Alert: Amnesty Passes House Judiciary Committee

NumbersUSA sent out an Alert today: "Republican Buy-In Makes Amnesty Real Threat." Much of the message contained a pitch for contributions; I deleted those sections, although if you are interested, the NumbersUSA website is here. Here’s the Alert:

This morning, the House Judiciary Committee passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. That would mean the bill can now be voted on by the House with little additional warning. . . and with 23 Republican Co-sponsors, it's likely to pass.

I bet a lot of people might wonder why the Judiciary Committee is passing a farm workforce bill. It's because this bill is really an immigration bill.

We need to stop this bill.

Here's why they don't just call it an immigration bill: There are none of the good immigration reforms American voters are demanding, such as requiring E-Verify for every U.S. employer and eliminating chain migration. There's only more immigration and more amnesties.

• There's no reduction in immigration numbers.
• There's no end to the visa lottery.
• There's no reform of asylum or refugee laws.
• And there's no mandatory E-Verify for any but a tiny proportion of employers... who are going to get all the low-paid, indentured servants they can handle anyway.

Indentured servitude! -- THAT'S what this bill is about: using amnesty to provide indentured servants to the groups like the Western Growers Association. That's because it gives hundreds of thousands of workers -- and their families -- amnesty and green cards... after they work four to eight years as what amounts to indentured servants first.

Once the illegal farm workers get their amnesty, they would be free to take any job in America, not just farm jobs. On top of that, an additional 40,000 new green cards each year would be issued for unskilled workers to work in ANY job they can get in America.

Please don't write off this threat as merely coming from extremists in the House. It has overwhelming support from the Democratic caucus, and almost two dozen Republican House members are co-sponsoring. So, especially with the impeachment battle, it's hard to take anything for granted.

We're going to need hundreds of thousands of our members to contact Congress. For that to happen, we're going to need to activate our millions of activists, with millions upon millions of emails and social media messages. We've just finished a vital overhaul of our website, allowing much easier access to actions while maintaining security and discretion. 

Two Ohio Representatives are on the Judiciary Committee: Steve Chabot [https://chabot.house.gov/] and Jim Jordan [https://jordan.house.gov/]. Click here for the full House of Representatives roster and contact information.

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Border Security and Illegal Immigration, continued

photo credit: ABCNews.go.com

John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist reported yesterday on the border crisis:

The day after President Trump’s rally in El Paso, Ortiz-Gonzales crossed the border, along with a group of 16 other adults and children, all from Central America. They had spent the night in a safe house in Juarez, and after paying $2,000 a head they were taken to a spot on the edge of the Rio Grande and told to walk across. (In downtown El Paso, the Rio Grande isn’t much more than a stream—easy to walk across, even for children.)

All but one of the adults in the group were men, and they all had more or less the same story: they have wives and other children back in Central America, they are coming here to work and send money home, they have networks of family and friends in the United States, and they intend to return to their homes at some point after they have made enough money. All of them are claiming asylum, but none of them, based on the accounts they gave, will likely qualify for it.

If you spend enough time on the southern border, where record numbers of migrant families from Central America are turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol—including 1,800 on the day of Trump’s rally—you begin to see this pattern emerge. Media outlets often repeat the now-familiar line that Central American families are fleeing poverty and violence, which is true (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are among the most violent countries in the world). But according to federal law, suffering poverty and violence doesn’t make you a refugee.

. . .

What goes unmentioned in most media coverage of family migration from Central America is the role that Mexican cartels play. Cartels control everything that happens on the south side of the border, not only the movement of drugs but also the movement of people.

The full report is here.

A previous CTP blog linked to opposing analyses of the recent budget provisions for Border Security. Paul Bedard at Washington Examiner considered the compromise a step in the right direction. Rush Limbaugh saw it as a step backward.

Steve Salvi at the Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC  considers the Border Security bill “disastrous” – and had this to say on his FB page:

We can no longer depend on most of our public officials to protect US citizens or our nation's sovereign right to control our borders.

Pres. Trump and the US Congress signed off on a disastrous bill that will result in:

1.    More American citizens killed by illegal aliens

2.    Encourage more illegal migrants to enter the US

3.    Help drug cartels/gangs expand human/child sex/labor trafficking

This is not America First! It was an ‘open-border illegal alien First-Americans last’ bill!

Even NumbersUSA has not issued an Action Alert that satisfactorily reconciles these disparate concerns.

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Caravan crossing the U.S.-Mexico border

From today’s NumbersUSA newsletter:

Thousands of Central Americans joined a caravan this week, originating in Honduras, with hopes of reaching the U.S.-Mexico border where they plan to claim asylum, illegally enter the country, or both.

Pres. Trump has already issued warnings to Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and has threatened to back out of the USMCA trade pact with Mexico if the country doesn't do its part to prevent the caravan from reaching the U.S. border. There are reports that Mexico is willing to cooperate.

The President has also said that he plans to move troops to the border to help prevent the caravan from entering the country.

So far, the Administration has responded well. But how it responds if, and when, the caravan reaches the U.S.-Mexico border remains to be seen.

If there's one thing that we've learned from past caravans and border surges, should any of the more than 4,000 economic migrants successfully make it into the United States, they'll be released to the interior of the country and never be heard from again.

Therefore, the best action the Trump Administration can take is to prevent anyone from the caravan from actually entering the country. Pres. Trump could even use his executive authority to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent the caravan from entering the U.S.

Handling Asylum Claims

Many in the caravan have told reporters that they plan on claiming asylum once they reach the United States, hoping to take advantage of loopholes within the process. 

They've said they'll claim asylum because of the criminal violence throughout Central America and/or the lack of decent paying jobs. But under federal law, those are not reasons for claiming asylum.

Under both U.S. and international law, an asylee is someone who claims that they fear persecution from their government if returned to their home country because of the their "race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion."

If the caravan was actually fleeing persecution, they would apply for asylum in Mexico.

The U.S. should take all legitimate asylum claims seriously. But it is critical to deny the caravan admission into the United States while their claims are being considered. Again, once anyone from the caravan steps foot in the United States, they're here for good. DHS is already running short on detention space, so there will be no way to detain illegal border crossers and asylum seekers while their cases move through the process.

Preventing caravans and surges

The Trump Administration has already taken steps to strengthen the asylum process. Earlier this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a ruling that moved the adjudication of credible fear claims more in line with federal asylum law. DHS implemented the policy this summer. However, if the Administration does not take the necessary steps to prevent this caravan from reaching U.S. soil, this dangerous and unlawful migration will be the new norm.

But Congress also needs to act. The House Judiciary Committee has already marked up and passed H.R. 391, the Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act. House Leadership should bring the bill to the floor during the lame-duck session.

H.R. 391 would close the asylum loopholes by requiring that asylum adjudicators only approve credible fear claims when "it is more probable than not that the statements made by the alien in support of the alien's claim are true" and the alien is likely to be granted asylum in the U.S.

[The NumbersUSA website is here. You can sign up to access their Congressional Alert boards.]

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