Offsetting DACA Amnesty with Reduction to Legal Immigration Remains Key to Gaining White House Support

Chain Migration
Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty Images
John Binder
Washington, D.C.

A House immigration plan that immediately reduces legal immigration levels in exchange for allowing nearly 800,000 illegal aliens to remain in the United States continues to be the only legislation supported by the White House.

Despite multiple attempts by Senate Democrats and the Republican establishment to craft amnesty legislation designed to get President Trump to cave on his immigration commitments, the White House has not signed onto any immigration legislation, except one bill.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (R-VA) “Securing America’s Future Act” is still supported by the White House, an official confirmed to Breitbart News.

Goodlatte’s legislation would allow the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens enrolled in the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to remain in the U.S., an amnesty of sorts that would break a commitment previously made by Trump.

The exchange for that amnesty, pro-American immigration reformers tell Breitbart News, would be something much greater: Immediately ending chain migration, ending the Diversity Visa Lottery, and mandating E-Verify.

Chain migration is the process whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S., creating a never-ending flow of low-skilled foreign nationals arriving in the country.

Under the Goodlatte bill, chain migration — which has imported more than 9.3 million foreign nationals to the U.S. in the last decade — would be ended and confined to only spouses and the minor children of newly naturalized citizens. Another provision creates a temporary visa program for the parents of naturalized citizens that claims it will come at no cost to American taxpayers.

The number of extended-family foreign nationals who have resettled in the U.S. in the last decade is greater than the total combined population of Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and Cleveland, the White House has noted in a recent ad campaign that seeks to explain and end chain migration.

The Goodlatte bill also eliminates the controversial visa lottery. Currently, the visa lottery randomly gives out 50,000 visas annually to foreign nationals from a multitude of countries. The countries include those with terrorist problems, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.

Further, the Goodlatte bill is the only proposal in the Senate and House thus far that exchanges a DACA amnesty for mandatory E-Verify, a system that would ban employers nationwide from hiring illegal aliens over Americans.

The mandatory E-Verify provisions in Goodlatte’s bill are so potent that even if illegal aliens use stolen Social Security numbers to get jobs in the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would be required to alert Americans that their Social Security number is being used in the workforce.

The White House’s own framework for an immigration plan, which gives amnesty to DACA illegal aliens, is much weaker in its efforts to offset an amnesty with immigration reforms that would benefit Americans.

For example, as Breitbart News has reported, the White House plan would not immediately end chain migration, allowing for at least four million chain migrants to continue entering the U.S. over a ten to potentially 20-year period.

The White House plan also expands the amnesty beyond illegal aliens enrolled in DACA to those eligible for DACA as well, a maneuver that could result in an amnesty that is uncontrollable. While eliminating the Visa Lottery, the White House plan merely repurposes the roughly 55,000 visas to import more white-collar foreign workers to take American jobs.

The plan also does not include any provisions to mandate E-Verify, punish sanctuary cities that harbor criminal illegal aliens, nor does it deal with the issue of “anchor babies”– U.S.-born children of illegal aliens who are rewarded with U.S. citizenship.

Every year, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 foreign nationals, with the vast majority deriving from family-based chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. In 2016, the legal and illegal immigrant population reached a record high 44 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.

Mass immigration has come at the expense of America’s working and middle class, which has suffered from poor job growth, stagnant wages, and increased public costs to offset the importation of millions of low-skilled foreign nationals.

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

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