. It’s an “organized group of people pushing a certain political agenda by a group calledPueblos Sin Fronterasbeing aided by hundreds of that organization’s workers.”

This effort, he estimated, cost several millions of dollars for food, water, transportation, medical equipment, mobile hospitals and child services, which reminded Farrell of a complex military operation. And while they did walk portions of the tremendous distance through Mexico, they primarily traveled on chartered tour buses, dozens of them.

The media reports of the plight of the migrants say that “they are trying to escape daily violence and daily threats. People are dying left and right. The conditions are extraordinarily dangerous.”

Farrell interviewed some of the marchers. He started every interview with, “Why are you coming to America?”

“They all said that their reason for joining the ‘caravan’ was economic,” he said. “It was job driven. And then, someone would say, ‘Oh, yeah, … we’re also fleeing violence’ as an after-thought.”

And then, Farrell asked the obvious question: “Well, if things are so bad, why did you leave your family back home? Of course, they couldn’t answer that question,” he said. 

Perhaps the growing recognition of the crisis at the southern border will bring a realistic attitude about the nature of the numerous migrant caravans headed our way and get Congress to do its job, and take action to address this crisis.

President Donald Trump has threatened to completely shut down the border this week if Mexico doesn’t take steps to stop the caravans from traveling through to the border. He has already cut funding to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras because they have not taken action to halt the flow of migrants. 

Shutting down the border has some serious problems for Mexico and the U.S., so Congress must act quickly. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said yesterday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” that his state cannot deal with the number of illegals entering it, and the same situation exists for other border states.

The Los Angeles Timesaddressed the border shutdown in February: “Fortunately for Trump, the law on immigration and related matters favors the president. Legal precedents have traditionally accorded the chief executive complete and nearly unchecked power to deny foreigners permission to enter the United States.”

"The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty … inherent in the executive power," the Supreme Court said in 1950. And the Timesadded, “Congress adopted a provision in 1952 saying the president ‘may by proclamation … suspend the entry of all aliens and any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants’ whenever he thinks it ‘would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.’”

That does not, however, preclude a block by an activist liberal judge.

There are at least 12.5 million illegal aliens in the country!

Here is some important information about illegal aliens in the country:

** There are approximately 12.5 million known illegals in the U.S., and there are others who have evaded authorities

** Approximately 1 million illegals enter the country each year.

** Roughly 80 percent of illegals processed and given a date for a hearing fail to show up

A letter from the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2015 to various members of the Obama administration cited these data:

** Of the 36,000 criminal aliens released from ICE custody in FY 2013, 1,000 have been re-convicted of additional crimes in the short time since their release.

** No fewer than 121 immigrant convicts were charged with homicide following their release from ICE custody between 2010 and 2014. It also noted that in 2014, ICE released 2,457 immigrant convicts because of the Supreme Court ruling prohibiting detention of deportable foreign nationals beyond six months.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allows some individuals, about 800,000, who were brought to the United States illegally as children to receive special consideration.  DACA members have achieved a high level of sympathy because they were brought here by their illegal alien parents as young children, and thus should be given the benefit of the doubt and not treated as illegals.

However, a report titled “Undocumented Immigrants, U.S. Citizens, and Convicted Criminals in Arizona,” deflates the glowing image of this group. The report says: “Unfortunately, if the goal of DACA is to give citizenship to a particularly law-abiding group of undocumented immigrants, it is accomplishing the opposite of what was intended. As Table 8 shows, DACA age eligible undocumented immigrants are 250 percent more likely to be convicted of crimes than their share of the population. Those too old for DACA status are convicted at a ‘relatively’ [emphasis added] low rate (45.7 percent more than their share of the Arizona population).”

Brietbart News reported last September that 2,139 of the 800,000 DACA recipients, deemed “DREAMers” by the open borders lobby, have had their temporary protected status revoked due to crimes, including: “A felony criminal conviction; a significant misdemeanor conviction; multiple misdemeanor convictions; gang affiliation; or arrest of any crime in which there is deemed to be a public safety concern,” according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency.

The USCIS stated that the majority of crimes by DACA recipients include: “Alien smuggling, assaultive offenses, domestic violence, drug offenses, DUI, larceny and thefts, criminal trespass and burglary, sexual offenses with minors, other sex offenses and weapons offenses.”

Now, of course, the Left argues that these people are merely looking for a better life, and we should help them. For the sake of discussion let’s accept the idea that most of them are “good” people, despite their criminal entry into America. However, some of them are drug dealers, human traffickers, gang members, rapists, murderers, convicted felons, deportees who have come back several times, and other unsuitable people.

The list of Americans who have been raped, robbed, murdered and otherwise victimized by illegal aliens is long, indeed. Which begs the question: How many Americans have to be murdered, raped, assaulted, etc., before people realize the seriousness of the immigration problem?

How many murderers, drug dealers and other criminal illegal aliens should we allow here? The answer to that question is a loud and firm, “Zero!”

Just how much do the American people spend each year in supporting illegals?

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) issued a report last September listing the following information: At the federal, state, and local levels, taxpayers shell out approximately $134.9 billion to cover the costs incurred by the presence of more than 12.5 million illegal aliens, and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens. That amounts to a tax burden of approximately $8,075 per illegal alien family member and a total of almost $116 billion. The total cost of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers is both staggering and crippling.

In April of 2017 the Pew Research Center reported that there were 8 million “unauthorized” immigrants in the U.S. workforce, about 5 percent of whom are working or unemployed and looking for a job.

Pew further said that “a rising share of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for at least a decade. About two-thirds of adult aliens in 2014 had been in the U.S. at least that long, compared with 41 percent in 2005.”

The preceding data help us to understand the extent of the illegal alien problem, and also demonstrates that more than a few of those who come here illegally are bad people. This information further emphasizes the need to secure the southern border and carefully control entry into the country. This situation has existed far too long, and both Democrat and Republican administrations share the blame.

President Donald Trump is trying to address this serious problem, but there is strong support among those on the Left to maintain the status quo, who seem to think illegals in the country are a good thing, as well as laws, policies and legal interpretations that make cleaning up this immigration mess more difficult.

Illegal border crossings are down, but immigration issues remain

 

Immigration is the movement of people into a destination country of which they are not natives, or where they do not possess citizenship, in order to settle or reside there, especially as permanent residents or naturalized citizens.

Immigrating to the US is not a right; it is a privilege.

Most folks do not leave their home open to anyone with the desire to enter and live in them. They want to be sure that those they allow into their home do not want to harm them, or damage or steal their belongings.

Likewise, we must not leave the national borders open so that just anyone can come in. We have to make a determined effort to be sure that those who are allowed to legally enter America share our values, or agree to adopt them. They need to get a job and support themselves and their families, and to become true Americans.

The sloppy enforcement of our immigration laws and philosophy in recent years has produced a body of illegal aliens totaling around 11 million, according to some reports. The term “undocumented immigrants” is not appropriate for these people: Immigrants enter the country legally; these people entered the country illegally, or came in legally and over-stayed their visas.

As a result, the good people who come here for the best reasons, but are not here legally, have been overshadowed by the wicked deeds the many bad ones have committed. It’s time for that to change.

Seeing this problem clearly, unlike the previous resident of the White House, President Donald Trump campaigned on tougher enforcement of our borders and other measures to reduce or eliminate illegal entry into the U.S.

Since Trump was sworn in, good things have already started happening relative to illegal border crossings.

As reported in the Washington Examiner, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Thomas D. Homan, said that since Trump entered office, “illegal border crossings have crashed by almost 70 percent, ‘an historic low,’ arrests inside the country have jumped 40 percent and that demands for illegal criminals in local jails has skyrocketed 80 percent.”

"You can like President Trump, not like him, like his policies, not like his policies, but one thing no one can argue with is the effect they've had," Homan said. He is a 30-year immigration agency veteran, and the former chief of ICE enforcement.

Echoing that sentiment, National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said on C-SPAN that the reduction in the number of illegal border crossers between the U.S. and Mexico is “nothing short of miraculous,” putting the reduction at 53 percent of the same period last year, all before construction of Trump’s vaunted border wall has even begun.

Judd told Fox News, “There’s a vibe, there’s an energy in the Border Patrol that’s never been there before in 20 years that I’ve been in the patrol.”

Complicating the illegal alien problem is the movement by more than 300 cities and counties to protect illegals in “sanctuary” jurisdictions. Homan said that ICE will hire 10,000 new agents and crack down on these sanctuaries. “In the America I grew up in, cities didn’t shield people who violated the law,” he noted.

While denying that ICE is being pressured to meet quotas, Homan said that ICE will focus on targeting fugitives, criminals, threats to national security, and illegals who had previously been deported and came back into the United States.

In a move that runs counter to Trump’s “America First” initiative and efforts to provide jobs for Americans, the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month increased by 15,000 the number of H-2B visas for low-wage, seasonal workers for the remainder of this fiscal year on the basis that many businesses will not be able to find enough American workers this summer.

Defenders of such policies contend that Americans will not work these jobs because they are unpleasant or because they don’t pay enough; therefore foreign workers are the best solution. However, the Center for Immigration Studies found that the average hourly pay for an H-2B visa holder last year was $12.31, roughly 70 percent above the federal minimum wage.

You would think a lot of minimum wage American workers would take that increase in pay, as well as a lot of unemployed Americans who could get back into the labor force, even if temporarily. A Maine resort town, faced with a shortage of H-2B workers, solved their problem by hiring … Americans!

Our immigration problem would not have grown to its current crisis level had past administrations strictly enforced national immigration laws. As a result, millions of people are here illegally. The bad ones are now targets of government, but what do we do with those who are generally good people, except for their method of coming to America?

Some truly just want a better life and are living a generally good, clean life. What is the best way to deal with these “Dreamers?” There is a great sentiment for providing a strict and complex path to citizenship, and deporting millions of them is virtually impossible.

Perhaps a suitable compromise can be found.

Potpourri: Comments on the passing scene

From the “Aha” department: Judicial Watch reports that “Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told the organization on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe.”

However, attorneys also said it would just be too dad-gummed hard to go through the backup files to look for evidence of possible criminal behavior. Imagine that: an emergency backup of the entire government, so that if the entire government computer system were to be destroyed, all the information is protected, but it’s so disorganized that you can’t easily find anything. Doesn’t that make the backup essentially useless? Was this system designed and built by the same people that gave us healthcare.gov?

Do you suppose that none of the people at the IRS who claimed the emails had been forever lost knew about this backup? Really? 



*****

Raising the minimum wage by $2.85 an hour to $10.10 an hour effectively imposes an “unskilled labor tax” on employers of $6,170 per worker, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Mark J. Perry. That includes not only the increase in wages, but also increases in FICA, Medicare and unemployment taxes.

A survey of 400 U.S. Chief Financial Officers conducted by Duke University finance professor Campbell Harvey shows that a substantial increase in the minimum wage will, as so many have said for so long, cost jobs, as well as reduce job benefits and increase outsourcing.

The survey showed that in response to a $10 per hour minimum wage:
    •    Sixty percent of the firms said they would lay off employees.
    •    Forty percent said they would slash benefits to employees.
    •    Seventy percent said they would increase contracting, outsourcing, or moving actual production outside the United States.

A report on the study by the National Center for Policy Analysis notes that, “Businesses will not simply absorb these costs; they will look for ways to minimize the $6,000 tax by reducing the number of workers they employ, cutting workers' hours, halting additional hiring or finding ways to use automation to replace work done by employees. Employers may also cut employees' non-monetary fringe benefits rather than eliminate their positions.”

*****

Since President Barack Obama ended the War on Terror, America’s new efforts to combat, er … fight, umm … deal with terrorism has a new name: “comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.” This strategy has already produced more than 150 airstrikes in Iraq that killed ISIL/ISIS fighters, destroyed weapons, and allowed Iraqi and Kurdish forces to reclaim key territory. Thank goodness we are not involved in another war.

The president announced that with allies and Congress, America will lead a broad coalition in a counter-terrorism strategy called Operation Double Bogie to roll back this terrorist threat (from behind?).

*****

While drug smugglers and who knows what other filth sneak in and out of the U.S. over the non-existent southern border, Border Patrol agents busy themselves making birthday cakes for illegal aliens who have crossed the border into the country.

This information comes via Pinal County, Ariz. Sheriff Paul Babeu, who appeared on Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” program last Thursday on Fox News Channel.

The sheriff said, “I can give you a window into this administration because just a month ago, while all this was going on, we heard, myself and countless sheriffs in Fort Worth, Texas, heard … how wonderful it was these Border Patrol agents, federal law enforcement, had a birthday cake for this 13-year-old Honduran, and he’s never had a cake ... I called him on that, and said, ‘how on earth have we arrived at this point where it’s become the job of our Border Patrol agents, who their sole purpose should be to protect our country and secure our border, is to do what you just said, to have a birthday cake for a 13-year-old Honduran?’”


*****

From the Nervous Hospital, Unhinged Ward: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) claims that Democrats are not “fear-mongers;” but said on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” “It would be very important for the Democrats to retain control of the Senate,” she warned. “Civilization as we know it today would be in jeopardy if the Republicans win the Senate.” 

*****

Earlier this year came news from Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that we face increased risks from human-induced climate change. These new risks are, of course, the result of CO2 in the atmosphere, which now has more CO2 than it previously had. Over the last 100 years the number of CO2 molecules in a given quantity of air is up from 3 to 4.

No wonder they are concerned: that represents a 33 percent increase in CO2!

That sounds like a really serious problem, until you realize that the quantity of air in this equation is 10,000 molecules. We now have 4 molecules of CO2 per 10,000 air molecules, instead of 3. The amount of CO2 in the air is now 4 ten-thousandths (.0004), up from 3 ten-thousandths (.0003). Catastrophe has descended on us; we are surely doomed.