Democrats Dangle Anti-Fentanyl Law as a Swap for Amnesty

C-SPAN
Neil Munro

Democrats say they have a fix for the cartels’ drug epidemic: Invite more poor economic migrants to compete against ordinary Americans for wages, housing, and civic resources.

The solution was pushed during a July 19 House hearing into the damage caused by the cartels’ drugs. Democrats downplayed the American deaths and focused on protecting their pro-migration policies and allies, including homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas.

The hearing “is a political sham,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-CA).

“We should be focusing on … prioritizing the expansion of resources for immigrant communities and comprehensive immigration reform,” said Ramirez, who repeatedly boasts about her parents’ illegal migrant status. “That’s how you address public safety” for Americans facing drug threats, she declared.
The Democrats’ chairman of the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss), described the Democrats’ price for cooperation against the cartels’ mass murder of Americans:

I think nine hearings on this subject is a bit much. I am embarrassed at that because we are wasting time trying to impeach a Secretary when we ought to be providing men and women along the border resources  … Comprehensive immigration reform, not impeachment, is the way for us to get there.

Roughly 70,000 Americans died from the cartels’ smuggled drugs in 2022, during the tenure of President Joe Biden and his pro-migration border chief Alejandro Mayorkas.  In contrast, when Donald Trump was president, Democrats raised a national political storm under the claim that 18 unarmed blacks were killed by cops in 2018.

Fentanyl Death Rate, USAFacts

Mexico’s cartels have expanded their business from drug smuggling to labor smuggling. The expansion allows them to extract more wealth from the U.S. economy by illegally taxing the wages of millions of poor illegal migrants amid President Joe Biden’s easy migration rules.

Democrats in the hearing ignored the vast and growing damage caused to Americans by drug smuggling, debt bondage, and cartel violence. Instead, they pushed the GOP to OK a “comprehensive” legislative package of more amnesty and more migration.

“We are here for yet another episode of impeachment theater,” complained Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI). “We can reform the immigration system and make it more orderly.”

Even the Democrats’ witness urged Congress to endorse more migration as a solution for the cartels’ ability to push drugs and illegal migrants into the United States. Vanda Felbab-Brown, a director at the Brookings Institution, said:

Certainly passing a comprehensive immigration reform that would allow legal paths of entry into the United States, would immeasurably improve U.S. law enforcement, domestically, as well as it would improve capacities to induce partnership and meaningful cooperation from vital partners in countries such as Mexico.

The Democrats’ aggressive response also obscured their desire to protect mass migration from any congressional pushback against the militarized cartels or Mexico’s cartel-influenced government.

Mexico’s government is now quietly working with Biden’s deputies to regulate the flow of migrants into the United States in exchange for the U.S. accepting more Mexican migrants.

Similarly, GOP members at the hearing did not call for trade sanctions against Mexico’s government. That silence reflects donors’ influence on the GOP leadership.

But the GOP members also cannot accept the Democrats’ dangled trade amnesty-for-cartel-suppression because migration is unpopular due to being economically damaging to their voters and states.

Far from the Washington gridlock, Gov. Ron DeSantis has promised to pressure Mexico on migration and drugs, if elected president.

GOP legislators repeatedly pushed back against the Democrats and focused on the cartel-caused damage amid Biden’s easy-migration policies.

“Americans are dying and the Left is saying our committees investigating this as an embarrassment,” responded committee chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), adding:

Sixty-one percent of Americans get it though — that’s the percentage of Americans who say that our border is not controlled by us …

They also say that somehow this discussion is racist. It is not ….  It’s not racist to say that the cartels are seizing this [Biden] opportunity of our open border …. the only reason they bring up that it’s racist or that we’re trying to impeach or it’s some kind of dog and pony show is because they can’t tell you that Americans aren’t dying. They can’t say “Oh look, the numbers are going down on Americans dying due to fentanyl, oh look, the drug cartel crime is going down in America.”

They can’t make a valid argument against those facts. And so they say we’re racist or imply that we’re racist, or … have some game here or that it’s embarrassing that we’ve had nine committers on this.

C-SPAN

“I’ve heard [the hearing] described as theater,” responded Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY), adding:

I heard it described as a complete waste of time. It’s beyond explanation. People are dying, and crimes are being committed. How is that a sham? How is that theater?

The GOP-invited witnesses also pushed back.

Jessica Vaughan, the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, was portrayed as a hateful, anti-Semitic witness by Rep. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). She responded:

I cannot imagine a more inhumane policy than one that entices vulnerable migrants to turn over their life savings, families, or their kids, to criminal smuggling organizations because they believe that they will be allowed to stay in this country and [so] end up in debt bondage and other horrific situations.

Frankly, I’m saddened that members [of Congress] feel the need to distract from this horrific treatment of [migrant] people by impugning my motives, insulting me, smearing me, repeating lies about me … This is a real issue of a real atrocity that is occurring at our border.

Democrats downplayed the drug damage because they were trying to protect Biden and Mayorkas from political damage, even as they also tie concessions on drug deaths to a GOP surrender on migration, Vaughan told Breitbart News, adding:

They have to circle the wagons around Mayorkas. They find it easier to call names and distract from the problem because it’s unlikely that Mayorkas is going to actually take the steps that would be needed to fix it.

The Democrats’ proposed fix to the harms of illegal migration is a “fallacy,” she told Breitbart News:

The [Democratic] solution to all of this [migrant] exploitation is to make the process legal. One piece of evidence that this is wrong is exploitation happens in the legal guest worker programs. Those are legal visa programs, and yet trafficking is a big problem in H -2A and H-2B programs, and even the J-1 program. There are traffickers who will use these programs to prey on people who want to try and live or work here.

The combined solution, she said, is to cut off the cartels’ revenue steam from migration and drug smuggling. “Make them do something else for a living,” she said.

Mexicans want that crackdown, she said, adding, “They don’t like being a doormat for illegal migration that only makes civil society worse in their own country.”

Extraction Migration

The federal government has long operated an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration. This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries, reduces beneficial trade, and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.

The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.

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

The population inflow also reduces the political clout of native-born Americans, because the population replacement allows elites to divorce themselves from the needs and interests of ordinary Americans.

In many speeches, border chief Alejandro Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elite opinion about “the values of our country” Mayorkas claims.

Migration — and especially, labor migration — is unpopular among swing voters. A 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR). The 54 percent “Invasion” majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats.

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