Republican John Thune Complains Trump ‘Not Helpful’ for Migration Talks

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and other pro-establishment Republican senators want former President Donald Trump to butt out of their back-room negotiations with pro-migration Democrats.

“It’s not helpful,” Thune, who is the top deputy to Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), told CNN. “There are a number of pieces in there that are good, conservative border policies that we’ve been trying to get done for years,” he told reporters.

“There are some folks without question that don’t want to get any solution to a problem because they think that might help the other side,” retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) told CNN.  “You think Donald Trump has influence on politics? Yeah,” said Romney, who has consistently supported bills that would allow foreign workers to take jobs and homes that Americans need.

Late Wednesday, Trump declared his skepticism about the pending deal via a post on TruthSocial.com:

I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, Country! Also, I have no doubt that our wonderful Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, will only make a deal that is PERFECT ON THE BORDER. Remember, without Strong Borders and Honest Elections, we don’t have a Country!!!

Trump’s intervention “makes it harder because there are a lot of people that take their lead directly from him,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) complained. He is pushing legislation to help more foreigners take careers sought by U.S. professionals.

McConnell wants a vote on the deal next week, minimizing the time available for GOP voters to read the bill and protest before the Senate vote.

Thune is pushing the bill, which likely will increase the legal inflow of migrants:

“There is absolutely no way that we would get the kind of border policy that’s being talked about right now with a Republican majority in the Senate,” Thune told Punchbowl News. “This is a unique moment in time. It’s an opportunity to get some really conservative border [policies] that we haven’t been able to get for 40 years.”

But some of the establishment senators are also equivocating on the deal, partly because Biden’s migration is extremely unpopular among voters. They are wary of Trump’s clout in the GOP, where large blocs of the members are now alienated from the business-dominated establishment leadership.

“We want to make sure everyone has a chance to see and fully understand what the bill would do,” Thune told Punchbowl News. “I don’t think there’s any particular rush. It’s more important that we get it done right.”

The top GOP negotiator in the talks, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), says the Senate Republican caucus will not back the bill until a caucus majority — 25 of 49 members — supports the deal.

Politico reported:

Senate Republicans don’t control the floor, but Lankford outlined his thinking in an interview. If he can get 25 or more of the 49 GOP senators to sign onto something, he’s betting that it might be enough to get Speaker Mike Johnson to take up a big emergency spending bill with Ukraine aid – without losing the gavel to a conservative rebellion.

When Lankford met with House Republicans on Wednesday, he told them that he doesn’t plan to back a border deal that barely skirts the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Lankford explained that he doesn’t want to win “51 Democrats and 10 Republicans. … That is not what this is. This is not just trying to barely squeak it over to them.”

Other GOP senators are reluctant to contradict Trump. “I respectfully disagree with the president,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), one of the most pro-migration Republican senators. Trump “could not possibly see what we are negotiating. … To lose this opportunity to get it passed into law I think is malpractice,” he said.

The details of the deal are unclear, but leaks suggest it would endorse Biden’s efforts to import an unlimited number of foreign migrants into U.S. society. The huge inflow would crash Americans’ living standards and shift vast wealth to Wall Street’s wealthy investors.

The remaining disagreement for negotiators is over the “parole” loophole in the border, according to many reports from Capitol Hill.

Biden’s deputies are using the parole loophole to import millions of migrants for jobs and homes that would otherwise go to Americans. Any compromise on parole would end up raising the legal inflow of migrants into the United States:

To my Democratic colleagues: If you think Republicans are going to allow the Biden Administration to continue to abuse parole, you are seriously mistaken. The Biden Administration has had a roughly 20,000% increase in using parole authority compared to the Obama and Trump…

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 18, 2024

Currently, the federal government pulls in one million legal immigrants and roughly 500,000 foreign contract workers per year.

Biden’s team has pulled in an extra five million migrants since 2021. The overall inflow adds one new migrant for every two U.S. births.

Democrats are pushing ahead because they want the GOP to minimize the visibility of the immigration issue during the 2024 election. For example, Biden’s deputies appear to have made a deal with Mexico’s government to interdict migrants.

Biden deputies are also asking the GOP for $14 billion extra to bus, house, and hide the migrants during the 2024 election.

Without the extra money, voters will see more penniless and homeless migrants living in poverty in their cities, towns, and counties. For example, Breitbart News reported on January 3:

President Joe Biden’s migration has flooded almost 1,000 poor Latino migrants into the poor college town of Whitewater, Wisconsin, according to a plea by the city’s police department.

“Their arrival has put great strains on our existing resources,” says the letter to Biden by the city manager and police chief of the 15,000-person city.

Extraction Migration

Since at least 1990, the federal government has relied on Extraction Migration to grow the economy after allowing investors to move the high-wage manufacturing sector to lower-wage countries.

The migration policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries. The additional workers, consumers, and renters push up stock values by shrinking Americans’ wages, subsidizing low-productivity companies, boosting rents, and spiking real estate prices.

The economic policy has pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors, reduced native-born Americans’ productivity and political clout, reduced high-tech innovation, and allowed government officials to ignore the rising death rate of poor Americans.

The policy also sucks jobs and wealth from Heartland states by subsidizing coastal investors and government agencies with a flood of low-wage workers, high-occupancy renters, and government-aided consumers.

The colonialism-like policy has also killed many thousands of migrants, including many on the taxpayer-funded jungle trail through the Darien Gap in Panama.