THE WASHINGTON UNION PAPERS: NO. 38

A SMART & SECURE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM FOR A THRIVING ECONOMY

To the People of the United States,

America was built by immigrants. It was shaped by those who fled persecution, sought opportunity, and came not to take but to contribute. The foundation of this Republic was laid by those who crossed oceans with nothing but hope, who stood on the docks of Ellis Island with calloused hands and hungry eyes, who believed that in America, a man could be free not because of where he was born, but because of what he was willing to build. This nation did not rise to greatness by slamming its doors shut, nor did it become a beacon of liberty by drowning in lawlessness. Yet today, our immigration system is neither open nor secure. It is not welcoming to those who seek to enrich this nation, nor is it strong enough to prevent exploitation and chaos. It is a broken, sluggish, bureaucratic monstrosity, failing both those who wish to enter legally and those who rightfully demand order. It is a failure of governance, a failure of vision, a failure of will. No more. The Washington Union Party will not accept an America paralyzed between incompetence and inhumanity. We will build an immigration system that is fast, fair, secure, and designed for a thriving economy.

The enemies of reform will offer two false choices: open borders or mass deportations. They will tell you that we must either allow unchecked migration or shut the gates entirely. This is the rhetoric of cowards, of politicians who would rather stoke fear than solve problems. America does not need open borders. America does not need inhumane crackdowns. America needs an immigration system that works, that serves both the economy and the rule of law, that recognizes the dignity of those who come here while protecting the sovereignty of those who are already here. It is not a question of generosity or cruelty; it is a question of intelligence, of national interest, of whether we will choose competence over chaos.

For too long, the immigration debate has been hijacked by lies—by the grotesque caricature of immigrants as leeches feeding off the system, draining American wealth, living off welfare while contributing nothing. This is a lie—one that has been told so many times that it has poisoned our national discourse, creating a narrative that is not only false but economically self-destructive. The truth is clear: immigrants—both legal and undocumented—are a financial asset, not a liability.

In 2023 alone, immigrants contributed over $330 billion in taxes to the federal, state, and local governments. Undocumented immigrants—who are barred from nearly all federal benefits—contributed over $30 billion in payroll taxes, helping fund Medicare and Social Security, programs they will never be able to claim. These are not numbers conjured up to serve an agenda; they are cold, hard economic facts. Every credible study, from the Bipartisan Policy Center to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, confirms that immigrants—regardless of status—contribute more in taxes than they take in government services. Without them, our economy shrinks, our labor force withers, and our entitlement programs collapse under their own weight.

The Washington Union Party does not deal in fear. It deals in reality. And the reality is this: the narrative that immigrants are draining our resources is not just false—it is economic suicide. Immigrants are workers, taxpayers, entrepreneurs, and job creators. They are the backbone of industries that sustain this nation—agriculture, construction, healthcare, technology, and small businesses that fuel local economies. The United States does not suffer from an immigration problem; it suffers from an immigration system problem—one that is too slow, too broken, too inefficient to maximize the economic benefits of those who want to contribute.

History teaches us what happens when we allow fear to dictate policy rather than facts. During the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, we drove away workers who had built our railroads, only to realize too late that we had crippled our labor force. During the Great Depression, we expelled hundreds of thousands of Mexican-American workers in mass deportations, only to face a labor shortage when World War II demanded an industrial boom. Now, in 2024, we stand on the precipice of another self-inflicted disaster. Our economy is starving for workers, our businesses cannot fill positions fast enough, and yet, rather than building a system that allows immigration to work for us, we are still strangling it with outdated laws, bureaucratic incompetence, and manufactured outrage.

The Washington Union Party will not let this nation fall into the same traps of fear and ignorance. We will fix this. We will streamline the legal immigration process so that those who seek to come here do not wait years in limbo while our economy suffers from worker shortages. We will ensure that those who are already here, working, paying taxes, and contributing, have a pathway to full legal integration rather than keeping them in the shadows of a system that benefits no one. And we will enforce our immigration laws with common sense, ensuring that our borders are secure against those who seek to exploit them, while recognizing that our economy cannot afford to lose the very people who make it function.

The enemies of reform will continue to peddle their fear-mongering, their false dichotomies, their outright lies about immigrants draining the system. They will twist statistics, cherry-pick data, and appeal to the worst instincts of division. But the truth is against them. The economy is against them. History is against them. And we will make sure that the American people know it. The time for fear is over. The time for smart, secure, and economically sound immigration reform is now. The Washington Union Party will see it done.

Ellis Island once processed twelve million immigrants in less than five hours per person. It was not perfect, but it worked. It was efficient, direct, and built with a purpose—to bring people into the country, not to bury them in a bureaucratic graveyard. Today, an immigrant seeking legal residency in the United States waits years, sometimes decades, drowning in paperwork, trapped in a system that has been deliberately designed to fail. This is not an accident. It is not a flaw. It is a calculated dysfunction, created by a bloated government that has no incentive to solve problems because its power is derived from creating them.

We are no longer a nation that welcomes with open arms those who seek to build a better life. We are a nation that greets them with a wall of red tape so thick that even immigration lawyers struggle to navigate it. We demand that those who want to follow the law wait in endless lines, filling out mountains of paperwork, paying thousands in fees, hiring attorneys, proving their worth over and over again—only to be told, after years of waiting, that they were missing one document, one signature, one obscure requirement buried deep within an immigration code that is 10,000 pages long and incomprehensible to the very bureaucrats who enforce it. And while they wait, while they struggle to do everything the so-called "right way," they watch as others bypass the system entirely, stepping over borders with no background checks, no waiting period, no bureaucracy strangling their ability to work and live.

This is not a functioning immigration system. This is a punishment for those who obey the law.

It was never meant to be this way. When the waves of Irish, Italians, Germans, and Eastern Europeans poured through Ellis Island, they were met with a process built for entry, not exclusion. It was simple, effective, and swift. If you had no serious disease, no criminal record, and a willingness to work, you were processed and allowed to begin your new life that very day. There were no five-year backlogs. No bureaucrats drowning in unprocessed applications. No politicians turning immigration into a political football rather than a functional system. It was not perfect, but it was a system that worked.

Today, the same government that can process a passport renewal in weeks somehow claims that it needs ten years to process an immigrant’s residency application. The same government that approved billions in war funding overnight insists that legal immigrants must wait an eternity for a visa. This is not inefficiency; it is deliberate obstruction. It is an immigration system designed not to work, but to stall. A labyrinth of paperwork meant to slow, frustrate, and obstruct. A bloated bureaucracy that feeds on its own inefficiency, expanding itself not by solving problems but by perpetuating them.

And the cost is unbearable. Families remain divided for decades because a government official has yet to stamp a piece of paper. Employers are crippled because they cannot legally hire the workers they need. Millions who could contribute to the economy, who want nothing more than to build a better life, are left in limbo, unable to move forward because the system is too broken to process their applications in a reasonable time frame. And yet, while these people are forced to wait years in legal purgatory, corporations lobby for loopholes that allow them to exploit immigrant labor at pennies on the dollar—keeping workers undocumented, unpaid, and vulnerable. This is not a broken system—it is a rigged system.

The Washington Union Party will not accept this failure. We will tear down this bureaucratic disaster and rebuild it from the ground up. We will demand a streamlined immigration process, where applications are reviewed within months, not years. We will strip the bureaucratic waste from the system and force it to function with the efficiency of Ellis Island, not the stagnation of Washington. We will ensure that those who follow the law are never punished for doing so. And we will end the corporate exploitation of immigrants, which allows companies to benefit from their labor while denying them basic rights and legal protections.

America does not have an immigration problem. It has an immigration system problem. A system that rewards those who break the rules and punishes those who follow them is a system that deserves to be dismantled. The Washington Union Party will see to it that the bureaucrats who stand in the way of progress either do their jobs—or lose them. The time for waiting is over. We will fix this.

Meanwhile, those who ignore the law find themselves in a different reality.

The border is a sieve, a chaotic free-for-all where cartels profit off human misery, where fentanyl floods into our communities, where desperate families cross dangerous terrain only to be met with an overburdened system that cannot process them. We have built a system that punishes the honest while rewarding the reckless. We allow corporate lobbyists to exploit immigrant labor while politicians on both sides use migrants as political props. We treat people like numbers, like burdens, like tools for political posturing rather than human beings. This is not the America our ancestors built. This is not a system worthy of a free nation.

The Washington Union Party will not stand for this failure. We will reform immigration not with slogans, not with symbolic gestures, but with real solutions. We will fix the backlog by streamlining legal immigration, ensuring that those who wish to come here lawfully can do so within months, not years. We will secure the border with technology and manpower, not as an excuse for cruelty, but as a necessity for national security. We will deport violent criminals and those who exploit the system, while offering a real path to earned citizenship for those who contribute to this country. We will crack down on corporations that exploit immigrant labor, ensuring that those who come here are treated as workers, not as disposable pawns in a rigged economic game. This is not radical. This is common sense.

Let those who resist reform be warned: America will not wait for you to find your spine. The American people are tired of an immigration system that serves no one. They are tired of watching politicians exploit this issue without solving it. They are tired of a government that is incapable of efficiency, fairness, or security. The Washington Union Party will fix this—not because it is easy, not because it is convenient, but because it is necessary for the survival of the Republic. America will have an immigration system that works. America will restore dignity to those who seek opportunity. America will protect its borders without betraying its soul.

The time for excuses is over. The time for action is now. We will fix this broken system. We will honor those who seek to contribute. We will protect those who are already here. And we will ensure that this nation, built by immigrants but defined by law, remains strong, secure, and thriving for generations to come.

For too long, America has been caught in a lie of its own making—a nation that proudly declares itself the land of opportunity while erecting every possible barrier to those who would seize it. A nation that was built on the backs of immigrants, yet now stifles and punishes them. A nation that claims to value hard work, yet forces millions into legal purgatory simply for daring to follow the law. This is not just incompetence; it is a betrayal of our own history. We are a nation of immigrants, yet we treat those who come seeking the same dream our ancestors pursued as criminals, as threats, as parasites feeding off a system that, in reality, they help sustain. It is time to end this hypocrisy. It is time to fix what we have broken.

There is no moral high ground in a country that cries about "illegal immigration" while simultaneously creating a system so bloated, corrupt, and slow that it forces people to find another way in. There is no honor in a government that funds foreign wars with the stroke of a pen, yet tells families they must wait decades to be reunited because their paperwork is buried under red tape. And there is no righteousness in a nation that preaches about law and order while turning a blind eye to corporations that profit off the undocumented, using their labor to fuel industries while denying them basic protections and rights. This system is not broken by accident—it is broken by design.

The Washington Union Party will not allow this to continue. We will build a system that honors those who seek to contribute, protects those who have built their lives here, and upholds the laws of this nation without cruelty, corruption, or delay. We will streamline legal immigration so that it serves America’s interests rather than stifling them. We will end the corporate exploitation of immigrant labor, ensuring that businesses play by the same rules as workers. We will secure the border—not as an act of hatred, but as an act of governance, because a nation without control over its borders has no sovereignty at all. And we will never again allow politicians to use immigrants as pawns, demonizing them in speeches while benefitting from their labor in silence.

Let us not pretend that we are the righteous ones in this story. This land was stolen long before it was ever “secured.” The United States was built on land taken through blood, deception, and betrayal. Native American nations were not enemies of civilization; they were civilizations of their own, systematically destroyed under the banners of Manifest Destiny and greed. From the Trail of Tears, where thousands of Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole were forced from their lands, to Wounded Knee, where Lakota men, women, and children were slaughtered by the U.S. Cavalry, this nation did not expand through peaceful negotiation—it expanded through conquest, through the erasure of those who stood in the way of its relentless march. And yet, the descendants of those who orchestrated this theft now claim to be the rightful gatekeepers of America, deciding who is worthy to enter.

We built our prosperity off the backs of those who had no say in the matter—Native Americans, African slaves whose forced labor fueled the wealth of an empire, Chinese railroad workers who laid the tracks that connected this nation while being barred from citizenship, Irish laborers who were treated as disposable, Mexicans who were “American” one day and “foreigners” the next when the border moved over them. We owe a debt. Not of open borders, not of lawlessness, but of justice. A nation that has taken so much has no right to lecture others about who “deserves” to be here. If we are to call ourselves a great nation, then we must act like one—not by shutting doors, not by punishing those who dream, but by ensuring that the dream remains real for those willing to work for it.

To the cowards in Washington who stall reform, who profit from dysfunction, who stoke fear instead of fixing problems—your time is up. The American people will no longer tolerate the lies. They will no longer allow this nation to be run by incompetence, by xenophobia disguised as patriotism, by corruption wrapped in the language of law and order. The reckoning is here, and we are coming to take back what should have been fixed decades ago.

The future of this nation does not belong to the cowards who build walls—it belongs to the builders, the dreamers, the workers who refuse to accept failure as an option. It belongs to those who come here not for a handout, but for a chance. It belongs to those who believe in America more than those who were born here do. We will not fail them. We will not betray them. We will build a system that is smart, secure, and just. The time for waiting is over. The time for excuses is gone. The time to act is now.