Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” criticized those engaging in “hysterical lecturing” on the heels of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement that President Donald Trump was ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration policy.
Carlson said the real culprit worthy of such critiques was Congress and that those in favor of the policy lacked an appreciation for the rule of law.
Transcript as follows:
The administration today announced it will suspend DACA. That is President Obama’s program that grants special work permits and amnesty from deportation to illegal immigrants who’ve arrived in this country as minors. You might think the move would set off a national debate about immigration, the pros, the cons, how much of it we’re going to need going forward, but no. Instead the educated classes became completely hysterical lecturing the rest of us about the racism of the middle of the country. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EDDIE GLAUDE, JR., PRINCETON PROFESSOR: We can think about the policy issues, this is really red meat to its base, that it’s really speaking to a kind of deep-seated cultural anxiety about the changing nature of the country.
CARLOS GUTIERREZ, FORMER SECRETARY OF COMMERCE: There are people who feel threatened by immigrants and they are using this concept of unconstitutional —
KARINE JEAN PIERRE, MOVEON.ORG: He might do away with DACA, which is another moral line that he would be crossing, which is something that would be advancing white supremacy agenda and also against what the majority of Americans want.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well, this isn’t just demagoguery, though it is that. It’s also nonsense, whatever you think of the effects of DACA, no administration could continue it because it’s illegal. U.S. immigration laws are pretty straightforward. If you are in the country illegally, you were supposed to leave. If you think that’s mean or counterproductive or unfair take it up with their legislators.
Only Congress can change the law. The President is bound to faithfully enforce the laws of the United States. He, or any president, can simply invalidate those who doesn’t like. Former cabinet Secretary Gutierrez doesn’t think this is a meaningful distinction but if you want to live in a constitutional democracy where laws are more powerful than men, nothing is more important than that.
But to our leaders there is indeed something more important than that. Political power. They have concluded that mass immigration means new and reliable voters and that means more power for them. If they need to subvert the rule of law to get that power they will and they have. In states across the county, politicians now actively boast about ignoring the law. They unilaterally declare federal statutes invalid in their cities, they bar ICE agents from buildings.
They give drivers licenses and state college tuition to people who are here illegally. They refused to prosecute immigrants for crimes that have nothing to do with immigration, in effect giving preference to illegals over their own citizens. Congress is a little better, they look away as the laws they passed are mocked and applauded. In 2012, Barack Obama decided to take this reasoning to his national end point. He just openly ignored the law by creating DACA.
That move was sold as a way to protect people who don’t remember living in any country except this one. But like almost everything you hear from Washington, that was mostly propaganda. People came here illegally at 15 were just as eligible for amnesty under DACA as those who arrived as infants. DACA beneficiaries were not supposed to receive benefits. Remember that? That turned out to be a lie too.
In New York for instance, DACA recipients qualifies for both Medicaid and cash assistance. But this isn’t simply about DACA. The program was indefensible, but it was just one manifestation of a bigger and much more ominous trend. The global defense has given up on concept that have defined civilized states for more than two millennia.
Borders, citizenship and the rule of written law itself, all abandoned in favor of the worldwide rule by unaccountable technocrats. Just today from a “Washington Post” reporter and proud illegal alien Jose Antonio Vargas, posted a picture of his fake Social Security card on Twitter. His fellow clever people applauded. They are not pretending anymore. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(CROWD PROTESTING)
No Border, no nations, deportation!
(BLEEP)
No Border, no nations, deportation!
(BLEEP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to make it clear that immigrants and immigration are here to stay.
JOHN KELLY, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF-OF-STAFF: You are about to graduate into a complex and borderless world.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Secretary Clinton said this, take a look, quote, “My dream is a hemispheric common market with open borders sometime in the future.” Is that her dream? Is that what she wants, open borders, and open market?
SEN. TIM KAINE (D), VIRGINI: Yes. Jake, I’m glad you ask it that way because I don’t think we can dignify documents dumped by Wikileaks.
TAPPER: Right. That’s fair. Is this document then, is it accurate, did she tell Brazilian bankers that —
KAINE: I have no way of knowing that. I have no way of knowing.
TAPPER: Well, you could ask her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes. She did, in fact. By the way, nobody was talking like this ten years ago, at least in public. This is all happening pretty fast. So, it might be worth pausing to think through the consequences of these new attitudes. Borders, laws, citizenship, they are big things to give up, especially when they are done by executive fiat without giving a vote to the masses who actually deal with the actual consequences of these changes.
When you refuse to control your borders you are saying that the country doesn’t belong to its people. But to the whole world. When you give away citizenship to anyone who wants it, you are saying citizenship isn’t worth anything. Is that really our position now?
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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