Democratic legislators, progressive advocacy groups, and the established media are singing in harmony: President Donald Trump’s list of pro-American immigration reform priorities are an illegitimate “poison pill” created by White House adviser Steven Miller who is eager to sabotage a bipartisan, popular and noble welcome for a modest number of child “dreamers.”
The tone was set by top Democratic leaders, who issued a statement placing the interests of illegal immigrants ahead of Americans, and rejecting the legitimacy of Trump’s call for Congress to implement his election-winning immigration platform:
The administration can’t be serious about compromise or helping the Dreamers if they begin with a list that is anathema to the Dreamers, to the immigrant community and to the vast majority of Americans. The list includes the wall, which was explicitly ruled out of the negotiations. If the president was serious about protecting the Dreamers, his staff has not made a good faith effort to do so.
The reference to “his staff” is aimed at Miller, whose populist, American-first, advice helped steer Trump to victory in the GOP primaries in early 2016.
The New York Times adopted the same illegals-before-American perspective and the same ‘dreamer’ term for young illegals, saying:
WASHINGTON — The White House on Sunday demanded that lawmakers harden the border against thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America before President Trump will agree to any deal with Democrats that allows the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers to stay in the United States legally.
The New York Times also targeted Miller, saying:
Taken together, the proposals amount to a wish list for immigration hard-liners inside the White House, including Stephen Miller, the president’s top policy adviser, who has long advocated extremely aggressive efforts to prevent illegal entry into the country and crack down on undocumented immigrants already here …
But conservatives in Mr. Trump’s administration, many of whom were advocates of his hard-line immigration rhetoric during the 2016 campaign, are clearly maneuvering to ensure that any deal on the Dreamers also results in passage of the tough immigration enforcement measures and border security enhancements that they have been seeking in Congress for decades.
Politico’s headline, “Trump lists immigration demands that could derail ‘Dreamers’ deal” was followed by the text saying:
President Donald Trump laid out his immigration principles for Capitol Hill on Sunday — a list of hardline policies that could seriously complicate the prospects of striking a deal with Democrats over the future of hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants.
Contrary to the Democrats’ tune, Trump’s immigration policies are popular, mainstream and a long way from hardline, according to multiple polls taking before and after his shocking election victory in November 2016.
The pro-amnesty Washington Post used a Politico-style headline — “Trump administration releases hard-line immigration principles, threatening deal on ‘dreamers'” — above a similar article, which began:
The Trump administration released a list of hard-line immigration principles late Sunday that threaten to derail a deal in Congress to allow hundreds of thousands of younger undocumented immigrants to remain in the country legally.
The articles mostly ignored and low-balled the number of illegals who might be given amnesty under the Democrats’ Dream Act plan, as merely “hundreds of thousands.” In fact, the act would offer citizenship to at least three million illegals, and eventually their parents and foreign beneficiaries of chain migration.
The Post buried the administration’s core demand in the last two paragraphs, saying:
“We would expect Congress to include all the reforms in any package that addresses the status of the DACA recipients,” said one White House aide on the conference call who was not authorized to speak on the record. “Other views had their fair day in the democratic process.”
Noting that the Republicans swept the White House and both chambers of Congress in November, the aide added: “The American public voted for the reforms included in this package.”
TV networks followed the same tune:
Washington (CNN) The White House on Sunday night released an aggressive list of priorities for any deal to protect young undocumented immigrants in limbo — a list that could make a deal almost impossible to reach if it is strictly followed …
In the days leading up to the release, there was frustration that demands by top White House policy adviser Stephen Miller during the process could derail congressional efforts to find a legislative solution, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. The source said Miller injected himself into talks between lawmakers and made the issue more difficult by coming to the table with unreasonable demands on behalf of the White House.
As usual, the media outlets ignored the economic impact of illegal and legal immigration, despite multiple economic studies showing that the government-arranged boost in the labor supply reduces the price of Americans’ labor, and shifts a huge amount of the nation’s annual income from employees to employers.
NBC sang along:
The Trump administration Sunday sent Congress a list of tough immigration reforms it would require to be included in any legislation that would allow immigrants brought into the United States illegally as children, known as Dreamers, to remain. The proposals include funding for a southern border wall and are likely to be rebuked by Democrats …
One source familiar with the deliberations described the policies last week as a “wish list” of Trump’s senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner and former Senate staffer for Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The pro-amnesty advocacy group, America’s Voice, claimed:
Tonight, President Trump signed off on a long list of poison pill measures that threatens to kill the chances of enacting the Dream Act this year. In doing so, Trump seems to be following the lead of White House advisor Stephen Miller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, both of whom are ardent opponents of anything that would result in legal status for Dreamers …
Trump and the Republican Party are headed towards an ugly outcome. They will go down in history as the architects of one of the cruelest moves in American history: exposing 800,000 American young people to deportation from the country they love to countries they barely remember …
Our nationhood rests on the integration of pluralism, freedom and self-government. And it is because the vast majority of Americans still hold these values dear that we are optimistic that we will overcome whatever obstacles we encounter on our way to becoming the nation we are meant to be.
In the end, we are confident that America will recognize Dreamers as the Americans they already are. The question is whether Trump and the GOP are going to do this the hard way or the easy way.
The ACLU emphasized Miller’s role:
The White House ‘principles’ amount to nothing more than Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller’s Dreamer deportation outline. Miller’s wishlist of anti-immigrant policies is designed to scuttle progress for Dreamers and is afoul with unconstitutional ‘reforms.’
Members of Congress of both parties who want to resolve the status of undocumented immigrant youth should recognize that these policies are a non-starter and get back to work on behalf of the vast majority of Americans who want to get something constructive done instead.
The focus on Miller shifts the debate away from the public’s support for Trump’s 2016 campaign, and it also gives a helping hand to the business-first, cheap-lobby faction which dominates Trump’s economic team. That faction also plays a leading in big-city Democratic politics, including in Schumer’s hometown of New York.
Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.
But business groups have used their political power to tilt the labor market in their favor, via the federal policy of importing 1 million consumers and workers each year. The government also hands out almost 3 million short-term work permits to foreign workers. These permits include roughly 330,000 one-year OPT permits for foreign graduates of U.S. colleges, roughly 200,000 three-year H-1B visas for foreign white-collar professionals, and 400,000 two-year permits to DACA illegals. Universities employ roughly 100,000 foreign guest workers.
That Washington-imposed economic policy of mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
The cheap-labor policy has also reduced investment and job creation in many interior states because the coastal cities have a surplus of imported labor. For example, almost 27 percent of zip codes in Missouri had fewer jobs or businesses in 2015 than in 2000, according to a new report by the Economic Innovation Group. In Kansas, almost 29 percent of zip codes had fewer jobs and businesses in 2015 compared to 2000, which was a two-decade period of massive cheap-labor immigration.
Americans tell pollsters that they strongly oppose amnesties and cheap-labor immigration, even as most Americans also want to favor legal immigrants, and many sympathize with illegals.
Because of the successful cheap-labor strategy, wages for men have remained flat since 1973, and a growing percentage of the nation’s annual income is shifting to investors and away from employees. The business-funded Hamilton Project suggests that the shift is transferring $1 trillion per year from 160 million employees to the nation’s investors.
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