GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ridiculed Democrats’ mumbled threats to shut down the government if the GOP does not back a hugely expensive, no-strings amnesty for 3 million illegals — plus green cards for their chain-migration relatives! — in the 2018 budget.
A government shutdown to win an amnesty “is a ridiculous idea” McConnell told ABC’s Sunday show, “This Week.” He continued;
There is no crisis. The president has given us until March to address the issue of undocumented children who came into the country — a very legitimate case here — here through no choice of their own, and are in a kind of difficult spot. But there’s no emergency. The president has given us to March to address it.
I don’t think the Democrats would be very smart to say they want to shut down the government over a non-emergency that we can address anytime between now and March. That’s an very untenable position.
We need the fund the military. We need to make sure the Children’s health Insurance Program, which is expiring, gets to panel before tend of the year. We have another supplemental for Puerto Rico, and for Florida, and for Texas. All of that will be in this [budget] package that we’ll dealing with at some point here in the next couple of weeks … Look, there’s not going to be a government shutdown. It’s just not going to happen.
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, one of McConnell’s deputies, also scoffed at a Democrat threat of a shutdown, according to the Washington Post:
Barrasso went a step further, daring Democrats to block the spending bills and shut down the government over “people who are here in our country illegally.”
“If that is the rallying cry of the Democrats, I think that they will clearly be blamed,” he predicted of a potential shutdown.
The comments come a week after President Donald Trump taunted the Democrats via Twitter for their on-again, off-again threat to shut down the government to get an amnesty.
In the House, GOP leaders have also said they will not include the amnesty in the 2018 budget.
GOP leaders have the polls on their side.
Business groups and Democrats embrace the industry-funded “nation of immigrants” polls that 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. The political power of the voters’ fairness priorities was made clear during the GOP primaries and again in November 2016.
Many media outlets are touting the Democrats’ threat. The Washington Post, for example, portrayed the Democrats’ threat as credible:
Yet, if they’re not careful, Republicans could easily stumble into a separate chaotic, year-end negotiation on government funding. All that talk of knowing how to govern because Republicans did something they like to do — cut taxes — could get swept aside by a partial shutdown of the government during the holiday season, fueled by an issue that has bedeviled their party for more than a decade: immigration.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is standing firm against quick passage of a bipartisan plan to provide permanent legal status for about 1 million undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. “This doesn’t have to be addressed in the next two weeks,” McConnell said Saturday in a telephone interview from Kentucky, where he was taking a victory lap after the passage of the tax bill.
The GOP’s total rejection of amnesty push leaves the Democratic Party in a bind because industry lobbyists and immigration advocates have raised false hopes for a December amnesty. Democratic leaders, including Senate Minority Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nacy Pelosi, have not hinted how they intended to escape the jam.
But the House and Senate GOP leaders may end up approving o the Democrats’ ‘Dream Act’ for 3 million people — including the 690,000 DACA beneficiaries — sometime in the new year.
This week, the Senate GOP is expected to release a proposal that would offer some form of amnesty to some illegals in exchange for some benefits to Americans, including the end of chain-migration. Ending chain migration would be a huge development — depending on possible conditions — because it would automatically halve immigration and force employers to pay higher wages and invest in more labor-saving machinery.
The GOP Senate package was outlined in a Thursday report:
Republicans presented [Democratic Sen. Richard] Durbin with plans drafted mostly by [GOP Sen. John] Cornyn that would make changes to border security, bolster immigration enforcement, revamp the E-Verify employment verification program and put limits on some forms of chain migration.
Durbin called the GOP proposal “a disappointment,” noting that the more than 400 pages of proposals included a new definition of an asylum seeker — a legal issue settled by an international treaty.
“That’s way beyond border security that they’re talking about,” he said.
The bill is expected to end chain-migration, which allows recent immigrants to pick their in-laws to become the next wave of immigrants, regardless of their health, education, skills, ideology, and ability to assimilate into the United States. “I agree with [GOP Sen. Tom] Cotton and [GOP Sen. David] Perdue” who drafted the Raise Act, McConnell told Laura Ingraham on her Fox News show on November 29. “I think the kinds of things … that Cotton and Perdue are pushing are exactly what ought to be part of a solution,” he said, one year after Donald Trump’s shocking immigration-powered victory in November 2016.
Hosue GOP leaders are also considering a plan that would end chain migration.
Immigration reformers are being very cautious about McConnell’s new enthusiasm for immigration reform. For example, reformers fear that a GOP promise to end chain-migration visas will be converted by business groups into more visas for foreign white-collar workers who can bid down salaries for American graduates. Similarly, GOP promises to toughen the E-verify system could be rendered toothless by providing easy loopholes for the employers.
Each year, four million Americans turn 18 and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.
But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting one million new legal immigrants, by providing almost two million work-permits to foreigners, by providing work-visas to roughly 500,000 temporary workers, and doing little to block the employment of roughly eight million illegal immigrants.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor and spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also encourages discrimination against American workers, drives up real estate prices, widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts kids’ schools and college education. Furthermore, it pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and reduces the work activity rate below the rate in foreign rivals, which sidelines millions of marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
The workplace impact was highlighted by a bakery in Chicago, which was forced to hire Americans to replace 800 illegal immigrants this year. The enforcement and subsequent reorganization cut revenue at the Cloverhill bakery by 7.5 percent, and trimmed profits from 16 percent to 9.5 percent of revenue once up to $176 million was redirected towards higher wages.
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