Immigration still at Obama levels: Time to put the pressure on

Rex Tillerson's State Dept is continuing to issue visas like it's still the Obama years, for both immigrants and "non-immigrants". Many of the non-immigrant visa holders will overstay their visas and become illegals -- this is by far the #1 source of illegal immigration now. Instead of sneaking over the border, the US government gives them a "non-immigrant" visa, and then looks the other way if they choose to remain here after it's expired.

Here are the month-by-month figures for the Trump administration, in thousands:

Month	Immigrant	Non-immigrant
Feb	44	695
Mar	52	907
Apr	48	735
May	55	884
Jun	45	908

There is no decline over time. Cumulatively there have been 243K immigrant visas, and 4.1 million non-immigrant visas. Taking the monthly average so far, and multiplying by 12, gives a projected figure for the year of 584K immigrant and 9.9 million non-immigrant visas.

How many of each type did Obama let in? Here are the annual figures from fiscal years 2007 to 2016, in thousands for immigrants and in millions for non-immigrants:

Year	Immigrant	Non-immigrant
2007	434	6.4
2008	470	6.6
2009	469	5.8
2010	482	6.4
2011	476	7.5
2012	482	8.9
2013	473	9.2
2014	467	9.9
2015	531	10.9
2016	618	10.4

The projected figure for immigrant visas in the first 12 months of the Trump administration, 584K, is well above every year from Obama's terms except for 2016, and even then would only amount to a 5% drop.

The projected figure for non-immigrant visas, 9.9 million, is at or above every year of Obama's terms except the last two, and again would represent just a 5% drop from 2016.

Trump supporters voted for far more than a measly 5% drop in the number of immigrants flooding into our country. But since the GOP Establishment is so in favor of open borders, they're betraying the voters, against Trump's wishes (he campaigned on moratoriums and questioning birthright citizenship, not token gestures).

I guess they figure if Republican voters don't like the immigration policy, they have no other party to vote for instead. But that will only force us into making closed borders a demand during bitter primary battles against the Establishment. If they don't want that level of civil war in the Party, then they must reduce immigration levels by at least half. There really ought to be a moratorium, but in the interest of compromise, half. If they don't give us what we voted for, then it's right back to primary battle mode.

And if they betray Trump's promises by this much, the President himself will want to avoid looking like he got played for a sucker, and won't mind endorsing and perhaps even holding rallies for anti-Establishment Republican challengers. It's not just the executive branch officials like Secretary of State who determine immigration levels -- Congressmen can put pressure on them, like Senator Tillis did recently by jamming up a nomination until he got more cheap labor visas out of the executive branch.

By the end of July, there will be about 250K immigrant visas in total, and about 5 million non-immigrant visas. That right there is half of the level from Obama's second term. So achieving the goal of halving Obama's immigration level would require a more or less shutdown for the remaining six months.

We will find out how much the Trump faction wants to tackle the flow of new immigrants, or how much leverage they have against the open-borders globalists. We've already seen that the rate of deportations is lower than under Obama -- at the going rate of 17K deportations per month, even after all four years of Trump's first term, that would only remove 816K, rounded up to 1 million.

But there are at least 1 million new immigrants every year, including now under Trump as under Obama. There will be about a half-million who will be legal long-term immigrants, and of the other 10 million supposedly temporary immigrants, all it takes is single-digit percentages to overstay and remain, to fill out the rest of 1 million new long-term immigrants in just one year.

General Kelly at DHS is not removing them fast enough to counter-act the rapid pace at which Tillerson at State is flooding them in. There are already perhaps 20 million illegals here, so solving that problem means ramping up deportations and more or less closing off the in-flow. Otherwise the flooded ship will only take on more and more water until it finally sinks.

I'm going to do regular monthly updates on this topic so we can monitor what is actually going on, rather than what the spin tells us. Immigration is such a hot-button topic, that both sides play the endorphin rush game -- the globalists want to wail like Trump is sending millions out of the country and slamming the door shut on newcomers, while Trump cheerleaders want to jerk themselves off to the exact same scenario. But that scenario is wrong, and only keeping tabs on the data will tell us that, not imagining whatever scenario lets us get an endorphin rush of outrage or gloating.

If our audience is globalists, then yes, we should make them afraid of all the things Trump is going to do to their precious little worldview. Demoralize them. But if our audience is fellow Trump supporters, sympathetic Republicans, curious Independents, and so on, then we need to tell them the honest truth so that we can get ourselves fired up to put the pressure on Tillerson, Kelly, and the GOP Congress to carry out the damn agenda that we voted for with Trump, in both the primary and general.