DACA Amnesty Alert

NumbersUSA posted this Action Alert this morning:

CAN YOU HELP STOP THIS? A much-awaited bi-partisan Senate proposal is a DACA amnesty that

(1) continues Chain Migration

(2) rejects E-Verify

(3) gives green cards to TPS, and

(4) rewards parents of DACA with lifetime of work permits

In other words, the Senate proposal is the opposite of the House of Representatives DACA bill -- H.R. 4760 -- that NumbersUSA is endorsing.

Your senators need to know that their voters see the so-called balanced senate amnesty deal as a scary joke.

Phone Sen. Sherrod Brown at (202) 224-2315

Phone Sen. Rob Portman at (202) 224-3353

Pick one or more numbered items from above that you oppose and tell the Senators' staffers that is why they should make it clear that they want nothing to do with that "Durbin-Flake amnesty proposal" presented to the White House Thursday.

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Rep. Dave Brat on immigration – THE issue in 2018

R McKee cartoon credit: teapartyamerica.blogspot.com

Rep. Dave Brat spoke to Breitbart about the immigration issues ahead of us in 2018. Brat (R-VA) is the one who beat Eric Cantor, then the House Majority Leader, in the primary – and his upset victory put the amnesty bill on hold. But amnesty is the creature that wouldn't die.

Brat discussed Congress’s considerations to codify the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy into federal law.

Congress must prioritize four repairs for the immigration system before contemplating any DACA-style amnesty negotiation, said Brat: 1. Ending chain migration and the visa lottery; 2. Mandating employer use of E-Verify; 3. Construction of a southern border wall; and 4. Interior enforcement of immigration law.

The four aforementioned “permanent fixes” must precede any DACA negotiation regarding amnesty for illegal immigrants, said Brat: “It shouldn’t be about trusting or hoping, the permanent part has to come first, you see in that place and then you negotiate later.”

The rest of the report is here.

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Mark Steyn on illegal immigration

We can expect a lot of work in 2018 to do what we can to block the passage of DACA, start building the wall, and end chain migration. My fave, Mark Steyn, guest hosted for Rush Limbaugh yesterday, and his segment on illegal immigration and The Wall were reported at both Breitbart (“Mark Steyn: In the End, Trump Presidency ‘Will Stand or Fall on How He Tackles Immigration’”) and on Steyn’s blog page (“The Wall Is All”). The transcript report by Jeff Poor at Breitbart is below.

“[T]here’s a lobby — there’s lobbies for everything in this country,” Steyn said. “And there’s a strong lobby for illegal immigration. There’s a strong lobby for refugees, which again is a completely fraudulent operation by and large. Trump won because a significant [number of voters] were serious about building a wall, about ending illegal immigration and about doing something about people who walk into this country illegally, stay here illegally, take jobs illegally, get driver’s licenses illegally, use Social Security numbers illegally. And at some point … I would have liked him to hold the inauguration ceremony on the southern border and for it to culminate after the oath of office with him ceremonially laying the brick in the wall. But in the end, his presidency will stand or fall on how he tackles immigration.”

Steyn pointed to how low-skilled mass immigration has impacted the American economy, and there is a demand for low-skilled workers. He added that it isn’t just policy for Trump that is important [but] shifting “attitudes” as well.

“In the end, the Trump presidency I believe will stand or fall on how permanently he manages to shift not just the number of people coming into the country, but how he manages to shift attitudes towards remorseless unskilled mass immigration,” Steyn added. “That’s what got him elected, and that’s what [will] actually be the basis on which his presidency is judged.”

Steyn’s page is here. Ann Coulter recently published an article along the same lines, at Townhall and Human Events here. Her take is that if the United States does not stop illegal immigration, then all other issues are essentially academic. 

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UPDATE on Amnesty (A "No Action Needed" Alert)

NumbersUSA sent out this newsletter earlier today:

Thirty-three Republican U.S. Representatives want to put young illegal aliens who received the unconstitutional DACA amnesty ahead of the interests of American workers, according to a letter they all signed addressed to House Speaker Paul Ryan earlier this week.

The letter signers urged Speaker Ryan to immediately pass legislation that would grant a permanent amnesty to approximately 700,000 illegal aliens before the end of the year.

While they did mention their desire to improve border security and to fix the "broken immigration system", they offered no specifics. And they did not suggest that those fixes or any other immigration-related provisions be paired with DACA legislation.

We write in support of passing of a permanent legislative solution for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients before the end of the year. ...

We are compelled to act immediately because many DACA recipients are about to lose or have already lost their permits in the wake of the program's rescission. ...

We must pass legislation that protects DACA recipients from deportation and gives them the opportunity to apply for a more secured status in our country as soon as possible. Reaching across the aisle to protect DACA recipients before the holidays is the right thing to do.

You can read the full letter here: https://www.numbersusa.com/news/34-house-republicans-call-daca-amnesty

The letter's signees -- led by Reps. Scott Taylor of Virginia and Dan Newhouse of Washington -- fail to address any of the unintended consequences that would result from passing amnesty-only legislation. They ignore interior enforcement, including a requirement for all employers to use E-Verify for all new hires, that would cut off the jobs magnet and significantly reduce future illegal immigration. An amnesty without E-Verify would only guarantee demands for future amnesties for the new illegal aliens who would be enticed to come.

The letter fails to address Chain Migration, which if not ended, would multiply the size the amnesty, adding millions more foreign workers to the labor market to compete with unemployed and underemployed American workers. Pres. Trump, himself, has said that an end to Chain Migration must be part of any DACA deal, but the letter signers instead refer to an outdated quote from White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that leaves out Chain Migration.

The full list of the letter signers is at the link above to the full letter, or click here. I am pleased to say that none of the signatories are from Ohio, so there’s no Action Alert today to get on the phone to them.

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More on DACA & Dreamers Amnesty

image credit: wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com

Last week, Cleveland Tea Party blogged on the DACA / Dreamers’ Amnesty bill, urging Ohio AG Mike DeWine (now running for Governor) to stay away from the coalition of state Attorneys General suing the Trump administration and instead support the existing rule of law. That blog included phone numbers for an Action Alert.

Hans von Spakovsky at The Daily Signal outlines the pitfalls and downsides of DACA (useful analysis if you are making any calls now or later this week and needing information to counter the usual liberal talking points).

DACA had no requirement of English fluency either. In fact, the original application requested applicants to answer whether the form had been “read” to the alien by a translator “in a language in which [the applicant is] fluent.”

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that “perhaps 24 percent of the DACA-eligible population fall into the functionally illiterate category and another 46 percent have only ‘basic’ English ability.”

This is a far cry from the image of DACA beneficiaries as all children who don’t speak the language of—and know nothing about the culture of—their native countries.

In fact, it seems rather that a significant percentage of DACA beneficiaries may have serious limitations in their education, experience, and English fluency that negatively affected their ability to function in American society.

Providing amnesty to low-skilled, low-educated aliens with marginal English language ability would impose large fiscal costs on American taxpayers resulting from increased government payouts and benefits, and would be unfair to legal immigrants who obeyed the law to come here.

. . .

Providing amnesty would simply attract even more illegal immigration and would not solve the myriad of enforcement problems we have along our borders and in the interior of the country. Congress should concentrate on giving the federal government (with the assistance and help of state and local governments) the resources to enforce existing immigration laws to reduce the illegal alien population in the U.S. and stem entry into the country.

Until those goals are accomplished, it is premature to even consider any DACA-type bill.

Read more here.

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More maneuvering on taxes, spending, and immigration ?

art credit: crooksandliars.com

What Is Little Marco Up to?

Sen. Marco Rubio was interviewed yesterday evening on Fox’s Ingraham Angle. Sundance @ ConservativeTreehouse explains why his alarm bells went off:

There’s a big con job just over the horizon.  All of the elements are there.  The timing, the platform, the personalities, the discussion topics, etc., it’s a familiar script.  CTH would like to direct attention to this interview which took place last night on Laura Ingraham’s new Fox News show.  Listen carefully to three elements:

·         On Tax Reform – on one side of Rubio’s ‘full-throated‘ mouth he wants higher taxes on corporations 22% -vs- 20%. In the almost the same breath, inside the same argument, he says “it’s not their (the government’s) money”.  Try to reconcile that.

·         On DACA – [Remember, three months ago President Trump gave congress six months to fix DACA]  Rubio says the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) program is not the “Dreamers”.  What? Yes it is. The childhood arrivals ARE the so-called ‘dreamers’.

·         However, much more importantly, listen to what is said on “chain migration“.  Ingraham asks if Rubio supports “chain migration”.   Rubio says no, then immediately says: “I’ve always agreed to limiting chain migration to immediate family members”. WHAT? That is chain migration.

. . .

Something is going on in DC that precipitated this interview.

The rest of Sundance’s analysis is here (includes video).

Here is what may be “going on in DC that precipitated this interview.” NumbersUSA, an immigration & amnesty legislation watchdog, sent out an alert today. It includes the following:

Congress loves to add unpopular provisions to must-pass spending bills, and that's why we're on high alert.

As most of you know, the Trump administration stopped accepting new applications for Pres. Obama's unconstitutional executive amnesty for young illegal aliens (DACA) in September. Since then, both Democrats and Republicans have introduced several proposals that would give a permanent amnesty to DACA recipients. The must-pass December spending bill provides the vehicle to do so.

We've seen this play out before. Congress has used massive spending bills to hide unpopular immigration provisions or tried to pass amnesty when voters were less engaged during the holiday season.

. . .

A handful of high-profile Democratic Senators have announced that they'll withhold support for the spending bill if it doesn't include an amnesty for DACA recipients. To support their efforts, the open-borders lobbying group Partnership for a New American Economy is investing heavily in grassroots lobbying efforts over the next few weeks.

So far, both Pres. Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan have said that they don't want DACA to be included in the December bill.

Which side wins could depend on how much opposition to adding a DACA amnesty to the spending bill lawmakers in Washington hear from their constituents.

And here is a NumbersUSA Action Alert:

Over the next several weeks, Members of Congress need to hear a constant beat of opposition to adding an amnesty for DACA illegal aliens to the must-pass spending bill. Here are two actions you can take to get you started:

1) Call Senate GOP Leaders

While Speaker Ryan has been vocal about his opposition to DACA's inclusion in the spending bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been quiet. However, the third ranking Senate Republican, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) did say over the weekend that he doesn't think DACA should be part of the spending deal, but fell short of saying it won't be part of the final package.

Please call the following GOP Leaders in the Senate and tell them that you oppose adding the DACA amnesty to any must-pass spending bill.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- (202) 224-2541

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn -- (202) 224-2934

Senate GOP Caucus Chair John Thune -- (202) 224-2321

The NumbersUSA website is here. I expect more Alerts over the next couple of weeks.

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