Amnesty Army Readies Plan B

Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Energy an
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Neil Munro

Amnesty advocates are drafting a Plan B following the Sunday rejection of the wide-ranging amnesty-and-cheap-labor plan by the Senate’s debate referee.

“As we have been saying for weeks, we anticipate this would be a multi-step, iterative process with multiple bites at the apple,” said a statement from Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us lobby group for West Coast investors. The group has been funding many astroturf groups around the nation to persuade politicians and journalists that additional migration is popular.

If the decision survives the progressive backlash, it will prevent the Democrats from using their narrow, one-vote majority in the Senate to create a huge partisan amnesty that would have many economic, civic, and political consequences.

The FWD.us statement said:

We wanted to make you aware that Senate Leadership will present alternate immigration-related proposals for the Senate Parliamentarian’s consideration in the coming days, after the Parliamentarian stated her opposition to an initial iteration late Sunday.

…

Congress has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to pass a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants currently living, working, and contributing to our families and communities across this country. This can and must be the year that Congress finally recognizes Dreamers, TPS holders, farmworkers, and immigrant essential workers as the Americans they already are.

The Plan B may be a scaled-down version of the amnesty push, which would have provided amnesty for at least 8 million migrants, accelerated the inflow of chain migrants, and lifted caps on the inflow of foreign graduates. The plan was excluded by the parliamentarian, or referee, from the planned $3.5 trillion budget bill  because  it is a broad policy issue, not a narrow budgetary adjustment.

The secret Plan B may include a push to replace the parliamentarian, or promote a narrower version of the Plan A.

However, Democrat Senators from small states may protect the parliamentarian. They have an incentive to protect the parliamentarian’s clout because they fear that the wealthy states may gain the power to rewrite the Senate’s rules in their favor.

The FWD.us group has close ties to the White House, and in recent weeks, administration officials have been repeating the group’s poll-testing talking points.

The FWD.us statement included responses from their allies to the parliamentarian’s rejection of their initial Plan A:

The White House
“The President has made very clear that he supports efforts by Congress to include a pathway to citizenship in the reconciliation package and is grateful to Congressional leadership for all of the work they are doing to make this a reality. The Parliamentarian’s ruling is deeply disappointing but we fully expect our partners in the Senate to come back with alternative immigration-related proposals for the Parliamentarian to consider.”

[Democratic Senate Majority Leader] Sen. [Chuck] Schumer:
“We are deeply disappointed in this decision but the fight to provide lawful status for immigrants in budget reconciliation continues. Senate Democrats have prepared alternate proposals and will be holding additional meetings with the Senate parliamentarian in the coming days.

“The American people understand that fixing our broken immigration system is a moral and economic imperative. America has always been that shining city on the hill that welcomes those pursuing the American Dream and our economy depends more than ever on immigrants. Despite putting their lives on the line during the pandemic and paying their fair share of taxes, they remain locked out of the federal assistance that served as a lifeline for so many families. We will continue fighting to pursue the best path forward to grant them the ability to obtain lawful status.”

For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This pocketbook opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan,  rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

FWD.us allies have produced multiple reports claiming very small wage gains for Americans. Those claims are cited in a “50 economists” letter and were debunked by Breitbart News in April.

However, donor-funded GOP leaders have downplayed the pocketbook impact of migration on Americans’ communities. Instead of trying to win worried swing voters by offering pocketbook gains from immigration reform, GOP leaders try to steer GOP base voters’ concerns towards subsidiary non-economic issues, such as migrant crime, the border wall, border chaos, and drug smuggling.

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