President Donald Trump’s riveting spectacle of televised bipartisanship exposed the Democrats’ political weakness in the amnesty debate — and also revealed remarkable GOP unity on the goal of ending the nation’s chain-migration system.
Time after time, Democrats pleaded for a quick passage of unpopular ‘dreamer’ amnesty while also promising a later-meaning-never debate over popular immigration reforms, such as the elimination of the visa-lottery and the chain-migration system, which doubles the annual inflow of legal immigrants.
Time after time, in contrast, GOP leaders wrapped themselves in sympathy for the 670,000 DACA illegals while insisting that Congress must implement Trump’s popular policies by ending the huge visa-lottery and chain-migration programs which are slowly but steadily freezing Americans’ wages while turning Republican states blue.
A key moment came when Trump invited GOP Majority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy to shut down the Democrats’ demand for a quick amnesty by touting the president’s immigration priorities as a must-do item:
[Democrat] SENATOR FEINSTEIN: … What about a clean DACA bill now, with a commitment that we go into a comprehensive immigration reform procedure? Like we did back — oh, I remember when [Sen. Ted] Kennedy was here and it was really a major, major effort, and it was a great disappointment that it went nowhere … Would you be agreeable to that?
THE PRESIDENT: I think a lot of people would like to see that, but I think we have to do DACA first.
REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTHY: Mr. President, you need to be clear though. I think what Senator [Diane] Feinstein is asking here: When we talk about just DACA, we don’t want to be back here two years later. We have to have security, as the Secretary would tell you … But, let’s be honest. Security was voted on just a few years ago [in 2013], and, no disrespect, there’s people in the room on the other side of the aisle who voted for it. If I recall, Senator [Hillary] Clinton voted for it. So I don’t think that’s comprehensive; I think that’s dealing with DACA at the same time. I think that’s really what the President is making.
It’s kind of like three pillars: DACA, because we’re all in the room want to do it; border security, so we’re not back out here; and chain migration. It’s just three items, and then everything else that’s comprehensive is kind of moved to the side…
THE PRESIDENT: And the lottery.
REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTHY: And the lottery.
The GOP’s new agreement with Trump’s pro-American goals allows him to ostentatiously delegate the task of negotiating the legislation to a bipartisan group of legislators, knowing that he is only going to get back a bill that he likes. He said:
I will say, when this group comes back — hopefully with an agreement — this group and others from the Senate, from the House, comes back with an agreement, I’m signing it. I mean, I will be signing it. I’m not going to say, “Oh, gee, I want this or I want that.” I’ll be signing it, because I have a lot of confidence in the people in this room that they’re going to come up with something really good.
Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin quickly argued that Trump’s priorities were too time-consuming to debate, so Congress should just rubber-stamp a quick amnesty — with a few token provisions on the border, chain-migration and the visa lottery. For example, Durbin’s allies have suggested a meaningless tweak of chain-migration laws for green card-holders, and for conversion of the visa-lottery into green-cards for migrants with “Temporary Protected Status.”
But he was contradicted by McCarthy’s ally, GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House judiciary committee, who is expected to unveil a Trump-approved and McCarthy-backed immigration bill on Tuesday.
SENATOR DURBIN: You said at the outset that we need to phase this … We have a deadline looming and a lot of lives hanging. We can agree on some very fundamental and important things together on border security, on chain, on the future of diversity visas. Comprehensive, though, I worked on it for six months [in 2013] … and it took us six months to put it together. We don’t have six months for the DACA bill.
[Goodlatte]: We’re not talking about comprehensive immigration. Take a look at our bill and let’s talk some …
SENATOR DURBIN: You’ve mentioned a number of factors that are going to be controversial, as [Democratcic Rep.] Steny [Hoyer] has mentioned.
THE PRESIDENT: But you’re going to negotiate. Dick, you’re going to negotiate. Maybe we will agree and maybe we won’t. I mean, it’s possible we’re not going to agree with you and it’s possible we will, but there should be no reason for us not to get this done.
Democrats at the event were defensive because many polls show why they cannot defend their cheap-labor goals in public, nor can they make a direct threat to shut down the government if they do not get their amnesty.
Throughout the televised event, Trump played the role of even-handed moderator, even as he repeatedly invited Republicans to show unity behind his popular immigration principles, including the border wall. For example, he declared that Democrats do not disagree with his goal of ending chain-migration — which is actually a foundation of the Democrats’ political strategy because it delivered a huge flow of government-dependent voters to the polling booths. Trump said told his ally, GOP Sen. David Perdue, that:
THE PRESIDENT: David, the chain immigration, though, has taken a very big hit in the last year with what’s happening. I mean, you’re looking at these [chain-migration immigrant] killers — whether you like or not — we’re looking at these killers and then you see, 18 people came in, 22 people came in, 30 people came in, with this one person that just killed a lot of people. I really don’t believe there are a lot of Democrats saying, “We will be supporting chain migration,” anymore.
Trump also made sure to redefine the Democrats’ demand for a no-strings “clean DREAM Act” for 3.25 million illegals into a Trump-style “clean” bill for the 670,000 ‘DACA’ illegals plus his other reform measures, and also to define a ‘DACA’ bill as a Trump-style reform:
To me, a clean bill is a bill of DACA. We take care of them and we also take care of security. That’s very important. And I think the Democrats want security too. I mean, we started off with Steny saying, we want security also.
After watching the event, Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, noted that:
It is becoming an official GOP policy that chain migration is a problem … the fact that ending chain-migration has become something close to orthodoxy for congressional Republicans is a remarkable thing and entirely due to Trump.
If chain migration is ended, the number of immigrants will drop by roughly half, from 1 million per year to roughly 500,000 per year. That huge drop would cancel out the marketplace impact of an amnesty for 670,000 ‘DACA’ illegals in just 16 months.
The decline of new immigrant labor will pressure employers to pay Americans higher wages and also to buy labor-saving machines built by American workers. But the GOP’s business-first wing will try to convert some of the former chain-migration visas into extra visas for white-collar workers — so escalating fight the fight over migration’s impact on college graduates.
The event shows that Trump is becoming a more disciplined opponent of mass-migration, he said:
Trump was never really a restrictionist, but seems to be becoming a restrictionist because of the logic of his [2016] supporters … He was always temperamentally concerned about high immigration and loose enforcement, and that has become hardend and more articulated … he seems to be growing in office.
Read the entire exchange here.
Meanwhile, Americans’ wages are rising because employers have started offering higher wages to attract employees from other companies. That consequence of Trump’s immigration-enforcement policy is likely to have an impact in November.
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 work-permits to roughly 3 million resident foreigners, and by doing little to block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via 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.
Because of the successful cheap-labor strategy, wages for men have remained flat since 1973, and a large percentage of the nation’s annual income has shifted to investors and away from employees.