The latest immigration pitch comes from Bernie Sanders who wants to welcome thousands of “climate refugees” to the US which assumes major suffering somewhere on the planet because of extended bad weather, drought or some other regional hiccup. I remain convinced that climate change is often trotted out as a cause of problems that can more properly be attributed to world population growth. Plus, climate change is a flexible enough problem to allow many government-imposed solutions, definitely a plus for Democrats.

Tucker Carlson examined the ramifications of Bernie’s plan for “climate migrants” on his Monday show.

We humans now number more than 7.7 billion persons, more than double the world’s population on the first Earth Day in 1970 when the number was 3.7 billion — that’s quite an uptick in just under 50 years.

Top Democrats claim to believe in climate change as a big problem that is worsened by the United States, yet they want to increase America’s population substantially by immigration. Go figure.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well a couple years ago, Bernie Sanders described open borders as a Koch brothers proposal because it is literally a Koch brothers proposal — it’s a libertarian idea — he was right. Mass migration reduces wages for low-skilled workers but now Sanders has changed his mind. His campaign has released an immigration proposal that reads like something the Koch brothers would write: it would halt deportation or abolish enforcement of our borders, abolish ICE and create a new category for something called “climate migrants.”

Justin Haskins is a research fellow at the Heartland Institute. He joins us tonight to explain what a climate migrant might be, and more pressingly, Justin, why would a climate migrant have a right to come to my country?

JUSTIN HASKINS: Well apparently climate migrants, which I don’t even think are a real thing, are essentially a category of people from third world countries, from developing nations, who are so supposedly suffering as a result of climate change, man-caused climate change.

Now, I don’t believe that anybody is actually suffering from man-caused climate change, but Bernie Sanders’ proposal would have 50,000 people, 50,000 at minimum, come to the United States from around the world, who are suffering from climate change, supposedly, in just the first year — and over the course of his presidency, hundreds of thousands of people, because supposedly this is good for climate justice or something along those lines.

But the most bizarre part of all of this is that I thought, according to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and everybody else in the socialist left, that human beings are causing climate change, that humans’ CO2 emissions, that that’s what’s causing climate change, and it’s going to be catastrophic.

Well, if that’s true, then why are we bringing people from all over the world where they produce CO2 emissions less per person, in places like Mexico and Guatemala and places like that, why are we bringing them to the United States where we produce CO2 emissions per person at a much higher rate? It doesn’t make any sense.

CARLSON: And also, if you cared about the environment, which I personally do emphatically care, and actually go outside once in a while, unlike most people on the left — why would you want a crowded country?

Isn’t crowding your country the fastest way to despoil it, to pollute it, to make it a place you wouldn’t want to live?

HASKINS: Yeah absolutely. Look, the left is schizophrenic on a lot of issues, and this is one of those issues.

It doesn’t make any sense at all to have an open door, open border policy where you’re bringing people into the United States when people are supposedly destroying the planet, destroying the environment, where we’re we’re talking about population control in some parts of the left right now.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez says that she stays up at night, and she doesn’t think she can have children because she’s worried about the effect it’s having on climate change, but Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wants to bring in hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people from around the world into the United States. How does this make any sense?

CARLSON: And actually, I mean this with sincerity, I feel sorry for her because I think she means it. I think that the movement that was started to clean up the environment which most people, again very much including me, totally for that has morphed into this weird cluster of neuroses where people actually think they can’t have children because of climate, and it’s sad. I mean it really is — paging Dr. Freud — I mean these people need help. Well I guess we all need help our society’s going crazy.

Justin, thank you for your part in making it a little bit less crazy.

Below, when a moderator requested of the Democrat candidates, “Raise your hand if your government plan would provide [medical] coverage for undocumented immigrants,” all responded affirmatively.

For more details about Heartland’s report, see Medicare for All: More Taxes, Worse Health Care, and Much More Debt.

Incidentally, numerous illegal aliens have already come to the United States to mooch healthcare from American taxpayers. One of the most obnoxious cases was the several liver transplants performed on illegal alien Ana Puente whose aunt brought her to the U.S. from Mexico to get medical care. Puente’s attitude was one of entitlement, revealed when she remarked, “It doesn’t matter if I’m undocumented. They should take care of me at UCLA for the rest of my life because I’ve been there since I was a baby.”

In 2006, the Denver Post reported, “Hundreds of Mexican illegal immigrants are in Colorado not just for work but also for free medical care they say they can’t get back home.”

So there’s already a pattern in place of illegal aliens crossing the border to steal free healthcare from the beleaguered American taxpayer. The Democrats want to take it to the globalist extreme to get future voters and turn America into a socialist hellhole forever.

TUCKER CARLSON: 2020 could be the first year that the Democratic Party nominates a self-described socialist for president. Even if they don’t, almost every Democratic candidate running right now has endorsed at least some socialist policies. What are these policies and maybe more important, how much would they cost and would they work? Is there any evidence they would?

Justin Haskins is editorial director and a research fellow at the Heartland Institute, and he joins us tonight to assess. So Justin, we want to take all policy ideas seriously. Clearly the people in charge have screwed up the country, so we’re open-minded always, but give us a sober analysis of some of the big policies these candidates are promoting. Would they make the country better?

JUSTIN HASKINS: No Tucker, unfortunately they would not make the country better: the vast majority of the policies being offered right now by the Democratic Party are going to be incredibly expensive. They have no way to pay for them, and the first one to talk about of course is Medicare for All.

A lot of people have heard that this is going to cost $32 trillion to $38 trillion dollars over the first 10 years, but what does it actually mean for middle-class people? They’re being told that they’re going to save thousands and thousands of dollars because they’re not going to have to pay expensive deductibles and co-pays and things like that, but here’s the truth: we just conducted a study at the Heartland Institute, and we found that middle-class Americans are going to get absolutely screwed by single-payer healthcare.

Forty million to 60 million American households are going to end up paying more in new federal taxes than they’re going to get back in healthcare benefits. People who make $75,000 to $100,000 a year are going to see their tax bills go up, we estimate by 12,000 to $15,000 per year. Those who earn $100,000 or more are going to see their tax bills go up on average by $20,000, and the more money you make, the worse it gets. So single-payer healthcare — there is absolutely no way to pay for that.

And that brings us to our second point: free healthcare for all illegal immigrants. This is one of the most ridiculous policies that has ever been proposed in American history. Here you have 11 million to 29 million illegal aliens here in the country right now, and that’s probably a conservative figure. Even if we assume we’re just going to pay out healthcare costs that match what we’re paying right now for Medicaid beneficiaries, we’re going to see costs goes up. Who’s going to pay for that?

CARLSON: May I stop you there? So you’re saying those costs will go up? Those are just the costs of paying for the healthcare of illegal aliens.

HASKINS: That’s right, and that’s just the start. I mean this is a big invitation to the world, to billions of people around the world — come here to America, we’re gonna pay for your healthcare. What’s to stop busloads or trainloads or planeloads of people with serious ailments from coming to the United States legally or illegally, and for us to be treating these people?

I mean this is this is total madness, and that’s why basically no other country in the entire world does something like that, so yes this is a crazy proposal from the left.

And the third big proposal is a federal jobs guarantee: now this might seem tame compared to the other things that we just talked about, but this is an incredibly dangerous proposal.

Not only is it going to be very expensive — four trillion to $44 trillion, according to the American Action Forum over a ten-year period, depending on how many people are in it. But in addition it’s going to indirectly give the federal government power over the entire labor market because if they’re offering people a living wage, anyone a living wage which could be $15, it could be $20, it could be $25 an hour it means whatever it means to the Democratic Party candidates.

If you’re offering that then how is a small business or a medium-sized business supposed to compete with the federal government? You’re going to have millions leaving their jobs in the private sector to go work for the federal government to earn $20 an hour and free health care and free paid family leave and all sorts of other things to take jobs that don’t necessarily need to exist. I mean this is crazy stuff.

CARLSON: It is crazy, and they’re all for it too.