‘Might as Well Roll It Straight Into the Trash Can’: Tom Cotton Shoots Down Expansive ‘Gang of Six’ DACA Amnesty

The “Gang of Six” amnesty for millions of illegal aliens shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program should be rolled “straight into the trash can,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) says.

On Wednesday, a group of six pro-amnesty Senators will roll out their expansive immigration amnesty plan that would not only give a pathway to U.S. citizenship beginning with 3.5 million DACA and DACA-eligible illegal aliens but also give amnesty to the parents of amnesty beneficiaries.

Cotton — whose popular legal immigration-cutting RAISE Act was endorsed by President Trump in 2017 — slammed the “Gang of Six” amnesty, saying it was dead on arrival.

A memo on the expansive amnesty plan reveals that the legislation would:

• Give DACA and DACA-eligible illegal aliens a pathway to U.S. citizenship
• Give amnesty to the parents of DACA illegal aliens
• Make no cuts to legal immigration levels, whereby more than one million legal immigrants enter the U.S. every year
• Transfers the 50,000 visas through the Diversity Visa Lottery into two other visa categories
• Does not fund the estimated $18 billion U.S.-Mexico border wall
• Does not mandate E-Verify to bar employers from hiring illegal aliens over American workers

Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Jessica Vaughan wrote in an op-ed that the “Gang of Six” amnesty plan is “not a serious effort to find common ground with either the majority of congressional Republicans or the president,” as it does not meet the pro-American immigration reform requirements that have been laid out by the Trump administration.

A DACA amnesty is likely to trigger a border surge of potentially one million illegal aliens trying to cross the southern border into the U.S., as Breitbart News reported.

As the Migration Policy Institute has chronicled, previous border surges from amnesty programs have brought hundreds of thousands across the U.S.-Mexico border:

While the flow of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) has been climbing steadily since 2012, a dramatic surge has taken place in the last six months, with the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas as the principal place of entry. The Border Patrol there has converted entire stations to house unaccompanied minors and families.

According to the Border Patrol, apprehensions of unaccompanied children increased from 16,067 in fiscal year (FY) 2011 to 24,481 in FY 2012 and 38,833 in FY 2013. During the first eight months of FY 2014, 47,017 such children were apprehended by the Border Patrol. If the influx continues apace—and it shows no signs of slowing—the administration predicts that by the end of the fiscal year on September 30, totals could reach 90,000.

Ninety-eight percent of unaccompanied minors currently arriving at the border are from Honduras (28 percent), Mexico (25 percent), Guatemala (24 percent), and El Salvador (21 percent). This breakdown represents a significant shift: prior to 2012, more than 75 percent of UACs were from Mexico.

As Breitbart News reported, should the current legal immigration system not be changed over the next 50 years, the U.S. is on track to add 100 million foreign-born individuals to the country. In the next 20 years, the current legal immigration system is on track to import 15 million new foreign-born voters to the U.S.