Kelly: ‘Astounding’ That Democrats Reject Trump Immigration Compromise

immigration
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Neil Munro

White House chief of staff John Kelly told NPR that he is astounded by the Democrats’ refusal to accept President Donald Trump’s immigration compromise offer of citizenship for 1.8 million DACA illegals.

“It is astounding to me with all of my interactions [about immigration] with the Hispanic Caucus, the Democratic Caucus, all of that, that when this stuff was served up on a silver platter they did nothing,” Kelly said, according to the May 11 interview.

“It’s astounding to me, and it should be to the world” that Trump”s “earthquake” immigration concession on DACA was rejected, he said.

Kelly also showed that he is still hoping Democrats will accept a compromise deal over DACA population and the pending departure of 300,000 former ‘TPS’ refugees back to their homes in Honduras, Haiti, El Salvador and other countries:

I think we should fold all of the [Temporary Protect Status] people that have been here for a considerable period of time and find a way for them to be [on] a path to citizenship.

But Kelly’s renewed offers of compromise was met with a blast of anger from progressive op-ed writers, Tweeters, TV anchors, politicians, and activists.

Kelly’s surprise at the Democrats’ 2018 immigration stonewall was shared by other people, including Mark Krikorian, the experienced director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “A whole lot of people underestimated how much the Democrats would oppose anything Trump did, no matter what, and how radical they have become on immigration,” said Krikorian. “I underestimated it too.”

Krikorian continued:

A decade ago, when the George W. Bush amnesty campaign happened [in 2006 and 2007], there were still a few Democrats who were concerned about the effect of mass immigration on working Americans. But as we saw during the [2016] presidential campaign, Hillary’s campaign took the most radical position in American politics — that anyone who snuck into the United States or overstayed their visa would get to stay for the rest of their lives, so along as they didn’t get convicted of a violent felony. That was wet-foot/dry-foot for the whole world.

Why that happened I don’t know. The Democratic Party has been progressively leaving the workers and economic issues behind in favor of identity politics [while] becoming a corporate party [of] the top and the bottom against the middle.

Post-election studies have shown that Trump’s focus on immigration reform revealed a deep class divide over cheap-labor immigration that establishment media outlets had tried to hide. Trump’s reform promise allowed working-class Americans to back Trump, while upper-income and professional-class people moved towards the Democratic Party’s cheap-labor policy.

“Unlimited immigration serves the economic interests of the overclass and the identity politics is what they try to sell to the poor,” summarized Krikorian.

Kelly is still hoping that the new Democrats will compromise on immigration:

Right now, I would like to see legislatively the four pillars [of Trump’s reforms] enacted. And I think those that did not grasp the four pillars and pass it, have let down 1.8 million DACA people.

He told NPR that he would also like to make a deal that would allow many of the TPS residents to stay in the United States:

Take the Central Americans that have been here 20-plus years. I mean if you really start looking at them and saying, “OK, you know you’ve been here 20 years. What have you done with your life?” “Well, I’ve met an American guy and I have three children,” and “I’ve worked and gotten a degree” or “I’m a brick mason,” or something like that.

Productive migrants with deep roots can stay, Kelly said, but the recent TPS beneficiaries should be sent home if their homeland has largely recovered from the earthquake, storm or civil war that justified the TPS award:

For the ones that have been here for shorter periods of time, [look at] the whatever it was that gave them TPS status in the first place. If that is solved back in their home countries they should go home.

Kelly’s desire for compromise also prompted him to explain the administration’s policy of deterring illegal migration by prosecuting migrating adults while their children are safeguarded elsewhere:

The name of the game to a large degree [is deterrence]. Let me step back and tell you that the vast majority of the people that move illegally into United States are not bad people. They’re not criminals. They’re not MS-13. Some of them are not. But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society. They’re overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from – fourth, fifth, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English, obviously that’s a big thing. They don’t speak English. They don’t integrate well, they don’t have skills. They’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws. But a big name of the game is deterrence.

Kelly’s conciliatory and pro-compromise comments caused a storm of outrage and cries of ‘Racism!’ from Democrats eager to display their moral superiority — and also to undermine Kelly’s ability to help run Trump’s office.

The anti-Kelly arguments largely consisted of insults and tales about 20th century Europeans and Asians from elite Democrats who claim their anecdotes refute Kelly’s data-backed comments about recent Central American migrants.

But there is plenty of data showing the disappointing integration of many — not all — recent migrants into an economy where the abundance of cheap immigrant labor is creating a California-like two-tier society of high-tech rich and low-tech poor:

The 2016 report on immigration by the National Academies of Sciences admitted “a slowing rate of wage convergence for immigrants admitted after 1979” as it also admitted a huge economic impact on ordinary Americans.

A study released in November 2017 by the Anne E. Casey Foundation showed incredibly poor reading and math proficiency of fourth grade and eight-grade immigrants: “For children in the 4th grade living in immigrant families, only eight percent scored at or above the proficiency level in reading. In math, the proficiency rate is even worse, with only five percent of 8th graders in immigrant households scoring at or above the proficiency level. Compare these statistics to that of children who are born in the U.S. to non-foreign families, where 38 percent of 4th graders scored at or above the reading proficiency level and 34 percent of 8th graders scored at or above the math proficiency.”

Activists claim the DACA youths are well educated, but Breitbart News reported that the Migration Policy Institute showed that “while DACA recipients are almost as likely as U.S. adults in the same age group (15-32) to be enrolled in college (18 percent versus 20 percent), they are far less likely to have completed college (4 percent versus 18 percent).”

An April 2018 report by the Center for Immigration Studies showed that: the median income of new arrivals was $18,402 in 2017, slightly lower than in 2007. Native income also fell slightly, so the gap between new immigrants and natives stayed about the same, with natives’ income still about twice that of new immigrants.

An October 2016 report showed that a record one-in-five U.S. residents speak a foreign language at home, with the fastest-growing languages including Arabic and Urdu, a new study reveals. The Center for Immigration Studies, surveying data the Census Bureau released from its 2015 American Community Survey, found 64.7 million U.S. residents spoke a language other than English at home, with data indicating that one-in-four public school students speaking a foreign language at home.

The Democrats’ rapid shift in the last decade towards a pro-migration, open-borders policy “has been so remarkable that a lot of people didn’t get it … a lot of people were surprised at how radical and intransigent the Left has become,” said Krikorian.

Democrats won’t shift back towards the middle until they suffer multiple election defeats in 2018, 2020 or later because of their anti-border stance, he said:

If the Republicans hold on to their majorities [in 2018], some Democrats are going to reassess their resistance posture, so there might be an opportunity to make a deal. If Trump wins reelection [in 2020], some more Democrats are going to conclude this will not go away if they cover their ears and say ‘Lalala, I don’t hear.’

“I hope in the White House they are starting to realize that,” Krikorian said. “This is trench warfare … there’s no blitzkrieg going on here.”

Kelly is likely to help win that large and long-term fight, said Krikorian, because “having grown up blue-collar, he is more likely to feel the idea [of open borders] isn’t good for Americans.”

Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.

But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting roughly 1.1 million new legal immigrants, by providing work-permits to roughly 3 million resident foreigners, and by doing little to block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.

The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people, it floods the market with 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, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

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