“The primary purpose of our immigration laws is to set the pool of labor in the United States so that we can maintain the wages and working conditions of the American people,” explained Art Arthur, a resident fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and former immigration judge, during a Monday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.

Arthur’s remarks came in response to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) Monday rejection of interior enforcement, in which the latter asked, “What’s the point [of interior enforcement]?” Pelosi also derided interior enforcement of immigration law as “appalling” and “outside the circle of civilized human behavior.”

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Mansour asked of Pelosi’s remarks, “Are we not supposed to remove anybody? Is that what she’s saying?”

Arthur responded, “That appears to be what she’s saying. I think that every now and again, politicians slip and let their true intentions be known. Frankly, I think that’s not just the true intention of [Nancy Pelosi], but the true intention of many members of her caucus who are so vehemently opposed to immigration enforcement that they want to do things like abolish ICE, so there is no longer any immigration enforcement in the United States.”

Arthur continued, “What that will lead to, inevitably, is a huge number of individuals unlawfully present in the United States. We already have a huge number, but we’ll have even more. There’ll be more of a drain on our public services and our public schools, but even worse, there’ll be individuals willing to work in deplorable and unsafe conditions in our country.”

Arthur went on, “The question becomes, which of our labor laws are going to be enforceable if our immigration laws aren’t enforceable? Because the primary purpose of our immigration laws is to set the pool of labor in the United States so that we can maintain the wages and working conditions of the American people.”

“If the question is, ‘Why should we enforce the laws in the interior?’ then the answer is, ‘Because if you don’t enforce the laws in the interior, then there’s going to be nothing stopping people from entering the United States illegally and remaining permanently,'” remarked Arthur.

“It’s going to create a huge incentive for people to come to this country, to live here illegally, to work illegally, to take jobs that Americans — and I’m not just talking about citizens, but also aliens who are already here — could be doing and would be doing, but for the fact that those individuals are willing to come and work at a lower rate, perhaps being paid under the table.”

Border security and interior enforcement of immigration laws cannot be separated, noted Arthur.

“If we don’t have interior enforcement, all the border enforcement in the world — the tallest wall, the largest contingent of border patrol agents — isn’t going to be able to stop individuals from coming to this country. This truly is just a bizarre mindset.”

President Donald Trump’s recent comments about tentative deportations of millions of aliens likely refer to those who have had asylum claims rejected, speculated Arthur.

“More likely than not, the population of individuals in question would be family units who are under final orders for removal,” said Arthur. “Again, that’s an adult with a child, or adults with a child, or adults with children who are in the United States who had the opportunity to present an asylum claim that’s either been denied or they never made the claim. They were ordered deported, and they are simply awaiting removal from the United States.”

Arthur described deportations of those unlawfully in the homeland as a deterrent against foreigners aspiring to illegally immigrate to the U.S.

“There are about a million people, all told, but there is a much, much smaller category of family units who are in the United States,” explained Arthur. “The thought is that if people who live in descending countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador start to see their nationals come back to their home countries and family units, that they will be less likely to take the trip to the United States. That is the population of people that we would be talking about.”

Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.

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