Welfare bureaucrats are putting the scream on, with news that President Trump's efforts to enforce U.S. immigration law are incentivizing illegal aliens to drop out of assorted welfare programs.

Immigrants [sic] are turning down government help to buy infant formula and healthy food for their young children because they're afraid the Trump administration could bar them from getting a green card if they take federal aid. Local health providers say they've received panicked phone calls from both documented and undocumented [sic] immigrant families demanding to be dropped from the rolls of WIC, a federal nutrition program aimed at pregnant women and children, after news reports that the White House is potentially planning to deny legal status to immigrants [sic] who've used public benefits. Agencies in at least 18 states say they've seen drops of up to 20 percent in enrollment, and they attribute the change largely to fears about the immigration policy.

Are they serious? This is a crisis? We are supposed be alarmed, pound our feet, shout to our congressmen, and mobilize to put illegals back on taxpayer-funded welfare programs?

Obviously, someone's rice bowl is threatened, and it's not actually that of the illegals.

For starters, this whole thing looks funny.

The leftist "narrative" up until now is that illegals never take welfare. That looks rather tattered with this report about illegals dropping out of welfare. Actually, it confirms what conservatives have noticed all along: that illegals do take taxpayer-financed welfare, in large numbers, and come here with skills so low that their capacity to succeed in a Western economy is compromised. Meanwhile, the very existence of that welfare, open to all comers, is acting as a "magnet" for more of them to head to el norte, kids in tow.

The second "narrative" it blows apart is that illegals care so very much about their kids, much more than the rest of us, as the border show around family separations for people caught breaking the law demonstrated. What they're claiming now is that without government programs, these people would let their own kids starve in front of them instead of take other measures (such as getting jobs or going to private charities). Politico reports the bureaucrats (notice that the magazine didn't find any narrative-perfect illegals) in full hysteria-call:

"One way or another society is going to pay for this," said Hennessey of Public Health Solutions in New York City. "It's very expensive for a baby in the NICU. It's very expensive when a child's developmental needs aren't met, or there's a severe maternal morbidity event."

So illegals, who come here for jobs, not welfare, and adore their kids so much that they can't bear to be separated from them, would stand there and let their kids starve if America doesn't cough up a full food ride for them through the Women, Infants, and Children program, and no other resources are available for them.

Nope, this is about bureaucratic rice bowls. Bureaucrats and their wealthy NGO allies get cash and funding based on the numbers of people they can enroll in their programs. A booming economy is bad news for them, because people take jobs and leave welfare rolls. So is President Trump's bid to enforce existing U.S. immigration law.

The bureaucrats and do-gooders quoted all admit that they aren't actually entirely sure why the Women, Infants, and Children program has seen its numbers drop from 7.4 million to 6.8 million since President Trump took office. There is a dismissive note about the "improving economy" but no recognition that the sudden availability of jobs in the Trump economy tends to have a large effect on whether people (legal and illegal) stay on welfare rolls. For a lot of the poor, the promise of a job with the prospect of higher wages and an improved standard of living – and no government supervision, no need to keep heads down and incomes low – is preferable to any state welfare, so they're taking the jobs and running. Jobs in that much dismissed "improving economy" are likely the biggest reason the numbers of welfare recipients, both legal and illegal, are going down. This, by the way, is correlated with falling food stamp rolls (illegals supposedly can't get those) and declines in other welfare populations in the Trump economy.

The quoted bureaucrats do say that, because they have fielded inquiries from illegals, those same people who supposedly aren't bright enough to manage a voter ID card yet are amazingly cognizant on the minutiae of maintaining the exact qualifications for welfare, and who want to make sure that being a public charge won't hurt their green card chances.

What this shows is that the open borders lobby and the welfare industrial complex are amazingly integrated, and President Trump's effort to restore rule of law at the border and protect taxpayer assets is a threat to their money interests and raison d'être. What it also shows is that President Trump can't keep pushing hard enough on this. Striking out at the money trail has always been a surefire effort to end corrupt regimes and, by extension, corrupt bureaucratic empires.

Image credit: Andrew Skudder via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.