The Art of the Choke - Trump's preemptive surrender on DACA amnesty for illegal aliens

... Right now, the White House is preparing to propose a citizenship amnesty for an estimated 1.8 million "Dreamers," rather than the 690,000 DACA recipients that had been discussed up until today.

"NumbersUSA has no choice but to oppose what is being suggested as the White House "framework" for a mass amnesty.

"The plan seems eerily similar to the blueprint used for the 2007 Bush-Kennedy amnesty, which appeared to end chain migration, but wouldn't actually end it for 17 years.

"NumbersUSA mobilized our huge grassroots army to defeat the 2007 amnesty, and we will do the same if this plan is proposed next week.

"Under the White House framework, young-adult illegal border crossers and visa overstayers would get immediate benefits, including, most importantly, the right to compete with Americans in the permanent job market.

"But vulnerable American workers would get little or no relief from the competition of chain migration for 15 to 20 years. Even if new applications for chain migration categories are stopped immediately, the framework would allow chain migration to continue for decades by allowing all of the four million foreigners in the waiting list to continue coming.

"It is the House committee chairmen's H.R. 4760 that has its priorities straight.

"Although it provides the amnesty to DACA recipients that President Trump agreed to protect, its top priority is providing benefits to struggling Americans and legal immigrants already here by reducing overall immigration from the current level of more than one million a year and by mandating the incredibly popular E-Verify to take away the magnet for more illegal workers. Significantly reducing immigration numbers is desired by overwhelming majorities of American voters, according to the recent Harvard-Harris poll."

We must press the Members of the U.S. House to pass the Goodlatte bill (H.R. 4760) as soon as possible to try to block the horrific amnesty that the Senate appears ready to pass.

It is often said that you can't fight something with nothing. Fortunately, we have that "something" -- H.R. 4760.

The writings of Mark Krikorian are always interesting, thoughtful and measured, so I read with interest his commentary, The Art of the Choke, on the new immigration proposal from the White House. Though the essay is well-reasoned, I disagree....

Mark’s objections seem to be that (a) the proposal would give amnesty — er, I mean a path to citizenship ?? — to many more unauthorized immigrations than just the DACAers, and (b) while the proposal would stop chain migration it would grandfather those already in the queue....

Concerning (b), I have always been a firm believer in making grandfather exceptions to new policy. It is a matter of keeping one’s word (not to mention avoiding lawsuits), and one must look at long term benefit. Moreover, some of the new policy would have effect much sooner than the Krikorian time horizon...

Regarding (a), it seems to me that this could turn out to be a brilliant move, “an offer the Democrats can’t refuse.” If they were to refuse it, and the deal ultimately cut were to include only the DACAers, the Latino activists would be livid — and with long memories. No, this is one they need to accept, quickly before you-know-who changes his mind....

The open-ended amnesty offer by Donald Trump’s top deputies to the Democrats combines political incompetence, malpractice, greed, betrayal, and self-mutilation, say Trump’s friends and supporters.

“It electrifies the Democratic base and dispirits your own Republican base, and that is the recipe for a wipeout” in November, said Dan Horowitz, editor at Conservative Review. “You could call it the Self-Impeachment Act of 2018,” he added....

The demoralizing amnesty plan was published just after Senate Democrats threw in the towel after losing their amnesty-of-shutdown threat in the face GOP’s Trump-style rhetoric, just after Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin admitted his “Gang of Six” bill was dead amid widening Democratic splits,  just after GOP leaders got comfortable using the powerful charge that Democrats will favor illegals over Americans, just after House GOP leaders began to push Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s Trump-approved immigration bill, and just after voters — including minorities — starting moving back towards the GOP, and just after the Supreme Court moved the supposed DACA deadline to June.

“Jeez, Republicans snatch defeat right of the jaws of victory, again,” said Rosemary Jenks, NumbersUSA’s government relations director....

The malpractice is shown by the terms of the proposal, which contradicts Trump’s claim to be a master negotiator, by offering many concessions without getting anything in return, and by front-loading the amnesty while deferring potential benefits for Americans until after the November election and even the 2028 election.

The proposal says it will help Americans in the workplace by cutting back chain-migration — but it actually allows all 4 million people in the backlogged chain-migration pipeline to become citizens over the next 15 years or so.

The proposal says it cancels the visa lottery, but it just diverts the lottery visas to accelerate the arrival of the siblings, and elderly parents previously picked for citizenship by semi-random visa-lottery winners.

The proposal says it offers amnesty to an estimated 1.8 million younger illegals — but it suggests no rules to limit the likely fraud, undercounting and judicial appeals that could ensure a supercharged repeat of the 1986 amnesty, when the legislature’s promise of 400,000 green cards to agriculture workers quickly became the bureaucracy’s award of 1 million green cards....

The proposal does ask for $25 billion to build a border wall, but it also rejects proposed laws that would allow criminal charges against people who fly over the wall, overstay their tourist visas and claim their children are dreamers too. Instead, overstays are to be merely deterred by a quick departure or “expedited removal,” the proposal says....

The proposal also betrays the voters, who pulled the lever for Trump when he promised no amnesties, to enforce the laws and promised passage of reforms that would help Americans and their kids prosper after decades of working in a high-immigration, low-wage economy....

“There was no reason to do this now,” said Jenks. “What needed to happen was the President to come out strongly in favor of the House bill so that we have one good marker down.”...

... Kansas Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach called the White House plan to push for U.S. citizenship for 1.8 million eligible illegal aliens an “extremely bad idea.”...

For example, following the 1986 amnesty, it is estimated that of 2.7 million illegal aliens who got amnesty, at least 700,000 of those amnesty recipients fraudulently got legal status.

Secondly, Kobach says a future White House administration can simply “wave or override” the requirements that allege to keep the Trump administration’s amnesty plan contained to the 1.8 million eligible illegal aliens. A maneuver whereby the amnesty requirements are waved could lead to an amnesty for the majority of the 12 to 30 million illegal aliens currently in the country...

President Donald Trump’s new “framework” amnesty plan would provide citizenship to at least 1.8 million illegals — but would not allow any beneficial reduction in cheap-labor immigration until 2027.

The pro-business plan, leaked to Washington insiders this afternoon, asks progressive Democrats and business-first Republicans to accept a trade-off: Amnesty for at least 1.8 million illegals in exchange for a border wall, end chain-migration and ending the visa lottery.

But the loopholes are huge — and those loopholes will flood the labor market for another decade, so helping Wall Street by cooling the current worker shortage which is now raising Americans’ wages.

For example, the lottery program would be ended, but the 50,000 lottery visas per year would be given to other migrants, so doing nothing to reduce the wage-lowering inflow of cheap labor.

More importantly, chain-migration would formally end immediately, but everyone on the huge waiting list would be allowed into the United States. That pipeline of pending chain-migration immigrants includes roughly 4 million people — many of whom will depend on taxpayer funds because they are either unskilled or too old to work. That population is enough to keep the chain-migration pipeline open for another ten years...

The White House expansive amnesty plan is hardly different from previous amnesties, one of which failed miserably under Obama and another that the White House shot down this week.

For example, the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan in 2013, which practically destroyed all conservative support for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in his presidential aspirations, would have given the entire illegal alien population of about 12 to 30 million illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship as early as five years after being granted amnesty.

Likewise, the current “Gang of Six” amnesty plan sitting in the Senate, pushed prominently by Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Dick Durbin (D-IL), would begin giving at least 3.5 million illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship as early as ten years after getting amnesty.

On the other hand, the White House-backed House immigration plan, authored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), would remain in line with Trump’s concession of only giving legal status to DACA-enrolled illegal aliens with no special path to citizenship.

In exchange for the amnesty solely for DACA-enrolled illegal aliens, the Goodlatte bill implements mandatory E-Verify to ban employers from hiring illegal aliens over Americans, major reductions to legal immigration levels, and full funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as a slew of other reforms that would help raise the wages of America’s working and middle class.