Breitbart News Senior Editor at Large Joel Pollak told MSNBC’s David Gura on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s offer to so-called “DREAMers” was so good that they should be tattooing his name on their shoulders.
“When I hear the ‘DREAMers’ complain about this arrangement, I’m just stunned,” Pollak said, noting that Trump’s proposal grants a “path to citizenship” for at least 1.8 million illegal aliens who were brought to the country as minors — beyond the roughly 800,000 who registered for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
“I mean, they should be tattooing Donald Trump on their shoulders, or other places, because this is such an amazing deal for them. He even helps those who didn’t apply for the DACA status, who didn’t come forward with information. This is the best deal they could expect to get, and they should be thanking him for it.”
But the DREAMers had been demanding more, Pollak said. “Instead, I hear complaints, accusations of racism. Nobody owes them anything. Rather than invading congressional offices and using obscenities, they should be showing how American they can be by participating in a respectful way and saying this is a reasonable compromise or first step.”
“This country does not owe anything to the people who did this the wrong way,” he added, “and if anybody’s civil rights are being violated, it’s legal immigrants who tried to uphold the law.
“I don’t think race has anything to do with it. I think the problem is the DACA recipients and ‘Dreamers’ have been taught to be entitled and look down on the Americans who they want to join as countrymen. This is completely the wrong way to do it, and I think Trump should send them home with nothing, the way they behaved.
“I think they should thank every person in America for allowing them to stay as long as they have. We need some humility from that side, not entitlement and arrogance.”
Pollak also noted that Democrats’ rejection of Trump’s plan showed they had no concern for the “DREAMers’ at all.
“If Democrats cared about the country and the ‘DREAMers,’ they’d accept this deal with both hands. … [Trump] really came out way ahead of his base and offered something that nobody in the campaign would have expected him to offer,” he said.
“Chuck Schumer should be thanking Donald Trump for offering something so generous, and then they could get this all done and have it over with before March 5th. But it shows you Democrats don’t really care about the DREAMers.’ They care about their broader immigration policy, which involves the importation of 10 million new voters.”
In addition, Pollak also noted that Trump’s proposals could alienate his base.
“If this is some kind of opening offer, where the president is going to be under pressure to make more and more concessions … he’s going to limp into the November midterm elections with a significant portion of his base not interested, staying home.
“If, however, he’s decided on a different strategy, which is simply to come down right in the middle of this debate and offer what he thinks the final deal will look like, knowing Democrats are going to walk away from it and try to campaign on their immigration plans in the midterms, then he may be better placed.”
Pollak acknowledged that the president’s proposals were broadly popular, beyond those committed to one side or the other of the debate.
“I’ll say this for the president. If you break down this policy proposal, every single element of it, from the ‘DREAMers,’ on down through the wall, the end to chain migration, and the visa diversity lottery, every single element polls very well. And this is basically where the American public wants to end up.
“So if he’s arrived there, the people loudest in opposition — right now the Democrats — are going to look worse when they try to campaign against it.”
Toward the end of the interview, Gura asked Pollak why this issue was so important to him.
Pollak replied:
David, thank you for asking that. You know, I was born actually in another country. I’m an immigrant. I was born in South Africa. My parents were born and raised there, and they decided to immigrate to the United States. And one of the reasons they wanted to was they had grown up in a country where illegality had become the law, where racism was legal, where there was racial segregation. They did not want to live in a country where laws were unjust. And so they moved to the United States and were able to prosper and thrive and raise an American family where we have rule of law, where we have principles enshrined in our Constitution.
Now you have people telling us rule of law doesn’t matter. You have Nancy Pelosi, who could be the Speaker of the House if Democrats win in November, saying Donald Trump wants to “make America white again.” That’s the racial rhetoric we thought we left behind, the kind of absence of equal justice before the law — that’s not the America we came to embrace.
And that’s why it’s so important to me. I don’t want America to become like the place I left, like the places other people have left, where rule of law doesn’t matter. I’d like America to be what it was for my parents, what it has been for generations, a place where equality before the law is the most basic fundamental prerequisite for freedom.
And that’s not what we’re seeing right now, unfortunately. Americans have compassion and would like to do something for the so-called “DREAMers,’ but we’re being demanded we must do something, these people are entitled to something, and that’s simply not the case.
President Trump is expected to address his immigration proposals in his first State of the Union address Tuesday.
Follow Breitbart.tv on Twitter @BreitbartVideo
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.