I Regret to Inform You That the Millionaires Are At It Again
Celebrities lecturing Americans about "ICE Out" doesn't make them better than you—it just makes them richer.
Wealthy celebrities drunk on their own virtue have taken to lecturing Americans about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that deports illegal aliens. Ever since two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed while impeding ICE operations in Minneapolis, “ICE Out” has become the latest virtue signal—replacing Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, Support Trans Kids, and Free Palestine. The Left has its new clarion call: We should have no borders. People should be allowed to come here illegally and just stay, even if they commit crimes.
“No one is illegal on stolen land!” as the singer Billie Eilish, reportedly worth $50 million and sporting an “ICE Out” pin, tearfully put it at the Grammy Awards Sunday night to a screaming crowd of other rich celebrities and musicians. “F*ck ICE!”
She was one of many unbelievably wealthy celebs to use the stage as an opportunity to denounce the only mechanism the United States has for ridding ourselves of criminals who aren’t citizens.
The singer Bon Iver wore a whistle affixed to his lapel—in honor of “the observers in Minneapolis.”
“Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say, ICE Out,” said the singer Bad Bunny, worth and estimated $100 million. "We are not savage, we are not animals, we are not aliens, we are humans and we are Americans.”
Someone should tell him that Americans are not the target of ICE deportations. But never mind the details!
But the Grammy’s itself culminated a week of unbelievably wealthy people weighing in on the issue.
You had Ellen Degeneris, worth an estimated $500 million, who endorsed last Friday’s “Nationwide Shutdown—NO WORK, NO SCHOOL, NO SHOPPING, ICE OUT EVERYWHERE”—and then went mansion shopping on the very day she lectured Americans to stay home and make no money. Actors Natalie Portman and Ed Norton also spent last week tearing up on red carpets over deportations.
What do all these people have in common?
Your first instinct might be to point out that they are liberals. But their more salient feature is that they are fabulously wealthy. Most wealthy Americans are now Democrats, as polling routinely shows. The Democrats used to represent labor while the Republicans were the party of the country club. But we experienced a political and economic realignment in the last 20 years, one that radically accelerated under Trump, to where most rich Americans are now on the Left, while most working-class Americans are MAGA.
Immigration is a huge part of why that realignment happened. People forget that until recently, it was the Republicans who wanted lax immigration policies—and the cheap labor they bring—and it was the Democrats who were hawkish on immigration because they understood that immigration is bad for labor.
The Left routinely calls people racist for believing we should have a strong national border with consequences—deportation—for people who break the law and cross our border illegally. But for working-class Americans, immigration isn’t about race; it’s about economics: It’s about competition for jobs against non-citizens willing to work for much less and with much fewer protections. It’s about competition for housing in the lower-income markets that they are stuck in due to the poor wages they now get with all that illegal competition. It’s about competition in public schools, where all the children of the illegals go. It’s about rising costs of health care because in many places, illegal migrants get free health care subsidized by the taxpayer.
But though the wealthy like to strut around espousing their vanity morals, immigration is about economics for them, too. After all, they are the people hiring migrants—as domestics, as nannies, as landscapers and construction workers. Everything that wealthy people pay for is much cheaper due to the glut of illegal labor. Trump’s deportation agenda has absolutely made it harder to find laborers, which means it’s made those laborers still here—the American ones—able to ask for more money.
And contrary to another self-serving myth, there is no such thing as a job an American won’t do. Not one industry in America has more than a 30% share of illegal labor. Not one.
So next time you see wealthy celebrities with their stupid little whistles and “ICE Out” pins bragging about how good hearted they are, just remember: They aren’t actually kinder than you. They’re just richer.
Apparently not a word about upwards of 50,000 souls killed in Iran in the past month. It’s hard for me to find words for how disgusting these people are.
Spot on Batya ! You are a bright light of wisdom ‘mongst the commentariat.