McConnell Backs Trump on Chain-Migration, Ditches Sen. Flake

amnesty
Drew Angerer/ Getty
Neil Munro

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested Tuesday he will only bring an immigration bill to the Senate floor if it matches President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

The proposed re-alignment with Trump and his populist supporters was included in a Wednesday statement by McConnell, and undercut retiring GOP Sen. Jeff Flake’s claim on early Wednesday that McConnell had agreed to an amnesty vote in January. 

Flake’s earlier Tweet claimed:

McConnell’s statement also shuts down Democrats’ promise to their ethnic lobbies that they will push the huge DREAM Act amnesty in January.

Their DREAM Act amnesty would provide a no-strings amnesty to 3.25 million illegals, and put them on a fast track to welfare, grants, and voting rights. The DREAM Act would also deliver residency to millions of the illegals’ relatives, including the illegal-immigrant parents who brought them into the United States. The DREAM Act amnesty would cost taxpayers at least $26 billion in just the first 10 years, according to a December 15 report by the Congressional Budget Office.

The “Secure Act” touted by McConnell is being led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, in cooperation with Texas Sen. John Cornyn and the two authors of the RAISE Act, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotten and Georgia Sen. David Perdue. Grassley’s SECURE Act incorporates the RAISE Act which would end chain-migration and the visa lottery.

If chain-migration is ended, immigration will fall by roughly 50 percent. That change would help push up wages for Americans and help get nine million sidelined Americans into jobs. The change would also slow the nation’s politically chaotic slide into diversity and cultural conflict, and force Democrats to shift their electoral emphasis from immigrants’ concerns back towards Americans’ priorities. Trump has repeatedly backed the RAISE Act.

However, Sen. John Cornyn has suggested that chain-migration would be phased out in stages, raising suspicions among pro-American immigration reformers.

Grassley’s SECURE Act also includes a small-scale amnesty, dubbed the BRIDGE Act, which would provide a one-time set of three-year work-permits to the roughly 690,000 ‘DACA” illegals, not to all of the 3.25 million ‘dreamer’ illegals.

Moreover, experts assume that Grassley’s inclusion of the BRIDGE Act in his SECURE Act is just a place-holder for a larger amnesty.

One likely alternative is the bigger SUCCEED amnesty being pushed by two GOP Senators, Sen. Thom Tillis and Sen. James Lankford.

The Tillis and Lankford SUCCEED Act amnesty would help employers and retailers by providing work-permits and welfare benefits to 2 million illegals, while also helping the GOP with a 1o-year delay on chain migration and a 15-year delay on voting. The Tillis/Lankford Act, however, does not reduce the economic impact on ordinary Americans who would have to compete for jobs against the low-wage amnesty beneficiaries and also pay for their welfare.

President Donald Trump laid down his popular immigration promises during the 2016 election and issued another set of principles in October. Those promises include no amnesty for years, while the October principles demanded that any congressional deal stop the hugely expensive practice of chain-migration and also end visa lottery. Trump’s officials and deputies — including Kelly — are also emphasizing those goals in their public and private statements.

But Trump has also said he wants to get an amnesty for at least some of the younger illegals, despite his campaign-trail opposition to a wage-lowering amnesty.

Democrats strongly oppose Trump’s immigration priorities, suggesting that the issue may remain deadlocked, and be pushed front-and-center in the 2018 elections.

Several GOP Senators have also aligned themselves with the Democrats’ amnesty plans.

Many polls show that the Democrats’ calls for amnesty are unpopular because they contradict Americans’ sense of fairness to other Americans. That pro-American pressure is hidden by business and largely ignored by the media — despite the 2016 election results — but could play a large role in the pending 2018 election fights.

Business groups and Democrats embrace the misleading, industry-funded “nation of immigrants” polls which pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants.

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.

 

 

 

 

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