Democrats Reject Senate GOP Immigration Reform, Amnesty Proposal

The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Neil Munro

The Washington Post reports that the Democrats have rejected a proposal that would provide partial amnesty for some illegals in exchange for a series of pro-American immigration reforms.

The deal was outlined in a Thursday report which focused on President Donald Trump’s willingness to oppose a Democratic filibuster of the budget.

Republicans presented [Democratic Sen. Richard] Durbin with plans drafted mostly by [GOP Sen. John] Cornyn that would make changes to border security, bolster immigration enforcement, revamp the E-Verify employment verification program and put limits on some forms of chain migration.

Durbin called the GOP proposal “a disappointment,” noting that the more than 400 pages of proposals included a new definition of an asylum seeker — a legal issue settled by an international treaty.

“That’s way beyond border security that they’re talking about,” he said.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley “has been the driving force” behind the immigration reform package, a senior Hill aide told Breitbart News. Grassley has convened a group of GOP legislators, including Cornyn, to draft an immigration package for passage through the Senate. Grassley chairs the Senate’s judiciary committee, which handles immigration.

TheHill quoted Cornyn’s suggestion that the reform package could be released next week:

“Sen. [Chuck] Grassley and a working group had made an offer to Sen. [Dick] Durbin which he refuses to respond to. The way that Sen. Grassley described it is an impasse,” Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said on Thursday …

Now that the GOP offer has been rejected, Cornyn said Republicans are “looking at other ways forward.”

“I think you’ll be hearing more on that topic maybe as early as next week,” he said.

The GOP package shown to Durbin did not offer an amnesty to the 3 million illegals dubbed ‘dreamers,’ by Democrats and the media, but instead offered legalization and work-permits to the 690,000 DACA beneficiaries, according to an account in Politico:

“It was a 460-page border security bill by Sen. [John] Cornyn,” Durbin said in an interview. “I told him that is just not gonna happen. It didn’t even accept the Dream Act.”

The reports come as GOP leaders downplay Democratic threats to block the 2018 budget if the GOP does not agree to a no-strings DACA amnesty for the 3 million ‘dreamers.’ The Democrats’ preferred amnesty would put the illegals on a fast-track to the voting booth, and also allow the illegals to get green cards for millions of their chain migration relatives, including the illegal-immigrant parents who brought them into the United States.

In a November 29 Fox News interview, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it would be political suicide for Democrats to shut down the government in the hope of getting an amnesty. “That would be a pretty dumb place for them to end up, and I don’t think in the end they will end up there,” he told Laura Ingraham on her Fox show.

Instead, McConnell said he wanted a more ambitious bill that would cut chain migration:

I agree with [GOP Sen. Tom] Cotton and [GOP Sen. David] Perdue. The president has given us until March to deal with the issue of DACA. And the question is whether you are just going to do that and nothing else. I’m in favor of doing something on the DACA front. These kids came here through no act of their own. I think they have a legitimate case to be made. But I don’t think we ought to just do that. A chain migration, doing something about the diversity lottery, there are plenty of changes to the legal immigration system that should be added to any kind of a DACA fix that we do.

I think clearly immigration, the president made that a front and center issue. The wall, which we are still trying to achieve for him, was only part of it. And I think there is a great interest in changing the legal immigration system.

Other GOP Senators say the caucus is pushing for an ambitious immigration bill outside of the 2018 budget.

“I think the mood on our caucus is that ending chain-migration is a top priority,” Sen. Perdue told Breitbart News November 30. “The majority leaders statement … is a milestone,” he said, adding that “this is going to set America up to be competitive again with the rest of the world.”

“There’s a deal to be done,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN on November 26. “For the Dream Act, I think you could get strong border security and a break in chain migration.”

“This is not going to be part of the year-end omnibus or CR,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn November 2. The “CR” is Congress-speak for an end-of-year budget package.

“The Senators remains committed to their principles,” a Hill source told Breitbart News.

Outside the Senate, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he opposes a deal for illegal immigrants in the 2018 budget. “The goal is we want to fix this, and we’re working on it, and we want to make sure we do it in such a way that we don’t have the same problem down the road,” he told Reuters. “That means border security and interior enforcement so that we don’t have another DACA problem you know, five, ten years down the road.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly rejected an amnesty deal in the budget and has called for a bigger package which includes his popular immigration principles. Those immigration principles include a change to chain migration and adoption of the Cotton/Perdue Raise Act.

Polls show the public strongly prefers immigration rules which favor Americans.

Democrats embrace the industry-funded “nation of immigrants” polls which shame Americans to say they welcome migrants. But the alternative “fairness” polls show that voters put a much higher priority on helping their families, neighbors, and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy. That political power of the voters’ fairness priority was made clear during the GOP primaries and again in November 2016.

Public support for a ‘dreamer’ amnesty is also declining. Giving “children … protection from deportation” is the “top priority” for only 11 percent of American voters who identify as independents, and “a top priority” for only 23 percent of independents in a November poll by Morning Consult and Politico, which was headlined “Polling Shows Waning Enthusiasm for Congressional Action on Dreamers.”

However, at least eight GOP Senators are supporting various amnesty and cheap-labor immigration plans.

Cornyn has drafted a weak border-security bill that could provide a political fig-leaf for Senators backing an amnesty bill. The bill authorizes a series of border-security protections but does not require border agencies to build a wall. It also declares that the government must deploy a system to record the arrival and departure of foreign visitors — even though at least five existing laws already mandate the system. The Cornyn bill also only authorizes border improvements and does not include any funds needed to implement any of its instructions.

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt and Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran have introduced an immigration bill that would provide 125,000 visas and green cards to foreign college graduates and “entrepreneurs” each year. That outsourcing bill would increase the existing annual inflow of at least 1 million legal immigrants and at least one million temporary workers, plus the resident population more than 1 million visa-workers. That new population of 3 million foreign workers and consumers compete for jobs against the four million young Americans who join the workforce each year.

Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner is running the GOP election committee for the Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He has signed up the support the “Dream Act,” whose main champion is the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin. The act would provide a fast-track amnesty to at least 3 million illegals and many additional future chain-migration arrivals.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford have offered their “SUCCEED” bill as a way for illegals to get citizenship, although the bill awards that huge prize in 15 years to illegals who can enroll in education course after high-school and also avoid jail sentences that exceed one year. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch also supports the Tillis-Lankford amnesty.

All those bills, however, are modest measures compared to the massive replacement bill pushed by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. His “State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program of 2017” would annually invite 500,000 foreign workers — plus their families — to settle in the United States and compete for jobs against Americans. If passed, it would at least double the current levels of annual immigration and would push many voters out of the workforce.

Three of the four GOP members of the disastrous “Gang of Eight” 2013 amnesty and cheap-labor bill are keeping a low profile in the dispute. Sen. John McCain is ill, and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake has announced he will not run in 2018. Graham has endorsed Durbin’s Dream Act, but also says he wants a chain-migration fix. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has waffled and suggested to Ingraham November 29 that he could support bills that would grant an easy amnesty to the DACA illegals and more ambitious bills that would end chain migration.

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, who voted in 2013 for the Gang of Eight bill, told CNBC’s John Harwood on November 20, “I voted for it. It would’ve solved many of the problems … I would vote for it again.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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