Democrats’ 2020 Platform: ‘Immigrants Are Essential to Our Society’

“Immigrants are essential to our society,” says the Democrats’ draft 2020 political platform.

The platform is a bonanza for investors and Wall Street because it would provide them with many millions of additional consumers, renters, and workers — while quietly pushing the economic and social costs of mass migration onto middle-class Americans and legal immigrants.

“Immigrants are essential to our society and our economy,” says the platform, which downplayed the contributions of roughly 290 million native-born Americans and their parents. The platform blurs the distinction between legal immigrants and illegal migrants, saying:

They enrich our culture. They grow our food, care for our loved ones, serve in our armed forces, and provide critical health care services. Immigrants make America stronger. Not only do immigrants support us—immigrants are us. Our families and our communities, our congregations and our schools, our businesses large and small have been built and sustained through the inclusion of immigrants.

Because immigrants are essential, the Democrats promise to welcome more migrants, and to invite migrants who are excluded by President Donald Trump’s security policies:

We will immediately terminate the Trump Administration’s discriminatory travel and immigration bans that disproportionately impact Muslim and African people, and invite those whose visas have been denied under these xenophobic and un-American policies to re-apply to come to the United States.

…

Democrats believe the United States should be a beacon of hope for those who are suffering violence and injustice, which is why we will protect and expand the existing asylum system and other humanitarian protections.

In fact, the platform suggests the nation’s border controls are illegitimate: “Democrats believe that our fight to end systemic and structural racism in our country extends to our immigration system.”

The platform is expected to be approved at the Democrats’ 2020 convention, likely to be held virtually in August. The platform is not mandatory, but it is a public promise that helps activists and lobbyists pressure legislatures and any Democratic President to achieves the goals.

The Democrat platform promises fast-track amnesty for the illegal migrant population of at least 12 million people:

Democrats believe it is long past time to provide a roadmap to citizenship for the millions of undocumented workers, caregivers, students, and children who are an essential part of our economy and of the fabric of our nation. We will fast-track this process for those workers who have been essential to the pandemic response and recovery efforts, including health care workers, farmworkers, and others.

Immigration enforcement will be minimized: “We will end workplace and community raids … We believe detention [of migrants] should be a last resort, not the default.”

The platform carefully uses poll-tested language to portrays illegal immigrants as “essential to the pandemic response and recovery.”

Companies should be allowed to attract and reward migrant workers with more green cards, according to the platform: “We also support awarding visas for permanent, employment-based immigration in a way that is responsive to labor market needs. We want to attract and keep talent in this country.”

The phrase “responsive to labor market needs” is used by business interests to describe a process whereby companies can freely hire foreigners when Americans decline to work for the offered wages.

In 2001, President Goerge W. Bush pushed his similar “Any Willing Worker” plan that would have allowed companies to hire foreigners whenever Americans demanded higher wages.

As the country is flooded with millions of migrant consumers, renters, and workers, Democrats will try to reverse the pressure for rising rents and declining wages, according to the platform:

Democrats will forge a new social and economic contract with the American people—a contract that creates millions of new jobs and promotes shared prosperity, closes racial gaps in income and wealth, guarantees the right to join or form a union, raises wages and ensures equal pay for women and paid family leave for all, and safeguards a secure and dignified retirement.

The platform does not explain why employers would bother hiring sidelined Americans if their marketplace rivals can import an endless wave of younger, fitter migrants into job sites located along the coasts.

Under Trump’s curbs on migration, companies have been pressured to hire the U.S. graduates, as well as the disabled, drug-damaged, and ex-felons, the mothers of small children, high-school dropouts, and people in rural areas far from the wealthy coasts.

Trump’s curbs on migration have also slowed the rise in housing costs and helped boost opportunities and wages for blue-collars and college grads.

Similarly, the Democratic platform promises plenty of affordable housing — but does not explain how Americans will be able to afford good housing, close to jobs, amid a rush of immigrant families who will bid housing prices upward:

Housing in America should be stable, accessible, safe, healthy, energy-efficient, and, above all,  affordable. No one should have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, so families have ample resources left to meet their other needs and save for retirement.

This process is strongest in California, where many Americans and immigrants have been forced out of decent housing because so many higher-earning or single Americans and migrants are competing for housing.

The platform notes:

We have a nationwide shortage of affordable housing units, and tens of millions of Americans live in homes that pose risks to their health and safety. Homelessness has reached crisis proportions in a growing number of states, and housing costs that rise faster than wages have put the squeeze on renters in many of our biggest cities.

With a background of rising social tensions, spreading poverty and political inequality, and amid riots and rampant claims of “systemic racism,” the Democrats’ platform insists that migration’s social “diversity” is a good thing:

Americans believe that diversity is our greatest strength … We will ensure that our nation continues to prize diversity and compassion … Democrats also support measures to increase diversity among the ranks of police departments.

However, the Democrat platform suggests that problems can be solved if the government plays an even larger role in the marketplace. It says:

We will immediately convene California and other states with labor, auto industry, and environmental leaders to inform ambitious executive actions that will enable the United States to lead the way in building a clean, 21st century transportation system and stronger domestic manufacturing base powered by high-wage and union jobs.

The platform waives away the importance of border protection by blaming foreign countries for migration. This shift hides the role that Democrats — and the GOP’s business wing — play in encouraging and rewarding illegal migration into Americans’ suburbs and job markets:

Finally, Democrats will address the root causes of migration—violence and insecurity, poverty, pervasive corruption, lack of educational and economic opportunity, and the impacts of climate change.