Tom Cotton: Trump Has Not ‘Shifted’ on Immigration, Dems Spinning to ‘Cover Extreme Open Borders Views’

amnesty
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

President Trump has not “shifted” his positions on immigration, as Democrats and the mainstream media are implying, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) says, noting that the talking point is being used to “cover” for the Democratic Party’s “extreme open borders views.”

On Friday evening, Senate Democrats, along with pro-amnesty Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), voted to shut down the federal government because the spending bill to keep the government running did not include amnesty for at least 3.5 million illegal aliens who are enrolled and eligible for the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Now, Democrats and the mainstream media have used the shutdown to blame Trump, claiming the president changed his positions on immigration, thus creating a government shutdown.

Cotton, though, says this is “all just Dem spin” to cover up the fact that the Democratic Party puts the interests of illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.

For the White House, the official position on a deal on immigration has not changed for months. As Trump has repeatedly mentioned, any immigration deal needed to include full funding for a border wall, an end to the process of “chain migration,” and an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery program.

Under the current legal immigration system, more than 70 percent of all immigration to the U.S. come fromchain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country with them.

In an explosive report, Breitbart News revealed that chain migration, if not ended, is expected to add between seven and eight million new foreign-born voters to the U.S. electorate – a scheme that favors Democrats, as immigrants, specifically Hispanics and Asians, vote 2-to-1 for Democrats over Republicans.

Since 2005, chain migration has imported more than nine million foreign nationals to the U.S., making it the largest driver of immigration —  more than 70 percent of all legal immigration. As Breitbart News reported, five years of chain migration to the U.S. adds more people to the country than one year of American births.

Likewise, the Visa Lottery, which Trump has demanded an end to, randomly imports 50,000 foreign nationals every year from a multitude of countries, including those with known terrorism problems – such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.

Most recently, the Visa Lottery made national headlines when it was revealed that suspected ISIS-inspired New York City terrorist, Uzbek national 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of murdering at least eight individuals, entered the U.S. in 2010 by winning one of the 50,000 visas randomly allotted in the program.

A Pulse Opinion Research poll conducted this month found that 60 percent of American likely voters wanted to see the Visa Lottery ended, as Trump has demanded. The same poll also found that nearly 60 percent of likely voters want to see chain migration ended as part of any immigration deal.

Senate Democrats, along with Graham and Flake, voted to shut the federal government down after they did not get their way in slipping an amnesty plan for millions of illegal aliens into the spending bill.

As Breitbart News reported, the amnesty plan by the “Gang of Six,” — which includes Flake, Graham, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) — would give a pathway to U.S. citizenship for at least 3.5 million illegal aliens who are eligible and enrolled for DACA, while their parents, who originally brought them to the country illegally, would be allowed to permanently remain in the U.S.

Additionally, the expansive amnesty plan would annually give U.S. citizenship to 25,000 foreign nationals who have or previously had Temporary Protected Status (TPS).TPS is a federal program that allows foreign nationals from specific countries that have been devastated, usually by natural disasters, to have a temporary stay in the U.S. until their native country is revived. Until the Trump administration, TPS programs for countries like Haiti and El Salvador were regularly extended, with the program becoming a quasi-amnesty for foreign nationals.

The Gang of Six amnesty would gradually allow all of those foreign nationals on TPS to permanently stay in the U.S., despite the program never being intended to keep foreign populations in the country.

Such a maneuver would mean that the roughly 200,000 El Salvadorans who had their TPS terminated by the Trump administration would be able to apply for the 25,000 visas allotted in the Gang of Six amnesty plan to try to stay in the U.S. permanently.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

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