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Normally this newsletter is locked for Bulwark+ members, but I’m leaving it open today because I think it’s kind of important. I’m trying not to be alarmist, but at the same time I’m seeing flashing red lights everywhere.
I hope you’ll consider joining us. There’s power in community.
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I’ve been listening to Robert Evans’ podcast series on Adolf Eichmann and one of the things Evans mentions is that throughout the Holocaust, many Nazis had in their lives a “Good Jew.” Some Jewish person who they liked and wished to save.
Hitler’s Good Jew was Eduard Bloch, the family doctor from his childhood. Hitler granted Bloch special protection, eventually allowed him to emigrate to the United States, and as a result, Bloch and his family were not slaughtered.
One of the things that made Eichman unusual among his class of Nazi was that he had no Good Jews in his life. He was happy to dispose with all of them.
One of the hallmarks of Trump’s mass deportation regime has been the emergence of Good Immigrants from certain MAGA communities. We saw these people in the small Missouri town which rallied to Carol, a beloved member of their community who was arrested by Trump’s secret police because her papers were not in order.
These MAGA diehards whined and complained until the administration relented and let Carol go. It seems to have occurred to precisely none of the townfolk that America is full of Carols.
On Tuesday, we met another Good Immigrant. Her name is Geleny Allred. She is an illegal immigrant from Ecuador. Two years ago she married a man named Chris Allred. In 2024, Chris Allred voted for the man who promised to deport 20 million illegal immigrants.
I’m not sure if this is a story about garden-variety stupidity or incipient genocide. At the end, I hope you’ll tell me what you think is going on.
Chris Allred, a middle-aged white guy from Middle America, told the New York Times that he’s had a hard life.
Mr. Allred, 48, grew up on a farm in western Arkansas. He watched as his father, a machinist, struggled to navigate a rapidly changing economy. His father lost three factory jobs when the companies that employed him either closed or moved their production abroad, including to Mexico. He tried raising chickens, but ended up losing his investment. . . .
Mr. Allred went to college, something his father hadn’t done, but during his first year, his mother died of breast cancer and he dropped out. His sister had been murdered the year before, and the tragedies knocked his life off course. For years he was depressed. He contemplated suicide. He went from job to job, working in pool maintenance, ad sales at a newspaper, H.I.V. counseling and as a security guard at a nightclub. He wanted a family, but never felt stable enough to provide for one.
But things worked out for him in the end. In 2018, he told the Times, “he got a job he liked, working for a trucking company that was part of the now-booming economy of northwest Arkansas.” His life stabilized. He met a woman he loved. He got married. And then he voted for a guy who promised to arrest and deport his bride.
Who does Mr. Allred blame for how hard the first part of his life was? Immigrants.
He believes they are “an army of takers,” filling spots in emergency rooms and schools that American citizens have to pay for. . . .
“We don’t have an industrial base anymore,” Mr. Allred told me over dinner at his apartment in Bentonville. “We have trillions in national debt. It’s impossible. We can’t take on millions more people. It’s financially not possible.” . . .
“This is going to be an absolutely horrendous thing I want to say, but if you can’t talk about the truth you really can’t have a real conversation,” he said. “They’re parasites. What do parasites do? Over time they eventually kill the host. And that’s what this country’s headed towards.”
Oh. My.
Let’s connect some dots for Mr. Allred.
First off, the net economic impact of illegal immigrants is positive. Even immigration restrictionists admit that while illegal immigrants consume slightly more in government services than they pay in taxes, those costs are swamped by the economic activity they generate.
Here’s a paper by immigration super-restrictionist Steven Camarota. He claims that undocumented immigrants consume $42b in annual welfare spending against $30b in annual federal tax payments. You can question his numbers if you like—he’s trying to make the best case for getting rid of undocumented immigrants.
But Camarota then admits, “Illegal immigrants do add perhaps $321 billion to the nation’s GDP, but this is not a measure of their tax contributions or the benefits they create for the U.S.-born. Almost all the increase in economic activity goes to the illegal immigrants themselves in the form of wages.”
You can see him trying to wiggle out at the end, as if the wages these workers earn don’t count, since they accrue to the immigrants themselves. But that $321b then gets spent in the economy, consuming goods and services, creating jobs, and generating more taxable activity.
And keep in mind, these numbers are from the guy who is desperate to paint undocumented immigrants as a net negative. If you go to more neutral sources, the economic effects of even illegal immigration look even more positive.
Why is that? Because the illegal population is disproportionately working-age and disproportionately employed.
In other words: The opposite of “takers” and “parasites.”