The diversity-visa jihadi has rolled over the Democrats’ audacious plan to win a no-strings amnesty for millions of young DACA illegals during the Christmas budget fight by using activists and skewed polls to bluff and intimidate GOP leaders.
That power-grab was first blocked by President Donald Trump’s October 8 demand that any amnesty complies with his poll-tested list of immigration principles. On Nov. 1, he dramatically stepped up the pressure, telling the media directly that he wanted a quick end to the diversity visa lottery and chain migration:
So we want to immediately work with Congress on the Diversity Lottery Program, on terminating it, getting rid of it. We want a merit-based program where people come into our country based on merit. And we want to get rid of chain migration.
Chain-migration is also being challenged by a group of GOP Senators who are debating whether they can or should demand a reform of the nation’s chain migration system in exchange for the Democrats’ goal of an amnesty of between 690,000 and 3 million illegals. That debate is needed because any DACA amnesty will also deliver millions of additional Democratic-leaning immigrant voters into polling booths unless the chain-migration rules are changed.
On Oct 31, before Islamic acolyte Sayfullo Saipov drove his rented truck over cyclists in New York, an aide to Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford confirmed the Senator’s interest in ending the chain migration which has effectively doubled the legal immigrant population in the United States to above 30 million. The aide wrote to Breitbart News:
Senator Lankford is for prohibiting chain migration and discouraging future illegal immigration. He wants to settle this DACA issue in a way that actually helps secure our borders and make sure we’re not debating this same problem thirty years from now.
Georgia Sen. David Perdue released a statement highlighting his RAISE bill, the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act, which would eliminate the outdated diversity visa lottery and sharply cut chain migration:
President Trump is right, the Diversity Visa Lottery Program is a problem and is plagued by fraud. Given these serious concerns, Senator [Tom] Cotton and I have proposed eliminating this outdated program as part of the RAISE Act. While Senate Democrats originally created the Diversity Visa Lottery in 1990, many have supported legislation that would have eliminated it in the years since. I hope we can include this area of common ground as we work to fix our broken immigration system and strengthen our national security.
The Saipov attack shows the recklessness of federal immigration policy which accepts millions of unscreened immigrants via the visa lottery and via chain migration, said Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA, a pro-American immigration-reform group. The visa lottery picks new Americans by chance, while the chain-migration law allows recent immigrants to pick their relatives to become future Americans, he said.
Most of the people who come in by the [visa] lottery and chain migration are fine people who mean the best for coming to the United States, but it does remind us that not everybody who comes through these are exemplary folks … Not one of them is screened in terms of whether they have a skill that is neeed in the United States. Not one of them is screened as to whether their presence in the labor force would be harmful to any particular group of Americans … One group is chosen by chance and by raffle, the other group is chosen by prior immigrants, not by the American people.
So far, Democrats are refusing to offer any safeguards or offsets to American voters. On November 1, Politico reported Democrats’ claims they may shut down the federal government until Americans agree to provide an amnesty to the illegals:
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a prospective 2020 presidential hopeful, raised the specter of a year-end showdown last week when she declared she wouldn’t vote for a spending bill that doesn’t help children of undocumented immigrants who came to the country as minors. Republicans will need Democratic votes — definitely in the Senate and almost certainly in the House, too — to pass legislation to keep the government funded … But a number of other Democratic senators said they aren’t willing to go there — at least not yet…
“It’d be very difficult for me to support the end-of-the-year bill, whatever that may be, if DACA has not been taken care of,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “If we can’t take care of the Dreamers, I think it jeopardizes America’s standing on our principle strength: our values.
Democratic leaders, however, are being careful, partly because the polls show the public prefers that any amnesty deal help Americans more than illegal migrants or low-wage employers.
“It is a topic which we are not raising at this point, because we hope we don’t even need to think about it,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a party leader on immigration. “But I tell you, everyone I’ve spoken to — starting with me — are very serious this has to be done this year.”
GOP leaders have the advantage in this budget-and-amnesty staring-contest, said Mark Krikorian, director the Center for Immigration Studies.
What is the issue you’re willing to shut down the government over? For the Democrats to pick an amnesty for illegal immigrants [as an issue], and to claim that they’re going to start blocking veterans’ benefits, strikes me as ludicrous. They may be talking about it now, but I find it hard to beleive they would follow through.
Some [Democrats] believe their press releases, and then there are other, including [Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer who are smarter and realize that these carefully curated public opinion polls don’t really capture the real public mood.
But there is a long way to go before GOP Senators win a showdown over chain-migration.
For example, Lankford is working with Sen. Thom Tillis promoting a bill, dubbed SUCCEED Act, which would allow an amnesty for up to 2 million illegals. But their bill would only impose a slight trim on chain-migration by adding ten years to the citizenship process for the illegals, barring them from sponsoring extended-family relatives until 2033. The SUCCEED bill would do nothing to reform or cut chain-migration laws.
Moreover, most of the young illegals to be amnestied by Lankford and Tillis are Mexicans. Data from after the 1986 amnesty showed that each amnestied Mexican provided sponsorship and citizenship to more than six relatives back in Mexico, helping turn California into a Democratic-run state of sharp economic and civic divides.
On Wednesday, Lankford spokesman Darrell Jordan sent an additional statement to Breitbart News saying “it’s fine for Congress to narrow the variety of relatives who can be sponsored for chain migration.”
In turn, Lankford and Tillis are working with Perdue, as well as Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, to develop some package of measures that would make a DACA amnesty palatable to Americans.
They are getting some support from the House. For example, judiciary chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte blasted the visa lottery program in a Nov. 1 statement:
For years, I have called for ending the diversity visa lottery and have sponsored legislation to do just that. Tragically, we have witnessed yet again that the visa lottery poses a threat to the safety of our citizens and the security of our nation. Under the visa lottery, each successful applicant is chosen at random and given the status of permanent resident based on pure luck.
“This flawed policy is just foolish in the age in which we live. Those in the world who wish us harm can easily engage in this statistical gamble with nothing to lose. Our immigration policy should be based primarily on our national needs, security, and economics and not in part on an arbitrary system.
Goodlatte is working with several other House Republicans to develop a potential amnesty-for-something deal in December.
But there are many potential obstacles to a chain-migration reform.
For example, Texas Sen. John Cornyn reportedly wants to exclude the diversity visas — and likely the chain migration issue — from any deal.
Sen. Lindsey Graham is also working on the immigration with Cornyn and the other GOP Senators. He is an enthusiastic support for an amnesty. He opposes the visa lottery, but he is not likely to oppose chain migration, in part, because he has repeatedly said that he wants to bring in more labor for the tourist, hospitality, and agriculture industries in his home state of South Carolina.
Moreover, Democrats expect the GOP leaders to roll over when they’re hit by media pressure in December, said Krikorian. “The Republicans have surrendered so early so often they don’t have credibility with the Democrats … it may well be the [Democrats] will go through with their [budget shutdown] threats, but I don’t see how the Republicans will cave over this, because the public will not rally on the side of amnestying illegal aliens on Schumer’s terms, as opposed to some kind of give-and-take,” he said, adding:
[GOP Senate Majority Leader] McConnell may decide to call their bluff, say ‘Go ahead shut the government, see if we care,’ especially because from the President on down on down, Republicans have said that DACA [illegals] are sympathetic people and they do want to work something out… [so] it is not even though the Democrats can say ‘The evil Republicans don’t care about these young people.’
This is an opportunity to get something done rather than to use it as political issue… if it were me, I really would try to work something out. If we can get [an end to] chain migration and [mandatory] E-Verify in exchange for a narrow DACA amnesty, that would be worth it. I’d be eager for it.
Beck at NumbersUSA is also hopeful, saying “when have we heard before this year chain migration mentioned even a tenth as much in public?” He added:
It is because of [Sen. Tom] Cotton and Sen. David] Perdue introducing the RAISE Act, and because the President has embraced that act, and has started putting ‘chain’ in his tweets. There is real talk about it, and the more than Americans hear about chain migration and the visa lottery, and the more they will clamor to get rid of them.
On November 1, Trump offered a preview of the powerful and popular message that he can use to trump the Democrats’ threat to shut down the federal government, saying:
So we’re going to get rid of this lottery program as soon as possible. [Saipov] came in through the Diversity Program, as you know, and we’re going to stop that.
We’re going to as quickly as possible get rid of chain migration and go to a merit-based system. Terrorists are constantly seeking to strike our nation, and it will require the unflinching devotion to our law enforcement, homeland security, and intelligence professionals to keep America safe. We will take all necessary steps to protect our people and our communities, and to protect our nation as a whole.
“The more the president talks about this, the more pressure there will be on Congress,” said Beck.
Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.
But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting 1 million new legal immigrants, by providing almost 2 million work-permits to foreigners, by providing work-visas to roughly 500,000 temporary workers and doing little to block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.
The 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.