Top Democrats are dismissing a proposed amnesty deal from President Donald Trump’s globalist aides, which would trade citizenship for at least 800,000 ‘DACA’ illegals — plus their parents and immediate relatives — in exchange for some package of real or symbolic immigration-related benefits.
The Democrats’ leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, refused to even consider offering any benefits to Americans in exchange for the permanent amnesty of the 800,000 younger illegals who are now getting work-permits via former President Barack Obama’s “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals amnesty, which was first announced in the run-up to the 2012 election.
Schumer is a strong supporter of amnesty and pushed hard for passage of the 2013 “Comprehensive Immigration reform” amnesty-and-cheap-labor bill, which was also backed by the nation’s business sector. That bill proved to be a disaster for the Democrats and Schumer because it helped the GOP win 10 Seats in the 2014 election. That 10-seat loss has prevented him from becoming Senate Majority Leader until 2020 at least.
Schumer’s dismissal was so complete that he portrayed the proposed deal as DACA in exchange for mere border upgrades, so ignoring Trump’s proposed wage-boosting immigration reforms.
House Democrat leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi is also rejecting any exchange to make the DACA amnesty permanent. She described the DACA recipients as “children,” even though some are in their 30s and 40s.
The same “no bargaining chip” language is being used by Philip Wolgin, the managing director of immigration policy at the Democrats’ advocacy group, the Center for American Progress.
Greg Sargent, a progressive columnist at the Washington Post described the progressives’ view of the globalist DACA-for-something trade:
Now the Trump White House wants to use this population as a bargaining chip to compel Congress to fund a border wall, stepped-up deportations, cuts to legal immigration and a requirement that all employers use E-Verify. Evaluated solely on its own terms, this would be a truly awful deal for immigration advocates and Democrats: It would constitute giving the restrictionists a whole range of things they covet, in exchange for not removing protections from dreamers that even many Republicans are loath to see removed. (Advocates say mandatory E-Verify would force undocumented immigrants out of work and compel them to self-deport, breaking up families; advocates are okay with E-Verify as long as it is paired with legalization of the 11 million, which would allow them to work legally.)
There is no way Democrats could possibly assent to any such deal.
Sargent also echoes the mistaken claim that the public wants to preserve DACA:
But in that scenario, the mess has been dumped on Republicans as well as Democrats. An analysis by the Cato Institute’s David Bier shows that if Trump ended DACA, it would probably be unwound over time, which would mean large chunks of dreamers losing work permits in rolling intervals. The dreamers are very sympathetic figures; they are well-organized politically; the national press will feature their stories; and a major blamefest will break out. Republicans have already proven queasy about defending the uglier aspects of Trump’s immigration agenda — the mass deportations and the thinly disguised Muslim ban — and now they will risk owning the fates of the dreamers as well.
In fact, polls commissioned by Democrats and business leaders deeply understate the public’s support for immigration enforcement. Their reluctance to recognize the public’s strong support for strong enforcement has caused Democrats to overplay their hands in the 2013 amnesty debate, the 2014 elections, the 2016 elections — and likely the 2018 elections. For example, the Democrats’ pro-immigration groups continue to portray the popular goal of enforcement as “hate.”
Pro-American immigration reformers say that underlying support for tougher enforcement — and for President Donald Trump’s popular “RAISE Act” reform of the nation’s immigration system and economy — gives the nationalist-minded GOP leaders a winning hand in the pending 2018 election, where at least five vulnerable Democratic Senators are facing a Trump-leaning electorate.
The Democrats are also in a bind because a coalition of state Attorneys General has promised to extend a successful anti-amnesty lawsuit to include the DACA amnesty. The deadline for the threat is September 5. If the AGs do extend their lawsuit, then the federal judge in Texas is expected to quickly nullify Obama’s DACA quasi-amnesty.
Sargent indirectly admits the Democrats’ problem, and grudgingly endorse a trade of amnesty for a few policy trinkets.
To be clear, it is possible to envision some kind of deal involving the dreamers, as a kind of last-ditch (if sordid) way to salvage their fates, in which they gain protection (perhaps legislatively) in exchange for some form of increased border security funding or tweaks to the formula for legal immigration. But the White House deal taking shape would require Democrats to sell out all sorts of core priorities, and it is likely Democrats will draw a hard line against funding that would be used for the wall and an expanded deportation force
Pro-American immigration reformers, however, want to delay any negotiations over DACA until the Democrats have agreed to fund and reform the nation’s enforcement system. Without better enforcement — including a mandatory use of E-verify plus a better border fence — any amnesty for the DACA illegals will just spur another wave of wage-cutting, tax-consuming illegal immigrants, the reformers say.
Immigration reformers also want to delay any talk about a DACA deal until after the 2018 election because they don’t trust Trump’s globalist aides will try to win a good deal for Trump’s middle-class voters. The supporters of the proposed deal were described August 22 by a report from the McClatchy news service:
White House officials want Trump to strike an ambitious deal with Congress that offers Dreamers protection in exchange for legislation that pays for a border wall and more detention facilities, curbs legal immigration and implements E-verify, an online system that allows businesses to check immigration status, according to a half-dozen people familiar with situation, most involved with the negotiations.
The group includes former and current White House chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and John Kelly, the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both serve as presidential advisers, they said. Others who have not been as vocal publicly about their stance but are thought to agree include Vice President Mike Pence, who as a congressman worked on a failed immigration deal that called for citizenship, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, a Democrat who serves as director of the National Economic Council.
“It is plausible the [establishment aides] really want to drive a hard bargain, but the way that story sounded … I’m afraid that it could turn into kind of a swindle,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“I find it hard to believe that Ivanka and Kushner and Cohn are supporting the RAISE Act …. [and] I have a hard time seeing most of Trump’s aides pushing for anything on immigration except for bad things,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA.
In general, globalist advocates and their affiliated business groups favor large-scale immigration because it raises the profit-boosting supply of wage-cutting labor and taxpayer-funded consumers.
The current annual flood of foreign labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families.
Many polls show that Americans are very generous, they do welcome individual immigrants, and they do want to like the idea of immigration. But the polls also show that most Americans are increasingly worried that large-scale legal immigration will change their country and disadvantage themselves and their children. Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” policies are also extremely popular, including among Democratic-leaning voters.