Robert Law was the Director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, DC-based research institute that examines the impact of immigration on the United States. He is a recognized expert on the legal immigration system, with a particular understanding of the impact that employment-based immigrant and non-immigrant policies affect the wages and opportunities for American workers. Prior to joining the Hungarian think tank Center for Fundamental Rights, from 2017–2021 Mr Law was an administration official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, serving first as a senior policy advisor and then as Chief of the Office of Policy and Strategy. In this capacity, he led the development of a robust regulatory and sub-regulatory policy portfolio to enhance the integrity of the immigration system and protect American workers, including reforming public charge, H-1B, discretionary work permits, and adjustment of status and naturalization standards.
Mr Shaw was recently in Budapest as part of the Center’s Wokebusters initiative and while in Hungary he also sat down with Hungarian Conservative for an exclusive interview.
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Do you have any estimates of how many illegal immigrants came into the United States under the Biden administration? What are the most reliable estimates that you have?
The best guess right now, and of course it’s growing every single day, is that at least 12 million illegal aliens have crossed the border one way or the other. And that’s a combination of 10 million encounters—which means they had some sort of contact with Department of Homeland Security personnel—and at least 2 million what are known as ‘gotaways’, those who were observed completely evading the Border Patrol, who completely disappeared into American communities. And it’s growing every single day.
Is the biggest change in the immigration policy between the two administrations the elimination of the Remain in Mexico policy? As far as I understand, the current system is that an immigrant can come into the US, not through a legal port of entry, apply for asylum status, and then just leave, and we likely will never be able to track them again. Is this what the current status quo is?
So it's multifold, I say it's three things. Number one, getting rid of Remain in Mexico, which required that migrants would wait in Mexico until they had their court date if they showed up illegally without a visa. Number two, it was the Biden-Harris policy of catch and release, which means once you make it to the border, you're allowed into American communities. Then the third element of the policy changes is that there have been no removals or deportations of illegal migrants when their claims are denied. So, at the end of the day, basically the door is open and there's no deterrence, there's no accountability, and there's no repercussions for breaking US immigration law right now.
When was the first time in US history when immigration law started to be viewed as in some sense inhumane? Which was the first administration that sort of started this practice that the Biden-Harris administration is doing right now? Was it the Clinton administration? Was it perhaps the first Bush administration?
I think it just depends on how far back you go. I mean, obviously, President Eisenhower, many, many years ago, removed a large number of illegal aliens, mostly Mexican nationals who were day labourers. Then, you sort of had waves of stricter immigration policy, then a little bit more generous. Certainly, you saw under the Clinton administration a recognition that open borders and too much immigration harm American workers, so you saw some of the most restrictive immigration laws passed by Congress came in 1996 during the Clinton administration. And then over time you've had administrations like the Bush administration, Republican, but very permissive of immigration on a larger scale.
Regarding President Obama and his administration, they paint a picture that he was tough, but he really wasn't. They manipulated the numbers to appear tough while they were pushing a mass amnesty. And then once that failed, they kind of just gave up the appearances of enforcement. President Trump was really the first and only modern President to actually say, ‘these are the laws on the books, and I'm just going to enforce the laws.’ That got branded as cruel and every other word under the sun. But at the end of the day, all we did during the Trump administration was enforce the laws already on the box.
What do you think the main motivation is of these people either in government or in activist groups who are pushing for our current laws to be ignored? Do you think it's genuinely humanitarian? Do you think it's for cheap labour? Or do you think it's more nefarious than that, and maybe it’s for some demographic change that they want to see? What do you think is the most common motivation for somebody who is pushing for laxer immigration laws?
Yeah, I think there're layers to that answer. I believe the overarching principle is that the supporters of open borders just don't believe that the United States is a sovereign nation. And so if you're not a sovereign nation, then you're just a land mass where people can come, they can live, they can work, they can seek refuge regardless of what the laws actually are. Some definitely are coming for labour reasons, and some are coming to do harm to the United States. And you see that now you have Venezuelan gangs who have taken over American communities that didn't have a single presence in the United States just a few years ago. This has all happened in the last couple of years under the Biden-Harris policies.
‘I believe the overarching principle is that the supporters of open borders just don’t believe that the United States is a sovereign nation’
Do you think there's a chance that some of these immigrants could have voted in an election? There is a new law that's been passed and now upheld in Arizona, according to which now you have to provide proof of citizenship if you want to register the vote. Do you think that these laws are needed and do you think there have been some cases when somebody with no US citizenship actually could have voted?
There's certainly a possibility that illegal aliens or other ineligible voters have voted in prior American elections. And we know this for two reasons. Number one, we've had an effort right now by the states that the America First Policy Institute has been very much engaged with to look at the voter rolls and compare that to actual immigration and citizenship data, and they've identified tens or hundreds of thousands cases in some of the larger states of ineligible voters appearing on the rolls. When you combine that with a lack of photo ID required, there's always the chance that somebody, if their name was on the voter registration, were able to go and cast a ballot. And so it seems like this should be a common sense bipartisan effort that says we want integrity in our elections and that ‘one citizen, one vote’ means something. Yet you have one political party that will dig in and absolutely refuse to put in any measures that ensure the integrity of the ballot. So it seems to be that there's a political calculus that goes into that. Uncovering fraud is very difficult when you have the absence of information. When you don't have any photo ID required, it becomes harder to identify such cases.
Are you familiar with the immigration policy of the Orbán administration? Do you have any opinions on it? Do you think there's something that should be followed by the US government as well? Hopefully, by a second Trump administration.
Oh, yes, I'm very fond of the immigration and border security policies of Orbán and of Hungary. I've had the privilege of coming here previously. I have visited your southern border with Serbia. There, you see how a border wall works.
Even though it is a smaller barrier than the United States border wall with Mexico, when you have multiple layers of surveillance and enforcement and you have cooperation between your sort of federal enforcement efforts and your state equivalent law enforcement, it works. And most importantly of all, the ability to quickly return migrants who have no right to be in your country is what really seals your border and ensures that only the people that you want to be in the country get into your country. So there's a lot that can be learned from the way Hungary is treating things. I think the overarching principle that I learned at my last visit is this recognition that you're not entitled to—call it asylum, refugee or any other name—any sort of relief. You may want it, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to it. You have no right to that. That's exactly how the US law is written, but it's not how it's applied. And so you see the contrast there as well.
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