Path to Citizenship for Millions of Illegal Aliens Still Not Enough Mass Immigration for Democrats

During President Trump’s State of the Union (SOTU) address on Tuesday, the populist president broke with his previous commitment to American voters that no amnesty for illegal aliens would be considered until illegal immigration was ended.

In his address to both chambers of Congress, Trump offered an immigration plan that gives a pathway to United States citizenship to at least 1.8 million illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Trump said:

The first pillar of our framework generously offers a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants who were brought here by their parents at a young age — that covers almost three times more people than the previous administration. Under our plan, those who meet education and work requirements, and show good moral character, will be able to become full citizens of the United States. [Emphasis added]

The amnesty, though, has the potential to give a pathway to citizenship to close to 4.5 million illegal aliens, as a draft version of the White House plan, obtained by Breitbart News, reveals low standards for illegal aliens applying for the amnesty.

In exchange for the amnesty, the White House is requesting three pro-American immigration reforms: Full funding for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border; an end to “chain migration,” whereby naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country with them; and an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery program, which imports 50,000 random foreign nationals from around the world every year.

Unlike the amnesty for illegal aliens provision of the plan, the relief from the pro-American reforms would not be felt by America’s working and middle class for some time, as the chain migration portion of the plan allows the entire backlog of chain migrants to still enter the U.S.

Experts say there are roughly four million chain migrants in the backlog, which could mean that legal immigration levels are not reduced for another 10 to 20 years. For America’s workers, who are forced to compete with more than one million new legal immigrants every year for blue-collar and white-collar jobs, the non-immediate end to chain migration translates to continued mass immigration for at least another decade, while amnesty is given immediately to illegal aliens.

The Visa Lottery portion of the White House plan, like the chain migration provisions, does end the lottery system through which the roughly 50,000 to 55,0000 visas are handed out every year, but it merely repurposes the visas to different visa categories. Therefore, this portion of the White House plan does not reduce legal immigration levels to raise the wages of American workers.

Even with the potential amnesty for 4.5 million illegal aliens and no immediate reduction to legal immigration levels, Democrats remain married to chain migration and the Visa Lottery, refusing to accept Trump’s plan.

A slew of Senate Democrats rejected the White House plan, telling POLITICO:

“The tone was of a divider-in-chief,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview. “It was a red-meat appeal to the anti-immigrant base of his party, not the unifying, coming-together appeal that we all know is necessary.”

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“He’s laying out pillars that are not going to get him a deal from Democrats. A lot of empty rhetoric,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). “Those words were not helpful.”

“Nothing about the Dreamers,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “He had opportunities to heal. I’ve never seen a president that cares nothing about reaching out to people that didn’t vote for him.”

Likewise, House Democrats like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi slammed the idea of ending chain migration, despite the vast majority of Americans — including black Americans — supporting the initiative.

In a statement following Trump’s SOTU address, open borders advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) claimed the end to chain migration would “gut” the legal immigration system.

Gutierrez said:

I am still hopeful, but I don’t see this Congress and this President coming to an agreement that prevents the deportation of the Dreamers.  The White House agenda is to gut legal immigration in exchange for allowing some of the Dreamers to live here.  For those of us who support legal immigration, and that’s most Democrats and many Republicans, it won’t fly.  And the Dreamers themselves have said they do not want legal status if it comes at the expense of others who will suffer more as part of the bargain.  The speech did nothing to bring the pro- and anti-immigrant sides closer together. [Emphasis added]

For Democrats, chain migration is a sacred component of their legacy, as the current legal immigration system, if not changed in the next two decades, will add 15 million new foreign-born voters to the American electorate in the next decade.

Of those 15 million new foreign-born voters, between seven and eight million will be imported to the U.S. directly because of chain migration, according to Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research, Steven Camarota.

The voters arriving in the U.S. over the course of the next couple of decades are vastly more likely to become bloc voters for Democrats, rather than Republicans, as noted by University of Maryland, College Park researcher James Gimpel:

Immigrants, particularly Hispanics and Asians, have policy preferences when it comes to the size and scope of government that are more closely aligned with progressives than with conservatives. As a result, survey data show a two-to-one party identification with Democrats over Republicans.

By increasing income inequality and adding to the low-income population (e.g. immigrants and their minor children account for one-fourth of those in poverty and one-third of the uninsured) immigration likely makes all voters more supportive of redistributive policies championed by Democrats to support disadvantaged populations.

There is evidence that immigration may cause more Republican-oriented voters to move away from areas of high immigrant settlement leaving behind a more lopsided Democrat majority.

Democrats like former San Antonio, Texas mayor Julian Castro admit that mass immigration to the U.S. will result in Democrat dominance for generations in swing states.

As noted by Camarota, an unchanged legal immigration system over the next 50 years will likely result in 100 million new foreign-born individuals arriving and living in the U.S., potentially forever changing current voting patterns by the American electorate.

Though an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens is the plan Democrats have been pushing the Trump administration towards for the past five months, left-wing lawmakers — and even the Republican establishment — say the proposal is no longer enough of a bargain because it does not preserve mass immigration for decades to come.