Amnesty advocates are trying to intimidate GOP legislators by promising to publicize Republican support for popular enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws.
The bizarre political threat is apparently based on the assumption that swing-voters in the pending 2018 election do not want their immigration laws enforced. But many polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans want their immigration laws enforced — even as they also hope to help some of the illegals who have been living in the United States since they were children.
The blame pitch “backfires with the conservative base,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations at NumbersUSA. She continued:
I have no doubt that their intention is to work with the establishment media to get the name of the actual DACA holders, to show when they are deported — if they are ever deported — and then have big pity fests, and tell Republicans they are responsible for poor Juan being deported.
I don’t think most Americans will care.
The new promise to tell voters, which is couched as a threat, comes as the business-backed amnesty activists are losing their bid to insert an unpopular amnesty for 3 million ‘dreamer’ illegals into the 2018 budget. The push is fueled by business lobbies which want to distract the media and the public from President Donald Trump’s popular, wage-rasing, immigration principles. The reforms would include halving immigration rates by ending the via lottery and chain-migration, which allows immigrants to award green cards to their extended family and in-laws, regardless of education, skills, age or health.
On November 28, Trump effectively killed the Democrats’ push by calling their bluff to block the 2018 budget unless the amnesty is adopted.
The supposed threat to tell the voters about their legislators’ popular support for popular enforcement has popped up in Washington D.C. over the last week of November.
One early example was a November 26 op-ed by immigration lawyer David Leopold, titled “A vote to pass year-end budget is a vote to deport Dreamers.” He wrote:
Let me break this down. The 2018 spending package will fund the enforcement and removal operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol, which have been implementing Trump’s mass deportation plan since he took the oath of office.
The people targeted are not the “bad hombres” Trump promised to deport during his campaign. They’re people like Jesus Lara Lopez of Willard, Ohio, who’d lived in the U.S. for decades, had a legal work permit, and was paying taxes and raising a family. Jesus was deported after he voluntarily showed up at ICE offices for a routine check-in this year.
The script was backed up by Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer who helps supply white-collar labor into the U.S. labor market.
The script has been endorsed by Todd Schulte, director of the FWD.us pressure group, which is funded by venture capitalists in California, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Schulte’ allies at the America’s Voice lobby group also pushed the same ‘We’ll-tell-everyone-about -your-popular-vote” theme in a November 29 statement:
Republicans are responsible for keeping the federal government open, and if they refuse to include Dreamer relief, they will be on their own when it comes to putting together a majority out of their majority to keep the lights on.
The talking-point is likely based on the amnesty advocates’ misunderstanding of their cause’s popularity.
The amnesty advocates embrace the industry-funded “nation of immigrants” polls which shame Americans to say they welcome migrants. But the alternative “fairness” polls show that voters put a much higher priority on helping their families, neighbors, and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy. That political power of the voters’ fairness priority was made clear during the GOP primaries and again in November 2016.
One of the most negative poll was conducted in September 2016 by Ipsos, a highly rated polling firm. The poll shows the “strong support” and “somewhat support” numbers for various policies. That is important because it allows Americans some freedom to show their contradictory desire to help their kids and also help foreign migrants. Trump’s promise to start “immediately deporting” illegals who have committed crimes got 75 percent strong and somewhat support, and only 7 percent strong opposition. That’s 10-to-one support. Sixty-two percent support and 13 percent strongly oppose, “detaining or immediately deporting all people who enter the U.S. illegally.” Sixty-seven percent of respondents support and only 9 percent strongly oppose the implementation of current laws that levy fines on employers who hire illegals instead of Americans.
Public support for Schumer’s ‘dreamer’ amnesty is also declining. Giving “children … protection from deportation” is the “top priority” for only 11 percent of American voters who identify as independents, and “a top priority” for only 23 percent of independents in a November poll by Morning Consult and Politico, which was headlined “Polling Shows Waning Enthusiasm for Congressional Action on Dreamers.”
So far, only one Republicans — Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo — has promised to vote against the budget bill without an amnesty. Also, five Democratic Senators out of 48 say they will vote against the bill.
Those weak polls likely explain why the Democrats appear to have given up their bluff to shut government if the amnesty is not included in the 2018 budget, said Jenks. She continued:
It is unclear me that the Democrats actually believe their message, that they believe Americans really want amnesty for illegal aliens, or whether it is just a cynical play to get their own base ruled up, or if it is a just a feelgood ‘Look at us, we’re the nice people, not the mean people!’ claim … Any Democrat who thinks it is a good strategy to shut down the government for 700,000 [DACA] illegal aliens is out of their minds. I hope they do it — but it just ridiculous and patently absurd.
But amnesty advocates keep telling each other that their cause has 90 percent popularity. For example, the FWD.us group is sharing the claim that 90 percent of Americans support an amnesty for people such as Pamela Chomba, a Peruvian who migrated illegally into the United States at age 11 with her parents “because my parents and I agreed that … I wanted to go to an American university.”
“That was my dream, honestly, since I was five,” said the imported political activist, adding:
I graduated from a private university with private scholarships but also with merits … I was a community organizer before I started working with FWD, and I was a political activist before FWD as well, because I believe that we can listen to our community to see what is going on, and our community says that 90 percent of Americans also support dreamers and a pathway to citizenship.
Chomba describes herself as “Northeast Organizing Director @FWD_usProud Peruvian American.” She graduated from Marist College in New York with a degree in history, political science, women’s studies and philosophy.
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