The border crisis and Republican candidates beginning to connect the dots on amnesty harming Americans have been two of the factors driving recent polls and causing concern among Democrats in tough elections, according to NumbersUSA president Roy Beck.
“The public is ready to back the leaders in the party that shows they will truly go to the line for the workers,” Beck said in an interview with Breitbart News, detailing some of the grassroots efforts NumbersUSA has engaged in to get its members to push against amnesty this summer and encourage Republicans to make the case against it.
“To have Scott Brown and Tom Cotton and others start to advertise on it, that began to send shivers in August through all these Democratic camps,” he said, further pointing to recent polls revealing that people are paying attention to the immigration issue.
In recent days, the Obama administration has appeared to be wavering on meeting its deadline to announce major executive actions on immigration by the end of the summer, reportedly amid concerns that Democrats in tight elections will be politically harmed come November.
“The Republican voice is sounding more like [Alabama Republican Sen.] Jeff Sessions,” Beck said, describing in part why the issue of immigration is becoming more politically potent.
According to Beck, it has been decades since a major political party made the case for American workers as it pertains to immigration.
“The more that the Republican voice is the message of Jeff Sessions, the less likely that Obama is going to be able to try to pull another executive amnesty,” he said, arguing that he sees the trend as being toward speaking about immigration as an issue affecting American workers.
Beck predicted that Obama will not go as big with his executive amnesty as some expect him to.
“What I think is possible, maybe even likely, is some kind of statement in which they are not going to put in deportation proceedings [for] these so-called five million that they have been talking about — but no issuance of legalization documents, no issuance of work permit. Those are the two things that were the most destructive about DACA,” he explained.
The NumbersUSA president added that while he believes Republicans can and should use funding mechanisms to push back against Obama, should he move forward with executive amnesty, Beck does not think that the House should try to use the upcoming continuing resolution before the elections to that end due to the potential risk of a shutdown that would politically harm Republicans in the end.
“It does not make sense for us to push for an action, for our issue, that I think everyone would agree, would be very risky for the members of Congress who help us. So you know you don’t want to push for things that will really harm the people that are helping you,” he said.
“My hope is that they will only extend the CR for a couple of months,” and then deal with any executive actions after the election, he explained.
“One of the big reasons for after the election is, at a time when you don’t have this election deadline that gets in the way of dealing with this in a full way,” Beck added.